Our Australian Education

Today’s our last day in Australia. After spending Sunday and Monday at the beach (an overcrowded Bondi and a more relaxing Manley and Shelly, respectively), today we’re heading back to the Sydney fish market for oysters and prawns, we’re going to do some shopping and we’re going to finish the day with a play, Rabbit.

Theatre-wise, we’ve had a great run over the past month. We’ve managed to see three distinctly Australian plays, with Rabbit being our fourth. Taken together, they’ve given us an unorthodox education in what Australia’s all about.

Politics was covered by John Doyle’s The Pig Iron People (at the Sydney Opera House), a comedy set in 1997, the year John Howard, the conservative (down here, they’re called Liberals) who wrote all of Stephen Harper’s best lines, came to power. Alternately broadly funny and quite moving, it’s a thoughtful play about the fear of societal change represented by the election of Howard. Though some of Doyle’s “Old Australia” characters stray close to caricature, he never condescends to them. The Pig Iron People is an honest (and, most importantly, funny) attempt to understand a pivotal period in Australian history.

If you want to understand the role of sport – particularly cricket – in Australian life, you could do worse than the amazing Shane Warne: The Musical (the Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne). Imagine if Wayne Gretzky were a charismatic, boozing, chain-smoking womanizer and you’ll have an idea of who Shane Warne is and his role in Australian society: Warne’s name comes up twice in a book I’m reading on recent Australian political history.

Now imagine that story live on stage, set to music. The songs are great, ranging in style from rock ballads, to electronica, to an off-colour tune Noel Coward would have been happy to claim as his own. While you won’t get all the jokes if you haven’t read the tabloid headlines (thanks to Natasha’s Uncle Valdy for filling us in), and while Natasha’s Uncle Bob still had to explain the rules of cricket to me, the story of a talented athlete undone by his own appetites and a public unable to separate what happens on the field and off is a universal story.

Oh, and Warnie attended opening night, front row centre. How cool is that?

Last, but not least is Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical (Star City Casino, Sydney), based on the movie of the same name. It was fabulooous! Natasha calls it a “gargantuan bedazzlement." We’d never been to a big-budget jukebox musical and we totally enjoyed ourselves: the costumes, the sets (Natasha particularly liked how Priscilla, the bus, came across as a character in her own right) and, of course, the songs, especially the first-act-ending “I Will Survive.” Priscilla is Australian through and through, a fact reinforced by cameos by koalas, emus and the Sydney Opera House.

Though apparently it closed early, the fact that a Big Gay Musical like Priscilla would be staged shows how much Australia has changed over the past 30 years, and how the 1997 election of John Howard dramatized in The Pig Iron People represented the last gasp of an old Australia. Judging by the stories, creativity and energy of these three plays, the new Australia promises to be an exciting place. It would be fun to come along for the ride.

Shower curtains redux

So it turns out a lack of shower curtains isn’t an Australian thing; it’s a crappy hotel thing. We’re staying at the somewhat anticlimactic Holiday Inn Potts Point: big room, working bathroom doors, shower curtains, nice bed. It’s right next to Kings Cross, Sydney’s red-light district, which travel sites and several of Natasha’s Australian relatives all said is a dangerous, loud place, but we’ve had no problems. The hotel itself is tucked away slightly from the action, making it an oasis of calm.

The only unusual thing about the hotel is that we’ve had to take the elevator to our first-floor room because we can’t find the stairs. More accurately, we can’t find a door to the streets that doesn’t set off the fire alarm when it’s opened.

I sure hope they don’t have security cameras on that particular door. Man, was that an annoying sound.

It was good practice, though, since the next morning everyone had to evacuate the hotel briefly because of a fire alarm. If you’ve ever wondered what a hotel fire alarm sounds like, initially, it’s actually a pleasant intermittent beeping sound that I mistook for a hidden clock radio (I had just woken up; Natasha was finishing up in the bathroom), only it was coming from the ceiling.

That was the it-could-be-a-fire pre-buzzer. The actual you’re-all-going-to-die earsplitter followed. Not pleasant. So we grabbed our valuables (passports, digital camera, Apple products; we left behind: our Australian wines and my coursework) and joined a calm queue of other guests as we assembled at the designated rescue place behind the hotel. It was all so orderly it could have taken place at a Canadian university.

(Photo: Sydney's firies keeping us safe from harm.)

Yet another botanical garden

On boxing day we toured another botanical garden. It was Blayne's type of garden tour--a quick peripheral tour through the garden on the way to another location, this one being the Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art. Trailing after Bob, Jenny, Lesley and Blayne, I managed to get a few shots of the garden. The small pond covered in water lilies is home to a number of ducks, lizards, water turtles and eels. The large tree is the Bo tree or sacred ficus (ficus religiosa). The description that stood at the base of the tree explained that this tree grows like a strangler vine and kills the original tree it surrounds but it's rarely cut down because it is known as the wisdom tree, and who would cut that? This tree was planted in the 1870s. One branch of this tree has to be supported by props (see fence) or it will break off.
The picture above shows Brisbane's bouganvillia walkway along the South Bank beach. It was controversial when it was built but the walkway is absolutely spectacular as it winds its way through shops, pedestrian areas, swimming areas and restaurants. The arch of trees below is a popular spot for wedding pictures.

Glass House Mountains

Today we went for a drive to the Glass House Mountains about 45 minutes from Morayfield. Captain Cook "discovered" and then named the mountains. From the look-out point I took these pictures of the mountains. The mountains pictured here I believe are Mount Beerwah and Mount Tibrogargan.

We then drove to another look-out point and I took pictures of the surrounding rainforest and countryside. In these pictures you can just see several small farms with cows. From these look-outs we drove through plantations of pineapple, avacados, and macademia nuts. As some of you may know, pineapples don't grow on trees like coconuts (as I previously believed) but on short, little scrubby bushes. I stand corrected.To round off our Australian wine tasting experience we stopped in for a pre-lunch wine tasting at the Maleny Mountain Winery. As grapes do not grow well near the Australian coast in northern Queensland, most of the grapes for this winery are grown in New South Wales and then shipped to the winery. The varietal that does grow well in this rainforest region is the chambourcin grape. We bought a bottle of white wine for dinner since Blayne is making his traditional spicy Thai soup and green chicken and chick pea curries.

Possums!

On boxing day, Bob, Jenny, Lesley, Blayne and I went for a ferry cruise along the Brisbane river. Before we got on the ferry, we spotted a possum being chased by crows, perhaps because it stole eggs. After the possum escaped from the crows, I managed to get several close-up shots while it determined how it should escape. In these pictures, it's climbing mangrove trees that are growing in the water beside the ferry stop. 

Bob and Jenny's place has quite a population of the poisonous and invasive cane toads. The toads were imported from the United States to try to kill scarab bugs that were attacking the sugar cane but instead they escaped from the research lab. Much like the invasive rabbits, they increased the cane toads increased their population dramatically without any natural predators but unlike the rabbits the cane toads are happily eating and poisoning other species. 

This lizard was spotted in the Brisbane botanical gardens and sunning itself outside the Gallery of Modern Art. It appears to be a different kind of lizard than the one I saw in Canberra. 

How warm was my pool

It probably goes without saying that the best thing about being in Australia in December is not being in Canada in December. This was never clearer to me than yesterday – that would be Christmas – which I kicked off with a swim in Natasha’s Uncle Bob and Aunt Jenny’s pool and which we finished with a walk along the beaches of Bribie Island, about 20 minutes by car from their house.

Today we finally got to see a bit of Brisbane, in what apparently is the best way to see the town, by water taxi on the Brisbane River, which is probably the defining geographical characteristic of this city of over one million people. The CityCat fleet of catamarans is completely integrated with the town’s extensive bus and rail system, but it also doubles as a budget river cruise. If you like river tours or appreciate transit systems that actually work (hi there, Ottawa!), it’s the only way to travel.

(Brisbane from the river.)

On shore, the highlight of the day was our stop at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art, a wonderfully whimsical gallery that’s more PS1 than MOMA. Like all galleries, several artworks were accompanied by descriptions; unlike most galleries, several of these descriptions were also accompanied by descriptions written for kids. Frankly, I found the descriptions for children to be more clearly written and informative than the overly complex regular descriptions. This may be due to my art illiteracy or my impatience with pointless jargon: take your pick.

Sadly, the State Library of Queensland's exhibit Game on!, in which you can play dozens of classic video games, was closed.

Briebie Island

On Christmas day we went to the Bribie Island and walked along the beach. It's a Christmas tradition in Australia to play cricket on the beach (albeit rather badly it seems) and we saw a number of games underway. And we also saw a number of Christmas picnics (prawns on the barbie!) with the wrappings from presents spread everywhere. It's incredibly luxurious to walk barefoot along a long sandy beach on Christmas day! The pictures show Bob, Lesley, Blayne and I strolling along the beach in the late afternoon. The picture of the pier shows the Glasshouse Mountains in the background (look for the faint conical mountains in the background).

More photos of the Great Barrier Reef

Here are a few more pictures of the Great Barrier Reef taken by myself with an underwater camera.

Pictures of Brisbane

Here are a few photos of Morayfield in Brisbane.
1. Bob shows us the lemon trees on his property.
2. An African tulip tree.
3. It's a bit difficult to see but you can see the dark jabitocoba fruit in the bush. Instead of growing in bunches on stems the fruit grows directly on the stem.
4. Blayne examines a lemonade tree: we had fresh lemon juice for breakfast and it's delicious with a bit of soda water.
5. The dam is at the end of Bob and Jenny's property and we saw some lovely golden dragonflies and black butterflies.

Broken Social Scene = candy!

Most unexpected appearance by a Canadian band in an Australian commercial for what are undoubtedly tasty treats.

Brisbane: "Beautiful today, perfect tomorrow"

Yesterday we traveled from Biggera Waters to Morayfields, both suburbs of Brisbane. Colin and Rita, who drove us here, say that the slogan for Brisbane is "beautiful today, perfect tomorrow." And that has certainly described the weather we've experienced so far. It was a beautiful drive yesterday but despite all the signs warning of kagaroo and koala crossings we saw neither. We dropped Tegan off at her house (see picture) and then continued to Morayfields.

Now we're staying with my Uncle Bob, Aunt Jenny and cousins Jill and Lesley. They have 5 acres of property--two acres of yard with mostly native fruit and other trees and then the remaining area which is left fallow and leads up to a dam. We took a walk through the yard with Bob and Jenny identifying all the trees--African tulip (see picture), camphor laurel, bananas, several types of lemons (including the sweet lemonade) and oranges (mandarin, naval and valencia), mangoes, ficus, ice cream bean tree, macademia nuts and jaboticoba. I was pleased to try the jaboticoba (see picture of berries) since I had read about it on a website about exotic tropical fruits. The fruit--seen in a picture above--are grape-sized with one large seed and a relatively inedible skin. The flavour was grape-like with a bit of black current and blackberry mixed in. It's not a fruit that I would regularly eat but it was great to try. Jenny gave me a jar of homemake jaboticoba jam.

Eating bugs in Brisbane

Yesterday we spent the morning at Main Beach (a short drive away) playing in the waves and collecting beautiful shells. There were hundreds of people at another beach a short distance away but this beach was relatively uncrowed although the surf was a bit rough. The lifeguard on duty warned the swimmers to stay within the flags because the undertow was particularly strong. It was another perfect cloudless and sunny day.

Keely and Tegan play in the pool which is 34 degrees most days. The last picture shows Moreton Bay "bugs" which are sort of a cross between crayfish and lobster but it's a separate species. We ate the bugs for dinner: delicious and I thought they tasted tasting than lobster.

I'll add a video of Blayne playing in the waves later when the Internet speed is better.

The warmth continues in Brisbane

Well here we are in sunny and warm Brisbane--the Gold Coast. We left beautiful Cairns at 6 am yesterday (December 21) for Brisbane and then took the train for an hour into the suburb of Biggera Waters. It was a family reunion: my Aunt Rita and Uncle Colin and their three daughters Linda, Lisa and Lara (also known as Ra) who each brought their children. Linda's children are Liam, Cael and Keely, Lisa's are Morgan, Dylan, and Tegan and Lara's are Isis and Ishka.

The first picture shows the back of Colin and Rita's house with the dock on the river that leads to the ocean. The second picture shows all the cousins: Blayne, Natasha, Linda, Liam, Dylan, Lisa, Morgan, Lara, Isis, Cael, Keely, Tegan and Ishka. In the last picture Blayne and Keely behind him are swimming at Rainbow Bay near Colin and Rita's house. The skyline of Brisbane is in the background. We took a drive along the beaches today, including Surfer's Paradise.

The Poseidon Adventure

We planned our snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef to be a highlight of our trip. We both were looking forward to it immensely and were concerned when we both caught a cold. While I had mostly recovered, Blayne vowed that great quantities of decongestant cold medicine would get him through the day—if he could (just) breathe, he could snorkel.

After an excellent recommendation from a travel agent at a local information centre, we decided to book a tour to the Great Barrier Reef through Poseidon tours, despite its ominous name. They actually had a poster on board touting “The Poseidon Adventure.” Why not just name the ship Titanic?

Anyway, prior to arriving in Cairns, we were overwhelmed with the number of tour boat operators and found it difficult to determine which would be the best for us. Poseidon has an advanced eco-tourism accreditation (good environmental procedures), a reef instructor, a great reputation for smallish groups, and three dives at separate sites on the outer Great Barrier Reef. If this sounds like a promotion of Poseidon, it is—we plan to write a positive review of our experience in TripAdvisor.

The day started brutally early—we were picked up from the Bay Village hotel was at 6:50 a.m. to transport us to Port Douglas, on the outskirts of Cairns over an hour away. En route to Port Douglas, our driver delighted, as all Australians seem to, in telling us about the dangers that Australian flora and fauna pose to tourists and locals alike. “Don’t swim in the ocean,” he said, “it’s box jellyfish season.” Of course we already knew that, having been informed by our taxi driver from the airport. But the bus driver pointed out that the normal jellyfish nets were useless against the smallest form of poisonous jellyfish. “They’re as small as your fingernail and there are several people in hospital for stings right now. Swim only in swimming pools.” This informative commentary was not especially moral-boosting as we were about to spend the entire day in the ocean.

All the snorkelers gathered on the top deck while the scuba divers (or bubble heads as the crew called them) gathered on the lower deck. The crew, except for the crusty skipper Richard, was all young, fit, incredibly tanned and good looking. They were also incredibly gregarious, trying to soothe the fears of several people who couldn’t swim yet wanted to snorkel on the reef.

The lecture about the dangers of Australian sea life continued when we were all on the Poseidon heading out to the outer Greater Barrier Reef. On the upper deck Gareth, a marine biologist from South Africa, described the procedure for treating a sting on the hand from a beautiful spiny lion fish that is slow moving and incredibly poisonous. “I heat up a kettle and pour the incredibly hot water on your hand. And you don’t even care how hot the water is because you’re in so much pain. I’ve had people beg me to cut their hands off after they’ve been stung. And then we call a helicopter to take you to the hospital.” Blayne and I looked at one another, not sure if this was all a story designed to scare the tourists or a factual description of treatment. It's true. According to the reef website, "You have virtually no chance of surviving the venomous sting, unless treated immediately. The pain is so excruciating and overwhelming that you would most likely go into shock and drown before reaching the shore."

Gareth said that anyone stung by a box jellyfish would also be flown by helicopter to the hospital. He stressed that nothing should be touched on the reef: not only was the reef to delicate to withstand contact but that many of the beautiful, colourful things that we would want to touch would be poisonous.

After these stories no one had any complaints when we were told that we all had to wear bright blue lycra suits to thwart any jellyfish. The crew referred to the suits as the “Teletubby suits.” After a brief introduction to the art of snorkeling, we struggled into our skin-tight, electric blue suits and jumped into the 29-degree C water.

From Kuranda by skyrail

After our jungle trek, we took the skyrail down the mountain. It was an absolutely exhilarating ride. The skyrail passes over the rainforest (all part of a U.N. world heritage site). It takes over an hour to travel down the mountain by skyrail—7.5 kms of cable with towers that were lifted into place by helicopters to avoid disturbing the rainforest. As a result, the forest is pristine. We got off the skyrail at two sites to look at the view down the mountain from platforms and to take short treks through the rainforest. At the Red Peak station we joined a guided tour given by an Aboriginal man. The most interesting part was about the cassowary, the bird that likes to chase people and can disembowel someone with its claws. But apparently cassowaries are not simply amoral killing machines. The guide said that the cassowary, a protected species with only several hundred to over a thousand left in the wild, has the unique ability to pass seeds from rainforest fruit through its system. Only the cassowary can digest the fruit and cause the seeds to germinate. If the cassowary goes extinct then over 400 plants will lose their ability to germinate their seeds and will also go extinct. The guide also said that the cassowary is the dreaming animal (seems to be like the totem spirit to Canadian aboriginal peoples) to his people. In their creation stories, they descended from the cassowary.

The pictures show the train to Kuranda slowly ascending the mountain along a very narrow track--there's only room for one train except at one point in the journey. The train stops once at a look-out over Barron Falls and I'm standing in front of the falls. It's a much bigger falls in times where rainfall is heavier. We traveled down the mountain in one of the skyrail compartments: it's a very smooth ride except when the skyrail car passes from one tower to another. I took the sweeping shots of Cairns and the rainforest from the skyrail car. The skyrail was an unforgettable experience. You fly over the rainforest and peer down on it—observing birds, nests, waterfalls, and animals. It’s absolutely undisturbed by people.

Greetings from Cairns

As you've probably noticed, Natasha's been doing most of the blogging, mainly because I've been laid out with a nasty cold since last Tuesday. I've got some longer posts coming, mainly about our theatre adventures so far. Without even trying, we've so far managed to see three homegrown Australian productions, with one more to come at the end of the month, and they've all been fabulous, in both senses of the word.

Some quick observations, though:

1. Snorkelling the Great Barrier Reef is just about exactly as amazing as you could possibly imagine. Check out Natasha's photos to get an idea of how awesome it is. And, as Natasha's video shows, I delivered on my promise of a shark attack. Promises made, promises kept!
2. It is possible to snorkel while your lungs are being scraped raw by a persistent cough and your head feels like it's going to explode every time you swim underwater, but I wouldn't recommend it.
3. Multiple doses of Sudafed and sheer willpower can hold off an illness for about a day, but you'll pay for it the next day.
4. Your television programming choices in Cairns on a Saturday afternon: cricket, two ballets, lawn bowling and race cars. We chose the cricket.
5. I'm still trying to figure out the rules to cricket.
6. It is better be sick where it's warm than healthy where there's a foot of snow on the ground.
7. The real reason I'm excited to be in Cairns.

Kuranda rainforest

Since Blayne and I have both been fighting colds, we decided to start our tour of Cairns slowly. We dropped into an information centre in Cairns and on the advice of the travel agent, booked a tour to Kuranda on December 18th and a tour of the Great Barrier Reef for the 19th. We thought that a jungle trek would improve our congested heads.

The mountaintop village and historic rainforest park of Kuranda is accessible by car, train and sky-rail. We took the historic train from Cairns to Kuranda, a journey of just over an hour and a climb from sea level to 334 metres. The rail-line was built in the mid-to late-1800s and the number of injuries and deaths related by the narration on the train was staggering. Many died of bubonic plague, malaria, and accidents like tunnel cave-ins. Although the narration didn’t make clear why the railway was constructed, it appears it was built for gold mining and tropical timber logging. The railway itself was a staggering feat of engineering, as the narration kept repeating, with cliffs that were chiseled away on one side and tunnels dug by hand through mountains and gorges on the other.

Once in Kuranda, and having secured more medication for Blayne, we wandered around looking at the many little craft shops. Then we set off on a trek through the rainforest, which is a protected world-heritage site. We saw a number of lizards and several turkey-sized birds stalking through the jungle. Some insects were making the most incredible buzzing noise like a cicada, only much more intense. Blayne finally spotted a brownish-gray moth that was making the noise, an observation that was verified when I took pictures of it and the noise increased considerably. The noise that thousands of these moths made was deafeningly painful.