James Plamondon Family

James, Aimee and Joseph taking the Pledge of Australian Citizenship

Now we have dual citizenship (US and Australian)

What's James doing lately?  He's

• Creating a new non-profit community-development organization, The Busselton Challenge, focused on improving the quality of life in the Shire of Busselton (his new home).

• Consulting to a few local high-tech companies, including PIVoD, a world leader in the application and use of Video on Demand technology and its integration to control and management systems.

• Writing a book on the theory and practice of Technical Evangelism, which is what he did at Microsoft for eight years.

James Plamondon's CV (resume) can be found here.

Read about our trip to Busselton, Western Australia in late 1998.

We liked it so much that we moved there in March 2000.  Click here for pictures of our new home!

Why Australia?

• English-speaking country (sort of; compare to this)

• Stable society

• Laid-back lifestyle

• Favorable exchange rate

• Recently rationalized tax system

Why Busselton?

• Great Mediterranean climate (long hot dry summers, short cool wet winters)

• Affordable beachfront property (compared to USA)

• Nice small-town atmosphere, with solid growth

• Beautiful forests & countryside

• World-class wineries, cheeses, restaurants, etc.

• Geographe Bay -- awesome body of water

• Great fishing, boating, sailing, surfing, diving, etc. are available just a few steps from my front door.

• Did I say "fishing"?  There are also crabs, prawns, marron (a kind of crawdad), abalone (20 per day per fisher & no closed season -- wow!)

• Acceptable Internet connectivity (56K now, ADSL soon)

• Good schools.

Of course, it's more than 20 hours away from Seattle by air -- but it's less than a second away by Internet, so who cares?

Busselton is not exactly in the heart of the software industry -- it may be impossible to shake it up from here, as I could from Redmond or Silicon Valley -- but I'm taking a long vacation from the industry right now anyway, and will address that issue later.

If my mind lives on the Internet, why shouldn't my body live on the beach?(tm)

Here are some additional links about Busselton and the South West Corner of Australia:

• Where is Busselton?: Interactive Expedia map

• Map of Busselton: Our house is located on the south-east corner of Roberts Road and Geographe Bay Rd., at the far upper-left corner of the map.

• Busselton in the Walkabout Guide

• WA Tourist Commission on the South West

• Read WA's local news: The West Australian and ABC.

• Article in the West Australian on techno-migration and Internet bandwidth.  The online version of the article does not include this picture, which was in the printed version.

• Check out the current weather, in

  • Imperial (�F, feet, miles, etc.)

  • Metric (�C, meters, kilometers, etc.)

  (Interestingly, the weather predictions on these sites are often very different.  I have not yet investigated which is more accurate.)

• Tidal predictions for Busselton -- note the very small tidal variation.

• Astronomical events given for Busselton (sunrise, sunset, etc.)

  • Note that Busselton's location is roughly 33S 115E.

  • http://www.auslig.gov.au/geodesy/astro/sunrise.htm#loc

James Plamondon & Family

546 Geographe Bay Road

Busselton, WA 6280 Australia

v: 61-8-9755-0152 (61 is Australia's country code, 8 is WA's area code)

f: 61-8-9755-0156 (please voice-call first)

e: mailto:james@plamondon.net (delete XXX; it's there to confuse automated web-crawling address-collectors)

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Last edited 06/24/03 06:59 AM -0000