At our third attempt, after rescheduling because of the weather and a work-related matter, I handed over the hard drive to Dave. We met at 5 pm, at the entrance to Woollies in Oxenford, just off our nearest access to the motorway between the Gold Coast and Brisbane. Dave described me as a citizen scientist because of the Tamborine Mountain species data I have amassed. He could have a point, though I never considered myself to be one and the scientific content was provided by experts.

I emailed a letter to Robyn Hamilton, having previously spoken to her on the phone, offering my Image Library as a donation. She was willing to consider my offer, but was concerned about the number of images. Robyn is the curator who is currently preparing my video footage to go live on the State Library’s website. Dave Allen, who is head of digital conservation at the Library, gave me Robyn’s name and number. When I first collected the hard drive, and before playing the footage, I had phoned him to confirm the Library’s postal address and he felt that it would be safer for us to meet. I had to tell him, that we needed to first fix the error.

Today, Steve copied the correct content onto the hard drive, and gave it to me. I actually discovered the error on the time-coded version which he copied onto the hard drive I use for selecting video frames for my albums, and footage for my species videos. I wasn’t able to check the memory card before I gave it to him to copy.

I contacted Steve to tell him that the hard drive he gave me with the data files of the remaining unedited footage for the State Library, included a duplicate of Card 11. It was on Card 13, the final memory card I gave him to copy. I had already packed the hard drive and was ready to post it.

One of the things I decided to do having returned from my overseas trip, was to ask Steve to create data files of the last video footage for the State Library of Queensland (SLQ), for which I had to give him the memory card. I also thought I should find out if the Library would consider accepting my Image Library as a donation. Steve and I had been editing the video frames for the past year or two and they needed to be put onto a USB. I met Steve for lunch at Bond University and gave him the memory card.

I thanked the urologist for successfully removing the kidney stone. He wants to see me just before my birthday in November and will require me to have another ultrasound on my bladder. Meanwhile, he has prescribed a tablet to be taken once a day, designed to combat gout, which shares uric acid as a symptom with kidney stones. The hope is that the tablet will prevent a stone from forming.

Today, during an hourlong operation, the urologist removed the kidney stone from my bladder, using a laser to zap the stone. This was the first time I have had a general anaesthetic and the first time since my birth that I have spent a night in hospital.  In fact, I spent another night and was collected by Steve and Paulina on 28.4.24 who drove me home. I treated them to a roast lunch at Bungunyah.

PS By 3.5.24, the tenderness and bleeding had stopped and I was well on the way to recovery. The urologist booked me for a de-brief on 27.5.24.

This afternoon I saw the urologist. His surgery was as busy as a railway station waiting room. He showed me a photo of the stone which he described as large and told me that I would need a general anaesthetic and be kept in overnight. I chose to have the operation at the Pindara Private Hospital and spent time with the doctor’s administrator dealing with the paperwork. I ended up hand-delivering the forms at the hospital on April 4.

At about noon on March 6, I noticed blood in my urine and went straight to the medical centre in the shops behind my unit block. I was prescribed an antibiotic and told to book an ultrasound on my bladder. For two or three days I was glued to the toilet and experienced pain and discomfort. I booked the ultrasound for the following Monday. I was told to drink a litre of water an hour beforehand, but given the UTI, I only managed 600 ml and even then, went to the toilet twice. The nurse had difficulty in conducting the ultrasound because I had to have two more visits to the toilet.

I was booked to see the doctor on the Thursday, but he had not received the result of the ultrasound. I had hardly recovered from the UTI when I had a recurrence a fortnight later. My regular doctor prescribed an antibiotic and promptly chased up the errant ultrasound report. I again spent two or three days glued to the toilet. When I saw her, the ultrasound showed a kidney stone in the bladder. She referred me to a urologist who ordered a CT scan of the… Read Complete Text

As luck would have it, I was in Brisbane and didn’t return home until late afternoon on Boxing Day, so I missed the freak weather, subsequently acknowledged as a derecho, a more than two hundred kilometre wide, tornado-like wind front, by the Bureau of Meteorology, which struck parts of the Scenic Rim, Tamborine Mountain in particular, and the Gold Coast on Christmas night. I saw the full impact of the weather system during the two days I was on the mountain without electricity.

People couldn’t access their tank water, because the water has to be pumped by an electric motor. Driving around the mountain, I saw houses destroyed by fallen trees which had cleaved them in two, or with their roof blown off and walls collapsed. The trees which weren’t blown down, were stripped of their branches, something I had not previously seen. Along the ridge on the main access road, power poles were snapped or leaning at a crazy angle. The power lines were draped over the vegetation or simply strewn along the road for kilometre after kilometre. The power outage lasted for two weeks. There may not be another community in Australia with a population as… Read Complete Text