Life before I-dog

I'm trying my very hardest to resist temptation, but I think I'm on the fast track. [&:]
I always thought lecturers get paid a fair amount?- my supervisor gets paid about 90k a year I think, plus extra stuff on the side which also has a quite high pay rate(e.g. consulting/data and policy analyses). And I've heard that academics here get paid a lot less than overseas? 
Grant/research proposals are all mostly "wank-fests", aren't they? [] I know my research proposal for my scholarship certainly was!
 
One issue that's been developing in NZ is that currently the government's trying to run the universities as a business (i.e. they have to make profits and all the academics are judged on how much funding they bring in), which I think is ridiculous! But that's a completely different kettle of fish...
 
My PhD is on "The representation of number and time in pigeons". Nice and obscure, huh? []. My Honours project was on teaching pigeons to "count" (as much as is possible), and we're currently writing it up for publication. It's not really animal behaviour, as most people think of it.
 
Which university are you at? I applied for a summer scholarship at ANU before I started my Honours but didn't get one.

I wasn't allowed pets when I was growing up (in SFO) but still managed to make animals a big part of my life.  I read a lot, I went down to the quarterhorse racing track of mornings, I had a friend about an hour away who let me ride whenever I could make it down, and I always had some kind of small animal - first bugs, then fish, then I actually talked my parents into letting me have a mouse. 

I went to school and got my degrees (history and classical literature) - and during that time started gathering my current manegerie - cats (my second cat just passed away last year at the age of 17), and then dogs starting with Maggie.  Maggie was a tough cookie and I had a rough first year with her.  Fortunately, I've always been fascinated not just with caring for and enjoying animals, but also with training animals (I tried to train grasshoppers - unfortunately they don't live long enough to evaluate the success of one's efforts).  So Maggie started obedience, agility, frisbee, and flyball.  Meanwhile, my farm dream started to become a reality and I got involved with the Border collie people because a collie-dog has always been a part of that dream.  []

And here we are.  I now raise sheep and train the dogs to help out there.  I compete at the working trials, though I haven't been active since my car accident three years ago (lack of money, not ability).  I have recently started training and selling dogs that chase birds off golf courses, corporate campuses, and airport runways/military tarmacs.  I really enjoy this because these dogs are misfits for the most part in other places - it's delightful to rehab them, train them, and see them bloom doing something really enjoyable.

I'm also on the BOD for the working breed club, the US Border Collie Club, and edit the newsletter.

Yeah, lecturers get paid a lot, but they also have to deal with lots of courses and running their research group and bowing to university admin. My supervisor was the head of the department and he got paid a lot, but the only way he could really get out into the field was to do early mornings and fob off dozens of people every day. I think you can only take so many years of that before you go mad. He's more than ready for a year off, in which he's actually going to write up all his research from the last 3 years. I have an enormous amount of respect for him that he can get into the field at all.

Other lecturers I've worked for over the years have had enough money to live comfortably, but considering the hours they worked, it seemed a rough life to me. One guy I worked for would be in at uni anywhere from 6 in the morning to 8 at night. He told me I had a good deal working for him because if the experiment didn't work, I could go home at 5 anyway and not worry about it. []

Academia has a lot going for it. It's a really rewarding environment. The only reason I've abruptly decided to leave it behind is that I don't want to teach and I'm not in a good position to move around a lot chasing jobs. Our government is trying to privatise universities, too. It's very depressing and the uni has been resisting it for years, but recently their funding was so small that they were forced to increase fees. They were about the last major university in the country to do it. Our government also apparently hates scientific research. All our scientists are going overseas. I don't want to leave the country, and I don't want to leave Sydney, so I'm kinda screwed if I want to stay in academia.

Hey, pigeons, that's cool. [] We had that guy who tracked homing pigeons with GPS come and talk at our university a couple of years ago. It was really interesting stuff. Animal behaviour is a pretty diverse topic when you start exploring all the possibilities. I actually did my entire course at ANU. There are some fantastic behavioural ecologists in our department. I still say 'our', but technically I guess I left the university and don't have any plans to go back. Good luck with your publication!

Yeah that is all true. Lecturers do spend a lot of time at uni. I suppose those it wouldn't be so bad if you're doing stuff that you're really passionate about.
 
Anyway, it sounds like you have a lot of reasons to /not/ get into academia! Who knows what I'll end up doing- I've still got another 2-3 years to decide anyway.  I really enjoyed ecology/evolution when I was doing zoology- if I hadn't switched to psyc, I'd probably be doing that (and probably somewhere overseas).
 
Have you heard back about your job yet? Good luck for that!