AROUND THE WORLD IN FORTY WEEKS - SABBATICAL TRAVELS
Jack Colwell
As most of you were aware from last year's newsletter, I spent the 1995-96 academic year on sabbatical leave. After being head for nine years, I was certainly ready for it!
My objectives during the leave were to learn AutoCAD and Fieldlog, to find out what other geological software, if any, we might need to include in the curriculum, to visit some important deposit types (particularly epithermal gold/silver) that I hadn't seen before, and other geologic features that would be useful in courses; and to find out how our graduates are doing in the geological world.
With AutoCAD and Fieldlog loaded on a portable computer, Laura and I hooked our tent trailer to the car and headed west. Boyan Brodaric, the author of Fieldlog, gave me a hands-on session at the GSC. I also talked software, geology, etc. with Alan Sexton M.Sc. '88 and Terry Goodwin B.Sc. '82 at the WMC office in Ottawa, and Matt Leybourne M.Sc. '88, who is working on a Ph.D. at the University of Ottawa.
John (M.Sc. '86) and Lyda Gardiner put up with us while I visited John and colleagues at the Placer Dome exploration office in Denver, the USGS, and Rockware. John had arranged visits to gold mines in Nevada, and we met him in Ely and later Elko after taking a detour through the spectacular national parks of southeastern Utah. The open pit gold deposits were well worth seeing, and I really got to appreciate the difference between oxidized and unoxidized ore. I spent a morning with Andrew Bourque (B.Sc. '85) at WMC in Reno.
We stored the car and trailer in Vancouver and continued on a round-the-world ticket, stopping in Hawaii, then Fiji, where we visited Gary Yeo, Kate and the boys, and I had an underground tour at the Emperor mine.
New Zealand was one of the major destinations on the trip, as was Australia. We rented a car and tented for 6000 km in New Zealand, visiting gold mines, volcanoes (Mt. Ruapehu was only smoking a little!), glaciers, and the geothermal areas around Rotorua, where gold deposits are no doubt forming a kilometre or so down. I soon got used to driving on the other side of the road and survived New Zealand and Australia without mishap! We stayed with Kelsie Dadd and Luc Daigle in Sydney, and visited more gold mines (at Bendigo and Kambalda) in Australia plus a quick trip to Ayers Rock.
Then on to Bali, Java, and Borneo. The rainy season is not the time to see volcanoes in Indonesia so we'll have to go again. We spent several non-geological, but fascinating, weeks in southeast Asia. We were able to fly to Sabah, where Michael Liew, M.Sc. '76, is a partner in a geotechnical firm, a good choice in an area where geology is particularly important in any major construction. michael and Pauline were very kind to us, and I'm glad he was driving on the foggy night returning over mountain roads from Mt. Kinabalu!
The last month abroad was in Greece and Turkey, where the main points of geological interest were the volcanic island of Santorini, the travertine deposits of Pamukkele, and the volcanic rocks in Cappadocia.
I brought back a good suite of epithermal gold deposits and a pile of slides and videos. The Department has already suffered(?) through my multimedia presentation on geothermal features around the world and I have incorporated material into classes.
It was good to be able to see the success of Acadia graduates around the world. Thanks again to all who helped along the way.