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Australia, 21-26 October 2007
Tale of Two Cities
Remember in high schoolthe essay assignment that started with "Compare and contrast ... " and could end with anything: Strategies of Grant and Lee. The use of symbolism by Flaubert and and Mark Twain. Heavenly views of Ptolemy and Copernicus. Love and marriage. Republican Laissez Faire and Democratic New Deal. American football and rugby. Gummi bears and parafin lips. Ford and Fiat. Coke and Pepsi.
I have recently realized is that I often use a comparison to help make a story (my high school English teachers will be so relieved to hear this).
I did it bicycling: Friendly Kansas and hostile Missouri. I did it in Fiji: Tourist trap Nadi Town and welcoming Kuata. Now, I turn the screws on Sydney.
Sydney
Sydney is an OK city, and I enjoyed my visit there, but there were some definite negatives.
On the good side, I stumbled onto a car show with a brazillion Corvettes. Visited a free Maritime museum in which a whole gallery was devoted to American Maritime history (really was devoted to encounters of Americans and Australians). It included the visit of the Confederate raider Shenandoah in 1865 and a Yankee businessman who sailed a New Bedford whaler to Australia to rescue 6 Fenians (British soldiers convicted as pro-Irish rebels) from Freemantle Prison in 1876. Of course I saw the Sydney Opera House and strolled the tourist area known as Darling Harbor. I did the cheapest possible harbor tour by crossing the Sydney Harbor bridge on foot. Explored the Rocks, an early dockfront neighborhood in Sydney, famous for tough guys (the Rocks Push gang), prostitution, scurvy-ridden prisoners, and nurses conscripted from the prison population to treat such souls. I spent an afternoon in the free museum of contemporary art.
But what I remember most about Sydney was the flies. Almost everywhere I went in Sydney, there always seemed to be one or two buzzing my head, trying to burrow in my hair, crawl in my ear, or fly into my mouth. I freely admit the possibility that taking more frequent showers might have helped, but I saw quite a few other people in business attire also batting at flies. While the streets all looked clean, somewhere there must be back alleys with a lot of uncollected garbage.
But my worst complaints were about Base Backpacker's, a youth hostel that I stayed at in Sydney. A guy with no towel used toilet paper to dry himself after a shower and clogged up a toilet with the wet paper. I'm sure this fellow didn't help matters, but there was a toilet paper shortage for all 3 days (on my floor, there was NO toilet paper for the duration). The kitchen was a pigsty: Except for a few responsible souls, people were not cleaning up after themselves. With dishes stacked high in the sinks, spilling over onto the counters, the next people to use the kitchen didn't have a place to wash their dishes, so even responsible people left their dishes unwashed.
Then there were the 60 ninth graders on my floor. Shushing each other at 100 decibels. Emo meltdowns. Guys playing sports and yelling stupid things at the girls. Girls screaming, posturing, and tittering stupid things back at the boys. Teachers yelling at the kids at 0100 to quiet down and go to their rooms. The teachers did try to contain the mob by camping out on the hallway floor until 0230. But the minute they left to go to bed, the sentries of the little heathens gave the all clear signal and the horde did a very noisy covert rearrangement of room assignments, apparently to equalize the numbers of boys and girls in each room.
At 0600 the teachers returned to wake everyone up for the optional sunrise viewing. Students were knocking on each other's doors, one student very responsibly yelling that no one should knock on the door of room 124 (my room). One roomful of girls had a meltdown, cursing at the teacher who was trying to wake them up. And of course, very few students wanted to go see the sunrise, so they all hung out in their rooms gossiping (not quietly, never quietly) about boys, teachers, nerds, jocks, parents, and anyone else who made life unbearably miserable for 14 year olds.
Melbourne
After two days in Sydney, I rode all night by bus to Melbourne (saved on paying for accommodations for a night). Not bad for $60. Even had an in-flight movie.
I stayed at the YHA (Youth Hostels of Australia). What a difference from Base Backpackers in Sydney: The kitchen was immaculate. There were people of all ages, not just university students. Chinese mothers cooking rice for her family. Old retired couples fixing coffee. Single guys my age. It was a refreshing difference. There was even a group of 50 or so 8th graders who were the very models of good behavior. The internet was cheaper than I had seen in a while. I even found a neighboring wifi site that didn't have password restricted access (the first time that had happened in 11 weeks of travel). The top floor is a lounge and balcony that overlooks the city. This was the first time in 11 weeks that an accommodation had a reading light over the bed.
And the bathroom always had toilet paper.
Where Sydney looks and feels like Baltimore with extra flies, Melbourne architecture reminds me of a clean and tidy New Orleans. The architecture is a mix of antebellum brick with wrought iron balconies, massive stone cathedrals and government offices, skyscrapers, and avant garde museums.
I visited the Melbourne museum. While I was a little disappointed by the randomness and small number of exhibits, there were some nice surprises. For one, they have an enclosed rainforest with some interesting specimens. They had a magnifying lens that allowed you to peer into an ant nest inside a rotting log. I encountered a male bower bird devotedly decorating his bower in a theme of deep blue bottle caps. He was unconcerned about me as I watched him, but when I brought out my camera, he hid in the undergrowth.
I spent a blissful hour in the Victoria market. The market had an awesome assortment of fresh produce (never thought that I'd say awesome and produce in the same phrase). It also had an ongoing flea market with a crazy assortment of cheap stuff. One of the oddities I noticed in the market was the way prices varied by location in the market. The most extreme case was that strawberries were $1.00 per half-pint at one end and gradually rose in price as you walked to the other end, reaching $3.00 per half-pint.
Interesting person
I made an interesting acquaintance at YHA in Melbourne with one of my roommates, a 40 year old Japanese man who quit his job as a civil engineer. He had been pushed by stress and depression in his job and pulled away by a passion for hiking. He had just attempted to hike the North Island of New Zealand from north to south, but constant rain stole his enthusiasm. Getting off the trail and returning to Auckland felt like quitting, so, not surprisingly, he felt even more self-critical and depressed. He moved on to Australia with only vague plans for what to do next.
Over the course of the two days I was there, we compared notes about leaving jobs, treks on foot or by bicycle, leaving trails that didn't feel right anymore, and thinking about what was coming next. I was surprised to see that he was reading Eckhart Tolle's book "The Power of Now", which I had read a few months ago. That of course led us to rehash our discussions about job, trekking, and future in the context of spirituality. It turns out that a few days ago, a friend of his in Japan had told him about Vipassana and he was thinking about doing the 10 day course. He had downloaded information from one of the Vipassana websites, trying to find answers to his questions, trying to decide if he wanted to attend the Vipassana center near Melbourne. Having been to a course myself, I was able to answer many of his questions.
Copyright (c) 2007 by Dick Delanoy
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