Friday 23March 2012
Whoa! I have a lot of catching up to do on this blog; so
let’s get to it. You might be interested to learn that I am writing this on the
Overland Express train from Melbourne to Adelaide—an 11-hour ride through
prairie and sheep ranches, so far at least.
A whole lot of nuttin’ out there!
We are only 4 hours into the trip; so I will let you know more about it
later. Now back to Wollongong…and on to
Melbourne.
We left Wollongong about 3pm and hired a car to drive us to
the airport —bound for Melbourne. My
cousin, Bernie, met us at the airport and drove into town—giving us the first
up-close look at this beautiful city. We missed dinner on the flight; so he
took us directly to a restaurant along the Yarra River in the center of
town. The area, known as the Southbank
offered an esplanade bordering the river and filled with restaurants, shops and
other attractions—including the new arts center with playhouses, exhibit areas
and concert halls. We sat on the restaurant deck overlooking the river, but the
weather was cool and damp so had to stay behind the plastic screens lowered over
the openings. It got quite late for us
weary travelers by the time dinner ended; so we headed home, but not before
viewing some interesting buildings and figures—like the one resembling the
Eiffel Tower, except bright white and sitting on top of another building. Then there was the building that looked like
a jumble of huge children’s blocks with the edges lined by neon lights. Quite a
sight!
Saturday 24 March 2012
Bernie promised a full day of touring the city sights and
delivered in a big way. We started off
at the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) War Memorial in the center
of town. It stood on a green hill overlooking
a long mall leading right into the city center. The veranda looking out from
the second floor offered wonderful views of the grounds and the city.
Melbourne also supports a free bus that follows a circular
route around the city center. We
climbed aboard to get an overall view of things and decide what to visit. The trip included several sports venues (did
I mention that Aussies are NUTS about sports!) and other cultural centers. We stopped at the Australian National Gallery
and visited an exhibit of high school student entries to an art contest. The entries captured some of the key issues
of adolescence: friendships, isolation, family, sexuality and concerns about
the future. Quite well done and
moving….!
Next we visited the Victorian Marketplace—a vast area of
several city blocks (both outdoor and covered) offering food, clothing, music
and video recordings, souvenirs, knick-knacks, appliances…almost anything one
can imagine. We sampled some Turkish
sandwiches and a German bratwurst. I had
to stop for a moment to take in the butcher shop sign advertising beef,
chicken, pork and kangaroo.
After several more visits to local attractions, Bernie
decided to finish off the day with dinner at a local Vietnamese
restaurant. Both he and Peter have visited
Viet Nam many times and ordered their favorite dishes for us to try: several appetizers and main dishes—more than
enough to get us in the mood for a restful night’s sleep.
Sunday, 25 March 27, 2012
Today, we visited the Healsville Sanctuary in the hills to
the northeast of Melbourne. This
facility hosts, protects and restores Australian wildlife. The self-guided tour started with visits to
the emus, kangaroos and echidna—a kind of tiny porcupine with a nose like a pinkish
tongue depressor. Clearly the Koala
stole the show-- sitting up in a tree, hardly more than an arm’s length away,
munching peacefully on green leaves. The
platypus came in a close second in his darkened enclosure (they are nocturnal)
darting about in the water to catch tiny fish, worms and other edibles. Later in the afternoon, we viewed a “birds of
prey” show where a ranger demonstrated the dramatic colors and flying prowess of
hawks, buzzards and various other native birds.
We also viewed a demonstration of a boomerang and a didgeridoo, a native
tube-like musical instrument, by a ranger of indigenous descent.
On the way back to Melbourne we stopped at the Chandon
vineyard (quite a lovely setting) and sampled about a dozen sparkling and
“still” wines. Several were quite good; so we took a couple of bottles home to
have with dinner.
Monday 26 March 2012
Bernie took the day off to give us another tour of the city
of Melbourne. We started with a tour of urban alleys with some of the most
extensive and beautiful graffiti I have ever seen. This is not your typical graffiti often made
by a delinquent adolescent with a can of spray paint, but a true art form. At a couple of places we visited, the
graffiti served as a backdrop for some professional videographers making movies
in local cultural settings.
We also visited alleys without graffiti but lined, instead,
with coffee shops and various up-scale outlets. I thought of the narrow,
cobble-stoned streets as a kind of “Jack the Ripper goes retail” environment
reminiscent of those alleys of East London that we visited in 2007.
Australians seem to like recycling old buildings into
innovative uses. Given the global
drop-off in the use of paper mail, the Melbourne Post Office presented a unique
opportunity. Now the beautiful,
Edwardian building hosts three levels of upscale retail shops, including one
curiously called the “Egg Maternity”. We
didn’t do any shopping but explored the various levels and complimented the
wonderful displays.
I spent part of the afternoon meeting with a colleague at
the Victoria Department of Health to share some information about various local
and international public health programs concerning social marketing. It still surprises how similar our
experiences and challenges can be—even a hemisphere away. Like most Australian meetings, it seems, we
sat and talked over coffee in a local café.
When the meeting ended, I joined Linda and my cousin at the
Victoria Parliament House just up the street. The building is one of those grand, old
mid-1800s stone structures with pillars and a bank of steps from the curb to
the front door. The inside provided more
of the same and included various photos of State Governors and statues of several
queens. The guide led us into both
“upper”and “lower” chambers (no longer described as “lords” and “commons”) and explained
the various official positions and roles of the Parliament. One of the historic members holding the
position of Sergeant of Arms actually had the surname Sergeant. The chambers were beautiful and sumptuously
decorated with angels, ancient figures and lots of real gold leaf—over $20
worth as I remember.
We departed from the Parliament House and walked through a
few blocks to catch of the trams back to my cousin’s place in Ellwood. It’s a
curious thing about Australia, by the way.
The wheeled device that you put your groceries in at the market is not
called a “grocery cart” but a “trolley.”
Similarly, the tracked vehicle on the street with the pole stretching up
to the electric line is not a “trolley” or “streetcar” but a “tram.” Likewise, I discovered that the term “punt”
(as in American football) also means “placing a bet” in Australia. These incidents sometimes make the
interaction interesting—especially if you tried to bet on American football (or
punt on a punt?) If you don’t believe me, just try ordering a “long black”
instead of a “regular cup of black coffee” next time you need a jolt of caffeine
after a long day of touring around.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Overland Express to Adelaide. We are still on the train after about 8 hours
of viewing countless miles of sandy-colored soil, scrub vegetation and
unimaginable number of sheep in the countryside between Melbourne and
Adelaide. One of the train crew says
that it should get more interesting in a couple of hours when we cross the
Murray River, but I don’t know what that means.
It is getting a little more “inhabited” with little more than a couple
of really small towns and a few villages so far. Let’s see what happens and I
will describe it in my next installment.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Whoa…I’m way behind again…which is easy to do in this
traveling situation. Let’s move on to
Adelaide, Kangaroo Island and the next couple of days.
We arrived safely in Adelaide after the 11-hour trip and
found a shuttle to the hotel in the middle of town. We saw a bridge, a river and some other
indications of civilizations closer to the city and even some multi-level
office buildings in the city (perhaps 30 floors high) in the distance; so we
went out for a quick dinner at a local pub and turned in fairly early to get
ready for the next day.
Wednesday also started early—with a wake-up call at 5:30am
and a 15 minute walk to the city bus terminal for 7:30am pick-up by the
excursion bus. Linda booked us on a one-day “highlights” tour of Kangaroo
Island, a large, sparsely populated island off Point Jervis to the south of
Adelaide. The bus, one of the large and luxurious 40-passenger types, took
about 1 ½ hours over narrow, twisted roads to arrive at the ferry
terminal. The ferry, a large,
industrial-strength modern catamaran type, soon crossed the 18km stretch of
water and dropped off at Penneshaw, the entry port for the island.
Kangaroo Island is 155km long and 55km wide and was
discovered by Matthew Flinders (an English explorer) in 1802. It offers about
18 native mammals, 250 birds and over 900 plants which are native to the
island. Only about 3000-4000 residents live there full-time, but many Australian
vacationers visit there during the summer and special holidays. Of course, there are lots of day-visitors
like us!
The bus-driver/guide first took us to Seal Bay, a large
breeding ground for Australian sea lions.
The animals spend 2-3 days feeding at sea and return to this area to
rest on the beach, on the rocks and in the dunes. We saw a female animal with a young nursing
“pup” lying on the warm sand under the wood walkways during our way to the
beach. When we got to the beach itself,
it revealed a large number of sea lions of all shapes and sizes (possibly a
hundred or more) in various stages of sleep, play or fighting up and down the
beach. The same was true as we looked
across the beach to other areas up and down the coastline.
Next, we stopped for lunch (always a welcome break after an
early morning start.) Just outside the
facility we spotted a lovely, little koala sound asleep about 20 feet up in a
tree near the walkway to the “birds of prey” exhibition. This event again featured some of the
interesting Australian birds like hawks, an eagle and two kookaburras. This
“ranger” even let some of the kids hold the birds on a thick leather glove—they
were delighted.
The bus drove from place to place over tiny, two-lane paved
roads; so it was easy for us to observe the extensive vegetation and brush
lands. In some places the
nearly-ubiquitous eucalyptus trees grew to incredible heights, but most of the
land seemed to be covered by dense, low shrubs and rough grassy plants.
At the next place, we visited the “Remarkable Rocks” a
jumble of massive (house-size) stone boulders etched into curious shapes by
nature. They lay on a high promontory at
the very edge of the shoreline. We were
able to walk among and even between them—looking up into the enormous holes and
features carved out by wind and moisture.
Finally we visited the beginnings of a new island on the
shore of Kangaroo Island. To see the
Admiral’s Arch, we walked on long, wooden walkways across the shelf of land
leading to the cliff overlooking the surf.
Then we climbed down several flights of stairs to find a gigantic stone
arch supporting the entire area that we just crossed. The sea is slowly wearing away the material
connecting the rock formation to the cliff and land above—leaving an arch,
something like the rough underside of an overpass on the highway--only much
grander and more rugged. One guide told
us that the stalagmite-type structures hanging down, bat-like, under the arch
were actually “petrified roots” covered with limestone drippings and hardened
into rock. This was quite a sight and
well-worth the long climb up the face of the cliff and rocky shelf (on wooden
walkways, of course) back to the bus.
The sightseeing ended about 7pm and bus returned to the port
for the ferry trip back to the mainland.
By the time we got back to Adelaide, it was about 10:30pm making for
another couple of tired travelers.
Today (29 March) is Alexis’ 29th birthday….so it
felt a little funny being half-a-world away.
Not only that, we arose at 8am thinking about her birthday but realizing
that it was still March 28 back home and wouldn’t be her birthday for hours! Things like that make me a little crazy! Like my cousin telling me that he is
fortunate that the porch faces NORTH because it gets more sun! Then I start noticing that the sun comes up
in the NORTHeast and sets in the NORTHwest.
It makes one think that nothing can be taken for granted anymore! (Did I mention that the water in the toilet
flushes the other direction! Go
figure…..!)
So we decided to have an easy day today and rented a car for
a short excursion into the hills near Adelaide.
We drove northeast (where the sun comes up!) and found a sign indication
the way to Mt. Lofty! Who could
resist? At the end we found a lovely overlook
of the entire Adelaide area, probably 20 miles from north to south. We even
made some new friends; two couples—one from Adelaide (“over there” he said
pointing) and the other from England, near the Welsh border.
We continued to Hahndorf, a quaint German-style town just a
few miles further. Mostly it contained
souvenir shops and German merchandise, and we managed to find a German tavern
with some great beer and food.
We spent the remainder of the day driving through the
Barossa Valley, the region’s main wine-producing area. The vineyards came one after another along
the road with many announcing “tasting” services and various tours. We even found a lovely little local place
known as the “New Eden Lookout” that gave a perfect hill-top view of the many vineyards
and valleys below. What a gorgeous
sight!
So tomorrow is another day with our return
flight to Melbourne (no 11-hour train ride this time.) Then we plan a drive
southward on the Great Ocean Road to view the “Apostles” and other sights. More about that later.
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