Australian businessman Ken Grenda has, after selling his business, awarded his employees generous bonuses.

The other boss, former Royal Bank of Scotland boss Fred Goodwin, has been stripped of his knighthood.

A NASA image showing fires(red marks) in the Northern Territory in Australia. (Photo: NASA). Click to enlarge.

For the Geo Quiz we are looking for a vast, but sparsely-populated territory of Australia.

It is summertime there with temperature averaging around 95 degree Fahrenheit.

The place we are talking about borders the Timor Sea to the north and to the south it abuts South Australia.

The southern region is mostly a desert with little rain in the forecast at least until March.

European miners arrived in this area in the 17th century, but long before they arrived, indigenous Australians had settled dating back as far as 40,000 years ago.

Nowadays there is a nickname for folks living there: territorians.

Australia’s Northern Territory is the answer to the Geo Quiz. It is a federal territory of Australia occupying much of the center of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions.

The Northern Territory is a vast region and has experienced an unusually high number of wildfires in recent years. One cause is an exotic grass that is a major fuel for fires.

An Australian scientist is now proposing a controversial solution: importing elephants and rhinoceroses to eat the grass.

African Elephant in Addo National Park, South Africa. (Photo: Gorgo/Wikipedia)

Scientists say there are many causes. Global warming may be one. Another is a kind of exotic grass that provides fuel for the fires.

It’s called gamba grass, and it was imported from Africa in the 1930s. Scientists brought it to Australia for cattle farmers because it produces a lot more feed for livestock than native grasses do.

But over the decades, gamba grass has spread across a large portion of Australia’s Northern Territory.

“Now it’s become very rampant, and it’s producing tremendously intense fires,” said David Bowman, an environmental scientist at the University of Tasmania.

Bowman is the author of a new commentary in the journal Nature, in which he proposes this solution to Australia’s gamba grass problem: introduce elephants and rhinoceroses.

“I’m thinking of using a big animal as an ecological machine to otherwise control something for which we don’t have any other options,” said Bowman.

Once gamba grass matures and becomes tall and woody, it is no longer edible to cattle or to native species, like kangaroos.

Elephants and rhinos, on the other hand, love the grass. Bowman thinks they would slow down the spread of the grass.

The idea may make sense on some level, but Bowman’s colleagues aren’t welcoming it.

“It’s not a solution at all,” said Stephen Garnett, a conservation biologist at Australia’s Charles Darwin University.

He says Australia is already overrun by a range of exotic species, including camels and water buffaloes. The country is spending millions of dollars trying to cull these feral animals.

Garnett says Bowman’s idea is a bit like the children’s song “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” The woman swallows a spider to eat the fly, then swallows a bird to eat the spider, and so on, each time creating an even bigger problem than the one she sought to solve.

“And the last verse is that she swallowed a horse, and then she died, of course,” said Garnett. “Well, David’s idea is a bit like swallowing a rhinoceros. It’d be yet another feral animal on Australian land.”

David Bowman says he is not proposing that elephants and rhinos be allowed to run wild.

“If we’re going to use these things, we’d use them in a sophisticated way,” said Bowman. He suggests sterilizing the animals, tracking them with GPS collars, and containing them with fences.

Bowman says he expected resistance to his idea, but he insists something must be done to reduce Australia’s wildfire risk. If scientists don’t want elephants and rhinos, he hopes he has at least provoked them to come up with other creative solutions.

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The holiday commemorates the day in 1788 when British colonists first arrived there. But Thursday was marked by turmoil and drama.

Aboriginal protesters confronted Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the country’s main opposition leader Tony Abbott as the two were coming out of a restaurant.

For 40 years, indigenous protesters have had their own Occupy movement of sorts – a tent city near parliament in Canberra. Wednesday, when asked about the so-called Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Abbott implied that it was time to tear it down.

That brought out the demonstrators, and their anger. Prime Minister Gillard literally had to be carried to safety.

Though Aboriginal communities have felt marginalized for centuries in Australia, their activism doesn’t typically grow as heated as you can see in the video above.

Here is an example of indigenous activists in Australia who are a best-selling band, Blue King Brown.

Below, Blue King Brown and another Australian artist, Gurrumul, collaborate on the song Guthu Mawula.

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Boyd Martin and Neville Bardos at the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in Lexington, KY (Copyright Amber Heintzberger 2010)

For the Geo quiz, we want you to name a town that some call “the horse capital” of Australia.

It is located in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales.

The town kicks up its heels at an annual horse festival.

The town of Scone is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to New York Times reporter Mary Pilon, who wrote about a horse named Neville Bardos, who is the odds-on-favorite for the US Equestrian Federation’s international horse of the year honors.

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Cartoon: Alan Moir, Sydney Morning Herald, Australia

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad doesn’t get why the whole world is demanding he introduce democratic reforms. Australian cartoonist Alan Moir captures al-Assad’s take on democracy.

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Crews have come from as far as the US, Hong Kong and France, but most of them hail from down under.

The race begins in Sydney Harbor the day after Christmas.

A cannon is fired at 1 o’clock to signal the start of the race and the yachts set off for the Tasman Sea.

It is a 600-plus nautical mile dash through the wind and waters off the southeast coast of Australia.

And for the Geo Quiz we are looking for the historic port city of Tasmania where the yachts are heading.

The Tasmanian port city of Hobart is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

Race organizers say the eurozone crisis is making it hard for several international teams to find sponsors.

This year only six foreign-owned yachts are competing making it the lowest foreign contingent ever.

Phil Mercer reports.

It’s a grueling race; in 1998, six sailors died when wild storms battered the fleet.

Still, it’s one of the most anticipated events on Australia’s sporting calendar.

This year’s race may be diminished, though. It’s taking a hit from the European economic crisis.

Garry Linacre, commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, which organizes the annual event, said the financial uncertainty has forced several international teams to pull out.

“We don’t have nearly as many European visitors as we would normally have,” Linacre said. “I think people are just looking at the moment at their expenditure and not possibly committing as much.”

Organizers have tried to attract more boats from Asia, but most of this year’s entrants are Australian. That includes Jessica Watson. A year and a half ago, the Australian teenager became the youngest person to sail solo around the world.

Watson is now 18 and she’s set to captain the youngest crew ever to compete in the blue water classic, with the help of a lot of sponsors.

“Sailing is a rather expensive thing to be doing,” Watson said. “So we have been incredibly lucky. We have an amazing team of sponsors on board.”

Applications for this year’s race closed at the end of November, but more than a dozen of the 100 entrants have withdrawn since then, many because of financial problems.

Garry Linacre said this year, there will only be one competitor from the US.

“Rives Potts the Rear Commodore of the Newark Yacht Club has brought his own boat,” Linacre said. “His son and his nephew sailed it here with a group of friends from America and they are the only American boat we’ve got this year, which is unusual. We have a much smaller international contingent and I think that is to do with this infamous global financial situation.”

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Levon Ennis was born to an Aboriginal woman in Sydney in 1969, who was told that he died at birth. Within weeks, Ennis was sent to Britain, where he was adopted by a middle-class family. They knew he came from Australia, but they knew nothing else about his history.

Ennis went to a private school in London and studied art in college. But he said that growing up, he never really felt like he fit in.

“All the time that I spent in England, I’ve had this feeling of where do I belong, what are my people, who am I, not knowing my identity.”

Despite his relatively privileged upbringing, Ennis later fell in with a gang.

“This was all just to find acceptance of who I am, where I am, that lostness in me, I think,” Ennis said. “My close companions in the gang were my family, what I thought were my family.”

Ennis eventually went to prison for drug and weapons offenses, and he served 12 years.

When he got out, his adopted mother suggested that he go to Australia to find out about his roots. That’s when he finally learned about his history.

Australia officially ended the policy of removing Aboriginal children from their families in the 1970s, and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized for the policy in 2008. But critics say the government has done little beyond apologizing to help them.

The policy itself remains a contentious piece of Australia’s history, according to Alison Holland of Macquarie University.

“There were a lot of people – missionaries, ex-missionaries, patrol officers, people who, for example, might have had to actually gone to collect the children – who swore that it was not about a process of diluting Aboriginal culture, but that it was about taking care of children who were neglected, children who, in some cases, didn’t know their fathers,” Holland said. “And then there are other people who, including many Aboriginal people themselves, who say that it was very much about diluting and eradicating Aboriginal culture.”

What is beyond doubt is that tens of thousands were spirited away from their families. Even in middle age some are still trying to find out who they really are.

When Levon Ennis began researching his story, he found that his birth mother had also been taken from her family. Ennis has tried to reconnect with her, but he said that she’s not interested, and neither are her other children.

“I can sort of understand why she’s a bit standoffish – the way she would’ve been treated back then in 1969, the way she was treated all through her life through the understanding she’s stolen herself, “ Ennis said. “I’m fully glad I’m home. I’m just a bit upset about my mother’s opinion at the present minute and siblings but I think that will come round eventually.”

Ennis now works in the mining industry in Western Australia. He’s also become close to other “stolen children,” though he doesn’t know anyone else who was sent abroad. And even though he now knows his history, he said he still struggles.

“It’s a very strange road I walk here. White Aussies here see me as Aboriginal and Aboriginals here see me as a white man,” Ennis said. “It’s like no-man’s land. I think like an Englishman inside the head and I have a black man’s heart and blood.”

So, what better time to consider Australia’s languages, and its use of English? Australia is, of course, home to a great diversity (though not so great these days) of Aboriginal languages. For decades, white Australians either ignored these languages or actively tried to eliminate them. Only recently have Australians begun to embrace these languages as a central part of the country’s culture.

On the pod, three Australians talk about this and other language-related issues: novelist and historian Thomas Keneally, opera singer and composer Deborah Cheetham and historical novelist Kate Grenville. As well as the discussion of the history and fate of Aboriginal languages, bush ranger Ned Kelly is remembered for a choice turn of phrase ( “a parcel of big ugly fat-necked wombat-headed big-bellied, magpied-legged, narrow-hipped, splay-footed sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords”).

This discussion was first broadcast on the BBC’s Start the Week. There’s a podcast version here. It’s always a must-listen.

For some more Aussie English, curated of the great Australian poet Les Murray, check out this previous pod/post.

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Take the example of Wendy Bowman.

“Next door to us, a mine was put right on our boundary. The dust and the blasting and the noise at night… The dust covered all the pastures. The cattle wouldn’t eat the pasture some days because the dust was so thick and heavy.”

Australian farmer Wendy Bowman (Photo: Jason Margolis)

Bowman hates the coal companies, seriously hates them. This is what she said about a coal executive: “I heard he had prostrate cancer, and I thought, it couldn’t of happened to a nicer person, actually.”

She then added a hearty laugh.

Bowman and I drank lemonade on her front porch. She went on for about a half hour about how the coal companies have destroyed the environment, contaminated the ground water, and wrecked the community.

At this point, you might be thinking: I’ve heard this story before – the big mining company comes in and locals say they destroyed the local environment.

Yes, same story. But the story in Australia has an economic twist. The mines are making people here rich, very rich. Skilled boilermakers earn more than $300,000 a year. 18-year-olds can earn $150,000 a year driving trucks. Bowman says, those teens and all that money… it’s a nightmare.

“You know all the young are drunk at night. They’ve got so much money they don’t know what to do with it. They’re spending it all on these hipped up, vrrmm vrrrmmm, vrrrrrmmm yutes and things that roar around town at night. It’s very sad to see a very, very nice district end up like this.”

That contempt that some farmers feel for the mining industry, well, the feeling is mutual.

“The farmland argument, it’s a ridiculous argument. It’s just a bunch of old cockies trying to preserve their way of life, which has no relevance to today’s society,” said Paul Howes, national secretary of the Australian Workers Union. (By the way, a cockie is Australian slang for a farmer with a little, insignificant farm.)

Howes says you want to know why mining salaries are so high? It’s simple: supply and demand.

“In terms of bankers and lawyers, at the moment, they’re a dime and dozen. I can get lawyers very easily. And I would argue that one boilermaker at the moment is worth 10 lawyers for our economy.”

To Howes, it makes for an easy calculus: “I’m a dig is up, ship it out guy.”

Tim Duddy's farmland on the Liverpool Plains (Photo: Jason Margolis)

But can agriculture and mining co-exist? Mitch Hooke, the CEO of the Minerals Council of Australia said, yea, they already do.

“At the moment, mining, there’s this perception that it’s just big trucks, bulldozers blowing up stuff. And it’s all ugly, downright dirty, dangerous, and low-tech. Well, nothing could be further from than the truth.”

Same question to seventh-generation farmer Tim Duddy: Can mining and agriculture co-exist?

“Absolutely not.”

For Duddy, the question is personal; the mining companies are knocking at his door.

I went on a driving tour with Duddy through his home area, the Liverpool Plains. It’s the next stop up the road from where I met Wendy Bowman.

Duddy said, “If they mine here the way they mine anywhere else, the agricultural resource will be destroyed, the water resources will be destroyed. And maybe not in one year, maybe not in five years, maybe not in 15 years, but in 20 years, perhaps, or 50 years. And this agricultural resource here is so productive, that it’s got a thousand year life span.”

Mining companies have promised to monitor the local water, take care of the environment and return the area to farming once they’re done mining.

Farmers aren’t buying this. They’ve organized a community effort, including a physical blockade to stop coal companies from coming here.

Mitch Hooke at the Mining Council said that’s over the line. He said the state governments have the authority to approve or reject mining permits, not local farmers.

“This cannot generate into a debate about not in my back yard, the old NIMBY adage.”

Tim Duddy responded, “Absolutely I’ve been accused of being NIMBY.”

Australian farmer Tim Duddy (Photo: Jason Margolis)

“A lot,” Duddy said, with a chuckle.

But Duddy said his land isn’t for sale, at any price.

“I said to them (the mining companies) that they don’t understand the love of land. And I don’t understand the money. They love money as much as I love land.”

Duddy will have tough road to hoe though. The reality is that the world still runs on coal: about a quarter of the world’s energy comes from it. Coal generates more than three-quarters of Australia’s electricity.

But those percentages might start shifting. The Australian government is on the verge of passing a carbon tax, which would discourage the use of coal. If that happens, score one for the farmers.

We are looking for an island nation that is just a scattering of dots on the map. The country’s nine tiny islands are located about halfway between Australia and Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Together they rank as the 4th smallest country in the world.

But as small as it is, this place has big problems. There is almost no drinking water.

Supplies have all but run out after five months of drought, so the government has declared a state of emergency.

New Zealand and Australia are mobilizing to help.

The answer is Tuvalu.

The Polynesian island nation is located about halfway between Hawaii and Australia. And the urgent need there this week is for drinking water.

Tuvalu declared a state of emergency this week. The neighboring Pacific territory of Tokelau, north of Samoa declared a similar water emergency Tuesday.

To find out more anchor Marco Werman talks to Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute based in Oakland, CA.

In the agricultural belt of southeastern Australia, an area called the Murray-Darling Basin, farmers and ranchers are up in arms about a government plan to dramatically cut their water use. The plan comes after a 12-year drought and decades of river diversions took a huge toll on the environment.

But head almost a thousand miles to the north and it’s a very different story. In rural Queensland, farmers never had much access to water. And many seem happy to keep it that way.

Cattle rancher Angus Emmott, 48, has lived in the interior of northeast Australia his whole life. His closest neighbor is some 10 miles away. I asked him what he does if he needs to borrow some milk or sugar. His answer: “Well, we milk our own cow.”

It’s not just the solitude that makes this life challenging. The climate isn’t exactly cooperative either.

(Map: Wilderness Society)

“We get an average of 12 inches of rain a year, but that’s a bit of a misnomer, calling it an average, because some years we get as low as one inch,” said Emmott. “Other years, we just had 40 inches. You do get an average in the long run, I guess, but it’s very, very irregular.”

Creeks and rivers do run through this area. But in dry years, they’re channels of dust. And scientists say the dry years could become even more severe with climate change.

Emmott and other ranchers could build dams and store water for the lean years; that’s what they do in the rich agricultural areas 1,000 miles to the south. And that would make life a heckuva a lot easier. But Emmott doesn’t want to do that.

“These rivers out here, well the rivers across northern Australia, are in relatively good condition. And because these rivers are in great shape, we have the opportunity to actually be a little smart how we develop this country,” said Emmott. “We can actually make sure that we don’t damage the attributes to these rivers that make them so important.”

(Photo: Angus Emmott)

“It’s a pretty simple equation in the Australian Outback: the limiting factor on growth is almost always water,” said wildlife biologist Barry Traill with the Pew Environment Group. He took me on a drive through the Outback and explained how this area gets its scarce water. It’s a boom and bust cycle. Ranchers and nature rely on floods that originate 500 miles north in tropical Australia.

“The floods will come through and they’ll keep going for 500 or 800 miles south of us, and they’ll go into country, which has had, in many cases, no rain, no effective rain, for years,” said Traill. “You get these lush green flood plains, several kilometers wide, iridescent green floods plains, going thru these harsh, red sand dune desert. It’s an extraordinary contrast.”

Traill has been working with ranchers like Angus Emmott to protect this system and prevent the damming of these rivers. A coalition of ranchers and conservationists got a law passed by the State of Queensland in 2005 to permanently safeguard these waterways. But each river has to qualify on a registry first, one by one, to get protection.

Conservationists know they’re racing against the clock. According to government projections, Australia’s population could grow by more than 50 percent by mid-century.

Barry Traill (Photo: Jason Margolis)

“Ten years ago we got a taste of what could happen here,” said Traill. “There was a proposal to put in a very large cotton irrigation farm, but that was, fortunately, I think, very strongly opposed by local people.”

Traill says large-scale irrigation could’ve destroyed the delicate ecosystem here. That’s why it’s so important to get the rivers protected soon.

But not everybody here is happy about more regulation.

“It costs you more to actually get the paperwork done than it does to do the job,” said rancher Sam Coxon. His family has been grazing sheep in the interior of Queensland since his great-great grandfather walked 1200 miles here from southern Australia (Victoria) with his herd of sheep in 1887.

Coxon looks every bit the part of outback rancher, his cowboy hat pulled low over his blistered red skin. Coxon said he knows how to care for his land, and that includes needing to irrigate crops. “These small areas of irrigation, they’re to prevent more damage to this environment by weeds. We are about the environment. Without a good environment, we haven’t got a living,” said Coxon.

Coxon’s existing irrigation rights won’t be affected by any new regulations. And he can still buy more water on the free market. Still, he argued that if the river near him is protected, they’re essentially being legislated into forever remaining a dusty outpost. “Look, I mean, it’s the way the world is going. We’re becoming a nanny state,” said Coxon.

Sam Coxon (Photo: Jason Margolis)

“Regularly we get people from around the area who will all come down here and have a barbeque and sit around, watch the sunset and catch up with each other. We haven’t got the roar of traffic in the background. I don’t know, there’s just something about being out in the real bush,” said Emmott as he surveyed the scene with a contented smile.

But the ‘real bush’ as Emmott knows it is threatened. As climate patterns shift and Australia’s population grows, that ever-so precious resource – water – will undoubtedly become even more coveted.

UPDATE: The Queensland government announced the permanent protection of three rivers in western Queensland in December, 2011. Environmental groups say this will protect 10 million acres.

“I introduce myself from time to time as John Ward, New South Wales Farmers Association spokesman for water, and parent of children in this town that need employment.” Ward adds this last thought because he and many farmers in agricultural towns like Griffith are worried that there won’t be enough water to continue farming into the future.

Australia’s recent 12-year drought hit rural farm communities hard. Now the government may ask farmers, like Ward, to cut their water usage by another 30 or 40 percent. Ward said he and his neighbors will have none of it.

John Ward (Photo: Jason Margolis)

When asked if he is at war right now, Ward said “Yes, there’s no doubt. We are in the trenches.”

Ward lives in what is called the Murray-Darling Basin, the breadbasket of Australia, tucked in the southeast interior of the country. Think of the Murray-Darling like the American Midwest. Now imagine if the US government told farmers in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ohio that they’ve taken more than their fair share of water and now they will have to give a third of it, or more, back to the environment. That is roughly what’s happening here in Australia.

“We’re talking about the heart and lungs of our nation. And you can’t take the heart and lungs out of any person and expect them to survive,” said Mike Neville, the mayor of Griffith. The town of 26,500 produces wheat, rice, vegetables and 30 percent of Australia’s wine.

This area became the country’s major food-growing region through intensive management of its many rivers and tributaries. In the 1920s, the government began building large-scale dams and water diversions for irrigation. Farmers here say these engineering projects performed miracles, turning a largely parched continent into a food exporter.

(Click on the image to see the full size graphic. Illustration: Manya Gupta)

“Why would we want to limit the production capacity of an area like this? It just doesn’t make sense?” Neville said.

Neville said the proposed cuts will destroy farm communities at the whim of politicians and city dwellers. But others say the proposed changes were born out of necessity.

“The Darling river was running dry,” said Richard Eckard, director of the Climate Challenges Center at the University of Melbourne. Eckard said the impact of 12 years of drought on the region’s Darling River was made even worse by the irrigating practices of farmers upstream.

“You can’t extract that volume of water and have anything downstream. The ecology is pretty wrecked compared to what it used to be, there’s not much life. The fishing industry is all but gone,”
Eckard said.

Now the Australian government is looking to rebalance the distribution of water among farms, cities and the environment. It’s working body, called the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, is tasked with managing the Basin’s water in the national interest. And even though the 12-year drought finally broke last year, many climate scientists believe that it was a taste of things to come as climate change alters weather patterns here.

That is why some conservationists and scientists argue that the government’s new water plan still short-changes the environment. Tim Stubbs, a member of Australia’s Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, said the plan wouldn’t return enough water to the Darling River system — for the environment or other farms.

“I’m an engineer, so I see the river as a really functional machine, if you like,” Stubbs said. “And just like, say, your body, we need a certain amount in the river so it can be healthy, so we can continue to use it for irrigation in the long-term. At the moment, we’re using it in a way that will mean we will run it down and it just won’t be effective or useful for irrigation at all in the not-too-distant future.”

Stubbs said water cuts won’t decimate farm communities. And he points out that cutting agricultural water use by 40 percent won’t mean that 40 percent of farmers have to leave.

Cattle auction in Griffith, Australia. (Photo: Jason Margolis)

That big payout to farmers willing to get out of the business is part of close to $10 billion the Australian government is allocating to help farmers.

And Eckard said some farmers have already proven they could get by with less water during the drought.

“We’ve got the northern dairy industry for example, that went from over 100 percent water allocation down to less than 30 percent water allocation in the space of four years. By the end of the drought, they were producing as much milk as they were before,” he said.

Eckard said, yes, a lot of dairy farmers went out of business. But those that adapted to less water, are flourishing. Just try telling that to Murray-Darling basin farmers though.

I went to a cattle auction in Griffith and met people working in agriculture like Jim Jackson who transports melons. He scoffed at the idea that people here can get by with less water.

Jim Jackson (Photo: Jason Margolis)

Jackson’s attitude reflects a deep contempt for the Australian government, even though it made farming so successful here in the first place by building all those dams and water diversions years ago. Many people here don’t trust the government. They think climate change is a hoax and they see the proposed water limits as a mortal threat to their communities.

And the anger hasn’t been limited to words. Water spokesman John Ward said when a draft of a new water guidebook was unveiled, farmers in Griffith let the government know exactly what they thought of it.

“They piled it all up and burned it up in front of the cameras,” Ward said. “That’s what we think of it, just burn it. Take it away. Go back and come back with something we can live with and something that has balance in it.”

Of course balance is in the eye of the beholder. The final water management plan likely won’t be out until next year. And the final water allocation figures are still being hotly debated.

But it seems clear that one way or another, less water will be the new normal for many of Australia’s farmers.

It was home to Australia’s first traffic lights, installed in 1928. The country’s first elevators — both freight and passenger — cranked up there in the 1870s and 80s. And the first women’s only gym in Australia opened in this city back in 1879.

Also, a local brewery was the first in the nation to sell beer in cans as opposed to bottles. That was in 1958.

Now this city can boast another first. Its harbor is the first known home of a new species of dolphin.

So where are we?

Answer: Melbourne, Australia.

Kate Charlton-Robb of Monash University in Melbourne and her colleagues studied dolphin skulls found in a number of museums, as well as more detailed analysis of DNA, to show that Tursiops Australis is clearly a different animal.

Last week’s decision by the Obama administration to have deportation policy focus on criminals rather than law-abiding immigrants may ease many families legal worries.

Yet the outlook for some families, especially same-sex couples, is still cloudy.

In San Francisco, one gay couple wonders whether the new rules will offer any reprieve, especially as long as a federal law that denies rights to same-sex marriage remains in place.

The couple’s romance started 19-years ago in a café in Sydney. That’s when Anthony Makk of Australia, met Bradford Wells, a tourist from San Francisco after the Mardi Gras party.

“I turned and saw him and just started talking to him,” Wells said. “We hit it off immediately. Before I left Australia to come back to San Francisco, I knew that this was the man I’d looked for my whole life.

Before long, Makk moved to San Francisco to be with Wells. Seven years ago, the couple married in Massachusetts. They now live in San Francisco, in a Victorian house filled with art, two dogs, and a garden filled with tomato plants.

“We’ve just tried to spend time together and be together,” Makk said. “That’s all we’ve ever done.

But Wells, 55, has AIDS and his health is deteriorating. Today, he’s too weak to work. Makk is his husband’s sole caregiver.

“I help Brad with his day-to-day things, you know,” Makk said. “I help him with his lifting, the shopping. Making sure he takes his medication at the right times … things that couples do for each other.

Now the couple faces another battle – over deportation. The federal government doesn’t recognize the couple’s marriage.

Makk has maintained his legal status over the years through a variety of visas. But his options have run out-and immigration officials have denied his green card application.

The Obama administration’s new deportation policy may not help Makk’s case. While the new policy recognizes same-sex couples as family-it only applies to people already tangled in the deportation process.

That’s not Anthony Makk’s situation.

He hasn’t broken any laws-and he hasn’t yet received a deportation order.

“Staying here under legal status, lawful status has always been work,” Makk said. “It’s never been easy. It’s cost tens of thousands of dollars over the years and lots of stress.”

Wells is frustrated that his husband’s determination to remain legal isn’t paying off. “He filled out visa applications that were as thick as a phonebook, documenting everything, every dollar he collected, every dime he spent,” Wells said.

“It’s just devastating to think that the man I’ve built my life with for the last 19 years was going to be taken away from me-for no good reason at all,” Wells said. “Just taken away from me.”

Makk is appealing the deportation order. Steve Ralls of the gay rights group Immigration Equality says that in Makk’s case, the best-case scenario will be if the Department of Homeland Security simply doesn’t act on his case as court challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act make their way through the judiciary.

But if the government does act, Makk faces the prospect of having to move back to Australia – perhaps without Wells, who’s ill and wants to remain near his doctors.

Makk tries to remain optimistic:

“I think there are enough people out there in a position that can do something that will look favorably upon us,” Makk said optimistically.

That may not happen soon enough. Makk’s legal status expires Thursday.

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