A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 11 November 2025 - T for Nobel prize, pot-lunch and a long walk

 Hello lovely peeps,

I have an interesting postcard for you today. It's a Maxi card again. That means it's a special postcard to celebrate the First Day Issue of a particular stamp. Usually the postcard has the same image (or similar) to the stamp. 

Today's postcard features Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet:

Sir Frank received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1960.

The image on the stamp was created/painted by Clifton Pugh.

Wikipedia writes:

Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet (3 September 1899 – 31 August 1985), usually known as Macfarlane or Mac Burnet, was an Australian virologist known for his contributions to immunology. He won a Nobel Prize in 1960 for predicting acquired immune tolerance. He also developed the theory of clonal selection.

Burnet received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Melbourne in 1924, and his PhD from the University of London in 1928. He went on to conduct pioneering research in microbiology and immunology at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, and served as director of the Institute from 1944 to 1965. From 1965 until his retirement in 1978, Burnet worked at the University of Melbourne. Throughout his career he played an active role in the development of public policy for the medical sciences in Australia and was a founding member of the Australian Academy of Science (AAS), and served as its president from 1965 to 1969.

Burnet's major achievements in microbiology included discovering the causative agents of Q-fever and psittacosis; developing assays for the isolation, culture and detection of influenza virus; describing the recombination of influenza strains; demonstrating that the myxomatosis virus does not cause disease in humans. Modern methods for producing influenza vaccines are still based on Burnet's work improving virus growing processes in hen's eggs.

For his contributions to Australian science, Burnet was made the first Australian of the Year in 1960,^[3] and in 1978 a Knight of the Order of Australia. He was recognised internationally for his achievements: in addition to the Nobel, he received the Lasker Award and the Royal and Copley Medal from the Royal Society, honorary doctorates, and distinguished service honours from the Commonwealth of Nations and Japan.

The stamp comes from a series of Australian Nobel Prize winners:

From left to right: Sir Frank Macfarlane, Sir John Carew Eccles (Physiology or Medicine, 1963), Patrick White (Literature, 1973), Sir Howard Walter Florey (Physiology or Medicine, 1945), William Lawrence Bragg (Physics, 1915).

The card was sent on the first of October (World Postcard Day):

Enough high brow stuff. What have I been doing?

On Saturday I hosted a few of my English speaking chums and we had lunch and did a Bibles study.

We take it in turns to host each month.

Everybody brings something, so our plates are a mixed bag of potato tortilla, couscous, chicken and broccoli and taco's. There are several drinks on the table for T for Tuesday, hosted by Elizabeth and Bluebeard. My drink (the orange one, which is nearly empty) is an Aperol spritz.

Then on Sunday I went for a long hike (also once a month) with the local walking club.

We were a coach load from our village and as it was a provincial thing, I've been told there were 300 participants.

We were divided in two groups. The long route and a shorter one. In my experience the short one is long enough for me.

This is from my Strava app.

The landscape was interesting. Lots of asparto grass (for basket making etc):

Here is a close-up:

An unintentional close-up as it took a picture as I was putting my phone back in my pocket.

I was told that the area has sulphur mines too although we didn't see any.

The children in the group were picking pistachios from trees that were too close to the path. 

There were lots of cave houses, but that's nothing unusual in our area.

Nice views. This village is called Benamaurel.

After the walk, which was about 8km, my friend and I had a beer in a local bar:

Then back to the tent in the town square to eat paella:

Paella for 300 people!

That is all from me today,

I will join Elisabeth and Bluebeard at the T-Party so,

Happy T-Day all!

Lisca