Aug. 17 - 20: INTECOL, Brisbane

Now the real excuse for going to Australia was INTECOL, the International Congress of Ecology that meets only once every several years. When I found out it was in Brisbane and the theme was global change and sustainability, I thought 'Ahah!' (this was last fall before any wedding plans had been made!) and committed then and there to going to present our recent research on climatic warming and its effects on ginseng. This is the theme of one of my PhD students, Sara Souther. So, she and I had been planning to present here for the last 10 months or so. I had never been to an INTECOL meeting, but I heard good things.

Now for the ulterior motive; I have been to 6 continents in my various professorial and private leisure traveling: Europe (several times), Asia (now twice), South America (twice), Africa (twice), North America (of course), and Antarctica (once). The only continent I had never visited was Australia! So there you have it. A life goal within reach. So it really was with great conflict in my mind that I chose to stick with the Australia meeting when my family was traveling in China after the reception. I would obviously have loved to be with them. But I didn't want to let go of this life goal, and I had made a commitment, so here I was.

Now the conference was what I would characterize as 'pretty good'. Some good plenary talks, and a smattering of very interesting talks in between. One picture shows Sara next to our poster talking with Johan Ehrlen, a well-known plant population biologist. Another shows a very bizarre poster and you can look at it more closely if you dare by clicking on the image. And Brisbane is a neat city. Sculptures lying around (see pic). If you look closely at the city pic, you'll see that there were Prius taxis - now there's a progressive city! We stayed in the Hotel George Williams, a rather spartan hotel but in the center of the city within walking distance of most things. My room was modern, but had a real minimalist air about it that I actually liked - who needs all that luxury if you're just sleeping in a place. Anyway, Sara and I had a nice 4 days in Brisbane. Here are a couple of pics from the meeting and from walking around town. I'll describe the trip to the botanical garden on Thursday in more detail in the next post.