Two hours and 46 minutes. Technically, it was summer when I stepped off the plane in Hobart, 25 hours and change after boarding Qantas 3744 in Seattle. It had been winter back in Seattle, as it was for the change of planes in LAX, but the hemispherical flip dropped me into the blustery Tasmanian summer, where it was 80 degrees yesterday. Today, at the moment of the austral fall equinox, the temperature has topped out at 55, with rain. These Aussies clearly don’t mess around.

But have I even explained what I’m doing down* here? (*With apologies for my northern-normative geography.)

There’s that software system I work on that’s supposed to help research vessels gather data at sea. It’s apparently becoming a bit of a thing. Back home, there are plans afoot to install it in the entire US University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System fleet, and there are a bunch of big new ships whose computer systems are being designed specifically to accommodate its use. The Aussies and Kiwis are way ahead of the Americans – the Australian Antarctic Division has been using it since way back when it was inadvisableware**, and the Kiwis have full time staff dedicated to it.

**(Back then, the system’s open source licensing terms stated – I kid you not:

IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE, INCLUDING INJURY, LOSS OF LIFE, PROPERTY, SANITY OR CREDIBILITY AMONG YOUR PEERS WHO WILL TELL YOU THAT YOU REALLY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER.

As I said, those Aussies don’t mess around.)

Anyhow. At a meeting in Hawaii last fall, I was chatting up folks at the Australian CSIRO – that’s the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation – about helping them out with OpenRVDAS. And maybe scoring a visit to their HQ in Tasmania along the way.

We talked and plotted a bit, and the fine folks in Hobart decided to whip up a multiagency workshop of antipodal organizations using OpenRVDAS. I’d show up and make myself available to lead discussion, talk about new and obscure features, and brainstorm on where this whole crazy project should go from here.

So here I am. I’ve got a few days before the workshop actually starts in which I’m hoping to mix poking around the town with actual prep for the workshop.

Improbably (wait – isn’t ‘improbable’ the expected outcome when I’m on the road?), I stumbled across my hosts – who I had never met in person – about an hour after writing the above paragraphs. Okay, it wasn’t extremely improbable: I was walking along the waterfront, admiring the RV Investigator, a massive gleaming blue and white ship operated by CSIRO. But it was still a surprise to overhear the young couple in the nearby picnic area say “…and if we pair OpenRVDAS with a relay, we ought to be able to….” Their office was down the block, and they’d just stepped outside for a few minutes to enjoy the early autumn sunshine. Yes, it was sunny again.