Today I made a journey by train to Kingswood, a suburb of Sydney which is the location of one of the campuses of Western Sydney University. The journey of about 50 km takes about an hour on the stopping train (T1) from Sydney Central Station. I was intrigued that the final destination for the train I got was Emu Plains. I had visions of vast herds of Emus gathered there, but I had to get off the stop before so never saw them. There’s about a 20-minute walk to the campus from Kingswood Station. It was quite warm so I was grateful when one of my hosts offered me a lift back to Kingswood Station at the end of my visit. The reason for my visit was set another seminar about Open Access Publishing in Astrophysics.
Here are the slides:
Although I’ve given a talk based on more-or-less the same slides recently, it always comes out slightly different. There was a bigger audience than I expected in the room, supplemented by even more on Zoom. The topic of Open Access Publishing does seem to be pretty hot these days in Australia and there was quite a lively discussion. I have a feeling we might have a manuscript or two submitted from WSU before too long.
Kingswood is a far less affluent area than where I am staying in Ultimo, and WSU is an institution that’s very different from the University of Sydney itself, but it was good to see another side of the city, geographically as well as socially. Thank you to everyone who attended and, especially, to Luke Barnes for inviting me and for lunch and coffee!
On the train back into Sydney I noticed that trains going in the opposite direction where crammed full, with (mostly) teenage girls heading to Olympic Park for a Taylor Swift concert. My train, heading into Sydney was fairly empty by contrast and the journey back pleasant enough.
