An Assortment of Aussie News

Yesterday, it rained in Canberra, over 10 millimeters (about .4 inches). Yes, in 2006, in Canberra, a "heavy" rain like that qualifies as front page news. The drought continues although climatologists hope that a weakening in the El Nino in the Pacific will bring back more normal precipitation to southeast Australia. Bizarrely, some towns in higher elevations in Victoria and Tasmania actually enjoyed a white Christmas, as freak mid-summer snows dropped and helped dampen some of the wildfires in those two states.

Canberra continues with "Stage 3" water restrictions, which limit you to watering your lawn once a week, and place other limits on how or whether you can put water on plants in your yard. It's a pretty dry place, in some ways the yellowing lawns reminding me of southern California or Denver. At least the rain seems to have lessened the threats of wildfires in town, something locals have been reminded of again this week as a commission released a report damning the authorities' response to the firestorm that struck Canberra in January 2003, killing four and burning 500 houses in a Canberra suburb only a couple of miles from where we live...

The other big news in Australia this week -- they beat England again in the Ashes cricket tests, extending their lead to 4-0. They hope to complete the shut-out in the last five-day test in Sydney this weekend.

And "professional celebrity" Paris Hilton has landed in Sydney. She's here on some promotional gig for some beer (if I knew it's name I wouldn't print it here), and doing the usual Paris Hilton activities -- hanging out on Bondi Beach, shopping in Sydney's poshest stores, and probably doing drugs and inducing vomiting to keep her skinny-ass protruding-hip figure just as it is.