Research Update: It IS why I'm here, afterall

So yes. I came to Australia to do research for my PhD dissertation. Funny...I haven't mentioned it once on this blog, yet. So here it is.

Research has been slow. No wait. Scratch that: research PLANNING has been slow. Research has been non-existent. But every grad student is warned that it will be like this - nothing will be like you expect, there will be necessary changes to your plans, there will be catastrophic incidents which require you to add another year or three to your degree. Fortunately, I haven't run across anything that serious. But I've had to spend about 3-4 weeks more than I originally planned trying to get things moving. But finally! A breakthrough! I have somewhere to go do research. This is an important first step.

A quick primer on Rachel's research for those who are unfamiliar. Without getting into the gory details, my research looks at collaborative bushfire planning and policy. Much of my actual data collection involves talking to members of collaborative bushfire planning groups. These are people (somewhere between 15-30 of them in each group in Australia) who work for organizations that have a stake in bushfire management. National Parks, Conservation Organizations, Forestry, Fire Fighters, Farmers, etc. You get the picture. In Australia, policy REQUIRES them to get together an make bushfire risk management plans for their local communities/regions. I came planning to talk to a bunch of these groups. Okay, that's probably more than you wanted or needed to know.

Unfortunately for me, my timing was a bit off. They just put together a new process for planning and only a few groups have gone started it and only 1-2 have finished. The rest of the groups in New South Wales completed plans probably 3-4 years ago. That's too long ago for me to talk to them for research purposes. So I've been waiting 1) for this one guy to get back to me about what groups have finished and 2) waiting for more groups to finish so I can talk to them. And he finally did.

So sometime between April 18th and April 28th, I will be leaving for the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. It is about 4 hours mostly west, but some north of Canberra. If you are interested in exact locations go to www.whereis.com.au and type in "Griffith, NSW". When I've talked to a few Australians about these are the responses I've gotten:

A. "Oh! That's where the mob is!"

B. "Oh! That's the marijuana area!"

C. "Oh, I didn't know they had bushfires out there." (This came from a fire ecologist, so it was a little unsettling).

But yes, apparently there are quite a few Italians, vineyards, and possibly remnants of the mob. I haven't been able to confirm or deny the marijuana comment. However, I HAVE been able to confirm that they do indeed have bushfires. It is a fairly agricultural area, but there is a National Park nearby. There are also several very cheap hostels, where I will most likely be staying. I'll also be renting a car, which I'm very excited about.

So that's my update. Things are finally rolling and I have a purpose. I also have two other potential sites lined up, but I'll save those for another blogpost.