Sea Turtles and School Teachers: Bundaberg, part 1

One of my favorite things about train travel is the act of simultaneously typing on my netbook and looking out the window. Because I am an accomplished typist, this is a lovely possibility. There might be an occasional typo to go back and correct. But really my fingers can do the thinking. They gamely record my thoughts while my eyes enjoy the landscape outside the train, which in many cases is some of my favorite landscape, snatches of the life lived in tis village or on that farm, fleeting and intriguing.

The ride from Brisbane to Bundaberg was no different. I drowsed, exhausted from my long night, and watched a young girl waving at the train from her family's dinner outside in their yard; glimpsed an old freight car in a backyard; saw cows and horses cantering, rolling, and sleeping over endless, empty green hills. Taking a train through Australia makes it's hard to believe in the world's overpopulation problems.

My Bundaberg host, Pat, met me at the train station. He was an interesting character and had worked all sorts of jobs, from commercial fishing to dishwashing to hunting for feral pigs. He lives in what is called a "caravan park" in Australia, what Americans know as a trailer park but minus most of the social stigma. Ths caravan park was called Elliott Heads, and it marked the first time I'd ever stayed in a trailer. Well, technically I slept in the Annex, a tent contraption attached to the caravan. There were showers and toilets in a building nearby.

Elliott Heads Beach

The weather was finnicky, and it changed abruptly to rain from bright sunshine as Pat and I had dinner outside the comfortable, tiny Elliott Heads general store. We had just enough time to finish before making our way toward the reason I had come here, so far off the East Coast tourist track: sea turtles.

Mon Repos, 15 km outside Bundaberg, is one of the best known sea turtle preserves in the world. I had gotten the idea to come here from a book I read in Sydney that belonged to James (remember him, my Sydney host?) The book included travel ideas for every day of the year, and when I read that it was possible to see both laying mothers and hatchlings during January and then confirmed that Bundaberg was very much on my way up the coast I was convinced.

The night was long. We showed up, as instructed, at 6:30 PM to register. As we had only made reservations the day before, we were placed in the last group, meaning we would be the last to get called if the staff patrolling the beach discovered hatchlings or a mother coming to lay her eggs. There were a few educational films to watch about turtles and a little museum to browse through, but those small entertainments quickly dwindled. At 10:30 PM Pat repaired to his truck to get some sleep, as he had his first day of teaching the next day (I felt terrible, but he had assured me it wouldn't be a problem.) After he left I sat, restless and frustrated. I missed the comfort of Brisbane; I was bored and still exhausted. All in all I waited 4.5 hours, sometimes making small talk with the dwindling group (some people gave up and went home) and other times just quietly stewing. More than 15 years before I had been in a similar situation in Costa Rica with my parents; we had sat on a star-filled beach for hours waiting for sea turtles that never came. It was a very cool night, regardless, but my young self had been deeply disappointed, and this situation wasn't shaping up to be any different.

Finally, just after midnight, our group was called. The rangers apologized; Nothing is happening tonight, they said. They hadn't seen a single nest or hatchling, so they'd been taking the groups out to watch nest processing for nests from other nights, where a ranger counts numbers of hatched eggs. I felt furious and disappointed, slogging through the sand for no reason at midnight, but then--

Our guide stopped short. "Don't move," she said in a hushed voice. "I thought that was a boulder, but there isn't a boulder on this part of the beach."

I leaned into the blackness in front of me and, as she approached, could just make out a female sea turtle the size of a laundry basket working slowly up the beach. She was beautiful; I didn't know why, but the sight of her slow path toward the dunes brought tears to my eyes (and I don't cry easily.) We, the last, forgotten group of the night, were lucky: this female couldn't decide whether she wanted to lay, so we were allowed to see her more fully as the ranger used a flashlight to help her find her way up past the high tide mark to the dunes. Again and again she turned back to the ocean, in her slow but stately way, and finally the ranger gave up. Then and only then were we allowed to use cameras. Turtles are very sensitive to light, so they are usually prohibited to keep the turtles from leaving their laying point too early.

The ambivalent mother


All of that alone would have been enough to make the night magical, but there was more to come. We went to watch the ranger process the nest we had been on our way to see, and as he went through the empty egg shells, he found three live hatchlings that had been left behind! They were teeny and incredibly cute. We were allowed to touch them and take pictures of them, and when that was finished we helped them find their way to the dark ocean. We led them down the gently sloping sand with a flashlight, watching as they struggled over pebbles, seaweed, and the guide's feet toward the water. Apparently, picking up young turtles and bringing them to the ocean yourself does more harm than good, because during that trip they orient themselves to the magnetic impulses of the earth, impulses which will bring them back to the same beach to lay eggs/breed (if they are the one individual out of a huge number to survive.)

On the walk back the former rain had cleared, and the stars were incredible. Incandescent is the word I'd like to use.

Unfortunately, despite all that, my time at the beach was tainted. Pat had been texting me from his car for at least half an hour. It's 1 am, where are you? he asked. He had to get up for work, he wrote. He needed to sleep. It was so late, and I felt terrible. But I wasn't allowed to leave the beach without the rangers.

Hatched eggs

Hatchlings!


Pat left early for school, and I slept in, creeping into the caravan when it got too hot and sleeping the last half of morning wedged under the "kitchen" table. I spent the afternoon chatting with two Aussies next door and floating in the water at Elliott Heads Beach. When I walked back, however, I found that the situation was more complicated than I had thought.

To start out, I found that to get to Airlie Beach (my next destination) on Greyhound that night would cost twice the price of a train, but there was no train until the next night for reasons that did not become clear until later. Then my cell phone ran out of minutes; when I tried to use Pat's, his did the same. By the time I found a phone to use, the Greyhound office had closed and Pat had started to stress out, as well. Although he had said previously that my presence would be no problem, he felt very behind on work and exhausted from the previous night. He clearly wanted me out.

I didn't know what to do. I had nowhere to stay and no way to get to Airlie until the next day; Pat encouraged me to try to get a seat on the Greyhound bus that night at 2 AM, but I certainly wasn't up for staying on a bus bench if it didn't work out. Finally, barely keeping a lid on my anxiety, I agreed to stay in a hostel and take the train the next day. After having trouble finding the correct hostel, I ended up at a no-frills down-at-the-heels place that was particularly unwelcoming, but I sucked it up and reminded myself that it was only 24 hours. Once I settled into the hostel, I wandered down to the attached bar and had a Bundaberg rum and cola-- Bundaberg rum is incredibly popular in Australia, and it felt like a fitting thing to do and a good way to celebrate what was hopefully the resolution of an ordeal.

A few hours later, I sat in my sweaty bun, with three German girls asleep around me. Maybe I'll go to the zoo tomorrow, I thought. I woke just as sweaty, remembering with a groan that I was in a nasty hostel and that I had lost my one pair of shorts at Elliott Heads. But the day had better things in store.

Slice of Life: Adventures in Brisbane 2

The last of the Brisbane days: Karl and I had an Eggstravaganza in which we discovered the house was alarmingly low on groceries and cooked eggs all the ways we knew how; I played late night Scrabble with Sven, who couldn't quite believe that Americans really do spell "colour" without the U, and found this hilarious; Karl told me great stories about traveling through Eastern Europe; the fourth roommate's father showed up to collect some of his things, and I hid in my room. I did laundry, helped with dinner and dishes, played the piano for the first time in years, sounding out a copy of "The Scientist" by Coldplay that I found in the piano stool. In short, it was a brief, fleeting home.

On one of the last mornings before he was to start medical school, Karl threw a "Hey, I'm Back!" party at his house. The drinking lasted from 4 PM until 2 AM (well, I had been out in the city by myself, so for me it was 5 PM until 2 AM.) The evening consisted of loads of Karl's friends coming around to make sausages, welcome him back, and drink steadily into the night. As I've mentioned, Australians drink a lot. This particular night represented the most alcohol I've ever consumed in one sitting, although to be fair that sitting lasted nearly nine hours. And I would like to say (if I haven't already) that the sort of drinking in which Australians regularly parttake did not, at least under my watch, result in any of the obnoxiousness and generaly disgusting behavior I associate with those amounts of alcohol. Everyone is just the same, only better and more animated. In short, they can hold their liquor.

The party was great fun. I enjoyed the sausages and the company; at one point I attempted, slightly bleary with champagne, to explain the basis of the Revolutionary War and American race relations to several interested Aussies. It actually reminded me a bit of the simplified explanations I offered Lisu people when I lived in China, although in this case my handicap was liquor rather than linguistics. At one point late at night, once those who would depart early had "piked" (Aussie slang for bailing early), we and the remaining partygoers, including most of the Traveling So and So's (see last entry) repaired to another house about fifteen minutes walk away. There we spent a few hours in the aptly-named Shed, a converted garden shed at the back of the house now outfitted for video games, jam sessions, and general hanging-outage. Again I was struck by the overarching familiarity of the setting; the Shed was somewhere I recognized from my own adolescence, the kind of place we frequented when we wanted time all to ourselves, in basements, garages, and parks.

Against a background of Wii bowling (I did better than I expected), the So and So's had a great time jamming using the available instruments and with Karl joining in on guitar. Between bowling turns I sat back and listened, watching the jam turn from slow experimentation to a rollicking dance party (I took a video that I wish I could post , but it's unfortunately too big.) Around 2 Karl and I walked back to the house carrying his fire twirling staff, and he taught me some basic tricks as the suburbs slept around us.

Eventually the day came for departure, and my regrets about lack of time, about the walls that don't come down and the connections that aren't deepened came back full force. I started to face a newly-built fear of the nomadic existence I'll lead for the rest of the year. Making homes throughout the world sounds (and is) wonderful, but the reality of leaving them was, and continues to be, formidable. My ability to bond with and get attached to people is something I like about myself, but is it a practical way to live during this year? What would be the consequences of purposely turning that instinct off? I'm really not sure.

In any case, I went to bed the last night with knots in my stomach and slept perhaps the worst sleep of my life. I left Karl with a copy of Roald Dahl's "Going Solo" from the used bookshop we'd explored in the West End and pushed on, packing my things and leaving this one home for Bundaberg and a new advenure. (I'll give you a clue, it includes sea turtles.)

Karl, Woody, and the lead singer of the So and So's in the half-light of the Shed

Slice of Life: Adventures in Brisbane 1

In my array of travels, some trips end up being about places--enjoying architecture, exploring neighborhoods, seeing what there is to see -- and some trips end up being about people. For me, Brisbane was very much about people. I got to see a chunk of the city, but my time in Brisbane was enjoyable and, even more, important to me, because of the people I met and the parts of their lives I got to experience.

I stayed for five days in a beautiful, rambling house in Sherwood (which is funny because the place I stayed in near Sydney was called Burwood) with Karl, his younger brother Sven, and their friend Ed, three guys roughly my age. The house belonged to Karl and Sven's parents, who moved to Singapore a few years ago and left the house for their sons to inhabit. Evidence of the family that once lived here was everywhere, in the high shine of the floors, the decorating choices (very much an Asian theme), the photos of younger days. Sometimes it was evidence in absence--the lovely pool was pretty much unswimmable, as no one "could be arsed" (as they say in Australia) to keep it clean. I don't mean to say that it was a messy house. In fact, it was much cleaner than I would expect from three guys ages 19-21.

Besides the highly-polished floors, the E boys' house featured a great open balcony/porch, a large, very fat cat called Attie, two turtles, and a small white mouse called Octavius. I later learned that this mouse once belonged to a fourth roommate, who tragically died of a brain hemorrhage about a month before I arrived, while Karl and Sven were in Singapore visiting their parents. As it turned out, the room I stayed in was once the roommate's. This was a little weird/creepy, but not as much as I was expecting, maybe because Sven didn't mention it until a few days into my visit.

Top: The living room and my host; you can also see out to the porch.
Below: A "family" dinner. From right Karl, Sven, one of their friends (reaching), and Ed (face partly blocked)

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I took the commuter train from the Gold Coast to the city, an unremarkable ride except for one stop, Olmeau, which sounded like "Almost" when paired with the announced "Olmeau Station." Maybe you have to be an English nerd to appreciate that.

When I arrived in Brisbane it was mid-afternoon, and Karl was busy at a first-aid seminar he was required to complete before he began medical school in half a week. So my first impression of the city was a very brief meet up with girl from Canberra (pronounced CAN-bra) and a local named Adrian. Adrian had seen a post I'd made on the local couch surfing group saying I'd be coming into town, and cruised up randomly on his bike, giving us a spin around the center of the city nearest to the train station, including a cool but touristy walking area called Queen Street Mall.

The Casino, a fancy building near Queen Street


Adrian left fairly soon after, and I had a coffee and enjoyed a copy of the local newspaper. Again, Bill Bryson puts the joy of Australian newspapers wonderfully:

"It always amazes me how seldom visitors bother with local papers," he says. "Personally, I can think of nothing more exciting-- certainly nothing you could do in a public place with a cup of coffee-- than to read newspapers from a part of the world you know almost nothing about. What a comfort it is to find a nation preoccupied by matters of no possible consequence to oneself. I love reading about scandals involving ministers of whom I have never heard, murder hunts in communities whose names sound dusty and remote, features on revered artists and thinkers whose achievements have never reach my ears, whose talents I must take on faith.
I love above all to venture into the colour supplements and see what’s fashionable for the beach in this part of the world, what’s new for the kitchen, what I might get for my money if I had A$400,000 to spare and a reason to live in Dubbo or Woolloomooloo... Where else can you get this much pleasure for a trifling handful of coins?"

In any case, it was a great way to pass the time before I met Karl at the train station and wandered off into suburban Brisbane and a fantastic stretch of days.

I arrived at the house and immediately felt that I had met some of my tribe, as they say. Sven, tall and striking, was into death metal and rock climbing. Ed loved similar music but preferred to hang about the house drinking beer and making droll comments. That first evening was spent eating spaghetti, drinking wine, listening to music, and playing Jenga and Guess Who?, two board games I hadn't thought about in years. A few of Karl's friends came around to visit after awhile--he had just gotten back from a six month jaunt in eastern Europe and so his presence back at home was a matter of some excitement.

In the course of the evening Ed, Karl, and I walked down to the "bottle-O" (that's what they call liquor shop) and I learned that Australia has, wait for it, drive-through liquor stores. Also I saw some possums (we know them as flying foxes.) Double plus bonus. The rest of the night was equally silly, fun, and low-key: it felt like a day at home with my friends. Except that every few minutes, as another song I loved came on Karl's iPod, I would pull out my mental map and remember exactly where I was. That made it all the more miraculous.

Quite a bit later, after an interesting conversation about gay rights in Australia vs. the US with a friend of Karl's called Woody, I ventured into the realm of Vegemite. Making me Vegemite on toast was a huge deal, apparently, and Karl and Woody made much of the right amount of butter and spread that was applied to the bread. I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would, but the salt was intense and built with each bite.

I snuck it into the waste basket after a few tries as we chatted about this and that, and Woody grinned, "I saw that." I shrugged, admitting it.
"That's okay," he said, "We'll ease you into it."

I spent the next several days alternately exploring the city and environs with Karl and hanging out with him and his friends. Karl told me that his favorite hosts on his trip in eastern Europe had been those who took time to explore with him and really introduced him to their world. His approach was the same, and the effect was great. We pushed through the considerable humidity and heat of mid-January Brisbane to walk the Botanical Gardens, take the City Cat (the commuter ferry that runs on the river) to South Bank to wander, and look through used bookstores and great coffee shops in West End, including one called The Three Monkeys with fabulous ambiance and great chai.

One morning I had the chance to experience Australian bureaucracy, which gives the American version a run for its mony, at a central office similar to the DMV, where Karl had to drop some papers. Another afternoon we gave ourselves up to the heat and sat on the false beach by South Bank, eating ice cream from Cold Rock (I guess they can't call it "Coldstone" down under) and watching small children flounder in chest-high water. In the background an enormous TV screen played "I Come From the Land Down Under" by Men At Work (I mentioned my surprise that Australians love the song) over the tumult of shrieks and splashes.

Brisbane skyline from the City Cat


Path through the Botanic Gardens

Bridge from the Botanic Gardens to South Bank


Chai and record shop in the West End

Nights were busy as well, fat with humidity and friends to see. Once we ventured into an area known as "The Valley" (proper name Fortitude Valley) near Brisbane, a warren of clubs and bars, to see The Travelling So and So's, a band made of up several of Karl's friends. We had drinks before on the street, revelers streaming past us on the way to another alcohol soaked night (have I imentioned that Australians drink a LOT?) The Traveling So and So's played in a dive called The Globe, which spotted an odd but cool characteristic: a dance floor tilted at 50 degrees. The So and So's music was heavy on the saxophone, and their singer sounded like Gwen Stefani: I felt pretty good about them as they tossed party noisemakers and plastic mini tambourines into the crowd (I still have mine), although not totally excited.

The lack of excitement was partially because I was having a realization. As I listened to the show, I watched the people I'd gotten to know over the past week enjoy themselves, dance, lean against each other laughing. I remembered, although the days before and after made me forget, that I was only a brief blip on their screens. Couch surfing affords incredible experiences and allows you to meet wonderful people. But put appropriate emphasis on "meet," because to dig deeper to the connection I generally prefer, well, that's not so simple, especially when your window of opportunity is only five days.

Even if you're staying with a person all the time, there are still walls that stay up, and I wanted them down. This made Brisbane both a wonderful experience and quite painful. The painful part came first as I watched the concert, then again later as I realized I was leaving and the walls I wanted down weren't there yet. Give me more time, I thought. We can make this work. The potential is huge. I just need more time. But there was a whole world waiting.

All that glitters

"Nearly everyone you meet elsewhere in Australia will tell you, "Oh, you must see the Gold Coast. It’s awful.”
"Really", you say, intrigued, "In what way?"
"I don’t know exactly. I’ve never been there myself. Well, obviously. But it’s like-- Have you seen Muriel’s Wedding?"
"No."
"Well, it’s like that. Just like it, apparently."
So I was interested on many levels to see the Gold Coast, and disappointed on nearly every one of them. To begin with, it wasn’t tacky at all. It was just another large, impersonal, well-provisioned international resort. I could have been in Marbella or Eilat. Perfectly fine, it just wasn’t very interesting."-- "Down Under" by Bill Bryson, p. 260

Sometimes when I'm traveling I find it hard to resist putting on my Anthropologist hat. My training at school has really shaped the way I experience the world, but there are certain times when I make a conscious effort to think like an anthropologist, and my visit to the Gold Coast was certainly on of those times. Like Bryson, as I traveled north toward Queensland I was constantly told how terrible the Gold Coast was. Even Johnny, my host for the first night on the Gold Coast, called it "soulless" and compared it to LA. "Everyone is plastic here," he said.

Johnny wasn't plastic, just shy. He very sweetly offered to pick me up from Byron Bay, an hour from Gold Coast City, and drive me back to his apartment.

In any case, my motivation for visiting Gold Coast was partially pretty beaches, partially a desire to cram in as much as possible all the time (this is something I'm working on), and partially curiosity to see if a place could live up to such negative hype. Like Bryson, I found it wasn't so bad as all that--but then again, maybe I just didn't go to the right places.

I slept at Johnny's (he insisted on giving me his bedroom while he took the couch) and in the morning we dined at his favorite local cafe. We spent the few hours before he began his shift visiting three different beaches within the city limits, the surfing and swimming meccas the area is known for. First we took at Miami beach (yes, it's really called that), then walked along Broad Beach, and then explored a national park-type area where you can walk up into the bush-filled headlands and watch the surfers. The beaches were gorgeous, wide expenses of smooth sand and impossibly blue water, filled with hard bodies and little kids at surf school. We shared a butterscotch gelato milkshake as we walked (oh man, mmm) and I forgot to put sunscreen on my back, a mistake I would suffer for for the next week at least.

Johnny went to work and shortly afterward I was picked up by Erik, a quick-witted, friendly Norwegian immigrant who does TV ads for a living. After a stop at his very pretty apartment (complete with sunny balcony) we went out to Jamaican food with Sabrina, a French woman who came to Australia and found that the boyfriend she was following was not as nice as she would have liked. I was not expecting authentic Jamaican food in this opposite hemisphere, but the family who runs it were clearly Jamaican immigrants, and the fare tasted authentic (at least in my limited experience with Caribbean food.) Our waiter at the restaurant was painfully shy and could barely take our orders, speaking in a tone slightly above a whisper. I thought perhaps he was the owner's son, coerced into working for the family business, and that struck me as a bit cruel. He did, however, manage to slip in quiet questions about the US once he caught wind that that's where I was from. I always find it interesting how we are simultaneously reviled and the subject of so much fascination.

Later in the evening we were joined by Sanna (pronounced San-NA), a bombshell Finnish woman and fellow couch surfer. We spent the night at Erik's, drinking and discovering two overarching universals: funny youtube videos and dragging your friends to do obnoxious things at 1:30 AM.

To start out, we watched silly video after silly video, from classics like Teen Girl Squad and The End of the World to surreal Finnish dancing and the music video for "Take On Me." Finnish, French, American, and Norwegian, we all laughed helplessly. Around 1:30 Sanna, who was fairly well drunk, starting agitating for going to Surfers Paradise, a huge strip of clubs (some of them minus the "of") near Gold Coast City, and the main draw in the Gold Coast mystique. They urged, begged, wheedled me into going, even though I was sleepy and night clubs are not exactly my scene.

Here is where wearing the Anthropology Hat gets confusing. Is it good, or even is it important, to do things that you don't like when you travel? On the one hand, people on vacation are in some way always a bit hedonistic, doing only things they enjoy-- the point of vacation is certainly not to cause oneself discomfort. But on the other hand, people seeking to understand another culture will miss out on important components of that culture if they stay in their comfort zones and do only things they like or that are familiar to them. So where does that leave me, an extended vacationer attempting to enjoy a year experiencing new cultures? Well, on this particular night it left me under the bright lights of Surfers Paradise, having decided that I would wonder what I missed if I didn't come along. And it has left me since with food for thought as to what I'm willing to do for the sake of travel and experience, what risks I'm willing to take, and what exceptions I'm willing to make in the march of "who I am and what I like to do" outside of the US.

The answer to "what I would have missed" that night is "not much"--a street full of shined-up, over-dressed Aussies/Europeans gyrating to bad techno. It was gaudy and sort of amusing in a Crikey-look-at-the-Australian-in-its-native-environment sort of way (no, the irony of that sentences does not escape me.) But when we went to enter a club called The Bedroom and they asked for $10 at the door I decided I'd had enough. I took a taxi home and used the time to work on reading "The Graveyard Book," which I'd started originally in San Francisco but hadn't had a chance to finish. I finally did so in the morning on Erik's balcony, eating toast in the Queensland sunshine with not a techno beat to be heard or a stiletto heel to be seen. I entertain lofty goals of stretching further outside my comfort zone next time around, but you can lead a horse to water, can't teach an old dog, etc... Choose your own cliche, I enjoyed the evening and morning nonetheless.

Noontime came and Erik dropped me at the train station. Next stop: Brisbane.

Miami Beach

Port Macquarie Magic

The trains that traverse the east coast of Australia are quite slow: as I rode six hours up the coast toward Port Macquarie, I reflected more than once that we could have been easily outstripped by a car. Nevertheless, I napped, read the Bryson book, wrote a bit, and chatted with a British traveler named Ian who was heading to the same destination. Once, on the shuttle bus that took us from the train station to the coast, I thought I saw a group of grazing kangaroo.

I was met at the station by my couch surfing host, Chris, an ex-part Brit whose voice sounded exactly like Alan Rickman's (aka Snape in the Harry Potter films.) They must hail from the same area of the UK, and the timber was remarkably similar. Chris was barefoot when he hopped out of his car to help me load my things. That's how I knew this would be an experience.

There's something miraculous about arriving at a train station in a place you have never been and having someone there to call your name and take you away. And things only got better from there-- dedicated readers of this blog will recall the next bits, as I wrote about them in real time a few weeks back. On the way to his house, Chris ran me out to "The Lighthouse," a local landmark on the coast, to give me an idea of "where I was"--which, as it turned out, was a sunlit headland drenched in light mist and beaches stretching out below.


What a view

But before I could even register the beauty fully I was whisked back to the house, a lovely rambling one-level decorated with photos and artifacts from Chris' extensive travels in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Cambodia. There were three girls waiting there with half-made dinner, two Germans from Munich, Tine and Lora, and a British girl. They plied me with wine and within a few minutes there was an incredibly delicious Malaysian-inspired stir fry on the table. We all ate ravenously. I couldn't remember when I had last eaten such a wholesome, solidly good meal--certainly before my week of meat pies and sausage rolls in Sydney. And vegetables! I was overcome with vegetables.

The feast

I was already in a state of surreal shock, a mix of red wine, benadryl (I was worried I might be allergic to Chris' cat, although it turned out I wasn't) and awe at the situation. Here I was, presented with an immediate place to stay and belong in a foreign city, complete with a dinner with people from the world over. And it was only to get better.

There were two more German girls arriving that night. Chris has his visitors coming by car meet him at the Lighthouse, so we went to wait and meet them. We brought a bottle of champagne and plastic flutes, and the breeze was just refreshing enough to require a sweatshirt as we watched the almost full moon come up over the vast Tasman Sea. The waves crashed on the rocks below and the moon danced behind the clouds, its light bouncing off the water. I kept laughing without meaning to. How does this kind of thing just... happen? I could only marvel.

I hadn't previously been sure how long I was to be in Port Macquarie. I knew I wanted to go to the Koala hospital, but that was about the extent of my To Do list. That night I found out that Tine and Lora were moving up the coast the next day in a rented van and I could save some money by going with them. It would mean sacrificing some time in this lovely house and exploring the beaches near the house, but I decided I was willing to do so, feeling a little reluctant but very money-conscious.

I had planned to wake up to listen to the birds waking up in the glen near Chris' house, an event he promised was worth the early start. As it turns out, I wasn't given a choice-- at 5 am, the sound of crazed laughter invaded my dreams. I woke thinking that the sound must have been a product of nightmare, that it couldn't be real, but then... there it was again. Kookaburras, which sound truly deranged, are always the first to start the bird symphony (or so said Chris), and they were soon joined by catbirds that sounded like they were purring or meowing, as well as a wide selection of clear whistles and caws. Following the bird chorus, I had a lovely breakfast and went with the British girl to collect eggs from the hens that live across the road, belonging to an Aussie professor who mostly works in US. Another sweetly surreal activity to add to the roster.

Collecting eggs

When we got back, however, things had taken a turn for the worse. Lora had been bitten by something, and her ankle was red and swollen. We called Chris, who hypothesized that the culprit was a painful but harmless black ant. But as a tourist you're told everything in Australia will kill you (and much of it will), and so I understood when they decided to go to the hospital.

One of the lessons I've started to learn from this trip is that regardless of what unexpected twist life throws at your when you're traveling, there is always the potential for something good to come of it. This time, for example, I was at first frustrated about the delay and worried about how it would affect the next few days, which were tightly planned (a selfish reaction to someone else being injured, but I'm trying to be honest here.) But I used the unexpected time to go on the first of a series of cliff walks leading into town through gorgeous, wild beaches, and it was wonderful. I walked with the other two German girls, and on the way we saw the morning culprit (a kookaburra), as well as some lime green lorikeets and a wild turkey. The beach was filled with mist, enormous boulders, and greenery. I sat under a large rock (the only shade), read a few chapters of Bryson, and relished the scene. The way back was even better, as I chanced upon a koala in a tree. It wasn't that interesting, as they sleep most of the day (and I couldn't get any good pictures of it), but it was suitably fuzzy and cute and I was gratified with another Australian Animal Sighting.

Kookaburra sits on the ol' telephone pole/merry merry king of the... I guess that doesn't work


The untamed beauty of Port Macquarie Beaches



The hospital had declared Lora to be perfectly fine, and so we got underway, first for a daytime stop at The Lighthouse and then to the koala hospital, where they rehabilitate sick animals from up and down the coast and house those whose habitat has been destroyed. There we were gratified to see a very awake (and incredibly adorable) group of koalas and to learn about what makes such a place possible. It was lovely.

Views from The Lighthouse



The rest of the day was taken driving. It was long, of course, but not so bad. I chatted with Tine and Lora about Germany, they asked about the US, we talked about our experiences so far in Australia. They laughed about the chain Bavarian Bier Cafe which is very popular in New South Wales, and often has a picture of a German man in "traditional" get-up with a falcon on his arm on their signs. "After a long day of falconry, I like to drink a nice Bavarian Bier!" he is depicted as saying. They reported to me that they had never participated in falconry, nor had they ever heard of anyone or anyone's ancestors, practicing falconry. They found this hilarious.

We stopped at a few places to look around-- one town was built around an estuary, where a river was busy mixing with the sea; in another, the home almost exclusively of Indian immigrants, featured a beautiful Hindu temple and women walking the streets in saris; in the last a flock of birds with bright red bellies filled the palm trees and made the most deafening noise I have ever heard birds make.

From our stops along the way

We arrived in Byron Bay, major pot and folk music mecca, shortly after dark. It was the kind of place I might have liked to stay a day to explore, but I had made other plans. I met Johnny, a very nice and quite shy Filipino Australian, at the Byron Bay supermarket. He had driven down from the Gold Coast to pick me up and take me to my next destination.

SO CUTE

Making Tracks in Sydney: Part 3

I am nothing if not a market person. Put me in a shopping mall and I have no problem strolling through, stopping occasionally to window shop. Probably I will be begging you to let me leave after a bit. But present me with an outdoor market selling whatever-- vegetables and fruit, used clothing and books, crafts-- and I am in deep trouble.

I had heard that Sydney has a great market scene, and as the weekend had finally come I resolved to check it out. I originally planned to explore two markets, in Paddington and Glebe, but the planning stage of the excursion went so long that I decided to cut my losses and just look at Glebe. Good choice. The market was situated among shady trees in a local park, and it featured plentiful arts and crafts, used clothing and books, homemade cosmetics and candy, many kinds of food, and Chinese massages. I wandered blissfully for a few hours, munching on dim sum from a take-away cart and listening to the Spanish men manning a jewelry tent sing and play the guitar. It took awhile, but I finally settled on my one allowed purchase--a Scrabble tile made into a charm for a necklace.

The Spanish singers at the Glebe Markets


When I was finished I settled in the grass and read, listening to the Celtic band playing nearby and waiting for Damian, the couch surfer from the night before. He showed me around Glebe a bit, including treating me to some positively sinful Spanish-style hot chocolate at a funky chocolate shop (for those keeping track: the standard marshmallow colors of Australia are pink and white, much like Ireland and, as I later found out, New Zealand.)

Street art in Glebe


After a stop at Damian's apartment, we took the bus into the city for the event for which I had stayed an extra day in the city: Sydney Festival First Night.

The annual Sydney Festival takes place every year at the height of summer and includes performances musicians and dance companies from all over the world. After several years, however, people started to complain about how expensive all the shows were, so the city arranged for an All Free first night, which amounts to a massive set of free concerts scattered over the center of the city. I had heard about this night in my first few days in Sydney and resolved to stay on for it.

My cell phone ran out of batteries quite early in the night, and this turned out to be a fortuitous occurance that encouraged rather than hindered an amazing time spent. Right before my phone heaved its last sighs, I was able to meet up with James (my couch surfing host, if you remember) at a band where a great big band was playing. I watched Aussies dancing happily and enjoyed the music in the quickly falling dusk. In between sets, we were treated to entertainment by Aphrodite, who was hosting Love TV on a closed circuit television all over the park, from a little all-pink trailer next to the stage. She interviewed a series of Sydney quasi-celebrities about their love lives and their respective love-affairs with Sydney. Most of these interviews were amusing blather, but one point in particular shone brightly as a point of cultural difference (which you have to really look for in Australia). At the end of each interview, Aphrodite asked her interviewee to arrange his/her facial features as they would look at a...er...point of climax. Note that this image was then broadcast to the hundreds of revelers watching on the lawn around the big band stage-- including children! I told James that that sort of thing would never fly in the US. It looked for a few minutes like I might have gone on Australian Love TV, which I would have put down to a cultural adventure, but Aphrodite ran late and didn't have the time.

Scenes from Sydney Festival First Night: An enormous orange wombat; Three bikers playing unconventional clarinet in the park



Following the big band performances I tried to go see my fellow Wesleyan alum Santogold performing, but the place was packed to sardine levels with Australian hipsters and I couldn't even get close. Instead, having lost James at this point, I struck out on my own and decided to make my way to the stage where the Gypsy Kings and Queens, a Spanish/Balkan band, was to perform. The show, which lasted an hour and a half, felt a bit like getting drunk on music, along with a crowd of thousands. At first I was a little lukewarm on the whole thing, as the songs were very heavy on brass with very fast trumpet finger work and not much else--music to fight bulls to. But the crowd warmed up and the music did, too. There was ornate, interesting vocal work threading in and out of the brass, a couple of beautiful gypsy dancers spicing up the stage, several incredible guitarists, and then, all of a sudden, a mass of us all of us dancing and singing wildly to the music of northern Spain and the Balkans. I don't know if any of us could have told you when the transformation happened, from skeptical audience to excited masses--only that it had and we were happy.

As it turned out, I was standing next to a Serbian immigrant about my age, and as the concert went on we chatted and she told me about the songs she recognized, this one fit for weddings, another sung by an enormous woman with a huge voice who is apparently very famous in Gypsy circles. It was wonderful to be able to catch my breath in between songs and have some cultural context as to the alien, lovely music I was enjoying.

The famous Gypsy singer

The show ended with a burst of fireworks. My feet throbbing, I joined the crowd as it flowed as one being out into the city. I found a pub with the Serbian girl and her two Armenian friends, one with terrible pounding techno but fitting nonetheless. We had a pleasant drink wand walked back to the metro, where I stumbled home ecstatic and exhausted.

I spent my last day in Sydney largely in a previously unexplored part of the Australian world, that of the upper crust. In the morning I went to the famous Bondi Beach, first to the markets (where I very smartly bought the book "Down Under"by Bill Bryson--also known as "In A Sunburned Country"-- which would keep me well entertained and informed for the rest of my trip) and then to see How The Other Half Lives.

Bondi Beach markets


The famous beach itself
Ceal and Tony were friends of family friends, and they had been generous enough to offer to spend the afternoon with me. They picked me up at Bondi and whisked me off to a posh sailing club for lunch. While we waited I was introduced to Pokies, mysteriously complicated poker machines that I couldn't figure out. Apparently they are wildly popular-- if you start looking you seem them everywhere: in super markets, pubs, coffee shops, hotel lobbies. Bryson says in his book that Australia has 1% of world's population and 20% of its poker machines. I believe it. It would seem that Australians love to gamble.

We had a drink before lunch and then I dined on minted lamb with more than one fork in my dingy gray singlet (that's what they call "tank top" here.) I tried not to feel too out of place-- the food was great and I knew it would be the best meal I'd have for a long time, living as I am on a backpacker budget. Ceal and Tony were great lunch companions-- Ceal very intelligent and filled with opinions, Tony quieter and more reserved with the classic dry Australian humor. I loaded up on vegetables and tried to be as thankful as I could.

After a drive around the area to see a few of Sydney Harbor's smaller bays, they took me to an area of the city botanical gardens called Mrs. Macquarie's Chair, named after an old governor's wife, with gorgeous views of the opera house and bridge. This particular sojourn was appropriate for a couple of reasons: first, it brought my time in Sydney full circle as I admired the opera house from afar. Second, I was to leave the next morning for the second stop on my trip, a town named for that same governor: Port Macquarie.

Making Tracks in Sydney: Part 2

Very, very early the next morning I found my way through the tangle of Sydney public transportation the Sydney Fish Market. Sonia met me there and we walked around the entire building, which spanned a couple of city blocks, finally threading our way through a busy parking lot filled with burly men delivering fish, to the entrance. It wasn't well-signed, but we found the area where bidders could sit and watch the products reeled off, and got comfortable.

It was a Dutch Auction, which means that the starting price is actually way too high, and bidders buzz in like on a game show when they see a price they're willing to pay-- and hope they're the first to do so. We were told by a very nice man working at the auction (a bidder himself) that this is to make things "as fair as possible" because no one can drive the price up on purpose, although Sonia (who studied economics) had some reasons I didn't really understand for feeling skeptical about this. The bidder pointed out all of the different areas of the fish warehouse to us, explained about the various abbreviations the auctionmaster was using, and was generally very nice. I found the auction to be quite exciting. There was constant movement far below us on the floor as new variants of fish, squid, prawns, lobsters arrived and were sorted; layered on this was the buzz of people checking out sorted product; and on top of it all swas the constant drone of the auctionmaster selling another 15 kilos of King Prawns or swordfish.


View from the bidding platform at Sydney Fish Market



I had agreed to meet several couch surfers in a hip area of Sydney called Newtown for coffee, but the fish market started (and ended) so early that I had a couple of hours to kill. I got some breakfast in another part of the market's cavernous building, surrounded by fish traders getting off work. There, I discovered a quirk of Australian culture-- if you buy a "sausage roll" you get a fried sausage wrapped in something like a spring roll wrapper. But if you buy an "egg and bacon" roll you get eggs, bacon (which in Australia is actually more like fatty fried ham), and barbecue sauce on a sub roll. Go figure.

I decided to spend my remaining time finding my way to the Town Hall area, which has lovely architecture. As previously mentioned, I spent a little while looking around and sitting on the steps listening to "I Come From the Land Down Under" by Men at Work and feeling too clever and snarky for my own good. I should mention, however, that I have since had my comeuppance. As it turns out Australians love this song. I heard it several times during my travels-- a couple times on the radio, once at a public pool in Brisbane, and once performed by a two-man didjeridoo-and-guitar band in Airlie Beach (but that comes later.) My previous thought had been that it was too gimmicky and silly, but I guess it's kind of like how I love the song "Dirty Water" by The Standells (which, for those not in the know, is about Boston.)

Sydney Town Hall


As it turned out, the Newtown coffee excursion was quite the affair. We ended up 13 in all, from all over the world and a few Aussies as well. Newtown is a vaguely alternative-flavored neighborhood (my host mother told me to look out for "those gothics") with lots of coffee shops, funky bars, and vintage clothing stores. We took advantage of one of the more spacious establishments, then after a light lunch a chunk of us broke off to head to Manly Beach.

If you're not familiar with it, Sydney Harbor has a crazy amount of nooks and crannies, and it makes use of an extensive ferry network to connect by water what would take a long time to travel between on land. This includes several beautiful beaches (Bondi is probably the most famous). We chose Manly because we'd heard the ferry ride was quite nice and none of us had been on the Sydney ferry before. The day had been overcast, but the sun started to burn through the clouds as the little old boat made its way across the water. I put on suntan lotion (as usual, under the ozone layer hole it was a losing battle) and admired amazing views of the bridge/Opera house from the water.

No seriously, how beautiful is this building?


The walk through the center of Manly town to the beach had a lovely carnival atmosphere, and we enjoyed lounging on the beach people watching, chatting, and dipping our toes in the surf. When we got hungry, instead of getting individual ice creams at the inflated prices along the boardwalk we went into the nearest supermarket and purchased a two-liter container of ice cream and 6 spoons. We took the spoils of this victory to the wharf overlooking the Manly lagoon. Life was pretty good.

Enjoying ice cream on the pier, communal style. From left: Kailash (India), Wil (England), Nicole (New Zealand), Sofia (USA), Damian (Australia)



We were all enjoying each other too much to finish so early in the afternoon. It was a Friday and we joined in the post-work festivities back on the mainland, making our way to The Hart pub. There we feasted on a free "sausage sizzler" and I had my customary cider (this variety called Pipsqueak, which I think is a pretty awesome name for a cider.) I don't know if I have mentioned here before that Australians love their sausages (I've heard they're called 'snags' sometimes but never heard someone say it to my face.) Usually they are prepared on a "barbie" with grilled onions or peppers and served on white bread (not rolls) with "tomato sauce," which is like ketchup but sweeter.

We stayed at The Hart well into the night, but jet lag was still playing games with me and I had to leave early. It was lucky I did. Remember before I mentioned that I was accosted by cute tween America-loving goths? Well, the following scene took place when I stepped onto the Burwood line at Town Hall station:

I was bleary eyed, trying to stay awake and discern whether the train I boarded would, indeed, be stopping at Burwood, when two goth kids dressed all in black with lots of eye make up, identical streaks of deep pink in their hair, and five or six piercings almost at random on their faces, accosted me. They were decorated so similarly that I wondered if they were siblings of boyfriend and girlfriend.

They yelled at me (but friendly-like) across the carriage, "Are you American!?!?" then trotted up to be closer. Without waiting for me to respond, the girl exclaimed, "If I go to America I want to go to ___, Ohio " (here she named a town so teeny and random I can't remember it now; she wanted to go because is the home town of her favorite emo band.) She considered for a moment. "Or Disneyland."

The two of them looked at me with fascination and wonder, as if I was an alien, as if they had never met an American before. Maybe they hadn't, but this was the first time in this country I had been treated as such an anomaly. They asked me maybe 10 questions in a row about life in America, rapid fire. I tried to rev my sleepy brain and answer.

" I want to go to America so bad," the girl said again. She giggled. Almost no pause, and then: "Have you tried Vegemite?"
"She shouldn't," said her brother/boyfriend, "She won't like it."
"But it's so Australian!" she shot back.
"Well, I'm pretty Australian and I don't like it."

They got off at the next stop, waving at me and telling me to say hi to Ohio for them, leaving a burst of Aussie goth perkiness in their wake. I could see their magenta streaks bouncing through the crowd at the station as they headed toward the stairs.