I just made a whirlwind trip to Newcastle to speak at the Newcastle Coders Group, on “Getting the Most Out of the SQL Server 2005/2008 Profiler”. I took a 3-hour train ride from Sydney to Newcastle in the afternoon, made my presentation at 6:00 PM, then returned to Sydney the following morning. I didn’t get much opportunity to see much of Newcastle, although the train ride went through part of the Australian Blue Mountains.

The group is run by volunteers Peter Drew, David Williams, Sharon Parry, and Stephen New, and meets the 1st Wednesday of each month at 6:00PM at Forsythes IT and Training. Peter was very helpful in helping make the arrangements for this trip.

One thing I learned new from my trip is that much of the sand that you find on the beaches of resorts in Hawaii actually comes from Newcastle. While I knew that Hawaii imported a lot of sand (because the islands aren’t old enough to have created much of its own), I didn’t know that Newcastle was one of the sources of the sand.

Tomorrow, I am off to the SQL Server Code Camp in Wagga Wagga.