Rachel and Mike in Australia

No trip across Australia is complete without crossing the Nullarbor. The Nullarbor is a flat, almost treeless plain (name derived from Latin for ‘no trees’) that stretches for 1200 km from east to west and is the world’s largest piece of limestone.

Trees thinning as we approach the Nullarbor Plain

Crossing the Nullarbor remains a feat celebrated by tourist memorabilia (we’re proud owners of a magnet) as even with paved roads it is a bit daunting to see the signs signaling 100-200 km between towns…and towns out here are just roadhouses, which are gas stations, restaurants, mini-marts, and hotels/campervan parks all in one. The settlements historically consisted of one family and children attended school over the radio.

The day we were setting out for our Nullarbor crossing, the Ranger at Cape Arid National Park warned us that it was supposed to get hot the following day — up to 44C. We were a bit worried at how well our eastern european heritage and the 20 year-old van would handle such a high temperature.

46C is no fun!

Never ones to shy away from a challenge, we rose early the next morning and set out. The temperature never got above about 38C, so we thought we had survived the worst heat of the trip unscathed. Apparently the Ranger’s forecast was a few days off because the heat caught up with us. Two days later the thermometer in the shaded cab of the van peaked at 46C (115F)! We were using a 12L carboy for drinking and cooking water and it typically lasted 3 days or so. In 46C, it lasted only one. Between the two of us, we drank ~10L of water and 2.5 L of juice over the course of the day. Luckily, it was a dry heat so putting cold cooler-water soaked towels on our head and neck provided some relief.

Kangaroos remind us a lot of deer. They are most active dusk until dawn and have an unfortunate habit of getting hit by cars. Initially, all our kangaroo sightings were road kill. This was sobering enough for us to make every effort to be finished driving by sundown. On several hikes we managed to get pretty close to some roos. We started a hike in Kosciusko National Park around 3 pm, which I thought would be too early in the afternoon to see any roos (sundown was around 8:30 pm). Boy was I wrong! We had barely been on the trail for 5 minutes when we startled 3 or 4 nearby roos out of their sleep. We watched them hop away and started to continue on. We looked out across the valley and saw that our presence had apparently disturbed more roos than we thought. There was a whole mob of roos hopping across the valley. They just seemed to keep coming. We must have seen at least 100 roos. It was an amazing sight right out of National Geographic. It inspired me to try and capture some roo footage to share with all of you. There were several attempts, the best of which is below…but suffice it so say, I don’t anticipate to receive any job offers from National Geographic.

The last Australian phenomenon that we really enjoyed on our drive was that of ‘Big Things.’ We were first introduced to the concept of Big Things when we went to a screening of the film Big Dreamers at the Australian Embassy in DC. The film is a documentary on the building of the Giant Golden Gumboot in Tully, Australia.

The biggest Big Thing we saw.

Tully’s economy was mainly based on sugarcane farming and when less-expensive Brazilian sugar hit the Australian market, the town’s economy didn’t fair well. Some members of the local Rotary Club decided to give the town’s economy a boost by increasing tourism by erecting a giant Golden Gumboot (in honor of Tully being the wettest town in Australian–it received 7.9 m of rain in 1950). At the beginning of the movie we thought this was a novel, if not the most logical, idea. However over the course of the film, we learned that Big Things are all over Australia. The first one, the Big Banana in Coff’s Harbor, was built in 1964. Some towns embrace their Big things while in other towns the Big Things have fallen into disrepair. Big Dreamers made a special place in our hearts for Big Things, and we tried to stop at all those along the way. Some were better than others, but all provided a story, and what more can you really ask for?

The oddest Big Thing we saw.

We have the rest of our photos from the trip up on Google Maps now: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=100268592381595196808.000460d2637162a1f7cbd.

Driving across Australia, from Perth back to Sydney, reinforced the fact that Australia doesn’t do many things in a small way.  There are large distances between places (we logged ~4500 km total); ridiculously persistent insects; giant sweeping vistas of hills, plains, & beaches; and of course Aussie ‘Big Things.’

We flew out to Perth to pick up the campervan from “Team Westbound” and start our trip back east on January 3rd.  Luckily, we arrived in Perth around the same time as the dung beetle.  I am not enamored with insects in general and particularly not here, where so many are apt to kill you, but I quickly learned to love the dung beetle.  The dung beetle eats flies, and its arrival signals the end of fly season.  Australian flies look like American flies, and buzz like American flies, but they do not behave like American flies.

Flies on Mikey

They follow people and try again and again to land on your eyes and mouth, so you have to constantly wave your hand in your face to try and keep the dozen or so swarming flies off your face.  It can make you a bit crazy. We managed a truce with the flies during a hike in Cape Arid National Park—the flies rode our hats and backs for ~6 km, which was fine with us because they were leaving our faces alone…but why on earth flies would ride on us for a couple hours is a mystery to me.

Australian freight trucks also travel in sort of swarms.  Much of Australian freight is moved by what they call “road trains” which are multi-trailer tractor-trailers (something like 36-wheelers!).  They are particularly daunting because the highways are generally two-lane undivided highways without paved shoulders.  Depending on how strong and which direction the cross breeze is blowing, encountering a road train can mean a significant pull on your vehicle—scary!  We never saw more than two road trains in a row, but apparently, they stack up to 5 behind one another to improve fuel efficiency in some places.

The natural scenery in Australia is fantastic and we loved getting to experience so many beautiful landscapes on our trip.  The most striking was that of the Yeagarup sand dunes.  The sand dunes have blown inland from the ocean and are the largest landlocked dune system in the Southern Hemisphere.  The dunes are moving further inland at a rate of 4 meters per year and swallowing up the forest in the process.  On top of the dunes it looks like a desert scene straight out of the movies and at the edge there is this 100-foot tall wall of sand enveloping everything before it.  Truly an amazing sight.

Atop the sand dunes

Sitting on the edge of the wall of sand. The sand is taller than the tree tops!

I’ll write more about the trip in my next blog, and we’re working on getting photos from our trip up on this Google map of Australia: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=100268592381595196808.000460d2637162a1f7cbd

We made it back from spending Christmas in the States (where we enjoyed spending time with  family and friends and had a white Christmas in CT!) in time to celebrate New Year’s in Sydney.  We had a tasty dinner at a friends whose house has a view of the Harbor Bridge.  The fireworks definitely lived up to their reputation–they were phenomenal!

Sydney New Year's Eve fireworks

Watching the fireworks in Aimee's backyard

We’re starting 2009 with a truly Australian adventure.  Tomorrow morning we’re flying out to Perth (on the western coast of Australia).  We’re meeting up with a couple friends there who have driven their campervan from Sydney to Perth.  We’ll be driving the campervan back to Sydney.  Should be a beautiful trip, though parts of it will be pretty dull.  There will be 2-3 days of crossing the Nullarbor desert, which is mostly just flat, dry, and hot.  Mike’s a little nervous about how we’ll handle the heat after 2 weeks of freezing weather in the States and a couple days of the mild Sydney climate.  The temperature in Perth was supposed to be 41 C (you don’t have to do the conversion to know that’s freaking hot!).  We’ve rented a SPOT transmitter that should track our progress across the country at this website:

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0vyHzuXhXIJgPHbm5WvjM9aOA1DG1KGCq

Think cool thoughts for us!

Sydney Christmas tree

Things can feel a bit upside down Down Under sometimes.  Even though it’s summertime in the southern hemisphere, all the Christmas decorations are the traditional evergreen trees and poinsettias.  Lots of stores have Christmas trees and candles and holly in the windows and a fair number of houses in our neighborhood have lights decorating them (though they’re on for less hours since it doesn’t get dark until about 8 pm).  There is one notable exception to the traditional decorations in

Sydney.  Downtown in the financial district there are a number of Christmas banners hanging up emblazoned with an upside down possum.  We don’t know what the story with him is, but we’ve embraced the Christmas Possum and he has made a few Christmas deliveries for us!

Sydney-siders consider December 1st the first day of summer.  Since it’s summertime most Australians don’t do a big Christmas ham or turkey dinner.  A classic Australian Christmas dinner is shrimp on the barbie, and it sounds like many spend the day on the beach or by the pool.

The school year runs from February until mid-December, so Christmas falls during the summer vacation.  We’re told that most of Sydney clears out for the month of January, and we’re going to do the same.  We are flying to Perth where a campervan will be waiting for us that we’ll drive back to Sydney.  We should have some great photos to share from the trip!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Mike's New Year's Resolution is to get an outfit to match this guy.

As the East Coast has been socked in with cold weather this fall, we’ve been enjoying our first spring in Sydney.  Sydney is the equivalent latitude as Atlanta but being on the coast its climate seems to be closer to that in San Francisco, though people say it can get really hot.

Crimson Bottlebrush in our backyard. The parrots went to town on the seeds but haven't been back since it finished blooming.

Freezing weather and snow are rarities in Sydney, though the Blue Mountains (elevation 1100 m or 3600 feet) west of Sydney do sometimes see snow in July or August.  For a famously dry, desert country, it feels like it rains a lot.  We’ve gotten a good rain pretty much every week, which is good for the soil but makes drying laundry on the line difficult.  The temperature has been really up and down, so we end up with one 85F day followed by a 60F one.  Not attuned to the weather yet, we often end up either over or under dressed!  Though this year has been particularly bizarre, so I’m not sure experience would have helped much.  October 22nd was coldest October day since 1978, yet the mean temperature in October was slightly warmer than average.

Here's one of many plumeria trees in our neighborhood. They grow much better here than in a pot in Massachusetts!

Mike in front of a blooming Jacaranda tree.

Spring hasn’t felt as dramatic as it normally does and I’m not sure if its because we weren’t here for true winter or because things stay green all year long here or because in the city people don’t have large yards and most of what’s planted is succulents or shrubs.  There are some flowers we recognize from home (petunias) or from past travels (birds of paradise, plumeria) but much of it we don’t know.  There are a number of flowering trees that are pretty.  Jacaranda trees are the symbol of spring in Sydney and have small lavender flowers.  Apparently, the expression at Sydney University goes “by the time the jacaranda in the main quadrangle flowers, it’s too late to start studying for exams”.

I’m surprised how much the weather seems to influence my perception of time and season.  Though the dates were passing on the calendar and Christmas decorations were going up in stores, I wasn’t feeling the holiday spirit or that Christmas was coming.  When we stepped off the plane last weekend and the first gust of cold air hit me, I immediately thought, mmmm, feels like Christmas!

The fallen petals of this bougainvillea look like leaves and gave me a little taste of fall.

It’s funny how you learn things about home by living somewhere so far from it.  Being in Australia has reminded me what a sterilized culture modern day American is.  There are far fewer attempts in Sydney to separate oneself from the outdoors.  We were surprised in our first month or so here how cold Sydney felt.  The houses aren’t insulated the way homes in the US are and they don’t typically have central heat (electric radiators seem to be what most people use).  There are big gaps at the bases of two out of the three doors that lead to the outside.  And in one bathroom and one bedroom there are small windows that just have screens–there’s no glass.

Glass-less window. Other visible 'features' are the hole in the ceiling and the orange linoleum floor.

Granted that Sydney doesn’t usually get freezing weather, but considering how it felt in late spring, I would not want to hang out in that room in the dead of winter.  My first Australian purchases were a scarf, heavy sweatshirt, and a wool quilt, and I was very thankful for all of them on more than one occasion.

Houses in Sydney often don’t have A/C either.  Now that the weather has warmed up, we’re opening the windows frequently.  Unfortunately the two small windows that don’t have any glass are the only two windows in the house that have screens.  I think you could argue that in the US we are overly worried about separating ourselves from nature, but I’m still having a hard time understanding why, in a country that has some of the world’s deadliest insects, you wouldn’t put screens on your windows.  The lack of sealing has introduced us to some of the native fauna.  We’ve had quite a number of wild beasts wander into our house: flies, mosquitos, ants, regular cockroachs, flying cockroachs, spiders, beetles, caterpillars, a cat, lizards, slugs, mice, and rats in our house…and that’s in just 9 weeks and only the ones we’ve actually seen.

The ones that have mystified me the most and which prompted me to write this blog are the slugs.  I’m used to seeing slugs only in really wet places…usually outside after a big rain.  One morning here I went to fill the kettle with water for my morning tea and nearly leapt out of my skin when I looked down and saw a gigantic slug on the sink basin.  I think it was the biggest slug I’ve ever seen.  The day before it had rained and Mike had been cleaning our oven shelves outside.  The rag he had been using was also on the sink basin, so I figured the slug must have been on the rag.  How else could this giant slug make it into the house and up onto my sink?  Well, I don’t know but a couple nights ago as I was getting ready for bed I went into my office.  It looked like there was a twig on the ground but when I got closer, I realized it was actually slug.  The office is the middle of 3 rooms downstairs, and it and the room next to it that goes to the outside are carpeted.  I was amazed the thing had made it across that much carpet.  I can’t say I know what slugs eat, but surely it wasn’t in my office, so I thought it would dry out overnight and die.  As I lay in bed contemplating what on earth had prompted the slug to come inside and where it had come in, I thought that I ought to take a picture of the thing for the blog.  I went back downstairs and I’ll be damned if in the elapsed 20 or 30 minutes, the thing had disappeared.  These Australian wildlife are impressive!

As my new friend the exterminator said, “You can’t worry too much about it.  That’s Australia.”

Sodas and coffees may be smaller here, but the slugs aren't!!

Aussie’s are known to ‘love their sport’ and we’ve had the chance to observe and partake in some of the fun.  Not long after we’d arrived in Sydney was one of the biggest “footie” matches of the year.  Footie in Australia can mean one of four games: rugby league, rugby union, Aussie rules football, or soccer.  Rugby league and rugby union come from the same original game but split in the late 1800’s, with rugby league being faster and rugby union being more physical.  The first rugby league game played in Australia occurred in 1908 just a short walk from where we live at the Birchgrove Oval, which is still used for footie (and cricket).

The beginning of October was the national rugby league Grand Final, which our Aussie friends were equating to the Superbowl.  Rugby league is apparently played in over 30 countries but is biggest in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand (Australia was World Cup Champions every year from 1975 to 2007).  The Manly Sea Eagles made it to the Grand Final (versus the Melbourne Storm), and I got to watch the game at the Manly Wharf Bar with a bunch of Oscar’s friends who live in Manly and are huge Sea Eagle fans.  The hoopla began with a pre-game show (rather than a big half-time one).  Jon Stevens, an Australian rock star, performed and he was accompanied by the most bizarre back-up dancers I’ve ever seen.

Dancing grill girls?!

They were dressed like sports fans and danced with charcoal grills.  They stomped the lids and had brushes to swish as though they were cleaning the grill grate.  The concept was bad and the execution was even worse.  Luckily, it didn’t affect Manly’s playing and they trounced Melbourne 40-nil, which is the biggest spread in Grand Final history.  Needless to say, Manly was pretty psyched and thankfully their excitement doesn’t lead to riots over here!

More grill choreography...

We’ve also had the chance to forgo spectating and actually participate in some Aussie sport.  A friend of a friend had organized an afternoon of cricket.  While rugby league is the dominant sport in Queensland and New South Wales (where we are), cricket is played across the country and is thought of as the national sport.  The basic cricket game consists of a bowler (essentially the pitcher) and a batter.  The batter stands in front of the wicket, which the bowler tries to hit with the ball.  The batter tries to protect the wicket and to hit the ball into the field.  The batter can score runs by running back and forth across the pitch until the fielding team gets the ball back to the bowler.  The way they throw and hit is completely different than baseball.  You’re supposed to bowl with a fully straight arm and as the batter you keep the bat straight up and down with tip on the ground so as to block the wicket.  Full-length professional cricket games can last 5 days.  We played a shortened and simplified version and it was still too long and boring.  Oscar took a couple videos that show the our cricket prowess.  I’m bowling and Mike’s catching.  We did pretty well, and I even got a wicket!!  The ball wasn’t coming in fast but managed to get by the batter with a tricky bounce and hit the wicket.  Unfortunately, Oscar didn’t catch that one on film.

Is the answer to the question “Did Australians pay attention to the American presidential election? In fact, the election has been a major topic of small talk for the last few weeks. Probably half of the people I’ve spoken to (from store clerks to friends of friends) have brought up the election. At first, they’re often quite timid about the topic…until I’ve answered the inevitable question of “Who are you going for?” The answer of Obama generally solicited a big smile and a “Good on ya” or “Good girl.” I think the recent economic woes have made it particularly apparent what a large influence the U.S. has on the rest of the world.*

Thursday's front page

But the Australians also take a very active role in their democracy in general…partly because they’re forced to. Voting in Australia is compulsory, and one guy I spoke to said he was fined nearly $200 for not voting in an election. Australians have been very surprised at how few American’s vote. Trying to defend our nation, I argued that in some cases it was because the person lived in a state that leaned heavily one way or the other, so their vote was unlikely to make a difference. In retrospect, that was not a very smart line of defense because it required me to get into the electoral college (which thanks to Bush/Gore they think doesn’t make any sense). I’ve been having to call upon all my middle school social studies skills to try and explain it to them (not sure I’m making Mr. Dubbs proud).

On election day, we had no trouble following the results via the internet, and apparently all the Aussie TV stations carried Obama’s acceptance speech live. We went to a pub to celebrate and had just missed the speech (luckily, YouTube had the video posted a couple hours later), but the pub had CNN on, so we got to hear some of Anderson Cooper’s analysis of the speech. The afternoon of the results, I saw some ardent Aussie supporters of Obama running down the street with red, white, and blue balloons and yelling O-bah-ma in their Aussie accents. The name sounds much fancier the way they pronounce it.

Obama was the lead story on all the newspapers on Thursday (election results came in Wed afternoon our time). The Sydney Morning Herald website had video postcards to him where they recorded people on the street in Sydney congratulating him. Australians seem hopeful for what he’ll do on the world stage. Nevertheless, some of Australia’s major bookies won’t pay out until he’s actually inaugurated, in case he gets hit by a bus or has a stroke before then. There are a variety of forms of legal gambling in Australia and Australians do seem to enjoy gambling. Last week was the Melbourne Cup race (more or less equivalent to the Kentucky Derby). and one of the popular ways to bet is to buy a ticket where you don’t get to pick the horse. You pay $5 or $10 and they hand you a ticket that you then tear away a portion of reveal what horse you’ve bet on. I thought that was crazy…but actually the only person I know who won had bought that type of bet, so maybe it’s not so crazy after all.

Australian Obamaphiles

*We have been surprised that the Aussie dollar has fallen relative to the US dollar since the beginning of the credit crisis. Apparently, the Australian banks were essentially penalized for not offering loans to those who couldn’t really afford them, since the American banks did so and made a big profit (for awhile anyway), and are now being bailed out by the government when things have gone sour. I know that’s a very simplified view…but it’s the best understanding I have of the situation.

Little did I know that Tasmania had lots more to offer than just the Tasmanian devils. Tasmania had some absolutely gorgeous landscapes to see. And we really lucked ‘in’ with the weather (down here lucked ‘out’ means things didn’t go as you’d like). We had had two weeks of cold and rainy weather in Sydney (highs ~17C, lows ~10C, which doesn’t sound too cold, but they don’t centrally heat or insulate houses here, so it felt cold). In Taz, we had beautiful blue skies all weekend and pretty warm weather. Our first afternoon, we biked about 10 km north of Hobart to Moorilla Vineyards.

On the way back from Moorilla Vineyard

The winery is pretty uppity, trying to be very artistic and boutique. I felt like quite the boorish American rolling up sweaty and carrying a bike helmet, but I’m glad they let us in. The wines were all good. They didn’t taste terribly interesting but they had the most amazing smells. You could actually get a scent of the fruit or elderflower or a variety of other things wine labels say you should smell, but you never do. And they’ve recently begun making microbrew beer (which is very rare here). They had some descriptions about how awesome the beer was that ended with the phrase “an experience previously unavailable in beer.” With a statement like that, we had to try them. A couple were really good, but I don’t know about a “previously unavailable” experience.

Our second day in Hobart, we took a bus halfway up Mt Wellington and picked up a trail to hike the rest of the way. It was a really fantastic hike. Where we started was rain forest with tons of fern trees. As we got higher, it turned into primarily eucalyptus trees. We had our eyes out for koalas but instead saw lots of little black lizards and red-legged spiders (turns out koalas don’t live on Tasmania). We also saw our first Australian snake. I have no idea what kind it was. I saw big, black, and scary-looking, which was enough to turn me around yelling and running away. Luckily, that scared the snake off so we were able to continue sans problem. We got some great views from the top of Mt Wellington and then hiked back down a different trail that took us along the ridge where there were all these red rocks and low flowering shrubs reminded me of the southwest U.S. And at the end back in Hobart, we enjoyed a well-earned taste of fish & chips right on the docks.

Top of Mt Wellington

The next day we drove (on the left side of the road!) down to the Tasman peninsula where we hiked out to Cape Huay, which was another beautiful hike.

Cape Huay cliffs

It was through lots of wildflowers and then out along some rocky cliffs that drop a couple hundred meters down to the ocean—pretty spectacular. That hike ended on a beach that had some of the finest, softest sand I’ve ever felt…and it serenaded you as you walked (or jigged!).  Hopefully a click on the link below will bring up a quick video of it:   Rachel’s musical feet….