Forensic textile science: Cakes, old and new friends

Saturday - onwards to Melbourne. Sarah Sakaguchi (a Cranfield Masters graduate) picked me up from the airport and we went off to St Kilda for brunch, a walk and cakes!

So many cakes, so little time

Sarah with cakes :)

Sunday was a day of catching up with other old friends, this time two Otago grads Gemma Radford and Sarah Weller; time for brunch.

Sarah, me and Gemma at Yellow Bird

Don't want you to think the week was one long brunch ;) My visit to Melbourne hit four places in four days. Monday and Wednesday had a defence orientation at DSTO and Diggerworks respectively. At both organisations I gave presentations, presented more Churchill coins and had meetings with old and new Australian colleagues. Thanks to Horace, Bin, Sarah and Annette.

On Tuesday I visited the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine to learn about how clothing is dealt with in the mortuary and particularly how damaged clothing in handled and packaged ready for forensic scientists to examine. I was invited to give a lecture and had an opportunity to present a Churchill coin to the team :)

The Mortuary Team

Thursday, I was out at the Textiles Department of RMIT. I've known Mac Fergusson for a few years having met him at The Textiles Institute conference in 2010. Mac has worked with AFP on textile damage projects and is also involved in the book edited by James and Jane. He is supervising a MSc candidate Libby, who we hope will come to Shrivenham to spend some time working with us on a very interesting forensics project - Libby's in the process of presenting the work at the ANZFSS this week in Hobart. I had an opportunity to present to staff and students from RMIT with some outside guests from DSTO and CSIRO. Mac and I exchanged a Churchill coin for a very nice bottle of Aussie shiraz!