Ryan Hellyer's website

I headed through to go partying with Anna and her friends in Queenstown. I took these photos on the way back home.

I went to see some of the special stages of the Rally of Otago with Scott and Marthah (my brother and his fiance). Lots of sideways action, dust, noise and excitement. The photos didn’t turn out too well, my camera lens got quite dirty and I didn’t realise till after I uploaded them

Valerie and I went to see the Dunedin Street race and took a bunch of really cool photos. Erm, then I lost all those really cool photos But we also went to tunnel Beach and I took the following photo on my EXTREMELY shonky phone camera.

EDIT: Found ‘em! Here’s Valerie eyeing up a hotdog.

and Valerie about to swallow it whole!

Karl Wieghardt was visiting the Brooker Bunch and whilst here he found out he’d made the worlds first iron(VI) compound! While celebrating at Eureka, Sally arranged this cake with six silver candles to represent his new discovery.

For any of you non-chemists, discovering iron(VI) is pretty huge! Iron is almost always found in the +2 and +3 states so 6+ is completely nuts! There’s some more information about it here … http://www.news.wisc.edu/12636

After our trip around the West Coast, Anna and I headed over to Lake Hawea and Wanaka via the Haast pass.

Anna went on an adventure to the West Coast of New Zealand. Some seriously wet weather awaited us!

I went down to Invercargill to celebrate Debbie’s birthday. Debbie is a fellow chemistry geek and one of the awesomest people I know. Happy 21st Debbie

Blowing, blowing, blowing …

BLOWN!

The speeches: So what did Carla say that made Debbie squirm so much?

Jon and I took our new Research Fellow down to the Catlins for some site seeing.

I visited the Royal Albatross colony with a new flatmate. The colony is at the end of Otago Peninsula only 30 mins drive from Dunedin.

Here’s a photo of the Brooker Bunch, the research group (which I’m a member of) of Prof. Sally Brooker. From left: Jason Price, Nick White, Andy Noble, Sally Brooker, Jon Kitchen and Ryan Hellyer (me).