Cave Bacon, Blue Bottles, and Rip Tides

We’ve been so busy since our return from the Blue Mountains that I haven’t had time to write until today. I can’t cover everything we’ve done in the last couple of weeks, but at the very least I’ll explain the title for this post.

Cave Bacon

In his post about the Blue Mountains, Philip mentioned our trip to the fantastic Jenolan Caves. Our guide suggested we compose poetry inspired by our subterranean experience, so I decided to rhapsodize about formations that looked like, you guessed it, juicy strips of bacon.

Here’s “Ode to Cave Bacon”:

Glistening carbonate descending in sheets
If I could munch stone your taste wouldn’t be beat
Your crystalline fat’s taken years to congeal
But with an egg cut from marble you’d make a mighty fine meal

Blue bottles

January 26th was “Australia Day,” akin to America’s 4th of July except for the very big fact that Australia never revolted against Britain to become a republic (Queen Elizabeth is still the country’s sovereign). Instead of independence, the day marks the arrival of the first British fleet in 1788, so Aboriginals understandably refer to it as “Invasion Day” or “Survival Day.” We decided to spend it with our friends Susan and Josh and their adorable baby, Pepper, at Coogee Beach (which is where the three of them are lucky to live and which Philip and I prefer over Bondi). We had a great time hanging out with them and some friends of theirs. The only problem? The day was scorching hot and the ocean oh-so-inviting, but the lifeguards (who wear the cutest red and yellow beanies on their heads) announced that blue bottles were washing in with the tide. Blue bottles are jellyfish that look like, you guessed it, blue bottles. Here’s how a friend of Josh and Susan’s described their sting: “Imagine someone pressing a lit cigarette to your skin—not for seconds or minutes, but for hours.” That gave us pause . . . We noticed, however, that plenty of people continued to swim in the ocean; and Susan said odds were still good we wouldn’t get stung. So we made our way to the water’s edge and, after standing there for about 15 desire-and-dread-filled minutes, I started walking into the sea.  Precisely at that moment, a girl only a few feet in front of me started screaming and crying and ran back onto the beach. Needless to say, our flirtation with the water came to a quick and cowardly end! Fortunately Coogee has a saltwater pool where we could take a quick dip, and we had lots of fun hanging out on shore with Susan, Josh, and Pepper. This is completely random, but I can’t resist sharing one of Susan’s stories (with her permission). Back in December she planned to make Josh homemade chocolate mousse for Chanukah. Unfortunately her mother, who’d been visiting, had used half the cream she’d set aside for the mousse, and Susan didn’t have time to go the store and buy more before Josh came home. What was a nursing mother to do?  Let’s just say the mousse ended up being a true expression of love . . .

Rip Tides

Thwarted by the blue bottles at Coogee, we decided to head to the ocean again a few days later. This time we took a ferry from Circular Quay to Manly Beach, enjoying beautiful harbor views along the way. Excited to spend a day on the sand and in the water, we rented a beach umbrella (keeping in mind that Australia and New Zealand have the highest skin cancer rates in the world) and spread out our towels. But no sooner had Philip waded into the surf than the lifeguards blew their whistles and ordered all swimmers out of the ocean because of dangerous rip tides. Blue bottles may inflict pain, but rip tides kill, so the lifeguards closed the beach. We spent the ensuing hours gazing at the tauntingly beautiful waters, hoping for an “all clear” signal that unfortunately never came. Chagrined, we went home thinking we’d never get to swim in the ocean at a Sydney beach.

Following a fascinating few days of studying Aboriginal history and art, both in the classroom and at museums, yesterday we decided to visit Susan, Josh, and Pepper at Coogee Beach one more time. Because we were meeting them for dinner, we didn’t think to bring bathing suits and towels, which we immediately regretted when we arrived at the beach, given that crowds of people were swimming in the apparently blue bottle- and rip tide- free surf. Once again we were at the beach but unable to go in the water. Here’s the happy ending: Josh offered us his own swimsuits and a couple of towels so we could take an evening dip. Which we did, with gratitude. Thanks, Josh!

Tomorrow morning we leave Sydney for Wollombi (in the Hunter Valley), where we’ll spend six days at an Aboriginal camp learning from Aboriginal instructors. We won’t have access to the internet during our time there, so won’t be posting again for at least a week. In the meantime, everyone, be well!

~Andy

With Susan, Josh, and Pepper at Coogee

With Pepper and Susan

Yes, couldn't get enough of Pepper

Bathers braving the blue bottles at Coogee Beach

Coogee's saltwater pool

View of cliffs at Coogee

Scene at Manly Beach just before swimmers were ordered out of the water

Lifeguard with surfboard

UV-free reading at Manly Beach

Hanging out with our friend John near Oxford Street (which is lined with gay pubs called "hotels," so-called because once upon a time only establishments that provided lodging could serve alcohol in Australia)

Students in front of Finger Wharf in the wonderfully named neighborhood of Woolloomoloo

Opera House Tour

I thought I'd post a couple of pictures from our tour of the Sydney Opera House. The interior is definitely 70's inspired, but somehow it all works! They have slowly begun to redo some of the interior spaces according to plans left by the original architect, Jorn Utzen, in his last years. One room that hasn't been touched is the foyer with the bright purple carpet. Apparently when Pavarotti performed at the Opera House he refused to participate in a photo shoot scheduled in that room because of that carpet so they had to move it to another room with red carpet . . . go figure . . .

As if we haven't posted (or taken) enough shots of the Opera House exterior, below you'll find a couple more, these taken from the Harbour Bridge during our walk across it. The amazing thing about the building is that every time you see it from a different angle it demands another photo. It really is an incredible structure.

On a completely different note, while we were watching a movie in the lounge with a couple of students, another spider appeared on the wall . . . bigger than the last one, but still not as big as they come. As we were all taking pictures it suddenly jumped off the wall and ran into the middle of our group. Obviously we all screamed and jumped up on the furniture . . . except me, of course, who had to keep everyone calm. ;)


~Philip

Foyer outside the Opera Theater

Another interior shot of the Opera House

View from the downtown end of the
Harbor Bridge

Circular Quay

Walking across the Harbor Bridge

The Rocks historic district

Charlotte's mother? (maybe 4" diameter . . . yikes)

The Blue Mountains

Last Saturday, all of us left Sydney to spend a weekend in the Blue Mountains, located about two hours outside of the city. The weather here has been hot and humid so we were all looking forward to getting out into the bush and into some cooler temperatures. After our stop at the Mt. Annan Botanic Gardens that Andy mentioned, we arrived at the site of our first lecture/hike, the aptly named Scenic World, located next to the Blue Mountain National Park. Scenic World is a huge tourist destination complete with a near vertical train ride to the trail head set to the theme song from Indiana Jones. Cheesy, yes, but stunningly beautiful too. Here we took a short hike to start becoming familiar with some of the local flora and then rode a gondola back up to the top where our bus was parked.

The Blue Mountains with the 3 Sisters on the left

The train down to the trail head

The mascot for the national park, the Mountain Devil,
named after the seed pod of the plant of the same name.

The real Mountain Devil with its foliage. The seed emerges
 from the split between its ears.

After our time at Scenic World, it was on to our accommodations for the weekend, the Jemby Renjah eco-lodge. The lodge is set in the middle of a eucalyptus forest with boardwalks connecting the different bungalows to the main dining room/reception area and wild rosellas and king parrots flying among the trees. The lodge was built on an old logging site with minimal impact on the land. Existing fire trails were used to bring in supplies and building equipment, and pathways to the various bungalows were strategically located on already cleared land. The lodge uses solar energy to heat much of its water and compost toilets (which were surprisingly clean and odor-free) to minimize water usage. The best part was being served breakfast and dinner (fish & chips one night, steak the next) each day, a nice luxury after weeks of sandwiches; and every morning at 8:30 am guests were invited to feed the parrots with a staff member . . . really fun, but be prepared for birds landing on your head, shoulders, and arms to get to the sunflower seeds.

Jemby Rinjah

Celebrating January b-days at Jemby Rinjah with
Katy, Sara, and Hannah

A rosella hanging out on the deck

Feeding a king parrot

Our first full day in the mountains was spent on an excursion to the Jenolan Caves, a massive cave system within the Blue Mountains that was supposedly discovered by an escaped convict who used the caves as a hideout. In fact, the Aboriginal people have used the caves for thousands of years and called them Binoomea, or "dark places." In the late 1800's, two brothers explored the system by candlelight, mapping them as they went, and in the early 19th century the caves were developed into a tourist attraction and are now the most visited tourist destination in NSW. Our whole group was treated to a 2-hr long guided tour deep into the caves, where we saw stunning rock and mineral formations and walked along the river that runs through the cave system. It was an amazing experience that was hard to capture in photos, but I'll post a couple of the better ones.

Inside the caves

The "minaret"

After our tour we took our lunches and walked along the river to a swimming hole where some of the braver kids (as well as Andy and myself) jumped off the rocks into the (cold!) water. The trail to the swimming hole is also where we saw some of the local wildlife. The first animal we saw was a red-bellied black snake that was camped out next to the trail. It's extremely venomous (you would need medical attention within the hour if bitten, which would mean a helicopter ride to the hospital), but this one was a juvenile and didn't seem to be too interested in us. We're learning this is pretty typical of the snakes here. If you leave them alone they're likely to make their escape without harming you. The highlight of the day was spotting what we've been told is the animal most rarely seen in the wild here in Australia . . . the platypus! For those of you who don't know, the platypus is an aquatic mammal with a body and fur similar to a river otter, a tail like a beaver, flippers for hands and feet, and a duckbill-like mouth. To make it even stranger, it also lays eggs! It is truly a bizarre animal. I'll post a picture, but like the penguins in NZ, you'll have to take my word for it, since it's barely recognizable in the photo.

The swimming hole where we had lunch

I just jumped but unfortunately Andy missed it!

Andy mid-jump

The platypus is right in the center swimming
over the top edge of the algae . . . really!

Here's what they look like close up.

Red-bellied black snake

That night when we got back to Jemby Rinjah we had dinner and then sat around the campfire playing games and listening to our Aussie bus driver tell stories and sing us Australian campfire songs. We all sang rounds of the kookaburra song too. Any of you know that one? "Kookaburra sittin' in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the forest is he, laugh kookaburra laugh kookaburra, gay your life must be . . ." It all started when we heard the kookaburras laughing in the forest around us. It was the perfect ending to our day . . .

After breakfast on our last day, we all set off on our 6-hour bush walk down into the rainforests of the Blue Mountains. It was an amazing hike that took us through dry eucalyptus forests to the wet rainforests along the river and back up again. The hike followed an ancient Aboriginal trail and passed alongside (and sometimes under) fantastic sandstone cliffs and rock formations. We stopped for lunch at the top of a waterfall with a spectacular view of the valley. The kids, of course, had to take off their shoes and wade on the flat sandstone rocks about 10 feet from where the water went over the edge and fell to the valley floor. Andy watched like a nervous parent until they were all safely back on the trail! It was a long, steep and hot climb back to the bus, and when we got to the top we were informed by Nat that we had all walked right over a tiger snake on the trail without seeing it. And I thought I'd been keeping a good eye out for snakes!

Starting out in mostly dry
eucalyptus forest

Andy, Dick and Marnie on the trail

Lunch at the top of the waterfall

Playing a little too close to the edge!

The whole group with the Blue Mountains
behind us

We're back in Sydney now with just a little over a week left here before we move on to our next stop, an Aboriginal camp in the Hunter Valley. Andy and I plan on making the most of this week with at least a couple more trips to the beach, a tour of the Opera House, and explorations of a couple more suburbs. We'll keep you posted!

~Philip

From Sydney to the Blue Mountains

Life has been a whirl of lectures and excursions since we posted our last entry, and I’m happy to say there’s nothing I’d leave out if we had to do it all over again. All of our lecturers and guides have been uniformly excellent, making it a pleasure to be a student again. Over several days we got a crash course in Australia’s colonial history as well as an overview of its major flora and fauna. Did you know that Australia has almost 800 reptile species (many of them deadly) while North America has fewer than 300? Or that eucalyptus leaves are toxic to most animals other than the koala, which is uniquely adapted to eat them? We also learned that you don’t tend to find “climax” forests dominated by one species of tree in Australia, due to the climactic extremes and relatively poor soil. Instead you find a diversity of flora marked by unique adaptations to the difficult conditions. There are, for instance, hundreds of varieties of eucalyptus trees. On an appalling note: until 1967, Australia’s Aboriginals were categorized not as humans but as part of the “flora and fauna” of the continent . . .

We encountered more appalling history at the Hyde Park Barracks downtown. The same Governor Macquarie mentioned in the last blog entry ordered a convict who’d once been an architect to design and build the barracks, where thousands of convicts slept, ate, and, most of all, worked. Inside was a replica of a wooden triangle to which convicts were tied, then lashed 50 to 100 times with a cat o’ nine tails and doused with salt water—all for such crimes as speaking too loudly or not working at a fast enough pace.

Last week our evenings were nearly as busy as our days. As part of the program, we all attended a speakers’ series called “Sydney Stories,” one evening hearing from a comedian who fled with his family from Vietnam in the 1970s, on another an Aboriginal performer involved in Australia’s civil rights movement, and on yet another a folk historian/musician who shared stories of working-class Sydney (and bawdy songs with lyrics that shouldn’t be repeated here). One night, Philip, Nat, and I also went to an interview/performance/movie in the beautiful neo-gothic quadrangle of the University of Sydney. There we had the privilege of listening to Kev Carmody, an Aboriginal folk singer who wrote and sang the music for the film “One Night the Moon,” which was shown on an enormous screen while we lay on the grass. Set in rural Australian in the 1930s, the film is both gorgeous and heartbreaking—definitely see it if you can.

The past couple of days were spent in the Blue Mountains, two hours west of Sydney. They’re dramatic not because of their height but because of the canyons carved among them. Imagine Arizona canyon country—but filled with eucalyptus trees. On the way, we stopped at a botanic garden for native species and had the bizarre experience of learning about Australian botany from a guide who told us he believes in creationism instead of evolution. At one point he said that, like Jesus Christ, shade trees are our salvation. Weird . . .

Staying with our group for our entire weekend in the mountains was Howard Barker, a naturalist/expert on all things Australian. His knowledge is truly encyclopedic—and he was extremely enthusiastic about sharing it. We were lucky to have him along, but I think we all suffered from a bit of information overload. Speaking of which, I think it’s time to finish this entry. I’ll leave it to Philip to tell you all about the snakes and mountain devils, as well as our sighting of one of the most elusive creatures in the Australian bush . . .

~Andy

Hyde Park Barracks

Convict hammocks

Typical Sydney row houses

More row houses

Koala at the zoo

Philip and his new friend

View of the "Grand Canyon" in the Blue Mountains

The Students Have Landed

I write this from the rooftop of Arundel House, our University of Sydney accommodation, enjoying a sweeping view of the city and a refreshing breeze. During the school year, Arundel House is a women’s dormitory run by the Anglican Church, which explains the strict no-alcohol policy as well as the numerous books promoting Christianity conspicuously placed on tables and shelves in the common areas. The day Philip and I arrived, a few of the permanent residents who’d chosen to stay over the summer break were chatting and giggling in the TV lounge. We felt as if we’d walked onto the stage set of “The Facts of Life.” One of the residents is a dead ringer for Natalie (Note for the uninformed: “The Facts of Life” was a sitcom in the 80s set in a private girls school).

The LC students have been here three days, and so far things are going great. Everyone is enthusiastic and the group has a nice dynamic. A lot of credit goes to Nat, our efficient and cheerful program coordinator, who fortunately made it down to Sydney from Brisbane a few days ago in spite of catastrophic floods (see http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/). Hopefully the recovery will be well on its way by the time we reach Brisbane in a few weeks.

In the meantime we enjoy Sydney, which is a world-class city and overgrown beach town rolled into one. The day after the students arrived we took a bus tour to introduce us to downtown and some inner suburbs. (Note: By “suburb” Australians mean any neighborhood that lies outside a city’s central business district, so a suburb can in fact be what an American would call an “urban” or even “inner-city” neighborhood.) Our friendly and informative bus driver fit the stereotype of the Aussie bloke. Five minutes couldn’t go by without his referring to beer (by the way, the Aussies seem to despise Foster’s—go figure), and he made sure to point out his favorite pubs as we drove along. Not surprisingly, our first stop was the opera house, which is truly a remarkable building. We then made our way to Mrs. Macquarie's Chair, a bench carved from stone that commands a view of Sydney Harbor. Lachlan Macquarie, governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821, ordered convicts to carve the chair and build the road that led to it so his wife, who pined for home, could watch ships arrive in the harbor from her beloved England. Many of those ships were crammed with convicts condemned to servitude in New South Wales, which Britain established as a penal colony in the 1780s. For a gripping history of Britain’s system of “transportation,” which conveyed tens of thousands of convicts to Australia, Tasmania, and Norfolk Island from the late 18th to mid-19th centuries, check out Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore. It’s a long but fascinating read.

After visiting Mrs. Macquarie's Chair, we left behind Australia’s convict past and enjoyed its recreational present at Bondi Beach. Philip and I didn’t have bathing suits or towels with us, so we only waded into the ocean, but some of the students dove into the surf. They were good about staying between the safety flags, since Australian beaches are infamous for their rip tides, which drown lots of people each year. People worry about sharks and jellyfish, but the rip tides are what kill.

The last couple of days have been spent attending top-notch lectures at the University of Sydney. It’s been fascinating to learn about the geological history of Australia (main lesson: the continent’s landscape is very, very old and thus very, very worn) as well as the debates surrounding when and how the Aboriginals arrived tens of thousands of years ago. I’d give more details, but I think Philip is anxious to explore more of Sydney today. I've attached some pictures below . . .

~Andy

Wading at Bondi Beach

Bondi Beaach

One of Sydney Harbor's many inlets

Students enjoying a view of the harbor

Sitting on Mrs. Macquarie's Chair