Bios of my comrades - again, or still, photos to follow

A few details still vague and uncheckable at the moment. Will correct on edit.

It might be worth mentioning a few words about my fellows on this Koala Conservation Earthwatch expedition, because for the first time in 5 days, one of them proved irksome today.

Desley Whisson, 47 year old project PI, is an excellent teacher, intrepid outdoorswoman, consummate ecologist, and generally cool person. While I wouldn’t call her laid back, she exhibits flexibility about the things that don’t require dogmatism, and trusts her volunteers to do what is asked of them, and to ask questions if we don’t understand something. She speaks her mind, but is appropriate as the team leader. I find her to be an extremely easy person with whom to work, and generally fun to be around.

Vicki Nathan was a team member last year, and works as an Earthwatch administrator in the Melbourne (I think) office. She came along this year as van driver and Des’s field assistant. She nice, competent, appropriate, and somewhere in her mid to late 40’s, give or take.

Jo (last name unknown to me) lives in Perth, and had so much fun on Des’s team last year, she convinced her husband to vacation here in Bimby Park so she could do field studies all day. She’s another sort-of official person, though she doesn’t live in the cottages with the rest of us.

Tim is 30, from Melbourne, has a shaved head because he saw himself in the mirror a year ago and decided to finish what nature had started, and is currently pursuing his PhD in ecology. This is his second Earthwatch expedition, and he is a wonderful addition both as a field biologist and a social force. He is chatty, funny, charming, and nice to everybody. He has great dimples (and I think he knows it).

John, we were all shocked to learn this evening, is 74, and a world traveler and life-long outdoorsman. He’s from Chicago currently, by way of Bucks County Pa and Cambridge, MA (MIT, for those who care). He’s an emeritus professor of biochemistry (I forget which Uni, but it’s not U Chicago or Northwestern) and quite knowledgeable about all branches of science. He’s indefatigable, generous with his time, a good conversationalist, and willing to learn.

Krystal is a 32-year-old under-employed supermarket manager from Detroit who is spending her minimal vacation time and even more minimal discretionary income to slog through tick-infested fields and leech-infested forests to contribute to a study of koala ecology. She looks like someone who would be equally at home (and noticed, favorably) in a gym or a nightclub. She is easy going, easy to live with, funny, and a hard worker. Apparently, she has lousy taste in men, and this trip proved to come at an auspicious time as she just broke up with a long-term boyfriend. Unlike me, the lack of cell phone service has been a boon to her.

Kelly, the old enough to have teenage children teacher from NY, is also a sweetheart. She is always quick to help anyone with anything, volunteers to take on new challenges at every turn, and steps into the Mom role even faster than I do. She’s assumed dinner duty 3 of the last 5 nights. She’s a great cook under challenging conditions (and 10 people to feed), but I sense that she does it because no one else is stepping up. Vicki and I fill in, but I think tomorrow night will be the boys’ turn.

Robert, a 67-year-old Aussie from outside of Melbourne, is a veteran of 23 Earthwatch expeditions to all corners of the world. He is a professor of accounting, a whizz with a spreadsheet, and a writer of very entertaining doggerel. Each evening he encapsulates the day with a series of limericks, all of them G-rated, that make creative use of rhymes in the Aussie vernacular. He knows a lot about a lot of things, is extremely didactic in his sharing of that knowledge, and as I learned today the hard way, not keen on taking direction. His unwillingness to heed my advice about tracking Frank, led to his blundering blithely into the same bracken quagmire that impeded us yesterday, and our losing contact with him for about 45 minutes. He headed off on his own, without radio or GPS, and didn’t respond when I called to him in a voice that was apparently audible to the entire rest of the research team, scattered as they were over the 7.5 hectare research site. The result was that 4 of us, fearing for his safety, lost 45 minutes of research time while we tried to locate him. He eventually emerged from the undergrowth, triumphant that he had located Frank. However, since none of us was there to record the necessary data or mark the location with GPS, I had to return to the site with him after lunch. Again, he refused to try the route I knew would be far less difficult, and as a result, the relocation took 35 minutes instead of ten. When we had completed the requisite observations, I forced the issue and took the lead, forging a path that led us out of the dense forest and back to our colleagues with far less loss of skin and ankle-twisting potential than retracing our original steps would have entailed. I like the guy, but I hope not to have to work with him again any time soon.

The last two people with whom I’ve had real interaction are Kara and Jessie. Kara is a post-doc (moved from Kansas to Oz. Fancy that!), and Jessie, an Aussie about to become a grad student, and the two of them have undertaken an enormously ambitious project having to do with assessing the nutritional content of the leaves, and distribution of all of the 200+ species of trees in the Eucalyptus genus, all over Australia, that are know to provide food for koalas. Robert and I spent 3 hours with them this afternoon running transects through stands of two of the species, measuring trees, tagging them with numbers and flagging tape, taking GPS coordinates, trudging up and down slopes, perching precariously on rotting logs, avoiding leeches, and generally getting dirtier and sweatier than I have been in a long time. Kara is a force of nature – driven, tireless, organized, clear, appreciative, and fun. While I was ecstatic to get back to base and have a beer and a shower, it felt good to have learned about a new project, feel like I had contributed (saved a lot of time, according to Jessie), and spent time with two young women who are still enthusiastic about their chosen career paths. I also saw some little purple orchids, and some birds (fantails (spp) I hadn’t seen before. We also heard a lyre bird (how cool is that!?!), measured blue gums (spp) that were as tall as some Sequoias, and learned that in Australia, a mountain ash is not a Fraxinus, but yet another kind of Eucalyptus (spp).

Tomorrow is a day off. Huzzah! 

Third day tracking marsupials

I awoke to the bellowing of male koalas, the plan-flute timbre of the call of the magpies (certainly schooled by a different vocal coach than their European cousins) and the laughter of kookaburras. The wind had died down, and the sky seemed to be clearing. The morning began with radio tracking, gum nut collection, and laying down tarps under specific koalas to catch scat for gut-fauna analysis. The enormous box (probably about 2 gallons in volume) of gum nuts (seed pods of the manna gum tree) will be allowed to dry and then the seeds will be collected and germinated to produce seedlings to replace the increasing number of trees killed by koala herbivory in the area of the study site. The seeds are apparently quite tiny, and each 1 cm diameter gum nut contains hundreds, but establishing healthy seedlings apparently requires a lot of seeds for starters. These trees also shed their bark and long strands of it flap in the wind like laundry on a clothesline.

 

All was going well on all fronts, until I went to help one of the tracking teams with the last few animals on their list. We found Bella and Monty and Katrina with little problem, but when it came to locating Frank, the obstreperous male we had caught yesterday, he was not in any of his customary trees. We tracked his signal to an area with incredibly dense head-high bracken ferns, and spent almost an hour bushwhacking our way through trying to home in on the signal. It was hot, exhausting work, and while I had a firm idea of Frank’s direction and approximate location, we were having a heck of a time actually getting to it.  Avoiding heat stroke being the better part of valor, we radioed Des who was able to find us, via GPS coordinates, in about 5 minutes. She got to us by a relatively clear path we didn’t know existed, confirmed that we were on Frank’s trail, and helped us find him. He wasn’t anywhere near a manna gum, the much preferred source of food, and was completely covered by the needle-like leaves of the sheoak in which he was sitting. He is, as Des says (think Aussie accent) “a nahsty boye.

After lunch we captured and re-collared Dave and Beast (much more straightforward than the Frank debacle, and I helped with flagging both of them) and fitted them with accelerometers. The idea is that each time the males bellow, they throw their heads back, which should register as a rapid acceleration on the accelerometers. When the data is downloaded, the number, duration, and timing of the bellows should be identifiable, which will give the investigators some insights into that particular behavior. The GPS data is used to track movements of the collared koalas, and will provide some data about who is hanging out with whom among the small subset (fewer than 10%) of animals with collars.

That accomplished, we trudged back to “Wally’s tree” for lunch and a few ant stings. The afternoon tasks varied, but I worked with a few people to begin assessing the 172 tagged gum trees in the study area. Because they have been so heavily browsed, the health of these enormous trees varies from quite viable to mostly dead. Five or six times each year, Des looks at every tree and evaluates it on a variety of parameters so as to have a longitudinal data set for each. My job was to photograph the ID tags, then take a few photos straight up into the canopy of each tree in the study. 

After about 50 trees, I was running low on battery power, and it was approaching 5PM. Then we spotted a mother koala with her 8 or 9-month-old joey in her arms. We spent the next 45 minutes watching the pair of them, filling up memory cards, draining batteries, tottering on tree limbs, and repeatedly uttering, “that is so cute!”

Even Des, jaded though I would have expected her to be after a decade of studying these critters, was enthralled.

Little dude spent a good deal of time trying to get to Mama’s pouch for a drink, but she ignored him, even when he bit her fingers, almost knocked her off the tree (he was over half her size), grabbed on to her belly and clung there while she scrambled to gain a toe-hold on the tree trunk, climbed on her back, and generally made a complete pest of himself. She blithely went on munching gum leaves, scratching her neck, and eyeing the curious onlookers. Joey was eventually successful and dove in for a long suckle. We couldn’t get an angle to photograph his triumph, but to us, Mom looked resigned, and slightly resentful.

Dinner, data entry, and photo downloading occupied the evening, and now I am ready to go to sleep. I made another attempt to connect to the internet from a spot outside the office, but like all of my colleagues here, my computer registered 5 WiFi bars, but no access to the internet. Aarrggh! Monday is a “day off,” so maybe we can get into town and I can actually post this stuff and get my e-mail. I’m having an amazing time, but I miss everybody! 

Second Koala Field Day

As we drove along the road into the campground adjacent to our field site on Wednesday, there were a few vehicles pulled off the road in various spots and their passengers were out with cameras and binoculars. They had spotted a koala in the trees. Vicky, our driver and Des’s assistant for the trip didn’t stop. When we pulled up to our cabin, there was a koala in the tree right next to it, less than 5 meters from where we stood. The four Americans in the group got out our cameras. That feels like a very long time ago.

Yesterday began with four of us radio tracking the tagged animals. I taught Kelly, a pretty, spunky, highly competent and very sweet teacher in a private boy’s school in NYC, how to track, and we found all 10 of our assigned animals in an hour. We then assisted the other team in tracking down two more animals, one of which had migrated some distance away from where he usually hung out.

 

In between some of the tracking, we were called away to watch Des and other members of our team catch two of the radio-collared females so that their health could be assessed and new GPS chips could be put on their collars. The first “little girl,” Lucie, is Des’s favorite. Des extended a pole with a noose on the end up into the tree, while two other people held up long poles with “flags” (plastic bags and pieces of blue tarp) and waved them in front of Lucie’s face. When Lucie backed up to a convenient position, Des slipped the noose over her neck (it isn’t tight and won’t hurt her) and the flaggers backed her the rest of the way down the tree.

 

Once she was near the ground, Des was able to grab her, and put her into a big burlap sack. Once in the sack, Des could use her knees to position Lucie on her stomach inside the sack, straddle her for control and let her settle. After a few minutes, Des exposed Lucie’s neck while keeping her face covered, removed the old collar, replaced the electronics, replaced the collar, positioned the antenna, and released her. Easy peasey! Lucie was so compliant, three volunteers got to practice the technique required to lay her down, calm her, and find her neck.

Lucie never seemed panicky, and blithely went back up the tree when she was let out of the bag. I checked to make sure she was beeping at the right frequency (if the transmitter isn’t turned on, the whole procedure was useless!) and we went on to find more koalas.

Sally put up a bit more of a struggle, and was a little stressed, by the experience. Nevertheless, when released, she hung out on the ground for a minute or two, ambled over to a different tree, climbed a few meters, stopped to check us out, then went back up to eat and snooze as all koalas do. We ended the morning capturing and collaring Frank. Our experience with the two females in no way prepared us for the bellowing and fighting that Frank exhibited. Des has captured him many times before, and each time is a nerve-wracking battle. This was absolutely no exception, and Des sustained a scratch on her arm from Frank’s claw-tipped thrashing limbs. When the dust and fur had settled, the score was biologists 1, koala 0. Frank had a new GPS device and an accelerometer. More on that later.

After lunch. we worked as a group to set up 20 infrared motion-triggered cameras at various places in the brush, half in the heavily human-altered area managed by the owners of the campground, and half in the adjacent, relatively pristine national park. We positioned and staked down little bait canisters within the focal plane of the lens. We’ll see who came to visit when we collect them and download the photos at the end of the trip. There are any number of tiny marsupials and rodents, as well as larger opossums, quolls, and foxes (introduced) that could pay the bait canisters a visit.

Kelly and I were in charge of dinner, so while other team members entered data and organized gear, we made a mega batch of squash, chicken, spinach, and mushroom risotto on a gas stove that puts out about no heat. I’m wondering if it’s a propane stove, because getting anything to actually cook was a challenge. Nevertheless an enormous amount of food was consumed, and appeared to be enjoyed by all.

The final event of a long day was spot lighting. To me the term has negative connotations because it conjures up images of drunken hunters beaming headlights into the eyes of deer, and then shooting them. Our version, however, was much more benign, entailing scanning the surroundings with powerful LED flashlights, and keeping a record of the wildlife spotted. After watching a beautiful sunset from the top of the hill,four of us walked much of the area we had been working in all day (fortunately Des and Jo know it well, because Krystal and I were completely disoriented in the dark). We saw the yellow gleam of the eyes of quite a few koalas (some of which were collared and Des knew them well), a ring tailed possum, and a tawny frogmouth. I hope I have a chance to make another evening excursion before the expedition is over. There’s so much more I want to see!

Tomorrow is another long day, so I’d best be getting to sleep.

First Day with the Koalas

The real major event of the day is that I finally saw both a kangaroo and a kookaburra! It was actually two kangaroos, grays, bounding across our study site first thing this morning. And I there were two kookaburras, too, but at different times, and around mid-day we heard a bunch of them laughing up a storm.

This was the first field day of the Earthwatch Koala Conservation study, and after 9 hours in the field, I have a new appreciation for field biologists. After training in how to use the GPS and record the appropriate data about the koalas we hoped to spot, we spent a long (4 ½ hours) drizzly windy morning traipsing up and down steep sandy-slippery hills through dense brush trying to see as many of the koalas that inhabited the study site as we possibly could. My half of the group found something like 170, and as my role was to mark the GPS coordinates of the trees in which they sat, I was constantly zigzagging between my 4 compatriots as they spotted the beasts in the canopies. I’d then mark the tree with a chalk X because we were in constant peril of either missing segments of the study site, or recounting the same animals. We actually did some of both, but were able to correct our errors.

 

For those of you who care, the region (the Otway peninsula of southern Victoria) is massively over-populated with koalas (there should be a population density of 1 koala per 2 hectares, and this site has 22 koalas per hectare), and as a result, they are overgrazing and killing all the manna gums (their favorite food source). Elsewhere in the country, they are an endangered species, and in places like Brisbane, they are an urban pest, primarily because of deforestation and the encroachment of suburbia on their habitat. Sound familiar?

 

Anyway, Des (Desley Whisson) has been studying this population and their immediate habitat for five years and in addition to just counting koalas, has radio-tagged a couple of dozen and her grad students and Earthwatch volunteers have given them all names. I know that’s anthropocentric and politically incorrect, but it’s more fun and easier to keep track of then random (or systematic) alphanumerics. After lunch in the field, we were given a brief tutorial on radio tracking, and set out to find every beast with a collar and record where exactly it was, what it was doing, and who else was in the vicinity.

I proved to be pretty good at waving the antenna and triangulating the animals, but I did run into one snag. I keep circling one area and had refined the location to a very very few square meters, but I still couldn’t find the koala. It seemed to be somewhere on the ground under a cluster of gum trees. What I had neglected to consider, was that sometimes the koala and its collar become separated, and in this case, Motty had slipped her necklace, and the collar was on the ground. The collars are put on loosely so that they don’t irritate fight-incurred wounds (in males) or hurt the koalas if they get snagged on a branch. As Ari experienced in her sheep project in Grand Teton, sometimes the collars emit a different kind of beep indicating prolonged lack of motion. This can also mean the animal has met its end. There are no kola predators, but they can sometimes mortally wound each other. We found two un-collared very ripe carcasses that had been scavenged by (introduced) foxes who left their scat as calling cards. As much as this was valuable data (dentition was used to determine the age of the animals) that was not the most delightful part of the day.

 

My tracking partner, Tim, and I, found our last critter about a kilometer from where we were told he was likely to be. Because koala food is so low in calories, and it takes so much digestive effort to detoxify the eucalyptus leaves, koalas neither move far nor move much. So finding “Beast” so far from where he was tagged two years ago, and where he was spotted 6 months ago, was unusual, and took us longer than we expected. We felt triumphant when we did locate him, and even happier when we found a large female in the same tree, but very close to the ground so we could see her slightly bulging pouch and green drool dripping around the leaves she was munching, The strong winds precluded my getting good photos, but it was still pretty awesome.

Some of my colleagues spent the afternoon entering data or prepping equipment for whatever we’re doing tomorrow (spotlighting tomorrow night is on the schedule), and now we’re all relaxing, chatting, and waiting for the dinner crew to finish cooking. We rotate nights, but I haven’t had a turn yet. The menu is set (a necessity when pre-provisioning for 8 people for 10 days) but the cooking rotation materializes as needed.

The internet connection here is accessible to us from the porch of the office, and is not very robust. I will endeavor to hold on to my connection long enough to add photos to this blog and get is sent out. I hope you are all well and enjoying whatever it is you’re doing. If you have sent me e-mail, thank you. I’m going to download messages after I send this, but if you’re counting on me checking Facebook, that’s not likely to happen for the next week or so.

I miss you all!

Last Day In Melbourne

I neglected to display the Lemingtons and coconut lemon slices (as well as a bonus cheescake) that I bought at David Jones department store . They were a tasty treat happily shared with Carey, Veronic, and Carey’s lodger, Peter.

This is a statue of Captain Cook that stands outside of St. Paul’s Cathedral which is across from the uber modern Federation Square and historic Flinders Satation - an intersection that consolidates the range of architectural waves in Melbourne. Some gulls have no respect. This was the rendezvous point for my second meet-up with Mike Vitale and one of his seeing-eye puppies. Sushi for lunch (we both agreed that the Urban Spoon review was better than the reality) and more garden walking int he rain.

By mid-afternoon I was back on my own to wander and snap some more. The performing arts center in the same part of town. 

The cafe behind the performing arts center. I’m not the only one who enjoys the photographic opportunity it presents.

Architectural design elements.

Self-explanatory. Melbourne is making huge efforts to conserve water in its vast gardens and municipal buildings. There is a lot of signage explaining various recycling systems installations, and gray water irrigation.

New Orelans?!? Saw amazing ironwork like this on a couple of streets. Some of these same houses had stained glass designs in their windows, too.

I finally learned that the collars I see on many of the trees are desgned to keep opossums from climbing up and destroying the trees. Apparently they are quite an urban pest, though I still haven’t seen one. They are nocturnal, and dark happens later than I am usually out in the gardens. Carey and I went to see Shakespeare in the Park last night (Romeo and Juliet - fun production) and walked home though opossu habitat, but didn’t see any furry critters. During the show, though, we did see dozens of enormous bats that flew in and out of an adacent tree and squeaked up a storm. Very cool!

This is a fig tree that has taken root in the crux of a gum tree. This climate is amazing. It was very drizzly all morning, and comfortably cool (I had to wear jeans and a jacket at the play), but promises to be quite warm (low 30’s °C) again today. Melbourne prides itself as having “four seasons in a day” on a  regular basis. I’m not convinced that’s any more true here than in Boston or Philadelphia or the Adirondacks.

Off this morning to meet the crew for my first Earthwatch Expedition. If internet is available, I will keep you posted.

Melbourne meanderings: an afternoon with Veronica

This photo was actually taken last night as Carey and I wandered through Fawkner Park en route to the Beer garden for dinner. Some of the trees here are ginormous - massive, even if not as lofty as some of the mega-trees in the American west. Victoria is known as The Garden State, but it in no way resembles New Jersey. Melbourne has a huge number of parks and gardens, and many are connected such that if one knows one’s way, it is possible to go great distances without leaving greenery, 

I don’t exactly know my way, but after a power walk/jog around Albert Park Lake earlier in the morning, I attempted to walk to Federation Square for my rendezvous with Veronica (my buddy from the Becheno Backpacker hotel) via parks and gardens. I took one twisty path too many and ended  up on a major roadway for about a kilometer more than was absolutely necessary. Before that misstep, however, I walked for some way through the botanical gardens. I’m sure you will all be shocked to know that I loved every meter of it, and plan to try a more directed route tomorrow when I head back into the CBD to have lunch with Mike Vitale and one of the seeing-eye trainee puppies.

Below: “The smallest one was Madeline.” Kids in state (public) schools wear uniforms. Some are polo shirts and slacks, some dresses, some skirts and blouses. These were the cutest I’ve seen thus far. And as at home, the older kids manage to sex up even the most modest of outfits once school is out for the day.

Another view walking into the CBD over the Prince’s Bridge. The funky architecture in the middle ground is Federation Square. The towers are predominantly part of the 90’s development boom.

I met Veronica, and began our afternoon with a Shu-Yee-required stop at the food court at David Jones Department store on Collins Street. (It’s downstairs in the building that houses the men’s department, and not in the building across the street where the entire first floor is the cosmetics department.) I found the lemon coconut slices, the Lemingtons with jam, and little cheescakes with berry sauce on top. Neither Veronica nor I were hungry yet, so we caught a tram to the Melbourne Museum with a plan to enjoy the pastries for tea later in the day. 

The enormous and spacious museum (apparently the largest in the Southern Hemisphere) was built in the 1990’s across a plaza from its Victorian forebearer that is now an exhibition hall where, among other things, the annual flower show is held. 

I used my student ID to gain free admission again, and was drawn into the rocks and minerals exhibits first. Iwas impressed with the label copy and optional video stories and interviews. There was a great meteorite exhibit, but no copy… yet… about the Siberian meteorite from a few days ago. From there we looked at dinosaurs, evolution, animals of Victoria, animals of the World, human mind and body, wind power, water conservation, Celebration of Federation tapestires (20,000 person-hours invested) and Melbourne history. The human body exhibit included some quite explicit panels about the development of the human body, sex, fertilization, and birth. There was a panel at the entrance to the exhibit stating the explicit nature of the contents, but it was not framed as a warning, but rather as information. I wonder if we could get away with something similar at the Museum of Science, for example. They did a fantastic job with all aspects of the exhibit.

We got a glimpse of one of the Aboriginal art exhibits, and  the small rain forest in one of the court yards before we needed a lunch break. I think we got through about 1/3 of what there was to see. I should have headed directly for the Aboriginal art, since we don’t have that at home, but the siren song of all those colorful stones and the attendant geology were a force too great to resist. Once we were headed in that direction, the obvious flow took us deeper and deeper into natural history. Aw shucks.  If I ever get back to Melbourne, I will definitely start where I left off.

After a wander along Brunswick Street (a mixture of Harvard, Central, and Davis Squares - used to be the really bohemian and alternative area, but has been upscaled somewhat) we stopped for lunch at the Black Cat cafe/bar. Rehydration was a must, as the temperature had climbed to 36°C. After lunch and more exploration of the northern part of town, we trammed back to the CBD and walked through several more gardens, including the Treasury Gardens with beautiful fountains and winding paths through lovely specimen trees. The photo below is from the conservatory in the Fitzroy Garden. I have never seen so many spectacualrly blooming begonias in my life, even at a flower show! In my next life, I will have something similar at my house, and I will hold garden parties inside in the middle of winter.

By 6PM I was physically tired for the first time since I’ve been in Australia. I had planned to walk back to Carey’s but I hopped on the tram after only a few blocks. It was air conditioned and direct and a good decision! We enjoyed her delicious lasagna leftovers, took care of the multiple partially empty bottles of wine, made inroads into the pastries I had carried around all day, and unwound for an early bedtime. I want to come back here. It’s a lovely city, and there is quite a lot I will not have explored by the time I leave on Wednesday morning. Who wants to come with me (besides Glenn, who must)?!?

Beach Day! And a few odds and ends

Sand: There is LOTS of it in my limited experience of Australia, and it varies in color and texture from place to place, but it is all barefoot walkable and clean. At wineglass bay, the sand was very white, and laid out in bands from very fine in the intertidal, to super fine and squeaky (like at Singing Beach in Manchester-by-the-Sea) above it, to slightly granular at the edge of the vegetation. At Bicheno, the sand was slightly less white, and along the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, it is yellow and medium-fine - perfect for sand castles and other constructions. Along the Bay of Fires I encountered one beach, adjacent to a squeaky sandy one, where the sand was crushed shells. The fragments were large enough to be identifiable as shells, but small enough not to damage my tootsies. It is all SO COOL, and I wish I had a field microscope to get a closer look!

Theodore Geisel trees: Since I arrived here I keep seeing trees with tall trunks and tufts of leaves on top that remind me of illustrations in Dr. Seuss books. They are, in fact, Sugar Gum trees (Eucalyptus cladocalyx), but I do wonder if our beloved children’s author toured Australia before illustrating his books.

Bats: I neglected to mention that as the sun was going down last night, a large creature flew from one tree to another over our heads, and was followed by several more similar creatures. Even though I was well aware that flying foxes live in these parts and was, in fact, looking for them in the Botanic Garden, my brain told me these large flying things were birds. Hah! Anyway, I hope to get a little more upclose and personal with their furry faces before I leave the continent. I’m told that’s inevitable.

Beach Day!!!

Took a walk from Split Point Lighthouse along the cliffs. The perspective is lost here, but the view isn’t.

This is me before lunch and a quick change for a magnificent swim in the surf at Lorne Beach along the Great Ocean Road. Crystal clear water, no jellies, no sharks, no flies, no rocks (where I was swimming), no trash, no flotsam. Just not cold, beautiful ocean water with body-surfable breakers and swimmable swells. And the sky really was this blue. Glorious!

And Carey

Stopped for culture and coffee at Qdos gallery in Lorne before heading home. It’s a beautiful woodsy spot with fun and sometimes beautiful sculptures outside, and today, an exhibition of three French artists and an Australian inside. We sat outside and had the company of a family of Australian magpies, whose chatter is far more melodious than that of their European cousins. They are also very much friendlier tha US birds, as are the other feathered fauna I’ve enocuntered thus far. We even saw a tree full of cockatoos near the beach. They are not so melodious (though quite large and handsome).

Drove back to Melbourne at the end of the day by an inland route so as to avoid all the beach traffic - not as bad as at home, but significant, and annoying on the crazy curvy cliff roads. These are not as narrow as those in Tassie, and some even have shoulders, but they still warrant a great deal of attention from the driver. Once on the big highway back to the city, I noticed the sound barrier walls. They’re made of rusted iron, I think, but some engineer or designer of something  decided to pretty them up by inserting clear colored panels at random intervals. I didn’t catch it in a photo, but as the sun was getting lower (you science nerds know what I mean!) it made patches of brightly colored light on the roadway where the light passed through the panels. The route was other wise fairly monotonous, dry brown pastures and fields ringed with cypres trees eventually giving way to a more industrial landscape. 

Almost too hot to sleep, but after a tapas-style dinner at a local beer garden (great people watching, good food, good good good good libations (sing it with me!)), I’m sure I’ll manage.

More from Melbourne: Friday and Saturday

Took the tram into Federation Square and was immediately assaulted by loudspeakers and a jumbotron - some sort of event with matching T-shirt clad youngish folks and a lot of other people milling about. Never figured out what was going on. Summer in the City so it has to be loud!

Paid a visit to the Ian Potter gallery where a variety of Australian art, modern, aboriginal, and 19th century works are displayed. It was a bright airy space in a deliberatley funky example of the 1990’s development of the Federation Square plaza. One of the guards, under the pretext of explaining a painting of Melbourne harbor from 1860, regaled me with tales of his cruise ship exploits, love of dancing on said cruises, and imitations of singers from Elvis to Deano to Etta James and Michael Jackson. According to him, “holding someone at bay” comes from keeping people on boats in the harbor for long periods of time while permission to land (or disembark, or something) was obtained. He was quite talented, really, but after 20 minutes of entertainment I felt the need to peel myself away.

Installation at the bottom of a staircase representing the life light of an important Aboriginal whose name I don’t recall.

Traintracks through one of the many gallery windows.

Hilarious work on the plaza. Installations in this spot change every couple of months.

Wandered through the booths of the Sustainability Fair along the Yarra River bank. Chatted with two guys working on a way to use dog poop degradation to produce methane to power lights or trash compacters in public parks. Apparently the prototype was briefly on line in Cambridge, MA, but ran out of functionality after a few months. This is definitely a technology whose time has come. Ihope they get the bugs worked ou!

Skyline - Flinders Station is an example of one of the grand old Victorian era buildings that are still nestled among the skyscrapers, the majority of the latter having gone up in the building boom of the 90’s. You can imagine the controversies, but as an outsider, I think it’s fascinating and not un-beautiful!

Tried all day to get a good photo of the Eureka Tower, the tallest building in Melbourne (in Australia? not sure.). I’m sure there’s a name for the style of architecture that looks vaguely unbalanced and changes dimensions as it rises. It’s the reflection, not the actual building in the photo.

My new friend Veronica, with whom I went hiking ont he Freychinet Peninsula, met me in town on Friday afternoon and we did some more wandering, eventually meandering along the river to the Immigration Museum. To get there, we crossed a bridge along one side of which were a series of large transparent plaques, one for each country from which Australians had immigrated. There was a map showing the relationship of the country to Australia, the languages spoken, the towns from which immigrants hailed, and the number of Australians, in 2001, who were born in that country, and the number of Australian-born people who could trace their ancestry to that country. Very cool!! We actually had to cross back over the river to get to the museum, which is housed inthe old Customs House. 

The museum was worth the trip (I got in free with my MSU student ID - thank you, Kate!). Musibits mixed video with artifacts, personal stories, mock-ups of ship cabins through the ages, and lots of photographs. If you like the museum at Ellis Island, you’ll like this, too.

Clock tower at Fliner’s Sation. Reminds me of London! Veronica thought it important that we stop in to see the scandelous painting of Chloe at the Young and Jackson Pub. We had to wander through the entirety of the quite open but rather elegant Victorian-era establishment to find the lass in all her glory proudly occuping an entire wall of one of the lounges. As my host Carey would say, “Gohgeous!”

RIver activities abound. I saw crew teams, kayaks, runners, bikers, walkers, loungers, individuals and groups exercising… 

State seal of the State of Victoria at the end of Prince’s Bridge. 

Rainbow in a fountain on my walk home through the gardens along St. Kilda Road.

The War Memorial at the Botanic Gardens.

More skyline.

After Carey scored me a bike from a friend on Saturday, she and I took a long leisurely morning bike ride down to St. Kilda and along the extenisve banks of Port Phillip (what would be the outer harbor, if we were in Boston, but it isn’t a harbor, apparently). After a lunch break it got really hot, so we took different tram lines (for a change of scenery) into the CBD and did an indoor activity.

Some beautiful creatures, but extremely limited information. The shop was all stuffed animals and souvenir junk. No books, no pamphlets, and no postcards! Seems to me they are missing some great educational opportunities.

The top anemone is a reflection on the surface of the tank. This thing was at least 18” across. 

I’ve already posted about the wonderful evening of barbeque (Aussie style), great comapny, and the urban version of a starry sky, so for a brief moment, I am all caught up!

Revelations

Just returned from my first Barbie - no shrimp, but excellent lamb and a host of other yummies.

Looked up in the sky and realized - Orion is upside down! Duh!!

And I finally found someone who could identify which stars constituted the southern cross, and saw it for the first time. Now will Stills and Nash get out of my head ?!?

Epiphanies from earlier in the day:

Fleets of Ti and carbon ridden by spandex and logo-infested jerseys = weekend warriors of Australia.

Swans here are black, while cormorants have a lot of white on them.

Developing left-handed reactions as a driver of a car does not translate into developing left-handed reactions as a cyclist.

Both motorists and cyclists in Melbourne respect bike lanes (of which there are many, at least on major roads) and everyone obeys traffic signals. That may just be a first impression, but it was a positive one!!

There are far fewer F-bombs uttered in Australia (or at least in Tasmania and Melbourne).

Currently, only 3 in 4 Aussies are actually born in Australia. At dinner tonight, it was 2 out of 5, though the other 3 have been residents for decades.

Artists are not like other people.

There’s a lot more ink in these parts, possibly an artifact of the its being summer and there is a lot more visible skin, or a nod to Aboriginal culture, or youth culture (though plenty of the body art is sported by people in my age bracket), or casual culture, or FU culture in general.

Development interests and green interests are generally at odds. (Not exactly revelatory)

Last two days in Tassie

A necessity in many parts of Tasmania.

The species on which our camoflaged cell phone towers must be based. Many are far less luxuriant than this speciment. Norfolk Pines (Araucaria heterophylla) are indiginous. Who knew?

Hold for plant unit: flowers, fruiting, and spent fruits. Eucalyptus species of some description.

Summer holiday is over and kids are back in school. Looks like early morning recess, or phys ed class. Same sounds as at home. Happiness!

Very large hermit crab along the beach at the Bay of Fires.

More mollusks.

Non-granitic rocks. Basalt? Anyone? Found this crinkly layered specimen along one beach of black boulders at the Bay of Fires.

Lots more sand-blown dunes up here (Bay of Fires) than down in Bicheno, though the fine sand looks and feels similar. More gorgeousness!

Oh dear. Overcast. Still rather attractive though, don’t you think?

More of the same. As Alena would say, “good life!”

Richmond Bridge 1825 - oldest known stone arch bridge in Australia. You guessed it - built by convicts.

Vantage from across the Coal River, so called because (crappy) coal was collected along its banks, and eventually mined a bit in the region until it was determined to be of too poor quality to be of any industrial use.

A view along the lane in Richmond, the most touristy but also beautiful of the towns I visited along the Heritage Highway. Overnight at Mrs. Currie’s B&B - charming, good breakfast, and all of the aforementioned legit and poached internet connection.

Yes, I know, typical Anndy photo. Looking out through the window of the Episcopal Church in Richmond. Not as grand as the old Catholic House of Worship, but also devoid of graphic paintings of the Stations of the Cross.

The Gaol (jail) in Richmond is quite well done up as a musuem (of incarceration) and one wall was left to show the unusual masonry. This one’s for you, Todd!

Miniature Hobart of 1869. Some guy’s 9-year project to reconstruct all of the buildings plus 900 little people engaged in all manner of activites. (Yes, ALL manner.) Signage included photographs of views of Modern Hobart taken at the locations that the various miniatures depicted. I thought it was charming.!

Vinyard where I treated myself to lunch. Off across the fields to the right is an enormous radiotelescope and the Grote Reber Museum, the existence of which I only learned from my waitress, and too late to schedule a visit before my flight to Melbourne. Thought of the Pauls, Martenis and Rosen.

Not like American airports! Kept my clothes on, kept liquids (including a bottle of water) packed where they belong, no radiation scans, short lines, nice security folks, and no jetways. Also no photgraphs of the planes or walkways to the plane, but I’ll allow them that.

Good bye, Tassie! I hope to be back some time. You’re beautiful and laid back and there is an entire 2/3 of the state I still haven’t visited!

Monday, the best day so far

Early morning beach walk in Bicheno. Saw the blowhole, a structure where incoming waves are channeled under a rock and through a hole in the top to make a spout, sometimes 5 meters high. The winds were low and the waves were small, so the spout was too, but still pretty cool. 

I learned that a “track” was not the habitat of the nylon and spandex attired, but means either a footpath or a trail. We followed the Bicheno shoreline version several kilometers before breakfast.

Back at the backpacker hotel I had a chat with Ena, a young Japanese woman I saw pouring over map. I had noticed her the previous evening because of the feathers in her long hair  and the fascinatingly flowy and colorful clothing she was wearing. I Invited her to join Veronica and my planned trip to Freycinet NP and she was ecstatic to have a plan for the day and some company. She looked like I have felt for the past few days.

Veronica drove up more beautiful coast to the Freychinet Peninsula and National Park. We followed a well-groomed and easily navigable track up though the eukalyptus forest and to the Wineglass Bay lookout. Again, the route was measured by “return time,” rather than linear distance, but it did mention that we ascended 400 meters and 300 stairs. The steps were natural stones arranged to make an uneven staircase.  The stones are like granite (pink feldspar and white quartz, black mineral) but had no mica, so I think the rock type has another name. Little help? Lichens on surfaces darkened many areas of the boulders, and the overall effect was very pretty. 

There were lots of enormous, precarious looking boulders perched on outcrops over the trail, and fascinating erosion patterns looked like enormous finger holes in a bowling ball. Others made caves.

Ena reminded me of one or two friends from the very early ‘70’s who tryly were flower children. Perhaps she’s actually a Buddist, but she seems to have a connection with the natural world that is unlike that of anyone I currently know. She touched every tree, collected leaves, branches, seed pods and feathers (the latter she put in her long braids), and when she lay on the beach, she seemed to absorb the energy of the Universe. It was fascinating to watch, and even though there was a substantial language barrier, we had a great time together. When she told me she was from Hiroshima it surprised me, but of course the city has risen fromthe ashes. My association with the name is still stuck in 1945.

We reached the lookout to see lots of photo-snapping tourists (including us) and the beach below us. A sign had said it was one of the “10 most beautiful beaches in the world,” but there was no citation.

I convinced Veronica and Ena to walk the extremely steep track “1.5 hours return” down to the water. The beach was truly magnificent - fine white sand, turquoise water, orange crusted rocks, and a mountain backdrop. Chilly wind and ambient 21°C temp dissuaded me from swimming but some intrepid folks were inthe water.

We shared lunch I packed and some food Ena brought (stir-fry with veggies and rice and avocado which she wrapped in Nori), after which V and I walked along the windswpt sand, noting all sorts of biological wonders along the shore.

In addition to lots of shore irds, including some remarkably un-skittish oyer catchers, there were Interesting unidentified clear blobs atop bright blue blobs with blue tentacles. The blobs (jellies of some species) were only a few centimeters across, but some of the tentacles stretched over 30 cm. No photos, becuase they just looked like shrivled blue lumps of plastic. Gorgeous colors!

While Ena meditated, I walked to end of beach, about 1km(?) to a tiny peaceful cove where wind was less evident. I was thinking it felt like avgood spot to camp, then saw a tent and a tatted dreadlocked couple. He was shooting with a fancy camera, she lying on the beach reading. Later on the hike out I crossed paths with two groups of three hiking in with full packs, a couple, and a Taiwanese guy who had spent the previous night at the backpacker hotel. All were heading in to camp and hike the peninsula loop (3 days recommended). I want to do that!!!

 On our return trip, I wanted to hike the smaller loop trail (of course I did) that was clocked at 3.5 hours, but my companions preferred to head back to car.

V wanted to walk the other half of the Bichonet beach loop so we could get to the fairy penguin rookery and see the birds as they returned from their daily fishing expedition to feed their checks. Ena had said she’d seen them the day before between 4-5 o’clock. We walked the 1.5 km (we checked a printed map) to Governor’s island crossing a sandbar at low tide, around 5:30. We sat on the windy bluffs amid the penguin burrows housing invisible-to-us penguin chicks until about 6:45, knowing full well the penguin parents would not return until dusk, which would be about 8 or 8:30. Headed home before the sandbar was inundated, watching the gorgeous light on the gorgeous landscape. We never saw the penguins.

This was the best day so far. 

 

Sunday, I think

For those of you who require chronological organization, you are out of luck. This is a report of what I experienced 5 days ago.

I checked in Saturday night to the Norfolk Bay Convict Station B&B in Taranna, so named becasue it was built in 1832 to service the convict railway, a human-powered train designed to transport goods (especially coal) fromPort Arthur to Norfolk Bay via an overland shortcut rather than sailing them through treacherous waters around theTasman Penninsula. Etchings from that time show a precarious track with ill-balanced cars on a steep grade. What fun.

The Innkeepers, Layton and Lowella, appeared to be refugees from the 60’s, having become inkeepers after years in academia that were so stressful Layton had a heart attack. Dealing with providing delicious home-grown organic food to an endless stream of demanding guests in an ancient building in a land plagued by drought and swept by fires seemed less challenging. They both appeared to love their jobs, which made for a very pleasant stay.

Sunday breakfast was ample and delicious. I was able to borrow L&L’s computer (a PC of some vintage with a split keyboard that had a hump in the middle like the back seat floor of a car) to check in with Glenn about the blizzard. Between his sequential photos out the back window, and Matty’s time lapse of the storm in Waltham, I got a pretty good sense of what I was missing - or not missing at all. From such a distance though, the community comeraderie of sharing the job of shoveling and turning the challenge into a multi-day social event did have its appeal. And snowshoeing through that would have been a blast!!

While at breakfast I struck up a conversation with the couple at the adjacent table, and via a circuitous route through midernist cuisine, El Bouli, and Alinea, I learned that their son, Nick Bennett, is the executive chef at Trocadero in Melbourne. Maybe Carey and I will get there for a meal before I leave Melbourne. We’ll see what percs name-dropping gets us.

After a quick walk on the dock for a view of the inlet in the rain, I packed up and headed down the road to the tasmanian Devil Conservation Center. The center has several dozen disease-freedevils, among other indiginous fauna. Part of the mission of the Center is to increase the population of Tassie devils that are not infected with the facial cancer that has plagued the population, transmitted as it is by bites to the face, incurred during fights over food, mating, and territorial activity (thought they are fairly social animals who share their food as well as wrestle for it.) I learned that the cancer is not viral, but is infectious becuase devils immune systems do not recognize the bite-injected cancer cells as foreign, and therefore do not fight them off. It is an imune system deficiency that is not, apparently, a result of inbreeding. Extemely weird biology!

The guide who explained all this also showed us a skull, and the shape of the cranium was remarkably reminiscent of that of an opossum (the virginiana kind we have waddling around at home) if opossum crania had room for ginormous masseter muscles. Marsupials are just plain weird.

The park is set up such that there is a schedule of talks and feedings at the various cages, fields, and enclosures on the premesis. After the devil intro, I traipsed after a gaggle of families with small children to participate int the kangaroo feeding. Up to that point I had primarily seen the fauna of Tasmania as road kill, but at the conservation center I was able to get up close and personal (they were eating right our of my hand!) with Forrester kangaroos (not actually native to Tassie), Bennett’s wallabies, and  a slightly shorter-tailed darker version called pademelons.  I’m not sure which were more appealing, the lng-tailed hoppers or the similarly-sized little kids feeding and chasing them.

The next “event” was a devil feeding. It was not participatory.They are scavengers in the wild, so feeding entailed one of the conservation biologists tossing them a hunk of roo.

When all was said and done, there was nothing left, neither meat nor bone nor fleck of fur.

I saw some sleeping quolls and somnolent parrots, then went to the “flight show.” This was the most showy, scripted program of the morning, and featured two species of parrot, both long-lived introduced birds that have populated the island from escapees of the pet trade. One parrot had learned to collect coins held out in the audience, and then to said audiences delight, returned the coins to each individual at the end of the show. We were also treated to interviews with an adult and two juvenile frogmouths - very cool birds, just wierd enough to be Australian natives.

The morning had exhibited highly changeable, intermittently showery weather which continued as I drove to the Coal Miner’s Heritage site. This was another collection of ruins where rally low grade (lignite, maybe? No science signage since the focus all around the area is on history) coal was mined, by convicts of course. The site had no maps beyond one etched, with no trail names, in metal at the site entrance. Trails were unmarked, and distances (again, at the entrance) were given in “return walking time.” I found this decidedly useless. In some locations there were plaques indicating what had been there (they didn’t correspond to anything on the aforementioned etched map) and included contemporary quotes about philosphy, conditions in the mines, or behavior of convicts. I thought the quotes were the most interesting aspect of the site, though the views, once the sun came out mid-afternoon, were beautiful.

It was disconcerting wandering along the trails which had little to distinguish the unless they included one of the ruined buildings, but I bravely (or foolishly) hiked around a bit, then adopted the mantra “Bay left return” once I got out of the woods and hoped to navigate my way back to the carpark. Eventually, I was successful.

One other good thing about the site was that I finally got cell reception at high point of hill and I was able to talk to Glenn. Hearing his voice was a huge psychological boost, and changed the color of the day. Travelling alone is lonely, and absurdly quiet! While I was happy to be warm and near water, I missed the camaraderie of cleaning up after the storm.

I headed north off the Tasman peninsula through the fire-ravaged areas I’d traversed on my way in a few days before. This time I was able to expand my concentration beyond white-knuckling the steering wheel and navigationg the hairpin turns to note that what I though were only burned forests actually contained burned houses and other buildings. What I had failed to note earlier was that these building had been completely annihilated, so unless there was a chimney left standing, they were invisible to me among the charred tree trunks. One of the patrons of one of the B&B’s I stayed in said she was there just to support the community, and had chosen to spend her few days of vacation in Tasmania for that reason. I hope the community can recover, becuase it really is a wonderful place.

Once I left the peninsula through Eagleneck, I drove toward Sorrell and the major east coast road, the A3. The speed limit is 100 kph on hilly, narrow, extremely serpentine, two-way roads that often skirt cliffs. It’d be great for my crazy biker and motor cycle riding friends with a death wish. At one point a group of 5 motorcycles passed me going at least 120, then two more passed on a blind curve so they could catch their buddies. Crazy shit!

Though treacherous, the route was beautiful, with spectacular coastal views, mudflats and turquoise water, cove after cove of white sand beaches, blues and greens of the sea decorated with breakers along the shore and white caps when the wind was up, then rolling cow and sheep pastures, hay fields, and patches of forest.

The miniscule towns were few and far between, and when I drove through them, there were no lights, and no stop signs. There were no street lights either, so driving the roads at night would certainly be lethal. The variable terrain kept drive interesting, and the character of road required full attention most of the time, so the fact that there were only two radio stations (one a terribly dull classical station, and one a top-100 station that was going gaga over the upcoming Grammys - it was still Saturday in the US) didn’t bother me and I didn’t get bored. Much as at home, the headline news never altered - 9 dead in northeast US snowstorm (details never forthcoming), 2 named in Aussie cricket doping scandal, Grammys tomorrow. 

I pulled over to visit a few beaches when I got back to the coast and closer to Becheno, my final destination. I took several short beach walks becasue they were too beautiful to skip.

In Bicheno, I arrival at the Backpacker Hotel, and as I was getting out of my car a middle aged woman offered me her spot because, she said,  everyone else was so young she was going to move on. I said I had a bunk reserved, so she decided to stay. She accompanied me to the end of town, a two-block walk, to pick up bottles of wine for the next two nights. We chatted pleasantly for a few hours over nibbling dinner and a tasty Tassie pinot noir. We made plans to take an early morning beach walk and find the Bicheno blowhole, wondering if the couple of dozen 20-somethings would allow us to get to sleep before the wee hours. It turned out we had nothing to fear. Most of the kids hit the hay before we did, and several groups were breakfasted and packed by 7AM. I knew I was not in the US any more!

Current update

Here’s the view from where I’m staying in Melbourne, at the flat of a friend (the delightful and vivacious Carey Lai) of our neighbor and friend in Newton, Claire Nivola.

In these views it looks like what I imagine Florida to look like, but in fact, it looks much like other American cities but with a lot of very funky, very modern glass and steel (and other unidentifiable building materials) architecture that dwarfs to original sandstone and brick Victorian edifices. I attempted to snap some photos from the tram, or from the street, but none, as yet, is worth posting. I’m sure there are good photos of the crazy University buildings, new office towers, and outrageous apartment buildings and hotels if you look up Melbourne architecture on the interweb.

Carey and I spent part of the day at the enormous Victoria market, which reminded me of Reading Terminal Market in Philly, Pike Place Market in Seattle, and Haymarket in Boston, only bigger than all three combined.

We encountered a lot of quite good street musicians, both in the market and en route, as well as some decidedly unstable folks whose performances were of a more spontaneous nature.The guys below are two members of a group called Ganga Giris, and played very cool and ecelctic jazz-voodoo-I don’t know the genre music. The didgeridoo player amped his instrument, which was an interesting sound, and played a PVC-pipe tunable version as well as the traditional one he’s playing here.From the market my hostess and I wandered some of the laneways, Melbourne’s iconic pedestrian-only streets and arcades with all sorts of cafes and shops and locals and tourists. Shu-Yee would be disappointed that I didn’t buy a single thing, though we did stop and have a scrumptious iced mocha at a chocolate shop. The beverage had ice cream, cream, real chocolate syrup, real chocolate shavings, and some coffee in there somewhere to provide some liquidity. What a treat! That activity was fairly emblematic of a day spend repaying the calorie debt I imagine (I have a great imagination) I incurred while I was subsisting on apples, yogurt, and cheese sandwiches for a few days in Tasmania. 

While Carey rested up, I met another friend of a friend, this time a former student of Bob Eccles with whom Bob and his wife, Anne, had become friendly and kept up a relationship over the decades and kilo-miles. My rendezvous with Mike Vitale was in “The Tan,” the Melbourne Botanical Garden, where Mike could both visit with me and walk the black lab puppies he helps prepare to be trained as seeing eye dogs. We meandered through palm trees, eukalyptus groves, past something that might have been a baobab, and encountered a large broad-leafed tree that was in bloom and looked remarkably like a southern magnolia such as I’d seen in South Carolina. It was! There was also a spiraling cactus gardens with species I recognized from Arizona, and a host of waterfowl and shrubs that were from Mother England. I will need to go back in the next day or two to check out the National Herbarium and get a better handle on how the beautiful but far-flung collections are arranged.

Among the many discussion topics we covered as we meandered was that of the organization of the Aussie University system. All but two of the 39 universities in the country are under the control of the Australian government. Any particular course of study, regardless of the institution, has the same tuition. The government pays the tuition for each specific course of study for a specific number of students at each specific university. Therefore, each university accepts only a finite number of students in each course (i.e. major for us Yanks). Every aspiring unie student takes a series of exams and recieves a national ranking based on those scores. Each student also selects several possible courses of study, and the choice of university for that course, and ranks them. Just like in medical residency matching in the US, students are accepted to a course in a university based on the student’s national ranking and their chosen course of study. There are no interviews, essays, or applications. It’s all done by the numbers, and resultant admissions used to be posted all at once in the newspaper (imagine the lines to get that issue!) but are now published electronically.

I guess in a way that is similar to everywhere in the world except the US. Students have to fulfill prerequisites as high school students in order to be admitted into particular university courses. So by 10th grade, kids have to determine what they are going to do for the rest of their lives. With all it’s flaws and the Peter Pan principle it perpetuates, I prefer our system of university education. The college admissions industry, however, could use a serious overhaul!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

History Day, Continued

Since my last partial installment, I have flown across the Bass Straight to Melbourne where I am staying in the flat of a delightful friend of a friend (thank you for playing matchmaker, Claire Nivola!!) I have chosen to spend the morning finishing this entry, at least, before taking off to the market and the ”Tan,” the Melbourne Botanic Garden, where I will meet another FoaF for a walk.

So, back to Port Arthur. After the grisly descriptions of the tour guide, I decided to firt visit the uphill protion of the site where were housed the members of the clergy and their families, next to a large sandstone church. Becuase the settlement eventually included wives and children of clergymen and a few of the military officers, real houses and a large formal garden were built to house them all. The approach to this area was up a long road beautifully shaded by venerable English oaks. In the very English garden there were totally recognizable formal flower beds, a fountain, and some even more venerable (evolutionarily) tree ferns. The latter was perhaps the only native plant in the gardens, though I wouldn’t swear to that.

After poking around the mid-19th century compound, I headed back to the waterfront for the boat tour of the port, part of the price of admission. We caught a glimpse of the Puer Peninsula where the young boys were kept to separate them from the nefarious influences of the adult male prisoners (though they were shipped over the water daily so they could do their slave labor in the boatyards or wherever else in the settlement) and the Isle of the Dead, the community grave yard. Boys were forced to bathe daily in the Antarctic waters off the peninsula, and escape was challenging, at best, given that the closest landfall was the Antarctic ice sheet about 800 km away. Nevertheless, death by hypothermia probably looked preferrable to 100 lashes, meted out so that if the prisoner looked about to expire, the punishment was paused long enough for the person to heal before recieving the rest.

On Will Baker’s advice, I paid a fee and disembarked for a tour of the Isle, where I saw my first wild wallaby. Yay!! I also got a tour of the unmarked, lower elevetaion site where the convicts, some 900 of them, were buried, and the more lofty end of the island where elaborately carved stones marked the graves of the military personel and members of the clergy and their families who met their demise at Port Arthur.

There were graves of infants and children and sarcophagi of officers, and I am frankly amazed that anyone survived very long at all in the conditions described by the site personel. There were physicians on the site, and it sounds like one of their jobs was to keep prisoners alive so that they could complete their sentences, some of which entailed 12 hours a day on the treadmill. Unbeknownst to me, the term literally means a mill (gristmill, in this case) powered by 100 men, all of whom were manacled by 16 pounds of leg irons, essentially “climbing the steps” of the mill wheel. At least one guy’s ankles were so damaged in the course of his sentence, his feet were rendered useless, and he hobbled about on canes. Charming.

Attempted escapees were not treated well. Nor were the insolent, untrustworthy, or were otherwise less than model prisoners, and we were led to believe that was most of them. Yet they were rarely hung, a punishment perhaps considered to merciful given what bad guys they were considered to be. 

This is the mill that also included banks of prison cells. Some of the brouhaha that led to the “reforms” to the sensory deprivation mode of confinement were due to reports of “unnatural acts” perpetrated by the convicts on one another. This distubed the finer minds back in London, because clearly such behavior was morally outrageous. Confining prisoners in such a way that they had no contact with one another (even going so far as to their being hooded as they were escorted to the “exercise yard” once daily so they could pace like lions in little pit) should clearly cure them of such bestial tendancies. Right.

The day had begun quite overcast, but the sun came out by early afternoon, and I was able to tour the labirynth of the hospital and military installation (the most beautiful vantage point on the site) in glorious sunshine, and check out the shipyard (mostly archaeological footprints with signage, and the remains of a lime kiln). Fotweary, I headed out to make my way to the Norfolk Bay Convict Station by way of some short walks to see ocean cliffs, a tunnel arch carved by the sea, and some flora, such as this Epicarus marginata, that are endemic to Tasmania. Yay island biogeography!

History Day - Port Arthur, etc.

I am sitting in the lovely shaded gravel-paved car park (parking lot) of Mrs. Currie’s B&B in Richmind, poaching an internet connection. I’m going to try to keep my posts chronological, relying on (gasp) hand-written notes to remind me of what I did where and when.

I woke up Saturday morning to the sound of the sea lapping just over the dunes outside my cottage, and decided to go for a jog along the beach because it was still two hours until breakfast. It was odd and wonderful to have no headphones, and to hear only the strange avian calls and incoming tide lapping on the beach.There was no man-made trash on the strand, and the few shells that threatened my bare feet were easily avoided. I also chose to dodge some strange gelatenous masses that were probably harmless denizens of the deep, but had a pretty strong “ick” factor.

If I find out what they are, I’ll fill you in. 

Breakfast was substantial in the traditional English school, cereal, yogurt, fruit, eggs, beasn, grilled mushrooms and tomato, and for those so inclined, bacon and sausage. The bread and jams were homemade and delicious. I was tempted to keep eating, but as many of you will know, intake of anything solid before 10AM is ordinarily beyond me, so I exercised a modicum of self restraint.

My first POI was Port Arthur Historic Site about 20 minutes away. I had my trepidations when I pulled in and found tier after tier of overflow car parks and bus parking, but even at 11AM on a summer Sunday, the place was sparsely populated. I figured I would spend an hour or two touring the ruins of the 19th century convict colony, but finally left at about 4:30PM. 

The visitor’s center very cleverly presents each visitor with a playing card. The card matches an actual individual who inhabited the site, and whose story is told in the musuem beneath the main entrance. I had to search for my 2 of hearts, which matched a young lad (aged 9) who was sentenced to transportation for stealing a handkerchief from a London lady. That must have been one damn fine handkershief, given that the boy served 7 years of hard (hard to a degree that I find unfathomable) labor at Port Arthur.

All visitors are booked for an introductory tour, and I learned from chatting with other visitors that no two tours are alike. Each tourguide chooses to talk about whatever details he or she finds most ingteresting, while giving a general overview of the history of the settlement. My young woman talked mostly about the Special Prison, where reformers, including Jeremy Bentham, conceiver of the panopticon back in Merry Olde Englande, decided that physical punishment (such as lashes, up to 100, with a cat o’ nine-tails) should be replaced by solitary confinement. Prisoners were held in 5’ x 8’ cells, in silence and total darkness, on a diet of bread and water, for up to 3 weeks. The Insane Asylum was constructed next door to this prison. Fancy that. I won’t go into a lot of details about the history and construction of the site buildings, but if you are interested, the Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur,_Tasmania) gives a pretty fair overview and the photos are better than mine.

About to lose my internet. More later!

So I guess this is Day 2 (Warning: long!)

I’m going to work backwards through the day and hope that I both remember the day’s events and stay awake long enough to report them. just spent a couple of hours sharing bottles of South Australian Rosemont wine (shiraz and merlot, for those who care) with two retired couples currently residing at the B&B where I have a beach house for one night on the western coast of the Tasman Penninsula. One couple is from Western Australia, and one from New South Wales. One woman attended a one-room school house with one teacher and 14-20 other children when she was in grades k-8. Her husband has driven trucks, raised chucks (chickens) and done a variety of jobs until his retirement 5 years ago. From the 4 delightfully friendly, open, interesting, and funny people I learned such valuable information as, “to the Aussies from other states, people from Queensland are called banana benders, South Australians are referred to as crow eaters, residents of Western Australia are sand gropers, and folks from Victoria, being from so far south, are referred to as Mexicans. Though I will admit to having missed ocassional words here and there, I think I am doing quite nicely following the conversation in their language. On my way across the lawn to my abode, I was finally able to see stars in the sky as this is the first even partially clear night since my arrival. I was expecting to be totally disoriented and to recognize nothing, but the first things I saw were Orion and Taurus in the north amidst a lot of other stellar nonsense. In my brief viewing, I recognized no constellations in the southern sky (the only otehr area visible) but saw a lot of really bright  stars above the gum tree canopies. Beautiful!

I met Jeff and Lisa (the sand gropers) when I finished my sunset walk along the beach after I had made and eaten some supper. I saw them sitting and drinking wine in the diminishing daylight and chatted them up (as they say). That led to the convivial hours that followed. We watched the sky together for a while, noted that another fire was burning to the north, and the smoke was drifting south an fuzzing up the sun. Very sad.

Because it is the height of the summer season, and this is a 3-day weekend (I don’t know why) I did not have a lot of choices when I decided yesterday to begin my exploration about as far south as I could go in Tasmania. Consequently, I ended up with a lovely two-bedroom fully equipped cottage, a sandune and 25 meters from a beautiful semicircular white sand beach. Tough luck. But I DO wish I had someone(s) with whom to share it. I’m not even here long enough to make use of all the rooms!

I drove here via a couple of natural POI’s, fascinating erosion-generated rock formations called the Tessallated Pavement and power-of-the-sea phenomena named respectively the Tasmanian Arch and the Devil’s Kitchen. The former was one end of a very long (maybe 1.5-2 miles?) white sand beach, which I walked as the sea-breeze was in full mid-afternoon force and kicking up some nice breakers. The beach was desserted when I set out, but half a dozen surfers and a couple of dog walkers materialized on my return leg. I was wishing I could telport all my blizzard-expecting family and friends here to take off the chill. I think I’m beginning to understand why they call this place “Oz.” (It really is Oz, not Aus, as I first suspected when I heard it pronounced by a native). It is surreal!

En route to points south, I drove through many kilometers of charcoal covered trees, the results fo the recent spate of bushfires that raged through the area last month. I saw only one man-made structure that had been destroyed by the blaze, and a remarkable number of houses (this area is quite sparsely populated, but percentage-wise…) that were completely unscathed and surrounded by verdant vegetation in the midst of burned trees. The burned areas were not all contiguous, but I imagine that some sort of fire control measures were exercised to protect people’s homes so thoroughly.

Prior to wending my way down along the Derwent and onto the Penninsula, I visted MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) north of Hobart. If you are unfamiliar with this unique institution, check out Richard Flanagan’s article about David Walsh, its creator, in the January 21 issue of The New Yorker: Tasmanian Devil. I will say at the outset that I did not enjoy the museum, per se, though I found it incredibly compelling, extremely imaginative, and literally unique. I was discomfitted from the moment I entered the first gallery (one is instructed to work one’s way from the bottom up to the fourth level) which was enormous, dark, labyrinthine and filled with various kinds of frequently disturbing art works and sound installations. I will admit that, having negotiated the drive, being alone, being awake since 3AM, and being far from home had me predisposed to disequilibrium, but having talked to other people (including my wine companions) my reaction was not at all unusual.

There was one installation that I actually actively liked, and the only one I could even pretend to understand. It was a room-sized intermittent curtain of water sprayed from jets two stories up such that the water spelled words. The words dissipated into normal spread-out drops as they fell. The words evoked topics from news headlines, and the whole thing was meant to represent the rapidity and mutability of the information overload to which we are all subjected in the digital age. I learned later that there is  Google feed into the controls of the jet streams such that the words reflect current topics in the news. Pretty cool!

Much of the art works, sculptures, paintings, videos, material and sound “installations,” depicted or evoked dsitrurbing themes, or treated serious material (abuse, death, sex) in an ironic or brutal manner. What irked me most was that other inherently beautiful or intriguing objects, such as ancient greek, Egyptian, or Venetian artifacts, or abstract works that had potentially cheerful themes, were all tainted by the darkness (literal and figurative) of the entire museum. I really wished I had someone with whom to discuss the experience. I think it was one worth having, but it wasn’t what I would call “fun.”

The museum is situated on lovely grounds overlooking the Derwent River, with all sorts of nifty architecture and landscaping design elements, all non-traditional, of course. One drives up a hill through a vineyard to get to the place, and this being high summer, all the grapes are getting ripe, so all the vines are shrouded in white cheese cloth-looking stuff to keep the critters off the goods. 

So now we’re back to this morning, which was spent solidfying driving directions (Avis was out of GPS units. Curses!) and booking the next few night’s accommodations. I will not have internet access for at least tomorrow night.

I hope the “worst storm since 1978” doesn’t prove to be that awful and that you are all safe, warm, and have power food and water. And I wish all for whom it is relevant a happy snow day!

 

The real Day 1

Who among you remembers the days when travelling meant finding and figuring out the vaguaries of foreign payphones, searching for change in the appropriate currency, and speaking briefly lest the change run out? Neither do I. Even I have become accustomed to instant communication, wherever, whenever, and with whomever I wish to communicate. Toward the end of making that possible for me here on the other side of the world, I spend some time this morning at various phone stores in the Hobart CBD (Central Business District for the acronomically challenged) comparing minutes and megabytes and domestic vs foreign calls so as to get the most economical SIM card from a company that actually provides service where I will be travelling. It turns out that with the exception of Hobart, most of Tasmania is ignored by telecommunications satellites. Nevertheless, I now have an Aussie phone with prepaid minutes that will work some places, sometimes, with some people. Yay.

While Lindisfarne (the neighborhood (suburb? town?) where I am staying across the Dewent River from the afroementioned CBD) is nothing to write home about, the Hobart waterfront and neighborhoods spreading uphill from there are quite beautiful, especially on a warm sunny day. I visited the Maritime Museum becasue it was across the street from the Tasmanian Museum of Art and History which was closed for repairs. It proved to be good way to gain an inkling of the evolution of Hobart from its discovery by Europeans in the 17th century through the convict settlements during “Transportation,” through its heyday as a whaling center, the development of its fisheries, and on to its reputation as a yachting mecca. There was no mention of the eradication of the indiginous population, so I knew I wasn’t home. Such an oversight would no longer be tolerated in a public museum in the US.

After lunch I finally got up my gumption to pick up the car I reserved and drove across town to meet some friends of friends who snowbird in Hobart, spring and fall in Boston, and spend their other summer in Chappaquiddick. I didn’t hit anybody, didn’t turn into on-coming traffic, and only turned on the windshield wipers instead of the turn indicator 80% of the time. We watched some sailboat races from their balcony overlooking the river, walked the lovely artsy parts of town I hadn’t yet seen, ate some local oysters and apricots, and had wonderful screen-free conversation. I think that is only possible when one’s company are octogenarians. I hope my intelligence and stamina increase to their levels by the time I’m their age! 

I drove back “home” over the bridge to watch the sun set over Mt. Wellington. Because, alas, there are two new bush fires burning to the NW of the city, the sky was particularly dramatic.

Must go make some choices as to where to go next. South? East? North? Stay tuned!

I Have Arrived!

SinceI have just arrived and  don’t yet have any adventures to report, feel free to skip this entry.

Tried as I might to stay awake until a reasonable bedtime hour Tasmania time, I crashed while the sun was still up (7:30 PM. I LOVE summer!) and woke up at 3AM. Some of you may recognize that that may constitute a complete time shift for me, but I am hopeful that I will soon be keeping the same hours as the rest of the Aussies.

Here are a few stats:

Distance travelled: 15, 611.6 km = 9700.6 miles (from Grand Central Terminal NYC to B&B in Lindesfarne, Tasmania)

Total travel time: 32 hours 28 minutes 

Total time hanging out in airports waiting for planes and/or luggage: 9 hrs. 3 minutes

Number of in-flight movies watched : 5

Number of in flight liters of water consumed: 6.5

Number of new tree species seen thus far: 9

Number of new bird species identified: 1 (Silver Gull, Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae) 

observations thus far vis a vis US/AUS Similarities: airports, language, architecture (remember, I haven’t been to Sydney yet), supermarket brands, crap available in airport shops, range of clothing styles 

US/AUS Differences: driving side, language, some vegetation, climate, season

First impression is that Aussies really are as laid back as their reputation indicates. Time will tell.

3 hours until breakfast. Nap time!

Koalas, Kangaroos, and Kookaburras, oh my!

If you’re reading this, you’ve found what I intend to be the annals of my sojourn to the island continent. The idea of going to Australia was formulated several years decades ago when my college roommate Cindy and I would imagine traveling to far-off climes. For those of you born after 1972 or so, world travel used to be the exception rather than the norm among 20- and 30-somethings, so it has taken me a while to act on my idea. I depart for Hobart, Tasmania, via LAX and Melbourne, in 4 days. Stay tuned!