So I got behind with the blogging.  As in, I didn't do any.  I will rectify that over upcoming days!  But for now, I will reflect on my Pre-Oz quests.

1. Find the resting place of my Uncle David.

Achieved, debatabley.  I found the Herb Garden, South Yarra, which was part of Melbourne's amazing Botanic Gardens (and conveniently pretty much across the road from where Jamie lived).  However, it has never been legal to scatter ashes there, and there definitely aren't any headstones.  It doesn't mean he wasn't scattered there though.  So I took lots of pictures.  That's the best I could do.  It is beautiful.

2. Forge ties between Edinburgh and Melbourne Open Knowledge Foundations.

Well, I went to #govHack and had an amazing time.  Pete and I discovered we'd already been to one of Flanders' hacks in the UK, and another hack that had derived from it (Dev8D and DevXS).  So we were well received.  Also because we'd travelled 11,000 miles to be there.  And I got to know some things about Australian data.  Stay posted for the official blog.

Check out some of the places my Mum and her family lived.

I found a caravan park in Palm Cove where she lived 38 years ago, and the creek where she learned to swim!  The change in the town from how she described it was immense, but walking the same beach she walked as a child was a really surreal experience.  I also dangled my feet in Mossman Gorge in the Daintree rainforest before I even knew that she used to swim there.

I saw a sign to Toowoomba near Brisbane, where she lived too.

Maybe attempt to bump into relatives or family friends.

Wasn't expecting to achieve this.  But I saw my cousin in Perth!  That was awesome.  And it was very good of him to pick us up from the airport, give us a super fast tour of Perth at night and let us sleep on his floor for a few hours, before returning us to the airport for 5am.  Thanks Luke!

It almost made up for the ..ahem.. additional expenses incurred.

See Ayres Rock.

Check!  It wasn't all that.

But the road tripping was amazing.

See the main cities on the east coast, like Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra.

Check!  But only just.  Brisbane and Canberra need more visits.  I wrung quite a lot out of Sydney, made new friends (one of whom was feathered), ate some really tasty food, and learned to love the Domestic Airport.

Two freelance projects, due on 5th June and 1st July.

Succeeded the first (with some hiccups) and failed at the second (pending..).

Finish my PhD literature review...

Haha.  That was ambitious.  It didn't get a look-in.  I feel bad.  There was no wifi though!  Anywhere!

Make a poster for the Semantic Web Summer School.

I didn't do that whilst travelling, but it is done now.


Meanwhile, whilst you wait for my full blog posts, here are our tweets, nicely collated:

I have been on no fewer than thirteen planes in the last four weeks or so.  I've already made my apologies to the environment.  If it's any consolation, it makes my ears really hurt every time.  It's only four days, after that, until I get on a flight from Edinburgh to Madrid.  It's becoming as normal as going for a walk.  (A walk with earache and slight deafness).

Presumably, if using electronic equipment during takeoff and landing, and mobile phones at any time, was actually dangerous there would be some sort of machine to detect if any passengers did have things turned on, and electric shock them (or something).  And there would be a degree of consistency in how these things were handled between airports.  In quite a few airports in Australia, we were asked to turn our phones off altogether before stepping onto the tarmac to approach the plane.  I saw a couple of people who were walking and tapping their screens get pulled aside and refused boarding until their devices were safely off and pocketed.  No planes were crashing in the background.  And nobody checked that out-of-sight gadgets were switched off.  So you only pose a risk if you get caught?  And in Zurich, the crew were happy with people making phonecalls right up until the plane started trundling.

Security is inconsistent too.  And a massive hassle, so in an endeavour to minimise unpacking and re-packing time at the gates, I gradually reduced the number of electronics and liquids I removed from my hand luggage.

A timid and inexperienced flyer before this year, I used to think it was standard procedure to remove everything with a glimmer of metal or a drop of liquid for an x-ray in its own separate tray.  So out came the chargers, headphones, coins, cards and soaps, along with tablets, e-readers, laptop, phone and clear bags of 100ml containers of liquids.

Before the start of this trip I'd figured out that was excessive, and silently pitied those who unloaded all of these things still.

Time to see what else the security guys don't give two shits about.

Kindle.  That was fine.  Nobody questioned a Kindle left in my bag.

Tablet was the next to stay.  My Nexus 7 caused zero concern.

At this point I'm just unloading a laptop and liquids.

So I left the toothpaste in.  That was fine.  Then I found out one of my travel buddies had been inadvertently passing through security gates with a 250ml bottle of suncream in the side pocket of his rucksack.  Apparently not an issue.

At some point on the trip I acquired small scissors; so weak they could barely cut thread.  They made it through security in Sydney the first time just fine, but in Alice Springs my bag got pulled back.  I thought it was the toothpaste, but no.  Once they had confirmed that these scissors were such that they'd buckle before piercing skin, they let me have them back.  Same again in Cairns, and Gold Coast.  By Sydney round three, the scissors had broken into two parts.  A very concerned looking lady asked if she minded if she threw them away rather than let them on the plane.  I didn't.

By this point I was sending 50ml nasal spray and deodorant through, because what the heck?  They were also cool with our massive jar of pasta sauce, and whatever we happened to be drinking at the time.

So within Australia, I was just removing my laptop at security (and phone from my pocket).

In Singapore, signs actually advised that we keep phones, tablets and e-readers packed, so only the laptop came out there too (my liquids were in my hold baggage by this point).

Zurich, however, are nuts.

No liquids still, and I got out my Nexus and Kindle straight away because someone ahead of me was getting yelled at about an iPad.

Apparently that wasn't enough, and eager staff sent my bag back through three times, unloading more on each round.  Out came chargers, headphones, bags within bags, chocolate.  I was almost ashamed of how much crap I was carting around.  For the final round they dug deep to extract a a sealed bar of soap I bought someone as a souvenir from Cairns.  That seemed to do the trick.

So then I had to hold up the line re-packing.

How does x-raying soap on its own make it less of a threat?  Or easier to detect the threat?  Serious question.  Anyone know?

I'm just pleased I left my Vegemite and teas in my hold luggage.

I'm lucky enough to have some quests to complete, or achievements to unlock, during my month in Australia.

1. Find the resting place of my Uncle David.

My Mum and her family moved to Australia for a few years when she was nine.  They moved around a lot, and eventually came back to the UK.  Her older brother returned to Melbourne when he was 17, and died there (very suddenly I think) at the age of 28, of a brain tumour.  He only visited the UK once while he lived in Oz, and though he stayed in touch with his family, information about his life is sketchy.  Until recently I thought I was going to have to trawl through various records to find out where he might be buried, and I'm not even sure what year he died in, let alone where he lived.  I talked to my Grandma the other day though, and she knew more than we thought - that he was cremated, and scattered in the "Herb Garden, South Yarra" and that he has a headstone there.  I'm not sure how accurate this is; the Web isn't being very forthcoming with useful information right now, but it's more to go on than I had before.

2. Forge ties between Edinburgh and Melbourne Open Knowledge Foundations.

Since there's an OKFN Hack days after I arrive in Melbourne, and not even far from where I'm staying, I've registered to take part.  Should be fun.


And some less questy, more general things...

Check out some of the places my Mum and her family lived.

I have a pretty long list of addresses across Victoria and South Australia, to see which still exist and what they're like.

Maybe attempt to bump into relatives or family friends.

This will be tricky though, as my UK family don't seem to know where anyone on the upside down side of the world is any more, how to contact them, or whether they'd be interested in meeting.  The ones we do know are in Perth, which I'm not going to be able to get to.  There are quite a lot of them around in Australia and New Zealand though, so hopefully more data will emerge.

See Ayres Rock.

Duh.

See the main cities on the east coast, like Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra.

Expensive and time-consuming, but doable.  I also want to go to Tasmania.


And things that need doing that aren't to do with being in Australia:

• Two freelance projects, due on 5th June and 1st July.
• Finish my PhD literature review...
• Make a poster for the Semantic Web Summer School.
• (Eep).