Gone Fishin'
Copyright© 2010 by Pedant
Chapter 18
On Tuesday, Des and Shirl told me of their adventures in bureaucracy and then Shirl presented me with a rather thick envelope: the 2003 Annual Report of the CSIRO. A note from Janice revealed that the 2004 wouldn't be "out" for several more months.
I told the kids that I'd be devoting myself to this piece of world-class literature for the next few days, and that they might want to get started on class reading. They both laughed. "By the way," I asked, "Any word from our friend downstairs?"
"Nothing, nothing at all. Maybe he's forgotten us." They left.
I'd been working in my corner at Black Mountain for years. I'd visited Maggie's office and Chaz'. I had literally no notion of how big the CSIRO was, nor of all the different sorts of things it did. 16 divisions! I'd never heard of most of them.
Australia Telescope National Facility
Energy Technology
Entomology
Exploration & Mining
ICT Centre
Industrial Physics
Land and Water
Livestock Industries
Manufacturing and Materials Technology
Marine and Atmospheric Research
Materials Science and Engineering
Mathematics and Information Sciences
Minerals
Molecular and Health Technologies
Petroleum Resources
Plant Industry
Sustainable Ecosystems
Textiles and Fibre Technologies
I was in Entomology. Maggie was in Sustainable Ecosystems. I guessed that Chaz was in Land and Water ... or was he in Marine and Atmospheric Research? Mr. Scott could probably tell me about Exploration & Mining ... maybe about Minerals. How many of them had offices in Western Australia and in the Territory? I bet my dad knew about Livestock Industries. Was wine in Plant Industry? Maybe Dr. Owens knew about Mathematics and Information Sciences ... and about the ICT, which stood for Information and Computer Technology. Different from Information Sciences?
Well, I didn't need to know yet. I'd ask Maggie next month, when I was in the Alice. And I sure wouldn't worry about the telescopes – that was in Narrabri, in New South Wales. I was on page three. This would really take a lot of time. I'd rather be classifying parasitic wasps.
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