We left home for our Australian adventure on the evening of Thursday 20 April 1995. We were to stay the night at a rather plush hotel on the outskirts of Manchester, from where we would take a courtesy bus to the airport the following morning in order to catch our early flight. A taxi was booked to take us to this hotel at 6pm. In the event, we were provided with a rude awakening on the Thursday - at 6am, by a confused taxi driver! He was enlightened as to the true nature of his mission in a manner which, albeit curt, was as restrained as he could expect at that time of the morning. In the early afternoon, I drove into Lancaster t o pick up the last of our travel documents and to pick up Joe and Betty Hanssel (Tom Hyclak's parents-in-law) from the station - they were to stay in our house as rent-free burglar deterrents throughout our time abroad. At 6pm, a (different) taxi driver app eared, and the poor fellow's heart sank as he came to appreciate the magnitude of the task which faced him - fitting the huge quantities of luggage which we were soon to take around the world into a mere car. He coped well, and 90 minutes later we arrived at the hotel which was indeed plush.

The long journey from Manchester to Sydney started on Friday morning (21 April). We touched down at Bombay - a surprise, as we had expected this stop to be in Paris. I suppose Bombay at night looks much the same as Paris. Anyway we were on the ground for about an hour at Bombay but were not able to leave the plane during this time. The next stop was Singapore, by which time the morning light (Saturday) had come, and we got some great views over the city. Here we did c hange planes - conveniently to the one at the adjacent gate at the airport. We caught a whiff of the hot and humid climate and decided that on the return journey (when we shall be stopping over at Singapore for a couple of nights) we shall spend most of t he time in air conditioned buildings! Singapore Airlines - with whom we flew - have a reputation as the world's best; we figured this has something to do with the plentiful and delicious food but also something to do with the exceptionally attractive air ho stesses garbed in traditional costume! We eventually arrived at Sydney at about 7pm local time. I took a couple of heavy suitcases to left luggage (ready to pick up again on Monday) and we took a shuttle bus to our hotel. Rather than a hotel, this turned out to be a comfortable little apartment, right on Darling Harbour and about 10 minutes walk from the city centre.

On Sunday, we took a walk to the fabulous Sydney Opera House and ate sandwiches on the circular quay overlooking the equally fabulous harbo ur bridge. Sydney enchanted us - it's a beautiful city and so clean you could eat off the pavements. It surpassed our high expectations. The relaxed atmosphere contrasts sharply with American cities. We shall enjoy our 5 days here immediately before retur ning home. Inevitably much time is now spent getting over jetlag, with me being sent on errands to shop for food (at Woolworths!) or to get burgers from McDonalds.

We caught the shuttle bus to the airport on Monday morning and I picked up the left luggag e before taking the turbo-prop flight to Canberra. Food on this Ansett flight was superb. We hired a station wagon on arrival to haul the luggage and ourselves to our accommodation - must consider one of these as a possibility next time we change cars. We have 4 suitcases and 4 large pieces of hand luggage. I suppose Katy at this age counts as a fifth piece of hand luggage, but Tom and Becky were magnificent, each carrying a rucksack on their back and doing anything else they could to help. Their behaviou r both on and in the wake of the long air flight has been impeccable. We found the housing office (which is next to our house) by serendipity, and moved in easily. While we still had the car, I went out shopping for essentials (these included a cot mattress for Katy - the house came with a mattress-less cot!) and Jill, Tom and Becky unpacked. Again the kids were a big help. The house is very comfortable - a large living room, 4 bedrooms (ours with en-suite), bathroom with seperate toilet, kitchen and laundr y room. A feature of the house is the 'gallery', an area 6 feet by 22 feet (approx) with one of the 22 foot walls having windows along its whole length, overlooking the lake. No other houses in view, it looks over treetops and over Lake Burley Griffin towar ds the Parliament Building and National Library. There is a garden and the 'crescent' is really a close, so it is safe for the kids to play outside. To say that we have landed on our feet is putting it mildly. The city of Canberra is a real surprise and a d elight (from first impressions at least). The word that incongruously comes to mind is 'rural'. There are vast areas of unspoilt bush separating suburbs which are theselves characterised by tree-lined streets and numerous parkland areas. Even the central city area - while having the shops, banks and offices which one might expect, is compact and unobtrusive. That area is about 10 minutes walk from our house, but the immediate vicinity of our dwelling doesn't betray such proximity to the city's facilities one little bit.

The Tuesday was supposed to be my first day in work. But it turned out to be a public holiday in Australia! So we went out for a walk in the morning. We walked down to the lake and came across our first exotic wildlife - some black swans and a crimson ros ella (a type of parrot). Nothing had prepared us for the abundance of birdlife which appears to our eyes to be exotic. Parrots and cockatoos are as common here - even in our garden - as blue tits and chaffinches back home!

Wednesday re ally was my first day at work. At this stage there are a lot of silly administrative tasks to perform - getting a library card, sorting out computer facilities (like getting a plug adaptor for my laptop!), getting a key for my office, visiting the Medicar e office in the city to arrange medical cover, opening a bank account, getting the children signed up for a creche, hiring a high chair, signing lots of forms. This was also my birthday. Has anyone noticed how difficult it is, when dating forms made out o n your birthday, to write down the current year rather than your year of birth?! After work, I went out for a drink with Bob Gregory (one of the professors here - and indeed one of the few really well known Australian economists).

On Thursday I had to visit the tax office in Belconnen (one of Canberra's suburbs) to hand in a tax form. This had to be done in person. I was struck by the efficient bus service around here, the whole job (including the walks to and from the city cente b us station) taking littl e more than an hour. Meanwhile, Jill and the children visited the creche, which is by the lake near our house. It's called Campus Childcare. All three children will go on Friday mornings, and the older two will also go on Tuesday mornings. This will give them the chance to meet other children and keep them in the habit of doing structured activities outside the home. Work is by now settling into more of a routine, but I encoutered a hitch on Friday when I discovered an error in the way I had transcribed a d ata set from the mainframe computer at Lancaster onto my laptop. Fortunately - thanks to the miracles of telnet (a method of logging into the Lancaster machine from here, and transferring files between the two machines) I was able to fix this on Saturday night. On Friday afternoon I attended a staff seminar - some chap talking about the economic consequences for individuals of migrating into Australia; interesting but unexceptional.

We hired a car on Friday for the weekend from a company called Susan's R ent-a-Dent. It's an old Toyota Corona, but is a nice runner and has a child seat fitted for Katy. The Friday-Monday deal is $72 including insurance which is very reasonable indeed and something we'll probably use most weekends while we're in Canberra. Our first jaunt was to the shops at Dickson - one of the suburbs - where Woolworths is located. Most people seem to reckon this to be the best place to shop for food. It was certainly better than the city centre shop, but supermarkets here in general seem to b e less attractive than those in Britain. Space is cramped and boxes are stored above the top shelf giving the whole place more the atmosphere of a Kwiksave rather than a Sainsbury's or Asda. Prices are comparable to those in Britain, though - some things are more expensive, but meat in particular is a lot cheaper here.

On Saturday, we visited Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, about 15 miles south of Canberra. Along the way - a beautiful drive incidentally - we saw our first kangaroos in the wild and also a per egrine. The reserve itself is a gem. Most of it is left in its natural state, but there are artificial wetlands to encourage birds to the area - we saw sacred ibis here - and also a koala reserve (where we saw one of the cuddly creatures climbing up a tre e). Koalas are now increasingly uncommon in the wild, so this is probably the nearest we'll get to a 'tick' for that creature! On Sunday we stayed near Canberra to visit a miniature village which the children enjoyed very much.

This diary will doubtless be less detailed in future weeks - not all weeks are as eventful as the first - and will not generally be a day to day account.

Week 2 begins on Monday 1 May. I'm well into the work routine by now. My office is just under 5 minutes walk from the house, so there's no need to worry about catching buses or even about getting very wet if it rains. Yes, we had our first Aussie rain thi s week - a very British style of drizzle, and it lasted off and on for the first couple of days of the week. This has been acc ompanied by a rapid fall of foliage, so that the glorious colours which greeted us on our arrival in Canberra are by now fading. The good news about that is that it makes the parrots easier to see on their perches! (Jill saw her first kookaburras this wee k, but that's a pleasure that awaits me and the children.) Later in the week the weather perked up again giving us days with temperatures of about 16 or 17 degrees C, and nights going down to about 5 degrees. The house is not centrally heated or double gl azed, but there are plenty of electric and gas heaters which appear to be quite efficient.

At work, there are staff seminars twice a week (Tuesday lunchtime and Friday afternoon), and these have a relaxed and informal atmosphere. On Friday, Viv Hall talked about growth (or rather the lack of it) in the New Zealand economy. I shall have to prese nt one of these on my own research later during my stay (and plan to give similar seminars at various universities in the Brisbane area during July). On Monday I fin ally took delivery of a desktop computer in my office. This is needed for communications (e-mail and file tranfer between here and Lancaster), but it also comes in useful as a word processor which I can use while the laptop is busy doing the heavier stati stical work. I have now invested in a mug. This is good news because the coffee room either charges 30 cents for a cup of coffee or 35 cents for a mug. The second of these alternatives is a bargain! I have got to know most of the department by now; actual ly about half of us are visitors (from USA and New Zealand as well as UK) - a feature of the research schools at ANU is the number of visitors they attract.

On Tuesday, Tom and Becky had their first morning at the creche without Jill (who had stayed with them the previous week to settle them in). They enjoyed it immensely, especially as they spent the whole morning playing outside in the creche's own very imp ressive play area. Katy joined the older two on Friday morning, when Tom got to do some painting and Becky was introduced to the wonders of yoga!

On Thursday, the television which we had ordered from the rentals company finally arrived. We had managed so well without it that the kids hadn't even commented that the house didn't have one. Still it's nice to have one now it's here, and we find we can watch the Dr Finlay series which we missed when it was recently shown in Britain.

I didn't say much last time about our car hire arrangements. We have again hired a car for the weekend - the same car in fact, a beat up old Toyota Corona with over 200000 kilometers on the clock but a nice runner nonetheless! I have to walk to Braddon (about 25 minutes' walk) to pick the car up after work on Friday, and then do the return stroll before work on Monday. The car helps us get around the short distances within the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) which we are travelling. Not least it helps with our Friday evening food shop. The routine is to go to Woolworths at Dickson (though we may go to Belconnen in futur e) and to call in at McDonalds (or in future it may be Kentucky Fried Chicken or Pizza Hut) for our tea. Tom and Beck insist on calling it Old McDonalds!!!

We had a wonderful day on Saturday. Soon after getting here, we bought a book called 25 Family Bush Walks in and around Canberra , and in the morning we went on our first such bush walk. It seemed pretty incongruous that a book like this should refer to bush walks in Canberra; this is supposed after all to be a capital city. But Canberra is a city with a difference - in most cities the buildings are interrupted by parkland, but here the unadulterated countryside is interrupted here and there by buildings. So we went on our first bush walk on the slopes of Black Mountain, a wooded hill rising to 800 meter s. Once we parked the car, we climbed a stile into a meadow where there were 5 eastern grey kangaroos grazing not 25 yards away from us. Three of them bounced off as we approached, but the others were still there when we returned one and a half hours late r. A magical moment for all of us (not least Tom, who spent the next half hour jumping about and trying to convince us he had a tail!). The circular walk took us up to a vantage point from where we got fine views of the countryside and mountains surrounding Canberra. Later in the walk we also saw an Australian pelican in flight. The walk was two and a half kilometers in length, and Becky and Tom both did very well to walk the whole lot unassisted. Later in the day we visited the elegant Telecommunications t ow er which sits at the summit of Black mountain (and which dominates the central area of the city); the views from the observation gallery of the tower were stunning and bring home what a fabulous location this is. In between those two activities, we called in at the Belconnen shopping area to find Toys 'r' Us and to buy paints for the children. So we had a busy day!

On Sunday we went to the Australian Botanical Gardens (only about three-quarters of a mile from our house) and were impressed by the way in which various Austr alian habitats - even including a small rain forest - had been laid out within a relatively small area on the slopes of Black Mountain in order to show off a comprehensive collection of native Australian trees and other plants. This made for a very pleasa nt walk. The birdlife there was good too, and by the end of the morning we could add to our list the white-browed scrubwren and the gang-gang cockatoo. We also visited (briefly) the old parliament house on Sunday morning, where the Australian senate and r epresentatives houses met until 1988. The afternoon was an altogether quieter affair, with the children painting and sleeping off the exhaustion of a busy weekend.

The children all seem to be growing fast at the moment. Tom's vocabulary is getting really extensive, and he's been remarkably well behaved over the last couple of weeks. Becky is full of projects; she made a 'scarecrow' the other day which she put on the windowsill - before that we had had dozens of cockatoos on the lawn at the same time, but s ince then we've had nothing!!! She and Tom send a lot of time playing 'pretend' games in the garden or in Katy's bedroom which for some reason has become a favourite venue. They have got to know the children next door - two boys, Christopher and Johannes, who are about the same ages as Becky and Tom - and have been playing a lot with them. Katy is very close to crawling and her manipulative skills are improving daily. She's taking finger food now although her first tooth is still stubbornly refusing to ap pear.

Week 3 begins on Monday 8 May, with the wonderful news that Steve and Helen's twins were born. We had received a phone call on Sunday evening to let us know that they were on their way, and we finally heard on Monday evening that the 2 boys had been born each weighing well over 6lb. At that stage those were the only details available, and we still don't even know their names! On the same day, Katy started crawling properly (now the hard work begins!) and Blackburn Rovers earned a good 3 points again st Newcastle United.

Actually, the week - as I need to report it - really began the day before this memorable Monday. On the Sunday evening, at about 6 o'clock, we were shaken by a loud, regular banging or thumping noise and the whole house started to shake. I ventured outsid e to investigate Jill's hypothesis (viz that there was a kangaroo jumping about on the roof of the house!) and found that no natural cause of this type was apparent. Then I noticed, in the night sky, some lights flashing and circling . Evidently this was nothing more sinister than an UFO landing. Only when we watched the news on TV later in the evening did we find the real solution to the mystery. It was all part of the VE day celebrations, and we had heard a re-enactment of the noise s of the Blitz. We also, apparently, missed a great firework display!

Jill has been getting excited about the refuse collection system in Canberra. To the casual observer, this is the 'wheelie bin' system which operates in parts of the UK. But the realit y (so Jill assures me) is much more interesting than that. We have, in fact, two bins. One of these is a normal bin, into which one puts rubbish. The other is a bin with a yellow top, the inside of which is split into a front half and a back half. This is the recycling bin. Into the front half goes discarded paper and cardboard, and into the rear goes plastic, tin and glass.

Nothing very exceptional happened at work this week. There were two good seminars given by two of the other visitors (from Americ a - Colin Cameron and Helen Tauchen). My work is coming along quite well at the moment. I'm working on a dataset of over 12500 Americans, and the data includes information about their labour market and educational experience. The statistical work which I' m doing on these data is quite complicated (bivariate probits and multinomial logits with selectivity), and it takes hours for the computer to perform all the tasks which I require of it; it's the norm when doing this kind of work to run hundreds of exper im ents to establish which specification of the model which works best, so the whole exercise is taking a long time. At least the results I'm getting now look a whole lot more sensible now I've got the right data to put into the program (see diary, week 1)!

We had to arrange to have a plumber visit us during the week when the drains got blocked and stopped one of the toilets from flushing. This seems to have been due to the mass of leaves being swept down drains outside the house. Jill has spent ages in the garden sweeping up these leaves, but we've not yet quite worked out which bin to put them in!

On Friday evening there was a works outing; Boyd Hunter completed his PhD this week (it's a piece of work which has created quite a stir in the media, providing evidence of ghetto-isation in Australia) and this was by way of a celebration. So I went along to the Brum Balti in Phillip (a suburb of South Canberra) and had a good evening out with the other members of the department. All the visitors agree that it is wonderful to be a long way from the day to day administrative chores associated with one's own institution. The Brum Balti was an Indian restaurant with maps and pictures of Birmingham (England) hanging from the walls (odd), and provided quite good and very plentiful food very cheaply (A$15.50, about UKL37.25).

Long after going to bed after this meal, at about 1.30am, the phone rang. Jill rushed to it, but got there just after it stopped ringing. A while later, just as we were dropping off to sleep once more, it rang again. It turned out to be someone calling from America for someone who used to live in this house about a year ago! So eventually we got back to sleep, only to be woken up again, this time by a violent thunderstorm. This story, believe it o r not, has a funny ending - in the morning we discovered that the storm had put our phone out of action, and had come just a few hours too late to prevent us from being woken up at all!!!

The weekend was busy. On Saturday, we had torrential rain virtuall y throughout the day, so our activities were of the indoor type. We visited the Royal Australian Mint in the morning; although most of the factory was not working at the weekend, we watched an excellent film about the Mint, had a look over the machinery u sed to produce the coins and around their museum displays, and the children struck some A$1 coins as souvenirs. It was all very well presented.

In the afternoon we visited the parliament building. This was opened in 1988, and is an extravagant treasure which sets high standards for any other countries constructing similar showcase public buildings. From the outside, the building is impressive, crowned by a massive steel skeletal-spire and the Australian flag. Two long avenues stretch down from the hill on which the building rests - one across the bridge over Lake Burley Griffin and towards the city centre, the other to the old parliament above which the eye passes along a further avenue leading to the war memorial. The interior of the parliament buildin g is as stunning as is the building's location in the city. The main hall has green and white marble pillars designed to resemble an eucalyptus forest; the senate and house of representatives combine architectural beauty with the functionalism needed in mod ern political chambers; the art (including several Sidney Nolan paintings and a fantastic Arthur Boyd tapestry) itself makes the building worth a visit.

Also on Saturday, we visited a travel agent in the city centre to book a 5 day holiday during July. A t this time we shall be based in Brisbane, and our holiday will take us to the Great Barrier Reef. We will be staying on Lady Elliott Island, a coral island situated on the reef itself (on the southern tip near Bundaberg). This will give us plenty of oppo rtunity to go for walks on the reef, go snorkeling, swim, and generally have a relaxing time. To end a busy day on Saturday, we had our evening meal at a Sizzler restaurant in Belconnen. We discovered Sizzler (home of the all-you-can-eat 'salad' bar - whe re salad = soup + salad + rice + pasta + bolognese + apple pie + bread & butter pudding + chocolate sponge + ice cream) on one of our trips to America, and were pleased to find one here as well.

The weather was much better on Sunday, though we still had the occasional brief and light shower. We went for another of our bush walks, again on Black Mountain, but this time doing a circuit of the mountain along a path running about 60 feet below the su mmit. Like last week's walk, this was about 2 and a half kilometers in length, but with fewer ups and downs we were able to complete it in about 45 minutes. Tom and Becky again walked the whole way themselves, and Katy as usual was in my backpack.

Having completed the bush walk so quickly, we were able to spend the rest of the morning at the Science and Technology Centre (Questacon), which was full of hands-on experiments for the children (and us) to try. These ranged from experiments with wooden b ricks to examine centre of gravity, through a see-saw with a biased fulcrum on which Tom could keep Becky, Jill and me up in the air, to realistic simulations of an earthquake and of a thunderstorm. The children also enjoyed an illustrated talk about liquid nitrogen - the speaker poured liquid nitrogen onto a balloon which shrive lled up in the cold, then expanded again as it got warmer; he also poured it into tins, the lids of which flew off as the nitrogen expanded and turned to gas - to Tom's great amusement. After Questacon, we popped across the road to look at the National Li br ary - a beautiful building which we see from our house and which has lovely stained glass windows; the point of this exercise was to get an additional stamp in the 'Canberra passport', a book which we've bought for the children and in which a souvenir sta mp is printed for every attraction which we visit while in the ACT.

On Sunday afternoon, after a short sleep for the children, we visited the Jerrabomberra wetlands, an area of Canberra at the eastern edge of Lake Burley Griffin which is Canberra's answe r to Leighton Moss. We were only there a short while, and our best 'tick' was a small group of black-winged stilts which are quite unusual in the ACT.

A few stories about the children are worth recording here. The first is about Tom when we were at the Mint. As we arrived, it was raining cats and dogs, and Becky, Tom and I ran from the car into the building. The two of them, for some reason, got hysteri cal about this, and this greatly amused the lady who was at the information desk. Later, as we left, th e rain was still pouring down, and I ran first to the car along with Katy, leaving the others in the building while I opened up. Tom turned to Jill and, in a very sombre voice, said "Oh no! Dad's goin' 'ome without us!" At this, the lady at the informatio n desk got as hysterical as the children had been earlier, and almost fell off her chair!

The second story is more domestic. Becky lost a pen this afternoon, while writing a postcard. We hunted high and low for this pen until it turned up, about half an hour l ater... tucked behind Becky's ear! She had completely forgotten that she had put it there!

Tom has just composed a song. To his credit it is very tuneful. The lyrics are truly inspirational: 'Aeroplane, aeroplane, flying in the sky. Aeroplane, aeroplane, flying to the airport!'

The week began on Monday 15 May with the fantastic news coming over the radio that the Rovers had won the Premiership title despite their jittery end to the season. This was a cause of both celebration and relief, and I am no w looking forward to a trip to Wembley for the charity shield, and lots of attractive European cup fixtures next season. The final premiership games of the season were shown live on TV here, but we didn't find that out till after the event. Still, I very much enjoyed watching Manchester United getting beaten in the FA cup final on Saturday night - the luck and appalling refereeing decisions which they have enjoyed in their recent games against the Rovers have made them rival Burnley as the most despised t eam for anyone with our loyalties.

My work made steady progress during the week. As well my two projects involving the large American database (which I mentioned last week), I've been completing the paper which I shall present to a conference here in September. This has involved writing a computer program in FORTRAN, and for this I've been using telnet to access Lancaster's mainframe computer. It certainly makes me feel close to home when my computer screen tells me that I'm 'talking' to the Lancaster mach ine! The results from this work look good. I'm starting to get encouraging results from one of the other projects too.

The children are getting more and more settled in the creche. Their favourite activities are painting and singing, but Tom has taken a real fancy to a rabbit which they keep there and (after the character in Bambi ) call Thumper. They really enjoy the children's TV programmes here, which Jill tells me are better than those at home. We've bought them a couple of books - Father Koala's Nursey Rhymes and Father Koala's Fables - which are beautifully illustrated Australian versions of nursery rhymes and Aesop's fables (hare and tortoise = emu and wombat), and these have rapidly become their favourites. Becky's reading is coming along really well, and Tom can now write his name unassisted (though the 'm' can still be rather randomly positioned on the page!) Becky, Tom and Katy and I saw our first kookaburras this week (or, as Tom insists on calling them, cook-a-buggers!!!) - another big thrill.

Before our usual Friday night shopping trip, we ate at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Becky now devours everything put in front of her. Tom is more circumspect but is less fussy about his food than he used to be. Katy eats everything we give her and then looks extremely jealous when we start eating from our own plates; she will not listen to arguments like 'you can have that when your teeth come through'. There are some people you just can't reason with! I mentioned a few weeks ago that the supermarkets here lack something in presentation. They make up for this by the quality of the produce. In particular the quality of the supermarket meat, fruit (especially bananas) and vegetables really shows up some of the stuff we have to put up with in the UK.

On Saturday we drove down to Namadgi National Park for another of our bush walks. Namadgi makes up most of the ACT, and it is real wilderness, so this bush walk was by nature quite different to those we had done within the city limits of Canberra itself. The walk was at Honeysuckle Creek. While it did not afford the fine views which we enjoyed on the walks on Black Mountain (too many trees), it made for a very pleasant trail through the forest, and the drive amidst the mountains to and from the starting point of the walk was spectacular. The path was evidently less well trodden than those which we had used in previous weeks, and it was very peaceful. Wildlife along the way included a kangaroo, the usual complement of parrots and cockatoos, and - new for us - a ru fo us songlark and an eastern yellow robin. The book gave the length of the walk as 4 kilometers, but we got lost walking along the road at the start of the walk and needlessly walked about a kilometer up a steep hill. Jill and I have both blamed this on the confusing directions given in the book, but I suspect that we are doing so only to cover our embarassment at not reading the thing properly! We carried the children back down that steep hill as a form of penance, but Tom and Becky walked the other 5 kilo meters themselves, again doing us proud. The bushwalks book is proving to have been a sound investment.

On our way back from Honeysuckle Creek we stopped at the Lanyon Homestead near Tharwa, just on the southern outskirts of Canberra. This is one of the oldest buildings in the area, dating back to the 1830s. It is a spacious farmhouse, furnished extravagant ly in period style. Once we got home, I arranged a treasure hunt for the children; then, while the children had their tea, I walked to the city centre t o shop for some things we had forgotten to buy in our weekly shop the previous evening. Jill and I were to eat later.

In the evening we were invited to dinner by our next door neighbours, David and Ute Linnan (parents of Johannes and Christopher). Also invited were Veronica something and Tom Campbell, both from the law department (where David works as a visitor from Sout h Carolina), and Chris Manning (an economist in the School of Asian and Pacific Studies - who interestingly had just finished reading th e World Bank report on Indonesia for which I last year wrote a section on vocational training in other South East Asian newly industrialised countries). We got a babysitter called Bianca to look after the children (on Ute's recommendation) - she seemed ve ry pleasant and is a law student at ANU. Our evening is best described as strange. David seemed to have a hidden agenda to the evening and would not relax. This was a shame because every time the conversation began to swing, he would interject with some r ea lly heavy intellectual comments to do with law, his every word ponderously spoken and interspersed with phrases like 'how shall I put it'. Tom, the dean of the law school, hails from Glasgow and moved here just 5 years ago; curiously for a dean, he seemed to know much less about what was going on in his school than anyone else! Still the meal (which consisted of a chicken curry sans starter or pudding) was tasty.

On Sunday, we decided to reward the children for their prowess as long distance bushwalkers by having an easy day. In the morning we took them to Rehwinkel's Animal Farm, just the other side of the New South Wales border (about 15 miles away). Here we could see many kangaroos and wallabies at close quarters, and Becky, Jill and I enjoyed letting them feed from our hands. Rehwinkels also had a variety of other animals - emus, peacocks, koalas (in a cage, unfortunately), dingoes (in a cage, fortunately), wombats, and (curiously) camels. This was something all three children really enjoyed, with Ka ty watching everything with eagle eyes from the backpack. In the afternoon, all three children had a nap, and then we went for a short walk down to the lake and back - which is when we saw the kookaburras.

Now that we have been here for nearly a month, some general impressions may be in order. It is natural for us to compare Australia with America - as the other new anglophone country in which we have (temporarily) lived. The two are entirely different. The insecurity and insularity of the Americans is abs ent here; so is the incessant and misconceived drivel about freedom and democracy which the Americans lap up and dole out. The social problems which appear to afflict the States in particular are here no more apparent than in Europe. The Australians do no t suffer from the lunatic government policies of the United States on matters like gun control and health insurance. Neither do they measure success in dollars. Of all the countries I have visited, America gives me most culture shock and Australia the lea st . This does not have the character of a new country which thinks it has got something to prove - it feels like a country at ease with itself. It is a very comfortable place to be. On the downside, one inevitably gets the feeling that this is something of a backwater, but that may come from having a Eurocentric perspective.

Week 5 begins on Monday 22 May. It's hard to believe that we're now half way through our stay in Canberra. It's a place we shall certainly miss when we leave.

At work, Lancaster's mainframe is still working on the problem I set it almost a week ago. That's annoying because it's preventing me from using one of my machines at this end for something else, but it's understandable because it is a very big problem which I've set - 50 million iterations of a quite complicated set of calculations! My other pieces of work (on the American data set) continue to progress quite well. It really is a treat to be working in a department where everyone has a very good academic track record and is worthy of professional respect. Paul Gregg (of the LSE) returned from his travels in Tasmania and Western Australia, and is here for another week.

On Monday, Jill and the children visited the National Film and Sound Archive, which is about 50 metres from the house - another stamp for the Canberra passport! They also report having had a lovely walk along the lakeside on Wednesday.

The main excitment of the week, though, concerned Tom. On Wednesday he developed a high temperature, and by mid-evening clea rly needed to see the doctor. Unfortunately our phone was having one of its periodic fits and was not working that evening, so Jill rushed around to next door to book an appointment for Tom (at a doctor's randomly chosen from the yellow pages) and a taxi to take us there. Since we don't have a regular doctor here, there was no possibility of a call-out. The surgery turned out to be in Lyneham, a couple of suburbs away from here (quite close to Dickson where we go shopping). David from next door (who has, si nce last Saturday's dinner, been much more relaxed and normal in our company) very kindly babysat for the other children while Jill and I took Tom to his appointment. It turned out that he had tonsillitis - yet again - and has by now fully recovered. It s eems to have been a particularly nasty bout, though - his temperature peaked at over 105 degrees F, and stayed stubbornly high for about 36 hours. We phoned from the surgery for another taxi to take us home, via the O'Connor shops to pick up the prescribe d penicillin.

All this has given us an interesting insight into the Australian health system. On arrival in Canberra we registered with Medicare, the government's compulsory health insurance scheme which has a reciprocity arrangement with the UK National Health Service . The way the system works here is certainly less convenient for the typical customer than in the UK, although I think it has some merits. We had to pay the doctor a fee (the doctor we saw charged a standard rate of $35) at the time of the a ppointment. We then claim back a fixed amount ($20.70) from the Medicare office in Canberra town centre. (There are provisions for the old, poor etc. to bypass this system in which case the net payment is zero.) Prescribed drugs have to be paid for in ful l (even for children like Tom). Unfortunately, though, our doctor forgot to sign something and Jill has since had to do some chasing about in order for us to get our refund of the doctor's fee. We shall have to check whether we can claim our net losses on o ur travel insurance; I have a feeling, though, that there is an excess of UKL50 on that so I'm not too sanguine. Interestingly, our staff seminar this week was about the Australian health insurance system, so one way and another it's a subject I've learne d a lot about of late!

Tom was much better by Friday, and nagged us to go to McDonalds (or, in his words, Old McDonald's) for our tea. It was good to see his appetite returning. It's also nice for the four of us to eat at McDonalds for $14, about half of what we would pay in the UK. Nevertheless, by Saturday Tom was still not quite up to full fitness, so there was no bush walk this weekend. He had, throughout his illness asked for little but to visit the dinosaur museum, and this is indeed what we did on Saturday morning. Our expectations of this were not terribly high, but we thought it would be a good place for the children to visit. The museum turned out to be very good, though, with about 8 full skeletons of dinosaurs, numerous other fossils and bone s, and plenty of interesting information. Also, rather curiously located at the dinosaur museum, there was an excellent shop of aboriginal artwork where we bought a beautifully painted boomerang. Becky, in particular, was very relieved to be told that big d inosaurs are extinct, but has been curious about how that came to be. I suspect that she only half believes me when I explain that a rock fell out of the sky and made the earth very cold so that there was nothing left for the dinosaurs to eat. So she fire d a tougher question at me this evening - how was the human race created? Is this girl still really only 3 years old?!!!

On the way home from the dinosaur museum we called in at the Belconnen shops to buy Tom some shoes (very smart) and to buy me a cheap ($10) saw. There is a good explanation for this seemingly eccentric behaviour, honest! Each evening this week, Jill has l it a fire for us, using the bark shed by many of the gum trees nearby and various bits of wood which we've found around the place. Hav ing been spoilt by this for almost a full week, we got used to having a nice warm fire (and like the idea of reducing our heating bills at the same time). There is plenty of wood which for we can scavenge - the ANU groundsmen have been trimming a lot of t rees, and the last couple of nights have been very blowy bringing us a literal windfall. But a lot of these pickings have been too big for our grate - hence the saw. While Tom and Katy slept this afternoon, Jill and Becky collected kindling and smaller pi eces of wood from a 100 metre area surrounding our house, while I did the same with large branches, sawing as required. We now reckon to have enough wood to see us through the next week!

Once Tom and Kate woke up, we took a trip out to visit Calthorpes House, a National Trust type of place in the suburb of Red Hill (a stone's throw from the parliament house). The whole suburb was beautiful, with parkland surrounding the type of houses tha t usually have a lot of zeros at the end of the price tag. To have th is type of area located so close to the centre of a capital city is mindblowing. Anyway, Calthorpes House dates back to 1927 and is unusual only because its furnishings (and carpets and wallcoverings) have never been altered since its construction. It is pleasant but unexceptional. The Wilton carpet in the drawing room looked brand new and would make a terrific advertisement for that company. On our way back home from Red Hill we drove through Yarralumla, the area of Canberra (near parliament) which conta in s all the embassies. This turned out to be an unexepected delight. Most have been constructed is a style reminiscent of the nations which they represent - Indonesia has columns of Buddahs, Mexico has Aztec pillars etc. It has to be said, unfortunately, th at the British High Commission lets the side down.

On Sunday we went to the seaside. We drove out to Depot Beach, just north of Bateman's Bay, NSW, about 175 kilometres from Canberra. The weather was lovely by the time we got there, after a misty start, and we had a great time - especially Becky, Tom and Katy. This was Katy's first time on the beach and she absolutely adored it, with a grin from ear to ear lasting the whole time we were there (about 2 and a half hours). Tom, by now fully himself again, also enjoye d himself, especially the short walk which we took through the rainforest which borders the beach and which is part of the Murramarang National Park. We all had a paddle, but I was the only one to have a dip - the misty start to the day had led us to forg et our swimming costumes, so I just used my pants instead and went around pantless for the rest of the day! The beach was sandy, the water warm, and the whole place quiet and totally unspoilt. Rae Carson, the departmental administrator, had recommended it t o us. We saw a pair of ospreys and also a pair of Australasian gannets, the latter of which were spectacularly going into free-fall for 30 metres as they dived down into the sea to catch fish. On our way there and back we saw some wallabies and a wombat a t the side of the road, in addition to a mob of between 50 and 70 kangaroos in a field; we also caught views over Lake George. We stopped along the way back at a small town called Braidwood, and enjoyed a Devonshire cream tea at a cafe there. Braidwood is l ocally noted for its old vintage - some of its buildings indeed date back to the 1830s, but these were plain and unremarkable. Having thoroughly enjoyed our day at the beach, we're all looking forward all the more to our holiday on the Barrier Reef.

Week 6 began on 29 May.

Nothing remarkable has happened at work this week. I've been invited to present a seminar paper at Monash University in Melbourne sometime during the last week of June. They want me to present it on the work I've been doing here on the American data set - so I'll have to hurry to make sure I have the work in a complete enough state for presentation by then!

On Friday, Jill took advantage of the children's morning in pre-school to go for a walk along the lake. She visited the Nati onal Capital Exhibition (which details the history of Canberra) and Blundell's cottage, a quaint old farmhouse dating back to 1860. The cottage now stands on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin, and it's really hard to imagine that until 1964 (when the lake was created) it stood in the middle of pasture land. It ought to be said that the fact that the lake is of such recent vintage is powerful testimony to Walter Burley Griffin's genius; to have designed this masterpiece of a city more than half a century be fore the lake at its hub was created was truly a remarkable feat. Jill's walk probably served primarily as a scouting mission, as we are all planning to visit these places sometime later during our stay.

On Saturday we got up early to head out to Namadgi National Park. We went there a few weeks ago for our walk in Honeysuckle Creek, and our return to the park was prompted by some information leaflets we had picked up on that occasion. This time we visited Yankee Hat, and had a pleasant 5 kilometre walk fro m the car park to some quite spectacular Aboriginal rock paintings of people and animals. The walk took us through a vast natural meadow surrounded by beautiful mountain scenery. We are not far here from the Kosciusko mountains (the highest in Australia), but the mountains of Namadgi remain for the moment below the snow line. The last few kilometres to the car park were on unsurfaced roads (as indeed was the case on our journey to the beach last week), and this adds to the feeling that we are right in the o utback. Only two other cars were there, and we saw no-one on our walk. With all this wonderful scenery nearby, one would expect the Canberrans to be out in the bush every weekend, but the locals we meet seem to venture little outside the city limits! In t he meadow we saw hundreds upon hundreds of kangaroos, including - for the first time in the wild - joeys in pouches. These lovely wild animals allowed us to approach to within about 10 metres before bouncing off, so we got a good view. Tom and Becky again walked (virtually) the whole way themselves.

We returned to Canberra soon after lunchtime because we were expecting some visitors to arrive mid-afternoon - Alan 'Bing' Smith (from my student days at Bath), Jane (his wife) and their two sons Alec (4 years) and Huw (9 months). Bing and Jane have been living in Sydney for 8 years now, so this was the first time we had met the boys. Bing had not changed one iota, and Jane had changed little (apart from acquiring a strong Aussie accent). They were in Canberra to ferry Bing's mother to visit some relatives here - she still lives near Doncaster but has been over here on an extended trip. They have very kindly asked us to stay with them for our last few days in Australia, during which time we shall be in Sydney. Tom and Alec, in particular got on well together; Alec seems to share Tom's interest in trains. They all stayed for tea, but had to leave at about 5.30.

On Sunday morning we walked to the ferry terminal and took a very enjoyable 90 minute cruise around L ake Burley Griffin - a snip at $8 each for Jill and me and free for the children. Becky and Tom both went to have a chat with the captain, and each had a turn at steering the boat themselves. The claim is that this is the best way to see Canberra, and sin ce most of the major buildings are located around the lake this is probably true. It also affords terrific views towards the Snowy Mountains to the south of the city. The western part of the lake is surrounded by bush, with hardly a building in sight, exc ept for the impressive residence of the Governor General of Australia (from which the views over the lake are sensational). Now I really envy him his job!!!

In the afternoon, we went to a birthday party. Deborah Cobb-Clark (one of my colleagues) has a daugher, Amanda, who has just turned three years old. (She also has two other daughters, Rebecca and Sarah, and a son called Matthew.) Deb is visiting ANU for 1 5 months, and is based at Illinois State University. Also at the party was Colin Cameron (another visitor, from University of California at Davis, but originally an Aussie) and his family - wife Michelle and kids Ian and Fiona. So it has really been a weekend for the children to meet a lot of their contemporaries! We had a very enjoyable time there. They live in Garran, a suburb of South Canberra about 10 kilometres from here, where there are a large number of purpose built houses owned by ANU and rented to visitors and to graduate students.

There have been complaints from certain quarters (who shal l remain nameless) that this diary has plenty of information about the children's and my routine, but not enough about Jill's - so I shall fix that now!! Jill inevitably spends a lot of her time with the children, making sure they have enough projects to satisfy their almost insatiable appetite for painting, writing, counting, drawing, glueing, cutting, model-making and so on. She also takes the children for a walk most days, often to the post office, newsagent or grocery shop on the ANU campus, but somet im es down to the lake (which is only about 300 metres away). As she goes, she picks up whatever pieces of firewood she can carry, ably assisted in this task by Becky. Housework takes a lot of time too, the more so now that we have three people walking or cr awling along behind making hash of every attempt at tidiness. When the children are in pre-school, Jill quite often takes the longer walk into central Canberra (about 10 minutes without the children) to shop at Supa-Barn or elsewhere. When the children pl ay with Christopher and Johannes, Jill natters with Ute. She also spends time liaising with the Housing Office about things that need fixing in the house - most often the phone. Her routine is therefore very similar to her Brookhouse routine (and dominated by the childrens' routine), and this is why there may not have been much written about it in the diary before now.

Some stories about the children will complete this week's diary. Katy at last looks likely to cut her teeth shortly; she is, as Jill says, a complete and utter monkey! She is into everything , and can now crawl long distances in no time at all. She adores pre-school, where as far as we can see she is strapped into a high chair and fed all morning long. Jill was raking up some leaves in the garden on Wednesday when she heard Becky behind her s tarting a conversation in a most indignant tone of voice: 'Tree, stop dropping all those leaves where Mummy's just raked up ... Right, Mummy, I've told that tree, so you won't have any more trouble with it! !!' Two minutes later, a gust of wind was followed by Becky's voice again: 'I told you, tree!!!' The story about Tom also has a botanical connection; he was walking along the other day carrying a thin willow branch, about 120 cm long. He was holding the part without leaves, and the part with leaves on was trailing behind him on the gro und. Somehow he managed to convince himself that a snake was following him - the 'snake' of course being the leafy part of the branch. So he ran away, then looked back and saw the 'snake' was still there, then ran on still clutching the branch for dear life. When he looked back once more, he broke into a state of funk and wailed: 'The snake's following me!!!'

Week 7 began on Monday 4 June. It is, by one day, a longer week than usual because Monday 12 June was a public holiday.

The week's routine for Jill and the children has been much as usual. The main excitement has concerned our efforts to book accommodation for our stint in Brisbane during July. John Mangan (a colleague at University of Queensland who has visited Lancaster a few times) was trying to get us a flat on campus, but faxed me recently to say that he had not been successful in his efforts to do this. This stirred us into action as time is obviously now getting short. We spent a couple of lunchtimes sorting out for ourselves some holiday-style accommodation on the Gold Coast (just south of Brisbane) for the period from 16-21 July (after we return from the Barrier Reef), and John managed to get us into a serviced a partment in Brisbane itself for the period 3-11 July. This ought to work out all right; I'm giving a conference paper on the Gold Coast on 5 July, working at the University of Queensland on 6-7 July (giving a research seminar one of those days), and givin g a paper at the Queensland University of Technology on 20 July, so some travelling will be inevitable. But the Gold Coast will be a nice place to visit after our sojourn on the Barrier Reef.

I have finally got into reasonable shape the paper which I ha ve promised to give at Monash concerning the American data set which I brought over here; I have yet to finish writing it up but at least the statistical results look promising. It has taken a long time to get the computer programs written and de-bugged, and then a long time to sort out the best specification for the model. But the results which I now have are, I think, interesting, sensible and informative. It's all about the way in which women respond to economic (wage) signals in deciding what kind of wo rk to do and whether to work part-time, full-time or not at all; it also examines the effect which schooling and child-rearing has on women's labour market participation. Statistical problems make this exercise a good deal more difficult than it sounds. T he other bit of work I've been doing simultaneously (running a FORTRAN program) still isn't complete; either the Lancaster machine is running very slowly on me or there's a bug in the program causing an infinite loop.

It was a particularly busy, and part icularly enjoyable, weekend. On Saturday morning we visited the high court - almost by accident! It is located next to the National Gallery, which was to be our ultimate destination, and we entered the doors of the high court merely to acquire an extra st amp in our Canberra passport. We were met by a very pleasant and enthusiastic guide, who delighted the children by stamping not only the passport but also their hands. (Later, the children refused to wash their hands after going to the toilet unless we pr om ised to get him to stamp their hands a second time!!!) He showed us the number one court, providing a lot of surprisingly interesting information. We later visited the number two and three courts. Only number three had a dock (and even that has never been used as it is reserved for cases of treason), since the main function of the court is as a last court of appeal and for cases in which the interpretation of the law is to the fore as it affects, for example, the rights of the states. From the outside the building is, in truth, an eyesore as viewed from the lake. Looking towards the main entrance, it becomes more palatable, and the interior is truly magnificent.

After about half and hour at the high court, we finally got to the National Gallery. At the moment there is a major exhibition of the works of Henri Matisse on show there, so we took the opportunity to see that as well as the normal displays. The Matisse was wonderful, and served to convince me that I had previously seriously underestimated this ar tist; the images which one associates with him - childlike and colourful figurative work with a minimum of detail - is not really representative, and this exhibition amply demonstrates an ability to work in styles from Corot through Vuillard and Picasso, as well as developing a style of his own. The remainder of the museum was equally impressive. There was a fine Rubens, a lovely Courbet, two particularly good Monets (water lilies and haystacks), and an absolutely fabulous piece of work entitled 'Blue Pol es ' by Jackson Pollock (whose paintings I can usually take or leave). There was a good selection of Australian art too, notably including Nolan, Boyd, and fine paintings by Charles Conder, Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts. The Aboriginal art collection was a lso impressive, mainly abstract patterns in pointillist style painted onto eucalyptus bark.

We went home for lunch and for the children to have a sleep, but were off again in mid-afternoon for more action on our roller-coaster day. We first visited Blun dell's cottage (see last week's diary), then the St John's schoolhouse - built in the early 1840s to serve the rural community of the area. Both were charmingly maintained as museum pieces, and provide a stark contrast to the modernity of today's Canberra . We then proceeded to the war memorial. This turned out to be a real surprise. It is indeed a fine memorial, but it is also much more than that. It is a first rate museum detailing the history of Australian military activity. There are scores of tableaux , vividly depicting the filth of the trenches, the heat of the desert, and the hellish nature of combat. There is a collection of aeroplanes including a Spitfire and Lancaster Bomber, and also three biplanes from the first world war. Absent, thank goodness, were the yawn-inspiring displays of medals which so often deprive such museums of the historical context and strategic interest, and of the lessons that past mistakes should teach us. The appropriate balance of respect and factual reporting is maintained t hroughout, with no attempt to glorify or glamorise. From the war memorial we went to have our tea at Pizza Hut, who currently have a deal - $6.95 for all-you-can-eat salad, pizza, pasta and dessert ($4.95 for Becky, but Tom and Katy ate for free - Katy in cidentally loved it!).

On Sunday, we turned into gold prospectors! We visited the Bywong mining village, about 30 kilometres north of Canberra. Gold is no longer mined commercially in this area, but the village has been reconstructed as it was 90 years a go, full of shacks and canvas tents and with a lot of old mining machinery lying around. The weather was cold and drizzly (so much so that we were the only people there), and the whole scene vividly portrayed the life of the early prospectors, many of who m moved from place to place week by week, literally living under a sheet of sackcloth hung over a rope. There was not much glamour here! We had the opportunity to pan for gold ourselves - reminding Jill and myself of a similar experience in California fiv e years ago. This was something the children really enjoyed, and we couldn't tear them away. In contrast to California, where we found only a small number of relatively large pieces of gold, here we found a vast amount of incredibly fine gold dust but were only able to keep some of the larger particles. Nevertheless, Becky and Tom can now honestly claim successfully to have panned for gold. And therein lies a tale.

Tom dropped his pan into a big dolly tub of water, and decided to try to retrieve it. The ne xt thing we knew, he had fallen head first into the tub!!! We picked him out to find his hair and the arms of his coat and jumper soaking wet, and he was still more concerned about his pan than about anything else (despite the fact that there were dozens more pans on a bench next to him)! It really was one of those incidents where a video camera could have earned us a fortune with one of those TV programmes where people send in videos of other people doing daft things!

On our way home from Bywong, we sto pped in at one of the local wineries - the Lark Hill vineyard - to taste their produce and buy some Pinot Noir and a lovely sweet Chardonnay. There are several cold climate wineries in the Canberra area, but the main wine producing areas are somewhat furt her north and along the south coast. In the afternoon - again after giving the children a nap - we went to the National Capital Exhibition to find out about the history of Canberra. (Jill had been there alone last week.) It was fascinating to see Walter B ur ley Griffin's original designs for the city, which have been adhered to remarkably closely, and to see also the designs which did not win the competition. It was also fascinating to see old - and indeed not so old - photographs of the city. In 1927, when the old parliament was opened, it was surrounded by nothing but farmland and the city's population was only 5000. During my lifetime the population of the city has risen more than tenfold to its present 300000, and to see pictures of the city centre from the 1960s is a real eye-opener. Yet the city still has a predominantly rural character.

The weekend was made all the more busy by the fact that Monday was a public holiday in most Australian states and territories - the excuse for the holiday being the Queen's birthday. (I wonder what justification they will find for this holiday once Austra lia becomes a republic in 2001 - as it surely will.) We took full advantage by hiring the car for an extra day this weekend, and spending Monday on a long trip out of town. We went to Wee Jasper, a tiny village about 100 kilometres north-west of Canberra. This place had been recommended by a colleague, Steve Dowrick. It is located in a beautiful valley surrounded by wooded hills and centred on a lake; indeed the whole drive took us through beautiful countryside, very reminiscent of the best of British scenery but on a vast scale. On our way we saw (in addition to the usual quota of kangaroos) a black-shouldered kite and some red-rumped parrots. The road was unfinished in places and seemed to lead nowhere much beyond Wee Jasper itself. Once we arrived, we visited Carey's Cave and went on a very enjoyable tour around part of the cave system. The guide - Jeff - was great with the kids. On our way back, we stopped at Yass (w here the children had spent some time in a playground earlier in the day) to visit Cooma Cottage, a National Trust property. (We exploited the reciprocity arrangement which the Australian National Trust has with the British National Trust in order to gain free admission.) This was a very pleasant dwelling dating back to 1833, and was once the home of Hamilton Hume, a well-known explorer of the south-eastern part of Australia. Also very pleasant was the coffee and cakes which we devoured in the cafe!

After the busy weekend the children are tired out - so are we! They have had an early night ready for creche on Tuesday morning. I shall be glad to get into work for a rest - but not too much of a rest as I have to prepare for my seminar presentation at A NU which is this coming Friday. Jill can't escape to work for a rest, but at least she will only have Katy - who is rapidly emerging as the ringleader of the gang - to cope with in the morning!

Week 8 began on Tuesday 13 June, the previous day having been a public holiday reported in last week's diary.

Our garden has been a real wildlife reserve during the last few days. Jill found a brush-tailed possum in the oak tree in our back garden one night this week. And today (Sunday) we have had numerous king parro ts, crimson rosellas, sulphur crested cockatoos, and even some kookaburras in the garden. I was sawing wood when the last of these flew over, and until it settled on a tree in the front garden, I only caught a glimpse; my initial reaction was to say 'what was that?' and Becky immediately replied, 'a kookaburra'! She's as good at identifying Australian birds as British ones by now!

My seminar on Friday went well, and I got some useful comments, particularly from Adrian Pagan. Adrian is one of the professo rs here and is probably one of the half dozen top econometricians in the world. He was able to explain something in my results which had always been a bit of a puzzle to me, so that was very gratifying. The conference in September - for which I shall be b riefly returning to Australia - has hit a hitch in that Bob Gregory (another of the professors here) has failed to fill one of the slots for which he had a keynote speaker pencilled in. After trying for several Americans, he suggested to me this week that e ither he or (since I'm coming over anyway) I might do it. Now I see no reason to subject the poor conference delegates to two talks by me in the space of just two days, so I compromised - we'll end up patching together quickly a joint paper by the two of us, and he'll present it. Mercifully, the requirement for the slot is just an overview of some parts of the economics of education - something I can do very quickly.

Saturday was a bit of a hodge-podge, but nonetheless extremely enjoyable. In the morning we visited the national aquarium where we got a foretaste of the wonderful array of brightly coloured fish which (hopefully) we shall see on our trip to the Great Barrier Reef. Stunning blue and purple fish with bright yellow stripes, iridescent green fi sh, and zebra fish which looked a bit like Scott Sellars playing for Newcastle United were highlights, as was a perspex tunnel through which we walked with large fish swimming all around us and above our heads. Outside the aquarium was a fine animal park, with fairy penguins and koalas being among our favourites. Jill kept saying things like - 'I want a koala. Aren't the penguins lovely; I want one' and Becky chirped in with 'Well, Mummy, you're going to have to learn that you can't have everything you want!!!'

In the afternoon, while the children slept, I sawed and collected some wood (Jill, Becky and Tom do a great job collecting wood most days). Our wood fire has become virtually a nightly ritual by now. The temperature is dropping to about 2 degrees C at night , and the house is not built to insulate us from that kind of cold! I also nipped across to the nearby Film and Sound Archive (which Jill and the children visited a couple of weeks ago, and which I found quite enjoyable). Then we all went for a drive. Fir st we called in at the Mint (which we visited a few weeks ago) to buy sets of Australian uncirculated coins. We then proceeded to the National Museum of Australia - at least that's where we thought we were going, but when we got there we found that it has n' t been built yet. Nevertheless, for some obscure reason, they have built a visitor centre which tells you what the museum will be like once it has been built! All a bit pointless, really, but we got another stamp in the Canberra passport and the episode o nly took about half an hour out of our day. As a substitue activity, we yielded to Tom's incessant pleas for us to re-visit the Parliament Building. We see this from our house, it is a regular landmark, and it has become a real favourite for Tom in partic ul ar. We think he has ambitions either to become prime minister of Australia or an architect! On this occasion we spent more time outside the building, climbing up the grassed slopes onto the roof, and generally admiring the fine views on this sunny (but br eezy and cold) day. Incidentally, it's worth noting at this point that the openness of government here is impressive - far greater than in Britain - and (unlike the Americans) people here don't make a great song and dance about it. I then dropped Jill and t he children home before going out to buy some take-away pizzas (taking a detour via Jerrabomberra to do some birding - adding crested pigeon, pink-eared duck, and Australasian grebe to my list, and also getting a great view of some pelicans).

On Sunday, we planned to go on a bush walk up Mount Aggie, about 70 kilometres from Canberra. This is another walk from our book of family bush walks, and would have been a 4 kilometre hike, classed in the book as 'easy' but with some climbing. Mount Aggi e is a less er peak on the border between ACT and New South Wales, and we would have got views to the south over the higher snowy mountains towards Mount Kosciusko. We set off on the journey, and the road turned to dirt track after about 40 kilometres. This was to be come, for Jill, what the Pic du Midi was for Mam in 1964 and what the sea journey to the Isle of Man was for Mum. The road was full of twists and turns and occasionally bumpy as we climbed through the hills, and I can imagine that in bad weather it would qu ickly become impassable, but today we had glorious weather and the road could at no stage be described as being even remotely hazardous. But by the time we had travelled to within 5 kilometres of the starting point of the walk, it was clear that this was Jill's nemesis and that we would have to turn back without our walk. So we did. Despite the disappointment, we did get views over the mountains which were absolutely fantastic, the equal of any mountain scenery anywhere in my experience.

Plan B for th e day saw us having a picnic at Cotter reserve - a picnic area on the banks of the Cotter river, where the main attraction for the children was a superb play area. We then made a quick visit to Tidbinbilla space tracking station (one of three such station s in the world which are used to receive communications from NASA space missions - the famous words of Neil Armstrong when he first set foot on the moon were relayed direct from the moon to here). On the way back to Canberra, we stopped at Mount Stromlo O bs ervatory, where the ANU has a group of powerful telescopes, to admire the view (and to get another stamp in the Canberra passport). This was followed by a short 2 kilometre bush walk - another from the book - within Canberra itself, around a cork oak plan atation in the Stromlo forest. This was very enjoyable, and made up in part for the disappointment of missing the walk earlier in the day.

Now for some stories about the children. On our longer car journeys, we listen to the children's tapes on the car's cassette player. As well as bringing some tapes with us, we have bought a couple of tapes of Australian children's songs. One of these includes a very catchy number called 'Thumbs up!' This is Tom's favourite, and he sings the chorus vociferously - 'bums up!!!'

A popular activity in recent weeks has been for us all, after tea, to go on what Tom and Becky call a 'dark walk'. This entails going over to my office to pick up the laptop computer so that I can do some work at home in the evening. The children think this is very exciting, and love pointing out the moon, the lit-up telecommunications tower on Black Mountain, and so on. A standing joke for us has been that whenever we see the Black Mountain tower, Jill says 'Look, there's another tower', and the children say 'Don't be silly, it's the same one'. One day this week, Jill said she would stay at home with Katy, and that Becky, Tom and I should go on the dark walk ourselves. We got to my office, I felt in my pocket and immediately real ised that Jill had borrowed my keys and not returned them. So that night, we got two dark walks for the price of one. Well, on the evening's second dark walk, the children got very excited when they claimed to see another tower, two different towers on the same walk. Of course, they pretended not to be persuaded by me that it was the same one as they had seen on the first walk!

There are still no teeth for Katy, but she has been making attempts at saying a few words this week, including 'Becky', much to her sister's delig ht. She now joins Becky and Tom when they play in Katy's bedroom during the day, and the sounds of hysteria which emenate from that room are incredible. Katy loves being part of the gang, but she does a good deal to encourage the other two into all sorts of mischief. Becky and Tom are always disappearing into Katy's room nowadays with their 'luggage' - bags full of all sorts of junk - and explaining that they are just going on their holidays and are catching a plane from Katy's room ... to Preston! We won der whether the good folk of Preston appreciate what latent appeal their town has as a major international tourist attraction!

Week 9 began on Monday 19 June. Apart from Tuesday (when we had cold southerly winds) the weather has been beautiful this week, but cold. We have had our first frosts, but the temperature rises rapidly to a high of about 10-12 degrees C. So long as the rain keeps away, this is our favourite kind of winter weather, but whenever we say to anyone here what a lovely day it is, they look at us as though we're barmy!

I finally got my FORTRAN program to run. That means that I have been able to finish writing up my paper for the September conference here. All in all, the stay at Canberra has been a productive time for me from a work point of view.

On Monday, Becky developed a cough, and had an asthma bout on Monday night. On Tuesday morning, she announced that she was much better, and said 'Thank goodness it was yesterday that I was ill - if it had been today, I would have had to have missed pre -school'! Despite this, she has continued to have a nagging cough at night, and we have consequently moved her bed to the gallery so that she is nearer to us. Whenever she wakes us up with her coughing, we question the soundness of our logic!

Becky's birthday happened this week, and we were all pleased to talk with Nain and Taid and Granny; the phone calls really made Becky's day all the more exciting. Her main present from us will be sorted out when we return back to Britain, but we did manag e to bring (or buy here) some easily portable things which she seems to have enjoyed - credit goes here, of course, to Jill's organisational abilities. Not least of these are some doll's clothes and a tapestry kit (of which more later). Becky took to pre-school a ca ke which Jill had decorated in the shape of the seven dwarves cottage.

On Friday, I took the day off work to return (on my own this time) to the mountains to do a couple of bush walks. The first was the Mount Aggie walk, postponed from last Sunday. The s econd was Mount Franklin, another of the nearby summits of the Brindabella range. After a frosty and misty start, the weather cleared to make a beautiful sunny and cloudless day. Each of the two walks was 4 kilometres in length, and since the dirt road go es high into the mountains, the total ascent (on both walks combined) was only about 300 metres. The views obtained from such relatively little effort were absolutely amazing, and will stay in my memory forever. From Mount Aggie one can see far into the K os ciusko National Park, and there is a great view of some of the Snowy Mountains (well to the south) including Mount Jagungal. The Snowy Mountains, appropriately, were covered in snow, but there was none anywhere near me! Having set off at 10 in the morning , I was back home before 2pm, and most of this time had been spent driving there and back. Although it is only 70 kilometres from Canberra, as I mentioned in last week's diary, quite a lot of the journey is along dirt roads which call for slower driving. It was particularly nice that Harry didn't charge me any extra for taking the car out early in the day!

On Saturday, we went to Goulburn, a small city (population 24000) about 90 kilometres north of Canberra. It is notable for being the first inland city in the country and has many fine buildings dating from the 1870s. This is the heart of the sheep rearing country, and the fields all around were full of Merino sheep. On our way there and back we passed Lake George which, following the drought, is very low at the moment. We saw (as usual) some kangaroos on our journey, and added an Australian kestrel to our list of birds.

Tom had found it difficult to cope with Becky's birthday on Friday, and was clearly quite jealous. So to give him something special to do on Saturday, I took him to the National Railway Museum while Becky opened and started to work on a tapestry kit which she had been given for her birthday (with Jill's help). Tom and I were treated to a personal three-quarters of an hour guided tour of the museum which ha s a good selection of rolling stock from various periods, including several steam locomotoves. Tom was awestruck; he shows this in a number of ways - instead of being the usual barely controllable wild man, he is good as gold and talks only in a whisper n ot only during but for about half an hour after the event. He was thrilled to be able to tell our guide that on his last train ride he was pulled by the Flying Scotsman (an engine which is well known here, of course, because of its tour of Australia about 6 years ago).

On Sunday, we had Becky's party in the afternoon. Our guests were the Cobb-Clarks and the Linnans, and a very good time was had by all. Jill made another 'seven dwarves' cake, and we had open sandwiches, sausage rolls, crisps and jelly. I took the childre n outside for a game of football, we then had pass-the-parcel (which was a novel event much enjoyed by the Americans), and Brett did a very good job of telling a story. It all went very well indeed; Tom clearly now lionises Matthew Cobb-Clar k (and that is no bad thing), and Becky got on particularly well with his sister, Rebecca. Jill is now talking of making cakes in the shapes of a kangaroo and a koala for Katy's alliterative birthday party - her confidence and talent know no bounds!

Since we had to get things ready for the party, our morning's activities were limited. But we did manage to get out to visit (and have a short walk at) the Ginninderra Falls on the Murrumbidgee River. This combination of cascades and waterfalls over a sub stantial drop of 200 metres is located about 20 kilometres away and is well worth seeing. Water Wheel Canyon, through which the river subsequently flows, is also quite spectacular, and is certainly a match for Cheddar Gorge.

On our way home from Ginninderra, we made two short stops. The first was at the Dinosaur Museum to buy an Aboriginal painting. The second was at the Australian Institute of Sport to collect yet another stamp for the Canberra passport; we expect to have co llected all but two of the stamps in this by the time we leave Canberra.

It may be useful to list our itinerary and telephone contact numbers for the remainder of our time away from the UK. So here goes:

3-11 July: Staying in an apartment in Brisbane (+ 61 7 262 7254)

11-16 July: Holiday on Lady Elliott Island, Great Barrier Reef (+61 7 156 4444)

16-21 July: Apartment on Gold Coast (+61 7 535 6088)

21-26 July: Staying with Alan (Bing) and Jane in Sydney

26-28 July: Boulevard Hotel, Singapore (Singapore +65 737 2911, we think)

29 July: Arrive in Manchester

The post has proved quite erratic over the last couple of months, taking anywhere between 4 and 14 days to travel in either direction between here and the UK. That being so, and given that we shall have only short stays at all the above locations, the bes t address to send any letters would be c/o Alan and Jane Smith.

Week 10 began on Monday 26 June. Sadly this is our last full week in Canberra. After 10 weeks, Becky and Tom have both developed noticeable Australian accents . 'Yes' has become 'yiss', 'kangaroos' are 'cairn-garoos', we live in 'Kenberra' and they sleep in 'bids'.

On Wednesday, I gave a research seminar at Monash University in Melbourne. I caught the 8.55 flight to Melbourne, and was at the Monash conference centre by 10.30. (This is a suite of rooms they have in the city centre; the main campus is about 20 kilomet res away from there, but for one reason or another my talk was in the conference centre.) It was good to meet a group of people with interests in the economics of education (although most came to the subject from a background in education rather than economics). It also gave me a chance to meet up with John King, who was at Lancaster until about 7 years ago but who is now at La Trobe (another of th e universities in Melbourne); it was good to see him, though he is a frequent visitor to Lancaster as he still has family there. The talk went well, and I had discussions with people until about 3 o'clock. I was then taken (by Phil McKenzie) to the Rialto - the highest building in Melbourne where there is an observation deck offering fine views across the city. After that I had an hour to myself (spent mostly in the art gallery - good collection including particularly nice works by Rembrandt, Steen, Turner , Constable, Monet, Manet, Renoir and Sisley). The art gallery is located opposite some substantial botanic gardens which from afar looked both pleasant and impressive (keen gardener though I am, I didn't cross the road for a closer look). Judging from th e taxi drive into and out of the city, and a short stroll around the central area, I would say that Melbourne is an attractive place, though it does not have the magical appeal of Sydney. The city is located on a wide plain next to the sea and surrounded by hills. A massive natural harbour, better described as a bay, is the main maritime feature. Much of the architecture in the city centre is reminiscent of a cleaned up version of Manchester, with the same character of Victorian zeal and self-assurance. The re are old trams everywhere. Where high rise buildings have been constructed, they have been built behind the original old facades. A little further out from the centre there are many houses with iron lace balconies. Other than in the central business area, the city is low level, with most people evidently living in spacious houses with ample gardens.

On Friday there were a lot of little bureaucratic jobs to be done. The house had to be inspected to make sure that we had not sold all the furniture and smas hed all the crockery. (We're not sure how they ensure that we don't do that over the weekend!) This was a prelude to my getting the necessary forms to take into town to reclaim the $450 bond which we had deposited on commencement of our tenancy. The bank had to be told of our new address, and a big box of books had to be posted to ourselves at Lancaster (surface rates are cheap at $2 per kilogramme, but of course they'll take months to arrive). In between these things, I had a lunchtime meeting with Bob G re gory and Tom Karmel (with whom I'm writing a paper for the September conference), and Bob and I went out for a farewell drink in the early evening. It turned out that he met Jim Taylor once (for about an hour) in 1969 and still remembers him - obviously J im leaves an indelible impression on people!

On Saturday, we made a return trip to Tidbinbilla, where we had been on our first weekend here; we again saw a koala in the reserve there along with a couple of emus and the usual hordes of kangaroos. On our w ay, we stopped at the Nolan Gallery at Lanyon, where there is a pretty good but frustratingly small collection of Sidney Nolan's paintings. His 1980s series of bird pictures was particularly appealing. We also stopped briefly at Cuppacumbalong, just south of Tharwa, where there is a small and expensive craft centre located in an old house constructed by the earliest occupants of the Lanyon homestead.

In the late afternoon we drove up to the summit of Mount Ainslie (one of the forested hills in the centr e of Canberra) to admire the fabulous view over the city and the surrounding countryside; the mountain is at one end of the line which stretches from the parliament house, through the old parliament house, across the lake, down Anzac parade and to the war memorial. The views from the summit surpass even those from the telecommunications tower. This is a city with which we have fallen in love, and we shall miss it badly when we leave.

Sandwiched in between those Saturday activities, Jill and Becky had a g irls' time out - the rest of us dropped them off at the city centre and they went to buy a doll's outfit with Becky's pocket money and one or two other items. Later, I took a stroll into town to buy a book from Beaky's (a chain of second hand bookshops).

Sunday was a quiet day. We visited Weston Park in Yarralumla in the morning so that the children could enjoy the play area next to the lake. There we also went through a Hampton Court style maze. In the afternoon, I took Becky and Tom to another play are a (in Commonwealth Park) while Katy slept and Jill did some packing. Becky was particularly brave in venturing onto what was for her a new piece of playground equipment - one of those things you see in army assault courses where you grasp a handle above y our head and dangle from this as you slide down a rope. Becky had been watching other (older) children play on this for ages, then suddenly insisted on having a go herself. I needed to lift her on and then follow her down, ready to catch her if she fell - which she didn't. She loved the experience and repeated it several times. Later in the afternoon we had a treasure hunt.

Jill has once again exhibited her uncanny knack of fitting a gallon into a pint pot as far as our packing goes. She has been doing bits of packing throughout the week, and is brilliantly organised; as an example, she makes sure that things we shall not ne ed until we get back to Brookhouse all go in one suitcase, so that we can leave that behind in Brisbane while we go onto the Barrier R eef. I wouldn't know where to start, so I hope I make some contribution by amusing the kids and keeping them out of the way. Despite my best efforts, Katy sneaked into our bedroom behind our backs and managed to unpack a suitcase!

I phoned John Mangan on Thursday evening to let him know when we would be arriving in Brisbane; he has kindly offered to drive us from the airport to our apartment when we arrive there. (John is an old mate - an Aussie who has visited our department in La ncaster several times.) A few weeks ago he told me that he had arranged for me to give a seminar and spend a couple of days acting as an economic adviser 'at our place'. By this I had understood he meant the University of Queensland, where John is based. Luckily I mentioned thi s to him again over the phone - luckily because it turns out that he did not mean the University of Queensland at all, but rather the Queensland treasury, to which he has been seconded! I could so easily have ended up giving an unadvertised seminar to an empty room five miles away from where a stunned audience patiently awaited their absent speaker!

It's now Sunday evening - tomorrow morning I shall take Goldie (the car) back to Harry Crawford's for the last time, and will hand my keys in at work. The children have grown a lot in the last ten weeks - we see it in Tom's telephone manner, in Katy's cra wling (and clapping, and mischief-making), in Becky's confidence. It has been a fruitful time for me at work - it has been an edifying privilege to work in an economics department the quality of which in Britain is surely matched only by Warwick, the LSE and Oxford. Jill says she is relaxed after ten weeks away from home. The work doesn't end here, of course - there's a pile of it waiting at Brisbane - but that will be a new story.

Week 11 began on Moday 3 July, the day we left Canberra. The first thing in the morning, Tom and I took Goldie back to Harry's for the last time. The lucky car was given kisses and fond farewells from the children. I then walked bac k, with Tom in the pushchair, via the post office (to send off last week's diary) and via work (to hand in my keys). Meanwhile, Jill and Becky were gathering the last of our effects together. The taxi arrived to take us to the airport at 10.15. It's quite a short trip, costing only between $10 and $12, and Tom and Becky spent the whole journey saying things like 'Bye, library; bye, parliament; bye, high court'. Jill spent the whole journey sniffling and drying her eyes, and I spent the whole journey being grateful that I shall be returning in a couple of months time.

The Ansett flight went smoothly, leaving at 11.45 and arriving in Brisbane about 90 minutes later. On the descent we got great views over the Glasshouse Mountains just north of Brisbane; these make up a surreal volcanic landscape. After picking up our lug gage (of which there is plenty - 4 large cases and about 7 other pieces including hand baggage, stroller etc.), we met up with John Mangan who had very kindly offered to transport us the relat ively short distance from the airport to our flat in Clayfield (a suburb of Brisbane about halfway between the airport and the city centre). This was done in two journeys - first me, Katy and the luggage, with the others coming later. The flat turned out to be really nice. It has two bedrooms, a shower room, a small hall and a living room with kitchen area. It is very well equipped, and the seats and beds are very comfortable (we like good hard beds). The only drawback has been the lack of a nearby park n ea rby for Jill to take the children to play in on the days when I have been out at work. After the first night (when Tom and Becky shared a bedroom rather unsucessfully), we have developed a system where Tom sleeps in one bedroom and Katy in the hall; Becky meanwhile gets transferred from our bed to a bed which we have relocated in the living room at our own bed time. This seems to work quite well. On Lady Elliot Island (and, for that matter, in Singapore) we shall all be sharing the same bedroom - goodness k nows how that will work out! Later on Monday, I walked to a large shopping centre about 3 kilometres away, bought a whole shopping list of food items, and caught a taxi back to the flat; although there is a small supermarket nearer than this, the latter i s really not suitable for a big weekly shop.

On Tuesday, we went (by taxi) into Brisbane. Like Sydney, this city is very much built around the water - in this case the water is the Brisbane River which winds its way through the conurbation creating a num ber of peninsulae and generally making itself seem ubiquitous. The city itself is charming with a large number of old buildings (by Australian standards) and much fine architecture. Many of the houses in the suburbs are 'Queenslanders', built on stilts wi th three separate parts to the roof, and are very attractive and full of character. The cleanliness of Australian cities is once more in evidence. We wandered around the city centre, pausing at Anzac Square and at the very impressive City Hall, before cro ss ing the river onto the south bank. This is the site of the world exhibition of 1988, and it has been converted into a park with restaurants, play areas, an area of re-created rain forest, and even a sandy beach and swimming area. The children enjoyed long sessions of activity at the play area and beach. Both Tom and (especially) Becky's confidence has visibly increased over the last few weeks, and they are attempting stunts which they would never before have contemplated. We then took the ferry back to th e north bank of the river and strolled through the botanic gardens to the Queensland parliament building (Tom was put out at the idea that a rival to his parliament building should dare to exist!) and to the old government house.

Wednesday was my first day back at work (of a sort). We hired a car and drove down to Broadbeach on the Gold Coast - about an hour's drive away. There I was to give a paper at a conference. It was a beautifully sunny day, and the last day of a three day c onference, so attendances had fallen somewhat by the time my session came along; there were only about 15 people there, but fortunately one of them was Adrian Pagan. The session was scheduled to last an hour, and mine was one of three papers to be delivered. So I rushed through th e presentation at breakneck speed - so fast that I think Adrian was the only one to understand what was going on. When I finished, though, it turned out that the other authors (who were from Russia and China) had not been able to come to the conference - so I could have had an hour to myself and explained in much greater detail what the paper was about! Despite this frustrating experience, Adrian was able to give me some useful and encouraging feedback. (The quality of the ANU was thus again evident!)

Having arrived part way through the one day for which I was registered to attend, I was as guilty as anyone of sciving at this conference. I left Jill and the kids at a play area near the beach just before lunch, and rejoined them after my paper - at abou t 3 .30. They had had a great time just playing and paddling in the sea. The beach (which Tom insists on calling the 'sandpit') is fabulously fine, white, dry sand; it stretches for miles from Coolangata in the south to Surfers' Paradise in the north. The sur f here is indeed terrific, and the water - even at this time of year - is beautifully warm; I went in for a dip after giving my paper. In addition to the surf beaches, however, the unusual lie of the land in this area ensures that there are also still wat er beaches available. The sea front is built up with many high rise holiday flats - but not as much so as we had been led to expect. Behind the built up area, the mountains of the hinterland are spectacular. We returned (taking the monorail from the beach t o the conference centre where we had parked - incidentally this was in the Conrad Jupiters casino!) to Brisbane, stopping for our tea at a McDonalds along the way.

On Thursday, John picked me up in the morning to take me to the first of my two days worki ng at the Queensland Treasury. I gave a paper to a group of about 15 treasury people (the same paper which I gave at Monash a couple of weeks ago) and this went well. I spent the rest of the day having discussions with various people at the Queensland Gov ernment Statistician's Office, including John (with whom I'm collaborating on a piece of work which analyses the Australian labour market). Since the weather was typical British drizzle, Jill and the children were largely confined to the flat; but this ga ve the kids a chance to relax a little after the exertions of the previous day. On Friday, I was again working at the Statistician's Office - mainly on my own research, but also I read and provided comments upon a couple of hitherto unpublished papers by st aff there. With the exception of one day (20 July, when I am giving a paper at Queensland University of Technology) the remainder of our time in Australia will now be holiday. In the evening we all went over to the Mangans' house in Wynnum (another suburb o f Brisbane) for a meal. We had fish and chips (much appreciated by all) and the children particularly enjoyed the chance to play with other kids' toys. John and Irene have two sons (Mark, 11 and Chris, 6), so Tom was in his element; Becky also enjoyed wat ching the video of Snow White, one of her favourites. The Mangans are about to move shortly to another house round the corner from their existing one, and this will give them some fantastic views of the bay.

On Saturday we took a drive (I had taken out a nother Nissan Bluebird on Friday evening, just before going to the Mangans'). We travelled north up the Bruce Highway, stopping first at the Wild Horse Mountain lookout over the Glasshouse Mountains. We then proceeded to Yandina where we stopped to look a round the ginger factory there - the biggest such factory in the world. It was a very well presented tour; we had a train ride around the factory complex which included a running commentary about the various stages of production, and the area around the f ac tory had a number of shops selling ginger products and a variety of crafts. After that, we drove on to Noosa National Park - a serene and beautiful spot where the Noosa River enters Laguna Bay. We then returned to Brisbane along the Sunshine Coast, stoppi ng at Marcoola to go on the beach and to spend some time at a play area. Becky and I took a dip, Jill and Katy paddled, and Tom dug a hole in the sand. Jill and I both believe this is the warmest sea we have ever swum in - and this is mid-winter!

After o ur busy day on Saturday, we took things relatively easy on Sunday. In the morning we visited the Australian Woolshed at Ferny Hills just outside Brisbane. Here we saw a fascinating demonstration of sheep shearing and sheepdog handling. They had a selectio n of eight different breeds of sheep with which we could mix. In addition to all this, they had some kangaroos to feed and pet, and (best of all, albeit succumbing to naff tourist activities) we had our picture taken cuddling a koala. We then visited a Si zzler restaurant for our lunch, and returned home for the children to have an afternoon nap.

The wildlife in Queensland is very different from that which we saw further south. Of the parrots which were common in Canberra, we have seen only galahs here. We have, however, seen some brightly coloured rainbow lorikeets. Other new 'ticks' for our bird list have included spoonbills, great egrets and cattle egrets. We have not seen any kangaroos or wallabies in Queensland.

A couple of stories about Tom are w orth relating this week. On our flight to Brisbane, we were given earphones so that we could listen to the in-flight entertainment service. Tom decided that these would be effective as a tool in a game of pretend. He donned them and started to examine Jil l as though they were a stethoscope. As he did so, he explained what he was doing, saying 'I'm Doctor Tom'. Given his erratic diction, this caused a great deal of alarm amongst our fellow passengers, who thought that they had heard him say 'I've got a bom b!!!'

The second story concerns our visit to the Australian Woolshed. As we were waiting for our turns at milking the cow, the animal decided it was time for a comfort break, and urinated all over the shed floor. Tom looked first at the cow, then at the milk bu cket beneath it, and exclaimed 'Oh no! It missed the potty!!!'

Becky, meanwhile, has developed into a really inquisitive four year old. Early this week, in response to persistent questioning about how she came to be in Mummy's tummy in the first p lace, I told her in full detail the facts of life. Her response was to laugh hysterically and say 'That was a funny thing to do!!' Some of her other questions have been tougher: 'Why do we have bones?' 'How does God make our bones?' 'Why did God make us?' Jill, being quicker and smarter than I, responds by saying 'Ask Daddy'. I'm left floundering!

Week 12 began on Monday 10 July. That day was hectic. Wanting to make the most of our short stay in Brisbane, we spent the morning travelling out to the mountai ns which lie to the west of the city. To be more specific, we went to Maiala National Park - not with any great idea of what we would find once we got there, other than reports of pleasant countryside and the possibility of some short but scenic bushwalks . After a drive of about 30 minutes, we arrived there, and found a 2 kilometre bushwalk which took us throught the rainforest. This was a sensational experience, much like walking into a different world; once we started on the walk, it was as if we had tr ig gered a switch to start playing a compact disc of the most unusual birdsong and other sounds. We saw relatively little wildlife in the forest, other than a noisy pitta and brush turkey, but the amazing sounds all around us were ample compensation. After o ur walk (which by now counts as a short one for Tom and Becky) we drove on through more rainforest areas in the Manorina and Boombanna National Parks, and through the hamlets of Mount Glorious and Mount Nebo, stopping at Jolly's Lookout for a fine view ov er the mountains and the plain stretching down to Brisbane, the sea, and Moreton Island beyond. On our way back to the flat, we stopped at Mount Coot-tha for another good view over the city. It was after that that the hectic part of the day started. We went shopping, then Becky and I took most of our luggage over to John's house; he and Irene had kindly agreed to look after it for us for the next few days. I then dropped Becky back at the flat (so that she could watch Madeline, her favourite TV programme) a nd took the car back to the Aircond Car Rentals. Meanwhile, Jill was recovering from the feat of packing a litre into a pint pot - the luggage allowance for the flight from Bundaberg to Lady Elliot Island would be a measly 10 kilogrammes per person.

An early morning on Tuesday saw the taxi arrive to deliver us to Brisbane airport for our flight to Bundaberg. Everything went smoothly, and after a 45 minute flight we transferred to the small plane which took us on the short (25 minute) flight to Lady E lliot Island where we were to stay the subsequent five nights. At the island we were given a quick introduction to the facilities and directed to our cabin. This consisted of one room (bunk beds for Tom and Becky and a cot for Katy) with en suite facilities an d a shared verandah. We managed to get a fridge put into the room (although it was not normally included in our type of accommodation) - the people at the travel agent in Canberra through whom we had booked the holiday had made a mistake and told us that a fridge would be available, and Katy's needs of course make this a necessary item of equipment for us wherever we go at present. By 1pm we had settled in, had a picnic lunch, and were starting on our first activity - a guided reef walk.

The next few days roll smoothly into one. We spent our time reef-walking, snorkelling, fish-feeding, whale watching, walking around the island, spending time with the children in the play area or at the kids' club, and lazing on the beach. It amazed us th at it is possible to walkout onto the Great Barrier Reef itself, wading in knee-deep water, bypassing the coloruful live coral by treading only on white dead coral (much of which is by now ground to sand). As we walked, fish swam around our legs. The fish again allowed us to approach them closely as we fed them - indeed they would eat right out of Becky's, Katy's or my hand. (Tom was less patient, and just threw handfuls of food into the water!) Easily seen from the fish feeding area were scissor-tailed sergeants, crescent w rasses, sixbar wrasses, threadfin butterflyfishes, and numerous fringelip mullets. It is good that, without more than a knee-deep wade in the water, the children could see all these. Snorkelling in the same area allowed Jill and myself also to see Barrier Reef anenomefish, humuhumu triggerfish (Picassofish), dusky anenomefish, ambon damsels, humbug dascylli, and a blue spotted stingray. Jill and I snorkelled regularly, taking turns, but despite a gallant effort Becky just could not manage it. This was all w ithin 50 metres of our cabin. On the other side of the island (about 500 metres away) there was another snorkelling area known as the coral gardens. Here the coral was truly spectacular, and the marine life was simply stunning. The live coral formed a pla teau, interrupted on occasion by places where the water became much deeper, and where one swam over dead coral. Where the two types of terrain met, high cliffs of live coral formed a spectacular landscape. The commonest coral types here were branch, brain , and blade coral, and these made a fantastic array of greens, reds and browns, with the occasional bright blue decorating the tips of the branch coral. In addition to those already mentioned, the fish which we saw here included moorish idol, cornetfish, bl ack backed butterflyfish, Jansen's wrasse, redback longface wrasse, six-banded angelfish, half and half chromis, and semicircle angelfish. I was also lucky enough to see a reef blacktip shark and - best of all - a huge manta ray, about 2 and a half x 2 and a half metres; the l atter swam so gracefully I was sorry not to be able to keep up with it and witness this creature for a longer time. The beautiful colours and shapes of many of these fish defies description; under the water on the Great Barrier Reef is surely one of the m ost beautiful places on earth, and it is so largely because of the fish which decorate it. On one occasion, one of the Lady Elliot staff (Jenny - of whom the children had become quite fond) babysat for an hour so that Jill and I could go snorkelling toget he r in the coral gardens. On Wednesday and Saturday, we were privileged to witness the spectacular sight of humpback whales swimming past the island, blowing and rising out of the water; we could also hear them communicating with each other as we snorkelled . The birdlife on the island also gave us some new 'ticks', with bar-tailed godwits, white capped noddies and reef egret being additions to our list.

The play area was conveniently located just outside our cabin; the children enjoyed the swings and slide there, but their favourite activities were playing on the beach, feeding the fish, and our ride on the glass-bottomed boat. They also enjoyed the half-hour long kids' club which the staff organised each day, involving treasure hunts and other projects. B reakfast and evening meal were included as part of the package, and the food was excellent and plentiful. After dinner in the evenings, we put the children to bed and read on the verandah. The kids also usually slept for a while in the afternoon; it was g ood to be so close to the beach that we could do a bit of reef-walking without going more than 100 metres from the cabin where the children were asleep. The whole island - which is only about three quarters of a kilometre square - is made of dead coral; around the island, th e coral is below the surface of the sea, and joins the rest of the Barrier Reef, and the area of live coral which is partly uncovered at low tide is suitable for reef-walking. The staff on the island were great, favourites of ours being Danny, Jenny and S an dy (with whom Tom became quite infatuated!). The potential problems of going on holiday with three young children were not realised, mainly because the staff on the island all went the extra mile to make sure that everyone had as good a time as was possib le. Remarkably, we found that having all five of us sleeping in the same room actually worked - despite the children all having suffered colds which left them with nagging coughs.

All things must pass, not least times spent in those places which resemble pieces of paradise dropped down to the earth; our time on Lady Elliot Island came to an end on Sunday. We left the island at 3pm, returning via Bundaberg to Brisbane where we hired a station wagon from Avis (at three times the cost of renting a car from Harry's or from Aircond - that's the price you pay for availability on a Sunday evening, I suppose). We picked up our remaining luggage from John's house, and then drove on to the accommodation which we had booked at Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast, abou t an hour's drive south of Brisbane. The flat (in the Horizons Family Apartments block) turned out to be a very comfortable and very well-equipped 2 bedroom apartment, a stone's throw from the beach (with good views) and with its own pool, sauna and play ar ea. Becky and Tom again slept in bunks, and again this proved successful. Week 13 began on Monday 17 July, when we took advantage of the rented car and drove out to the hinterland. We stopped briefly at Mount Tambourine before proceeding to the Natural Brid ge National Park where we enjoyed a 1 kilometre walk to see the famous bridge carved by a waterfall. It is a pleasant rather than stunning scene, certainly a curiosity but not as spectacular as counterparts which we have seen at Arches National Park in Ut ah or Rainbow Bridge in Arizona. Where Queensland's natural bridge scores, however, is in its surroundings. It is located in a lovely rainforest setting, and we again enjoyed the cacophony of unusual sounds made by the birds of the area. On the journey to t he natural bridge, we enjoyed impressive views over volcanic mountains in Lamington National Park. We travelled back to the Gold Coast following a very pleasant route through numerous sugar cane plantations and along the Tweed River. By the time we had st opped to shop for provisions and returned home, it was time for me to return the car to the Avis branch at Coolangata airport, taking a bus back to the flat.

On Tuesday, we stayed local. We walked in the morning to Burleigh Head - yet another national pa rk. We strolled through the forest on this headland, hoping - but failing - to see a koala in the wild; we did, however, see some of the wonderful lizards of Oz, and gained fine views over the sea and up the Tallebudgera estuary towards the mountains of t he hinterland. We caught a bus home to have lunch, and then spent the afternoon on the beach about 50 metres from the hotel.

Wednesday was also spent on the Gold Coast, but was altogether more exciting. We took a bus to Sea World, a large theme park loc ated just north of Surfers' Paradise. Entry was costly (at $34 each for Jill and myself and $22 for Becky) but the experience turned out to be well worth the outlay. We saw three shows - a sea lion and dolphin show, a water-skiing spectacular, and the 'sh ark encounter'. The last of these, in particular, was fantastic and alone was worth the ticket price; after a short film, the screen rolled up revealing a massive aquarium in which sharks and other large fish (up to 3 metres) swam around divers who wore t he garb used by divers through the centuries. This stunning scene was accompanied by a very instructive narration, and the whole performance was most effective. This is not to minimise the standard of the other two shows, however - the tricks played by the dolphins and the stunts of the water-skiiers were truly memorable. Between all the shows, we managed to squeeze in a visit to the theme park's aquarium, and it was great to see once again so many of the fish which we had recently seen in the wild at Lady El liot Island. In addition to the shows and the aquarium, the theme park has a number of rides. I took Becky on her first real fairgound ride (a boat on a water flume) and she was absolutely thrilled by it - so much so that she persuaded Jill to go on it wi th her; while Becky enjoyed her second ride as much as the first, Jill was not so keen and says she would have been frightened by it had Becky not been there to reassure her! More sedate were the rides we all had on the monorail, a train, and an aerial ca ble car. All the children also enjoyed their rides on a traditional merry-go-round. Indeed, all three really enjoyed their day out and learned a lot from it.

The following day was back to work for me - I had a paper to present at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. I started the 90 minute bus journey into town at 7.45 in the morning, looking over my paper on the journey, having also cast an eye ov er it the previous evening. It was an unusual kind of paper for me to be giving - a purely descrip tive and not at all technical piece of work of the kind to which I usually refer as 'blah blah'. But the bloke who had invited me had persuaded me that this was appropriate for the audience which was to be a mixture of economists and public policy analyst s. (The latter are not known for their technical prowess.) As things turned out, the faculty had undergone some reorganisation since a few months ago when the seminar was arranged, so the audience consisted of economists and finance people. I was therefor e concerned that a different paper might have been more appropriate, but nevertheless most of the people there seemed to enjoy it. After the seminar, I was taken to lunch by Jeremy Williams (one of the staff there) at a restaurant in the botanical gardens. Then I hunted down the Avis station wagon which we were hiring for the next 24 hours, and drove back to Burleigh Heads, arriving back at the flat at about 4.30. On my return, I was instantly to be made extremely jealous by Tom, who greeted me with the new s that he, Becky, Katy and Jill had spent the day on the beach and had seen dolphins swimming in the sea - right at the water's edge!

We breakfasted early the next day in order to visit the Currumbin Sanctuary in time for its opening at 8 o'clock. Currimbin is about 10 km south of Burleigh Heads, and the sanctuary is home to a wide variety of Australian fauna. It is most remarkable, how ever, for its twice daily sessions of lorikeet feeding; the first of these is at 8 am, when hundreds of wild rainbow lorik eets descend upon the sanctuary from the surrounding countryside. It is a remarkable experience to hold a tin dish of bread and water, and suddenly have a dozen lorikeets clambering over one's hands, arms, shoulders, and even head, just waiting in the que ue to grab some of the food on offer! This was an experience which all of us except Katy were privileged to enjoy. We were particularly fortunate because our British membership of the National Trust qualified us for free entry into the sanctuary, and our vi sit was necessarily brief. By 9.30, we had returned to the flat, packed the car, and set off on our way to Brisbane airport in readiness for the flight to Sydney. This turned out to be delayed by an hour, and in consequence we did not arrive at our next d estination - Alan and Jane's house - until mid-afternoon, after a taxi ride with a remarkably grumpy driver. Alan and Jane live in Chippendale, about 2 km from Sydney's city centre. They have a four bedroomed terraced house in a very quiet street; the hou se looks small from the outside, but appearances are in this case deceptive. Although the area looks to be fairly well gentrified, the backs of warehouses and factories remain in profusion, and we could not honestly say that the Smiths' taste in houses (or, more precisely, location) coincides with our own! Becky and Katy shared a room, while Tom slept on a camp bed in our room; this was our choice, since Tom is the only one of our children who does not snore!

On Saturday, we took a bus to Circular Quay, an d then a return trip on the ferry to Manly, getting fine views of the opera house and harbour bridge (the latter of which, for obvious reasons, Sydneysiders call the coathanger). Sydney really is very fortunate in its harbour, which seems to branch out an d reach most parts of the city. After our return to the city, we wandered around the historic Rocks area, and then strolled back through the town centre to do some necessary shopping.

In the evening, Alan and I went to an Aussie Rules football game, whe re the Sydney Swans were massacred by Footscray (134-71 or something like that). This was my first experience of this game, and I found it very enjoyable indeed. It is fast-moving and exciting (much better live than on television), and the rules are simpl e to follow. The aim is to kick the ball between two uprights at the opponents' end of the field (thus scoring 6 points). A narrow miss (which passes between two outer uprights) scores one point, and a single point is also scored where the ball passes thr ou gh the two main uprights other than by being kicked on the full. Passes are made from player to player either by punching the ball (which is rugby-ball shaped) or by punting. Any kicked ball which is caught on the full earns a mark which is essentially a free kick. Other than that, virtually anything goes. Sequences of kicks and passes which go from one end of the field to the other are particularly dramatic. In addition to the experience of a sport which, for me, was new, the visit to the football game w as particularlyinstructive for a second reason - our seats were in the private box reserved for people from Nokia (Alan's employers) and their guests. So the package included a Thai chicken curry and drinks. I found it quite remarkable that most of the Aust ralians in the box knew nothing about and had no interest in the Aussie rules game - they had come merely to enjoy a good night out, and for many that entailed turning their backs on the field of play altogether. In my view they were all the poorer for th at.

The following day we took a train and bus ride to the famous Bondi beach, where the children enjoyed their last Australian paddle and sandcastle-building session (and in Katy's case, her last meal of sand!). Sydneysiders are fortunate to have access to a number of very good, clean, sandy beaches with some fantastic surf. We stopped on the journey back at Bondi Junction to

do some shopping for food and for a Brio train set for Alec and Huw. The final week of the Australian adventure began on Monday 2 4 July with a longer train journey - to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. From here we could get a close view of several of the main geological features which have made these mountains famous, in particular the Three Sisters - three pillars of rock precario usly perched on a cliff face. The whole area is reminiscent of America's Grand Canyon, in that a valley has been carved in the form of several series of steep cliffs. The scenery here is primarily the work, not of the Nepean River, but rather of glaciers. T he result - a mixture of steep rock faces and lush woodland - is certainly beautiful, and - for me at least - it surpasses the Grand Canyon (which despite being intellectually challenging has, after two visits, left me cold). The only hitches on this day concerned the train service; owing to track maintenance, part of our journey to Katoomba was made by bus (causing some delay), and we had to return to Sydney on an earlier train than planned. Nonetheless, our brief encounter with the Blue Mountains left u s enchanted and wanting more. In the evening, Alan took us on a guided car tour of Sydney, crossing the harbour bridge, and visiting Mrs. Macquarie's Point for a spectacular view of the opera house and coathanger bridge together. The tour finished at the Lo rd Nelson pub in the Rocks, where Alan's recommendation of the beer brewed in-house was put to the test.

On Tuesday, we had a relatively relaxing day in preparation for the following day's flight. In the moring we visited the aquarium on Darling Harbour. This was better (though not by far) than its Canberran counterpart; it had a larger area where we could walk through a glass tube under the water, and the collections of rays and sharks were particularly good. Again it was good to renew our acquaintance with the brilliantly coloured fish which we had seen while snorkelling on the Barrier Reef. From the aquarium, we walked down to Circular Quay for a picnic lunch by the opera house and harbour bridge, and then returned to Alan and Jane's house for the chi ldren to have an afternoon nap. As we had done last Friday, we arranged to have a restaurant meal delivered to Alan and Jane's house - on Friday we had eaten a Chinese meal, but on this second occasion we opted for a Thai menu, and very good it was too!

Wednesday was a sad day, because we left Australia - a country which has grabbed me (for one - and I know Becky for at least one other) by the heart. In the morning I took the children out to a play area about 50 metres from Alan and Jane's house while Ji ll finalised the packing. We then had a quiet morning, catching a taxi (necessarily a station wagon) to the airport at 1 pm. All went smoothly, and our flight for Singapore left at 3.30. It is sad to report that Katy has held out and failed to cut her first teeth in Australia! We dosed the two older children with Phenergen to try and encourage them to sleep on the flight. This had the desired effect on Becky, but Tom (though well behaved throughout) did not get to sleep until about half an hour before landing. Katy refused to sleep in the bassinet and needed constant attention. This was the first flight on which we have enjoyed personal LCD TVs with a choice of about 20 films, plus information services and video games; but of course with the children failing to sle ep we could not really take much advantage. A highlight of the flight was our passage over Uluru. This gave us partial views over the great red monolith which looked stunning in the setting sun. All went well at Singapore with the bus transfer to the hote l (included as part of the package), and we were all washed and in bed by 11.30 local time. The hotel room is large - Tom even has the luxury of a double bed to himself - with all the modern conveniences one would expect. As was the case on Lady Elliot Isla nd, having all five of us sleep in one room worked out well - Jill and I left the room for the first part of the evening to read in a little vestibule about 10 metres away, thus giving the children a chance to fall asleep without lights on. First impress io ns of Singapore presented no surprises. It is predominantly a very modern city with most of the buildings being smart skyscrapers of recent construction. There remain some areas of older buildings, mainly shophouses dating back to the early part of the pr esent century. The modern areas of the city, including Orchard Road near which our hotel is located, is littered with gleaming shopping centres apparently far more numerous than could conceivably be justified by the local population. The weather is horrib ly hot and humid, although partial and transient respite from this came on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. Even on our arrival, late at night, the temperature was 28 degrees C, and the humidity hit one like a steaming wet blanket; to suffer that every day of the year must be dreadful.

We slept through to about 7 in the morning, and enjoyed a brilliant hotel breakfast before taking a swim in the outside pool in the middle of a thunderstorm! The children then took a nap before lunch, during which time I walke d around the shopping areas of Orchard Road in search of various items like bread, ham, margerine, milk and the like which we later used for lunch. After our midday meal we were taken on a 3 hour bus tour of the city (part of the package). This included s tops at Little India (an area of old shophouses characterised by evocative smells, but otherwise uninteresting), the Sultan Mosque and the Chinese Thian Hock Keng Temple. These were the first non-Christian houses of worship which either of us had ever vis it ed, and the second in particular was well worth the experience, characterised by fruit laid on altars along with candles and joss-sticks. The tour also called at a factory where gemstones were refined and set. This was something of a bonus as we had recen tly been answering a lot of Becky's questions ('how is such-and-such made') with the stock answer: 'in a factory'; and so we had been trying to think of how we could arrange a visit to a factory somewhere. (The true function of the ginger factory which we v isited in Yandina obviously failed to sink in!) The bus tour also passed views across the river to the high-rise part of the city and the famous Raffles Hotel. We resisted the temptation to dine at the latter! Our overall impression of Singapore is that i t is a pleasant enough place, with extremely lush vegetation and a few interesting buildings, but handicapped by overpopulation - surely people will demand more living space with their increased affluence - and a truly appalling climate. While it is a con venient stopover for European travellers to the antipodes, and while as such we may stop here again in the future, the real impact which it has left upon us is: 'been there, done that'.

On Friday we took things very easy, enjoying a long swim in the hotel pool in the morning, and taking the transfer to the airport in the mid-afternoon; this despite the fact that our flight was not scheduled until 11.30 pm, since our hotel could not arran ge for us a later check-out than 2 pm. The airport, despite heralding itself as the world's most popular, is not an ideal place to have three tired children - the transit hotel had no vacancies, there was no play area and no restaurants designed to appeal to young taste buds. Window-shopping provides some entertainment for a short while, but the shops really are not all that inspiring. We eventually settled in the nursery which is no more than a baby changing area with a few tables and chairs, but which was at least quiet and prevented us from disturbing other travellers. To m had a nap there, but Becky and Katy - the latter of whom is by now showing signs of developing chicken pox - respectively refused and (initially at least) failed to do so. Once on the plane, we all slept for a few hours. The flight went smoothly, stoppi ng at Paris and giving us rather hazy view of the Eiffel Tower. On our arrival in Manchester at about 8.30 am on Saturday morning, the taxi was waiting to deliver us home.

We all feel glad to have finished the month-long period of living out of suitcase s - checking ten pieces of luggage, including four large suitcases, into the hold, and caring also for miscellaneous bits of hand luggage is not particularly pleasant. Notwithstanding that though, coming back to Britain was also a curious experience in th at we would just as happily returned to Canberra, where we had felt so settled during the first ten weeks of our stay. Australia has become my favourite country - bar none; Becky too was upset to leave and keeps nagging for us to go back, despite not yet having recovered from jetlag! Whereas four months ago we would have regarded this trip as a one-off, it now seems inconceivable that we should not one day return to Australia.

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