We Go to a Land Down Under -- VI

In the Time of Creation

Friday, Oct. 7

Kata Tjuta

Several intrepid members of our group decide to take in the sunrise at Uluru while others are dropped off to take a hike around the mountain. Tourists like to climb the mountain, but because it’s a sacred site connected to aboriginal creation stories, the government officially discourages climbing the mountain. This is sort of a compromise. The native peoples would like a ban, but the government wants to keep the tourists happy. Thus the “compromise.” All the official literature discourages climbing, and in the park gift shop, you can buy a T-shirt that proudly proclaims you did not climb. Tour operators also strongly encourage their entourages to stay off the mountain/

We skip the activities because departures are way earlier than the ones we've experienced up to now, and we’re all tired of being up early. So our day begins at 8:30 as we board the bus for a closer view of the mountain.

While we drive to the site, Tony tells us some of the folktales that adhere to Uluru. He explains that both he and our driver, who also runs tours to the mountain, have to be certified to tell the stories. Even then, the stories he relates are considered to be the children’s versions, and the more complex tales are reserved for the older native peoples.

We drive to a trailhead that will lead us to the Mutitjulu waterhole. As we walk by various formations, Tony tells us of an epic battle between two snakes and points out the formations that resemble snakes and the marks on the mountainside that correspond to elements of the story.

One of the rock formations looks like a blunt-nosed snake, and among the lessons contained in the tales is that snakes with this kind of head are not poisonous, Another formation resembles a snake head with sharp, angular features, and we learn that this is an indicator that the snake is poisonous.

That heart-shaped mark at the top is really
a backside-shaped mark.

When we reach the waterhole, we hear yet another story. The waterhole is not spring fed, though some once thought so, but is filled by rain running off the mountain. Up on the side we see holes in the rock, and sure enough, they correspond to elements of the story we’re hearing. One mark looks like a heart to me, but in the story it’s the result of a woman sitting on the ground. Just below that a hole represents the mark made by her knee as she stood, and another below that represents where she struck the ground with her wanna, an all-purpose stick used by tribal women.

Rock paintings at Uluru

On our way back to the trailhead, we stop at an area containing paintings by the Anangu people. At least one of them seems to represent Alita, Uluru and Kata Tjuta, the three mountains that rise from the ground. These three formations lie in a line when viewed from above, and the perspective of all the paintings is also from above. When Tony asks the group why we think that’s true, I can't help turning to Sharon and saying, “Ancient Aliens.” Fortunately he didn’t hear that.

This aerial perspective is used for traditional stories that communicate sacred realities, often creation themes, and at least in part, the perspective helps obscure the message to the uninitiated. The paintings and drawings also serve as maps.

What do you think? Was that the dingo that ate her baby?

Back at the trail head we see a dog wandering down the path. Of course the assumption is that this is a dingo, and the group's cameras start clicking. But our driver, John, says it's more likely a regular dog running loose because it lacks the distinctive white markings of the dingo. I’m going to take his word for it, but this dog looks to me like it's at least part dingo from the pics I find online later.

We reboard the bus to take a drive around the entire mountain, with Tony continuing to tell us traditional stories. At some point we are asked to stop taking photos, another agreement to respect the sacred nature of the site. Along the way we’ll stop off at the park's cultural center. We can take pictures outside but not inside because the inside houses displays telliing stories we’ve heard during the morning.

We’ll head back to the hotel late morning, as the temperatures as rapidly rising into the 90s, and they don’t want us wandering about in the near desert in that kind of heat. This shouldn’t be a problem for those of us from Texas -- and most of the Texans in our group are from North Texas, where it's considerably more humid -- but we’ll be back out in late afternoon to visit the formation known as Kata Tjuta, another sacred site associated with creation stories, and the Walpa Gorge, a part of Kata Tjuta.

Kata Tjuta is more elongated and segmented than Uluru. We stop at a lookout on one of the long sides of Kata Tjuta, At one end of the formation, you can see the trail that tourists take to climb the mountain, though as with Uluru, they are discouraged from doing so. At some point stakes were driven into the ground to provide stability for climbers.

At the end of the lookout, you can see Uluru in the distance, about 12.5 miles away, and some other isolated formations sticking out of the ground Tony explains that those uprises are what's left of an ancient mountain range. Erosion and landfill over thousands of years left those formations

Gotta admit it’s pretty hot when we get to the gorge, but the real problem is the flies. Tony warned us that the flies can be bad during the daytime. Some of our group have purchased fly nets that you put over your head, but we didn’t because we really hadn’t been bothered much before now.

The flies home in on Sharon, as flying bugs have a tendency to do, and she begins to feel like she can’t breathe. The heat’s bothering both of us so we let the boys forge on ahead and turn back to a covered area to await their return.

Sunset at Kata Tjuta

When everyone returns we head for the west side of Kata Tjuta for the sunset. 

Sunset here is almost as spectacular at Kata Tjuta as at Uluru, though the formation from the west side is not as imposing. Gotta say, I’m really grateful for digital cameras. I shot twice as many pictures in two weeks as I took when I spent a month in India and Nepal four decades ago, and although the film wasn’t that expensive, the processing ran to a nice bit of change. Now the expense lies in the camera, which has evolved tremendously over the SLRs I used to have. I think I snapped more pics at Kata Tjuta than Uluru, just from playing with all the settings available to me.

One nice thing about the very late afternoon into sunset – the flies go away. Maybe they have an early bedtime so they can be up at sunrise to annoy the tourists.

We Go to a Land Down Under -- V

That's One Big Rock

Thursday, Oct. 6

We have an extra hour this morning before we depart. Feels positively decadent, or something like that.

We will be on the road for most of the day driving to Yulara, the resort village near Uluru, which used to be called Ayers Rock. (It’s kind of like Mount McKinley in Alaska. A white surveyor named in honor of another white guy, but the locals always refered to it by its aboriginal name, and it's now the preferred official name.)

Camels were imported, and some were released into
the wild where they multiplied and are now
considered to be a nuisance. 

We'll be heading south and then west, covering about 277 miles, about 30 miles less than the drive from Midland to El Paso. Like this latter drive, there's not much to see, scrub and dirt, the occasional mountain. Unlike the El Paso run, we won't be encountering towns along the way. Oh, there's a couple of places to stop, Camel Farm, a tourist stop where some of our folks take camel rides around a track that might be a quarter-mile long, and a couple of roadhouses where you can get a bite to eat and find a modest place to stay, but that's about the extent of it.

And you'll rarely see traffic. I may have this wrong, but I think that while on this road we see a “road train,” a semi pulling several trailers behind it. I believe this one was pulling three.

Tony’s trickster nature rises up again during the trip. One of our stops will be in the middle of nowhere where we’ll get a chance to see a large salt flat, one of many that dot the area. Before we arrive at the stop, Tony says he’ll give $50 dollars to whoever is the first to spot Uluru. But if he/she is wrong, then the passenger will owe Tony. According to the schedule we’re a couple of hours away, but hey, we’ve never seen it and it might be so high and the ground so flat that you can see it from a long way off.

Mt. Conner

Sure enough, not much time passes before we’re able to see a large mesa on the horizon. Is that it? Some folks swear it is. But of course, it isn't. It's Mt. Conner, Atila to the locals. Part of this trick is just the way Tony is – he likes to mess with us -- but I think it’s probably also an effort on his part to encourage people to pay attention to the travel itinerary he gave us the first day. It's a good try, but the itinerary will be ignored by some people in our group pretty much up to the last day.

We stop at a lookout to take pics of Mt. Conner and climb a small sand dune to check out a salt flat, one of many that dot the route. Then it's back on the bus until we reach the Ayers Rock Resort, our home for the next couple of days. The resort is a conglomeration of hotels, shops, a museum, and restaurants whose sole purpose is to support tourism for the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. It even has a small IGA grocery store that we will frequent.

Whereas Melbourne was blustery, rainy and cool, Yulara is sunny, dry and hot. Remember, they are as far into our spring as we are into fall, and the daytime highs are already in the 90s and forecast to hit 100 on the day we'll leave. Summer highs can go as high as 140. 

This night we’ll travel to a viewing area to see Uluru at sunset. Mind, there are hundreds of other people there to see it, but that doesn't detract from the experience. I would make a comparison to our trip to the Grand Canyon. We’d seen the pictures, but nothing prepared us for the grandeur of the actual place.

Uluru is “only” a bit over 1,000 ft high, but it's almost 6 miles around and sticks out in the middle of a mostly flat, scrubby, red plain. We're told that geologists believe it's like an iceberg, with some 80 percent of the formation lying underground. It's also loaded with iron, which makes it turn a rusty red at sundown – and sunrise, so I’m told. We skipped the opportunity to check it out the next morning.

While walking down a path to find some other angles on the mountain, we encounter a family. Sharon and the boys keep wandering up the path while I stop for a picture, and the parents start chatting with me. They’re Aussies on holiday and seem genuinely interested in whether we’re enjoying our vacation. I tell them how much the area reminds us of far west Texas and eastern New Mexico. Before long we’re chatting about our regular lives. They live in a town on the east coast that the father says is the eastern most spot in Australia.

The "arty," and now trite, shot,  Click to see this bigger
and notice that the mountain appears upside down in
Sharon's glass of water.

Uluru starts out being a sort of drab brown, but as the sun dips, it begins to brighten to a startling rust color, only to become drab again as the sun drops below the horizon.  I've dozens of pictures, and I realize I will have to turn one of them into a poster to come close to capturing the impact.

We return to the hotel and take a short walk into the central square to buy fruit and TimTams. Then it will be time to call it a day.

We Go to a Land Down Under -- IV

Play me didgeridoo, mate

Wednesday, Oct. 5

Today is a travel day, but we have to be up and at ‘em early in the morning, again. This seems to be a theme. What I like is when the schedule tells us the restaurant opens at 6, and we can have breakfast "at leisure, but we're leaving at 7. Fortunately breakfasts are full English breakfasts, basically a buffet with the usual morning pluss stuff we'd never eat for breakfast at home, like baked beans and vegetable sticks, so we don't have to wait to eat (unless you order an omelet.)

We will check in at the airport as a group, a concept that seems to be as foreign to most of the group as it is to us. I feel sorry for Tony, though – put 40-odd seniors in a group and suddenly you're dealing with a bunch of kindergartners who don't seem to be able to read or follow instructions.

Domestic flights don’t have as many restrictions as international flights, but they still do the random checks for drugs and explosives. Sharon and Brandon are tapped. (Sharon will be picked again before we leave the country and asks, “OK, what do they think old ladies are going to do?”)

We arrive in Alice Springs, part of the Australian Outback, at about 11 in the morning. This part of the country is in the Australian Central Time Zone, which is only a half hour different from the eastern zone, except they don’t follow DST, so it’s an hour and a half off Melbourne time. The whole time zone thing will be confusing. Cairns is in the eastern zone, but not on DST; Sydney’s fully a part of the Eastern zone with DST. Given that we’re only in country for two weeks, and that we’re skipping a huge part of the country, we undergo way too many time changes. Good thing you can get the time from your cell phone – especially given that the clocks in our rooms are never right, and most of the time I can't figure out how to change them.

Speaking of cell phones, Brandon’s cell phone works in Australia, but Aaron’s and mine don’t. We bought new SIMs at the Vodaphone store so we could keep up with each other if we got separated. Thirty bucks for unlimited talk and text and two gigs of data for a month. Given the exchange rate, that ain’t bad. Aaron thinks we're getting ripped off at home.

ANZAC Hill

We won’t go straight to the hotel after our arrival. Instead we’ll take a brief tour of the town, starting with the war memorial, which is built on ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Hill, maybe the tallest vantage point in the town. From the hill you can see pretty much the entire town and the McDonnell mountain ranges that lie nearby.

Interesting thing about Alice Springs is that the town was not built on or near a springs. The earliest settlers arrived after the rains and mistakenly thought the water was a result of a spring. A large river bed runs through the town, so dry while we’re there that the only way to know with certainty that it’s a river is by the sign on the bridge near our hotel.

Mural at School of the Air. 

After hearing a bit about the history of the area and taking a good 360 view of the town we head for The School of the Air. If you take a look at a map of Australia, you’ll see that a large chunk of the country is arid to semi-arid, with small towns scattered about. Educating the children who live in this vast area – most of them living on cattle stations that would make Texas ranchers jealous – with few roads and fewer schools was a challenge. The School of the Air, now just one of several scattered throughout Australia and New Zealand, aimed to solve that problem.

Another service, the Royal Flying Doctor Service, which we will also visit, had established a radio network throughout the Outback that used radios powered by attached pedal-powered generators. This network became the basis for The School of the Air, allowing students to have real-time contact with teachers, though sometimes the reception was spotty. Students were mailed lessons and texts to complete them with, and they mailed the completed material back. Over time the school has adopted new technologies – television, computers, Internet, for example -- and the school sponsors regular get togethers so the students have opportunity to interact with one another.

The presentation here is scheduled to take a lot longer than is necessary to explain the operation, so we cover the same ground – how many students they have, how many thousands upon thousands of acres covered -- more than once.

The pedal power radio that started it all, or one like it

We move on from there to the Royal Doctor Flying Service headquarters. The RDFS, as you might guess from its title, flies doctors and nurses to remote areas of the country to provide medical services – from clinics that address basic health needs to emergency situations – to the underserved areas of the country. We view a holographic presentation detailing the history of the RDFS and its services, much more interesting than the presentation at School of the Air, and wander through a small museum before heading for the hotel.

After we check in, Sharon asks if we can go to the McDonald's to see if we can buy a soda with ice. Google Maps shows the Macca’s to be a short walk away, so we head off. Only problem is that I’ve never used Maps to go somewhere on foot, so I’m not sure we’re on the right route. We come to an intersection that I fear is too far along the route and while standing there waiting for the light to change, I tell Sharon I’m not sure where we are or how to get to where we want to go.

A young woman also waiting on the light overhears – actually would have been hard not to – volunteers to help us and gives us directions that will eventually bring us to our destination. But her directions actually take us on a much longer walk than we needed to take. Along the way, Sharon recognizes parts of the town we had seen while driving around earlier on the bus. She figures out what the best return route we should take is, a much shorter walk. She's good at that stuff.

Foodie break: We’ve had sodas in Melbourne from the convenience stores -- they have 7-11s by the way -- but they were all bottled. And we encounter a dearth of diet drinks. Diet Coke is a big seller and available pretty much everywhere, but I don’t drink it. Doesn’t matter much because giant sodas like we have here apparently don’t exist. And the bottled drinks have fewer calories than a comparable sized drink here.

At the McDonald's, we are able to purchase sodas with ice, the large being roughly equivalent to a 20 ounce drink at home. There are no drink machines, no free refills. On the news, though, we hear a discussion about the obesity problem and whether candy displays at checkout aisles contributes to the problem. One of the commentators brings up sugared drinks as part of the discussion. Seems a bit ludicrous compared with our situation, where folks come to the QT or RaceTrac with ginormous refillable tanks or to the 7-11 on special Slurpee promotion days carrying wading pools.

Our evening will be spent at Earth Sanctuary -- World Nature Center, a carbon-neutral event venue that hosts ecology, culture and astronomy tours, weddings, and tourist events such as the one we're on. We’ll be fed an Aussie barbecue and have the opportunity to sample damper -- a kind of camp bread. We’re also entertained by the owners who talk about the kinds of animal tracks that can be found in the Outback and give us the backstory to “Waltzing Matilda,” which according to them is really about a traveler dancing with his bedroll. After the minimal exposure we'll have to the Outback, though, dancing with a bedroll seems reasonable

A didgeridoo player performs while we’re eating. He’s not aboriginal and plays “contemporary” didgeridoo works, but I don’t know enough about the music to know the difference. He’s supposed to be one of the premier players in the country though. At the end of his set, he pulls out a bunch of instruments to pass out among the crowd and attempts to teach us how to play. I’m able to produce some of the sounds, but I can’t sustain them. Apparently you have to use your diaphragm to pull in air at the same time you’re blowing out. Pretty cool skill if you can pull it off.

We end the night with an astronomy lesson, looking at the Southern Cross and learning how to use it in conjunction with the Pointers to find south. We also have a spectacular view of the Milky Way because we are far from the kind of light pollution that reduces the famous ribbon to a so-what dribble of stars across the sky. The star views alone would have made it a great night.

Our group has loosened up at this point, more so than the two drinks they've been served during the evening can account for, and we have a pretty rowdy ride back to the hotel. But the evening saved the Alice Springs stopover for me.

We Go to a Land Down Under -- III

The Great Ocean Road

Tuesday, Oct. 4

We are up too early again today for all the same reasons. But we’ve signed up for a daylong tour traveling the Great Ocean Road, which will take us to a famous coastal formation known as the Twelve Apostles. 

Tony always meets whatever group is departing to make sure everyone is there and knows which conveyance to board, and his puckish side comes out as we board our bus. He tells us to be sure to sit on the left side of the bus because that’s the side the ocean will be on, and we’ll have a better view. Being the trusting souls we are, the people from our tour group dutifully take over the left side of the vehicle.

But we don't need to do that. We'll be taking an inland route to begin the trip, and we'll spend large periods of time traversing forests, As we travel along, we figure out we've been had and begin to spread out.The first part of our journey didn’t follow the Great Ocean Road because heavy spring rains had caused widespread flooding in the southern parts of Australia, and landslides had closed a large section of the highway. 

Sheep dot the hillsides. Those are eucalyptus trees
on the horizon.

We claw our way out of town past the early morning traffic endemic to large cities before reaching the countryside. But what beautiful countryside. Rolling hills with sheep farms scattered along the way. Eucalyptus trees that form a unique silhouette on the horizon and hold the promise of koala sightings. It's hard to grab pictures through the bus window, and my descriptive skills are inadequate to properly convey the sights. But you can go yourself someday and see it for yourself.

The weather promises to be wild this day. The forecast is for rain and wind, and it is windy. By that I mean West Texas spring wind windy to strong gale force windy. Waves of rain move up from the coast, but we often manage to make a scheduled stop at a time when the clouds break and then leave just as they close in again. 

Old bridge at Winchelsea built by convicts. Only used
for foot traffic. The large tree on the left is a white gum,
a kind of eucalyptus tree with a smooth bark that leaves
a white residue if you rub it.

Foodie break: We stopped at Winchelsea for a morning tea break. Sharon and I drop in on a local bakery and buy a giant cinnamon roll to split, only they don’t call it a cinnamon roll so the woman helping us seemed a bit confused by our request. Unlike Cinnabon, they don’t drown it in thick icing. We didn’t find out what they do call the pastry we had, but the woman points out a cinnamon roll, which looks more like a flattened loaf of bread or a strudel.

Meantime, Aaron and Brandon visit the grocery store and discover a cookie, or biscuit , as it’s called in British English. (Biscuit can also be the term for what we call crackers. Confusing.) Anyway, this isn’t just a cookie; Apparently it’s basically the national cookie -- the TimTam. Imagine a rectangular Oreo with chocolate filling that’s way better than Oreo icing, and then the whole thing is dipped in chocolate. Later we discover that TimTams come in a wide variety of flavors. The Aussies are so confident that visitors have fallen in love with the TimTam that the stores in the Sydney Airport have large displays of them and even sell them in bulk, with a fancy, zippered bag containing eight packages.

One last food item before we return to the tour. We choose George’s Takeaway when we stop for lunch in Apollo Bay on Tony’s recommendation. He says they’re fast, and they are. We order fish, which the menu board says is made from gummy flake, and chips, None of us have a clue what kind of fish that is, so one of the guys looks it up. Flake is the Aussie term for shark meat, and it’s a descriptive term. Firm, flaky and delicious. Oh, and the gummy shark’s not endangered, so we don't feel bad eating it. My subsequent jokes about us eating the shark instead of the shark eating us are almost universally met with stares.  

Though it won’t always be true, we often find that we have to pay extra for “tomato sauce” -- what we would refer to as catsup. Given how often we’ll eat “chips,” or French fries, the extra buck it usually costs could add up. But paying for the condiment becomes less common in the later parts of the trip.

Sharon checks our the rocks on the beach at Apollo Bay. 

Apollo Bay also provides plenty of photo ops. Nice beach, winds driving decent waves, quaint little town, tourist shopping and plenty of places to eat. I buy an Aussie bush hat while here because I'll need a hat later in the tour, and I didn't bring one with me.

We make a few other significant stops during the afternoon. 

At one of our stops  the weather cooperates long enough for us to take a hike on a trail that loops through a rain forest at a place called Mait's Rest. Giant ferns mix with trees so straight that sailors used them to make replacement masts for ships. Other trees grow so high you can’t see their tops when you look up. Still others had trunks so large their age is estimated to be in the hundreds upon hundreds of years.

One of the koalas we saw.

Shortly after our driver pulls over in an area where he’s spotted koalas before. Sure enough, some in our group spot one in a tree right next to the bus when we get off. This bunch has debarked from a door in the middle, so the driver is unaware of the find and leads a bunch up the road where he's spotted one of the critters in a tree that sits a bit farther off the road. We snap pictures until raindrops indicate approach of another squall moving through and reboard the bus just before it hits.

Two of the stops are devoted to seeing the formations known as the Twelve Apostles, monoliths carved from the coastline by the waves and wind. Not sure how high the wind is while here because I hear different numbers, but I am sure that the sustained winds and the gusts are higher than anything I experienced before. The weather changes rapidly, sun, then clouds, then spitting rain. Holding steady long enough to get a clear photo is a challenge.

Waterfall at Loch Ard.

But the scenery is beautiful, and we stay out as long as we can stand it. At the second site we visit, Loch Ard, we’re treated to the sight of a large waterfall being blown sideways. And it’s thrilling to see waves crash against the rocks and splash at least halfway up the 150 feet tall formations. The winds grab the sea foam and send it soaring into the sky so that it looks like it’s snowing when it blows past us on shore. We all think it would be really cool to experience the area on a calmer day, but we also all agree that this experience is cool as well.

The other memorable stop is less a stop than a drive-by. Our driver is looking for an area where he’s seen kangaroos before. Eventually he spots one well off the road. He has nowhere to pull over so he slows to a near stop, but just as I’m about to shoot, he picks up a bit. He also starts honking, which I assume was an attempt to urge the creature to bound away so we can watch. It doesn't start hopping, but this whole routing makes it quite difficult to shoot a photo. Finally I start shooting through the window in the general direction of the 'roo and hope I get something. Sharon’s frustrated because she can’t get the shot. In the end, I wind up with this one, a bit fuzzy but recognizable.

Our last stop of the day is in another picturesque town, Port Campbell. We take care of personal needs, grab some pics as best we can with the wind blowing and rain spitting at us, then get back on the bus for a long trip back to Melbourne by another interior route. To entertain us, the driver plays “The Man from Snowy River” on the bus’s video system. Me, I sleep most of the way back. I’ve seen the flick, and it’s not good enough to worry about staying awake for.

Back at the hotel, darkness has fallen, and though it's not that late, we’re done for the day.

We Go to a Land Down Under - II

Doing the block

Monday, Oct. 3

We are up entirely too early. First, because we're on vacation, and second because you don't sleep that well, even though you're tired out of your mind when you retired, when your internal clock is 16 hours off.

Flinders Street Station with the Eureka Tower
in the background. The tower's exterior design
commemorates the rebellion of 1854 

Today we'll take a tour of the city. We begin down at the railway station, whose clock tower is our touchstone, Tony tells us. Find that, he says, and you can figure out how to get back to wherever you need to be. For the area we'll spend most of our time in, that's absolutely correct.

Catercorner from the train station lies St. Paul’s Cathedral (Anglican). The main part of the church was completed in the 1890s, but the spires weren't added until thee decades later, and are constructed from a different colored stone. After the completion of the spires, the cathedral was the tallest building in town, and though it no longer holds that title, it is still the tallest church in Australia.

Federation Square

Across the street and a bit down from the cathedral is Federation Square, a mixed-used development at the edge of the business district with a distinct style of architecture that doesn't fit with anything surrounding it or even with the ultramodern highrises that dominate the central business district. As we walked by later in the day, we noticed a giant sculpture of a baby hanging upside down in one of the open spaces in the square. It was designed by an Australian artist, I learned later.

Baby sculpture at Federation Square

Although the town dates back to the end of the 18th century, Melbourne as a city really took off during Australia’s gold rush in the 1800s, becoming the economic hub of Australia and the capital of the then province of Victoria. The city was flooded with immigrants from around the globe, and coupled with the flood of immigrants after World War II, the city remains a diverse collection of ethnicities.

One of the modern highrises downtown pays tribute to one of the key events in Australian history. As you can imagine, the British government was thrilled with gold find and the opportunity it provided to profit both directly through the gold and through the typical bureaucratic process of charging fees for just about anything someone might want to do in connection with mining the gold.

In 1854, miners in Ballerat, Victoria, staged a short-lived and ultimately disastrous rebellion, known as the Eureka Rebellion. Among their issues was that they were being taxed without representation through the imposition of fees to obtain a license to conduct mining. Despite their loss, a system for popular voting in parliamentary elections was instituted. The highrise reflects the colors of the rebel flag, blue and gold, and features a long, red stripe that signifies the blood shed during the failed revolt.

From St. Paul's we'll take a short walk to a unique feature of Melbourne's CBD -- laneways, what we would call alleys. Originally pathways used by workers and servants to reach their places of employment and places where the trash was taken into commercial areas, the laneways evolved, mostly after World War II, into districts with their own individual personalities.

Graffiti in Centre Place

One section, called Centre Place, is devoted to cafes and coffee shops -- and Melbourne is very proud of its coffee culture, Tony tells us. Starbucks tried to make an inroad but was only able to open about a quarter of the stores they planned to. Graffiti artists are allowed to operate by license in this and at least one other laneway, which draws locals and famous graffiti artists such as Banksy. Works will last a few weeks and then be covered over by other artists.

Ceiling in The Block

A pair sections we visited – The Block and the Royal Arcade – are devoted to upscale shops – high fashion, posh chocolatiers, very nice restaurants, that sort of thing. Moving from Centre Place to these areas is like walking from one planet into another. Stained glass archways, mosaic tile floors, statues that have been replicated from famous works in England. The Block and the Royal Arcade have long standing as part of the fashion shopping mecca of the city, and Tony tells us that it used to be quite the thing for the more well-to-do denizens of Melbourne to take a stroll in the area to see and be seen, an activity that came to be known as “doing the block.”

The Cook House

After our tour of the laneways, we hop on a bus to visit other areas of the city. Lots of gardens lie in various sections of town, and we stop of at one, Fitzroy Gardens, that contains a statue of Captain Cook next to his parent's house – there is apparently some debate over whether Cook actually lived there, and if so, how long – which was dismantled at its site in England and shipped to Australia to be reassembled in honor of the state of Victoria's centenary.

On, then, to the city’s war memorial, the Shrine of Remembrance, a large building across from the botanic gardens. Built to resemble the Greek shrines, its design allows for a unique light trick. An opening in the ceiling allows a ray of light to fall on what's call the Stone of Remembrance, at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11 each year, in commemoration of the signing of the armistice in 1918. The stone carries the words, “Greater Love Hath No Man,” etched in four lines. The ray highlights the word “Love” on the stone.

Also, from the top of the steps that face the CBD, you can see a building downtown whose external design features the face of King Billy, a famous Tasmanian Aboriginal leader.

We skip exploring the memorial in favor of walking around the botanical gardens next door. They are enormous. Pathways branch off every few yards, and you could spend the entire day there without seeing the entire place.

We have the option of going back to the hotel at the end of the tour or hopping off at Federation Square and walking back, which we do. The bus driver recommends a walk along the river, which we’ll do after a bit of shopping and some lunch.

We eat at a local pizza place -- pizza may well be more popular here than at home -- but had we yearned for the taste of home, we could have eaten at McDonalds’s, which the Aussies call Macca’s; or Hungry Jacks, the logo and menu being the same as Burger King; or Subway’s. Lots of American brands here.

The Travelers

After eating and shopping, we make our way to the river area, which will take us back to the hotel. The riverwalk is quite charming, but I can’t say the same for the river, the Yarra. Tony told us that the area the rivers originates from leeches mud into the water, especially after heavy rains such as they’ve had recently. So, the river's brown. And a bit trashy in spots where the trash can collect. At one spot a large amount of trash is corralled alongside the walk. An accompanying sign urges people to keep their trash out of the river. I’d say the campaign's not working.

Some art installations dot the way, including one that’s basically a protest piece. The one I like best is a bunch of metal sculptures that line an old bridge. I look it up after we return home and find that the bridge was part of the route immigrants would take from the harbor at Port Phillip to the Flinders Street Train station. The bridge was later abandoned and fell into disuse until it was repurposed as a pedestrian walkway. The statues were commissioned to line the bridge and the collection is called “Travelers” in honor of all the immigrants who crossed the bridge. We snap the appropriate pictures along the way and eventually return to the hotel.

Later we’ll walk back toward the train station to find a place that’s well rated for its burgers and call it a night.

Foodie Break: A note about burgers in Australia: As you would expect, the country puts its own spin on a food familiar to us. We ate burgers a few times and occasionally were able to order a variation somewhat similar to the standard American burger, bun with meat and veggie combination of lettuce, pickles and tomatoes. The chain places served the American version but had Aussie variations, though we never ate at one of them.

Mostly, the places we ate at made their own buns and offered a variety of ground meats such as beef, lamb, emu or kangaroo. Vegetarian patties were often on the menu. Cheese tended to be white cheddar. Bacon was often offered, along with a fried egg. Pineapple and beet root -- large slices of pickled beet -- were popular options. It seemed as though you were more likely to have beetroot on a burger than tomato. And it wasn’t bad, added a bit of tang to the taste.

We Go to a Land Down Under

Every trip has a beginning

Friday, Sept. 30

We’re cruising at 34,000 feet, on our way to 40,000, and more importantly, on our way to Oceania, Australia, the land down under. We’ve saved and planned, and now the trip is a reality.

Aaron and Brandon came along, Aaron having driven up from Austin and Brandon having flown to DFW from Lubbock. Bran arrived about the same time as we did and meets us at the Qantas terminal.

We check in at the counter because the stupid Qantas website won’t recognize our names – their system doesn’t allow for special characters such as apostrophes. This means the name on our reservation doesn’t match our passport. Not being able to check in online doesn’t amount to much, but it sent me into a small anxiety attack until calls to the airline and travel company assure me that the humans at the terminal won’t have the problem the computers are having.

We go through security, and even though the line seems kind of long. It moves well so we make it through in about a half hour. One of the TSA agents is having a bad day or something and bustles around barking at people. “Don’t put that there, that’s what the trays are for,” she says. “Move around that wheel chair. I don’t even know what it’s doing there. (The wheelchair has a passenger who is in the place another agent told her be.) Get that off the floor.” And so on.

True to form I’m the one who has to have an abbreviated pat down. Bran’s later arrival on the scene puts him at the end of the rush, and he clears in a fifth of the time we took.

Sharon and Brandon walk around in the art
installation at the Qantas terminal

We eat supper and head for our gate. The entrance to the Qantas area is front of some sort of circular, dome-shaped maze thing. As you walk around in it lights flash and various tones play.

Our flight is supposed to take 15 hours, a long time to be on a plane. We’re sitting in adjacent rows, Sharon and I in front of the guys, and we have empty seats between us. This will make it marginally more comfortable, and for these flights the seats have a bit more leg room than you’d find on your average American domestic flight.

We have lots of entertainment options and sleep as best we can. We’re given snacks and water at regular intervals -- if we're awake -- and will be served breakfast after they turn the cabin lights up eight or so hours later.

Sunday, Oct. 2

What happened to Saturday? We skipped it. We left on Friday and arrived on Sunday. It’s confusing, I know. And the worst of it is, we’ll leave on Friday and arrive on Friday. I hope God’s keeping track and plans to give me that day back somehow.

When we touch down in Sydney, we appear to be an hour later than our schedule indicated, but it turns out that daylight saving time has begun in Australia. Unfortunately the listed time of departure for Melbourne hasn't changed. We have to clear immigration, pick up our bags, clear customs and get to another terminal.

The immigration section is highly automated and speeds us through that part, except for Aaron, who is wearing his glasses, which seems to confuse the automated system, so he has to be cleared by a human. Customs was no problem, and the area where we need to grab a shuttle to the other terminal is also the area where we recheck our backs and go through security.

Sharon runs into a problem in security. She’s brought a small quilt to work on and a small pair of scissors that conform to TSA regs. That was OK for the flight over, but they’re not allowed at all in Australia, and her scissors are confiscated.

While she’s dealing with that a security person walks up to Brandon and pulls him aside to check his backpack and belt for drugs or explosive residue. Turns out this is a random procedure they employ, but I’m feeling much less travel persecuted than before. In fact, he'll be checked at least one other time while we're in county. Once cleared, we hop on a shuttle and are quickly taken to our new terminal, arriving 10 minutes before boarding time. Not bad. We’d have never made it through that fast at DFW.

Sign outside Melbourne airport. We're here!

On board the flight to Melbourne we’re served another breakfast. If you’re a “Lord of the Rings” fan, you’ll appreciate that we made jokes about having “elevensies”. If you're not a fan, you’ll just have to miss the reference.

We meet a rep for the tour company and head for our chariot to the hotel. The vehicle turns out to be less chariot and more rolling piece of junk, at least as far as the side door is concerned. The door grows crankier the more stops we make. By the time we reach our hotel, the thing won’t open at all. The only way out is through the back door, but we have to remove all our luggage first, and then persuade the concierge to bring us a step stool so we don’t have to jump three feet to the ground. One of the ladies remarks that she hopes this won't be an omen for the trip.

We are early for check-in, but the lady at the counter takes our luggage and says they'll have it put in our rooms when they're ready for us. We walk down to the river Yarra, which flows behind our hotel, and found a restaurant to have lunch. We all had the fish and chips, made with rockling, apparently a common fish in Australia and quite delicious, and then wander around a bit before going back to the hotel.

After freshening up, we meet our tour director, Tony, who is a first-rate character. He’s going to be a lot of fun. We sign up for an excursion for the next day and chill until supper.

For supper, Tony takes our group for a short walk to a tram station (street car), but we’re not boarding a tram to go to the restaurant, the tram is the restaurant -- The Colonial Tramcar Restaurant. Each car is outfitted as a dining car, with four tables per car. We have a choice of main dishes and complimentary drinks while the tram rolls through the city out to the suburb of St. Kilda, down to Port Phillip Bay and back. Really cool way to start the trip, and whatever omen the trip on the airport shuttle might represent, this experience has certainly brightened the prospects.

Back to the hotel and sleep, blessed sleep.

Le Voyage -- Homeward bound

The adventure concludes

Did I say we were going home? Silly me.

We arrive at the airport in plenty of time, we think, to make it through security and board the plane. We wind up in line behind some guy who asks if we're leaving any time soon. When I indicate we are, he begins telling us what a horrible reputation the Vancouver airport has and that his flight doesn't go out until the middle of the afternoon, but he's in line because of the horrible stories he'd heard.

Vancouver ship terminal, built to look like a ship. You can't
see it in this pic, but many of those high rises have sections
with trees growing on them. Not shrubs like these
on the terminal. Trees, big enough to be recognized
as such from a distance.

Then he launches into telling some airport horror stories. A priest standing in front of him hears -- you really can't fail to hear this guy -- and joins in talking about his bad experiences, though none of the priest's problems have occurred in  Vancouver. Before long the two of them are engaged in their own conversation, which bothers me not except for having to hear it, which veers from travel.

The priest, it seems, is retired -- forced from his parish, by his account -- and now happily serves as a chaplain for one of the cruise lines. The reference to being forced out brings on a discussion of what he thinks of Pope Francis -- not much, though he says Francis is true to his Jesuit roots -- and then the conversation veers into theology, where our loud acquaintance is out of his depth.

You can see that the priest is tiring of the conversation, and we are all spared when one of the gate attendants comes over to talk to those in line. Don't know if she'd been checking through a lot of people who don't have flights until much later, or if someone said something to her as they checked their bags, but she announces that they will not be checking in folks who aren't on the next scheduled flight, which is ours. This sets the man off, and he starts smarting off to her. She holds her ground, and he leaves, along with several other folks, considerably shortening the line.

She recognizes the priest and greets him, which prompts him to let us go ahead of him when we arrive at the beginning of the line because the woman is not the next available agent. We take him up on it and fly through the process. We won't see him for a bit, which either means he was stuck behind someone who took a long time to go through, or he spent time chatting with the woman. I suspect the latter.

Random shot of our ship in Skagway.

Going through security isn't what I'd call an ordeal, but it winds up being strange for me. The line for flights to Seattle is empty. Sharon hands her passport to the security guy; he looks at it and sends her on. He looks at mine, then looks again, thinks a moment, and tells me to see the other security officer off to the side.

She asks for my passport and tells me to put my backpack and camera bag on the counter. She takes a tool, attaches a pad to it and begins swabbing all the zippers on my backpack. Then she opens the compartments and swabs inside those. My camera bag, however, is ignored. The pad is removed and slid into a machine, where it apparently passes inspection, and I'm allowed to proceed.

At the screening area, I set off the alarm going through the metal detector. I'm told I probably have metal in my shoes, which I have to take off, leave with the security agent and go through the screening again, passing this time. I'm wearing a different pair of shoes, dress style instead of sneakers, so it's possible they have metal in them, though my guess is that if there is, there's just enough that combined with the hardware in my ankle will set a machine off.

Meantime, we wait for the woman who's screening carry on items to release our stuff. She's either very careful or new at the task, because she's constantly stopping the conveyor, backing it up and scrutinizing the screen. Still, we make it to the gate with time to spare. (Remind me sometime to tell you about going through Canadian customs when we arrived. I'm apparently much dicier looking than Sharon.)

Another cruise line's ship, I think it's a Holland America,
passes us on it way to a mooring in Juneau.

The schedule for our flight from Vancouver to Seattle should leave about an hour to change planes. While we're waiting, another passenger with a view of the departure board notices the plane into Vancouver's been delayed. By 10 minutes. She checks with the airline personnel, and they tell her that making a connection shouldn't be a problem. They announce the delay about 10 minutes later.

When she returns she tells those of us sitting around her a few of her own missed-flight horror stories, then notices the flight board's been updated again and jumps up to talk to the gate attendants. She does this a couple of times, then comes back, gathers her husband and their things, announcing they were booked on the next Air Canada flight to DFW, and we should check to see if we can be rerouted. Sharon and I go to the gate desk just about the time one of the attendants announces that the plane we're supposed to fly on had to return to Seattle. They will attempt to reroute passengers as soon as possible.

That turns the boarding area into a mess, as people crowd up to be rerouted. An employees asks everyone to return to their seats, and they will call names as they work through the passenger list. When it comes our turn, the poor woman helping us tries and tries to find a way to get us to Dallas but can't. Just before I'm about to volunteer, she asks if we'd be OK with flying to Seattle and spending the night. They'd provide a hotel and meal vouchers. Sharon is off Monday, and my return to work was scheduled to be late that day anyway, so we readily agree.

Little to tell after that. We go to Seattle, grab a shuttle to the Double Tree, where we're booked, and check in. The chain gives you warm, chocolate-chip cookies when you check in. I try mine and find it's not too sweet to set off my whacked taste buds (long story, if you don't know me). Later we go down to the lobby to use their dedicated computers to check in for our flight the next morning and see a box about half full of cookies left behind by some conference being held there, so we snag a couple more. A few will still be there the next morning before we leave, and we'll snag another couple, which are still surprisingly fresh tasting when eaten later on the plane. (I know, that probably constitutes theft, but it would be a petty crime, and I so enjoyed the cookies.)

We weren't able to sit together on the flight home. Sharon sat behind me. The guy next to me tells me he'd had knee surgery recently and would need to get up an stretch a couple of times on the flight. I tell him it shouldn't be a problem. I'll need to be up a couple of times myself.

Random shot of our ship at dock in Juneau.

We arrive at DFW, grab a shuttle to our car, and head for the house. Apparently while we've been gone, most of the drivers along the route we're taking home got together and decided to drive slowly, bring up a situation in which I feel like a speed demon for driving the speed limit, weaving my way around the surrounding traffic. At one point while traveling on IH 820, traffic comes to a virtual standstill because on driver had stopped in the middle of his/her lane. S/he starts up again after I pass.

The trip has been grand. We've both picked up a cold or flu or something that we'll battle for a week and half or so, but we've also made memories galore. I probably wouldn't want to live there, but Alaska was an outstanding place to visit.


A short note: We'd never had a balcony room before, and I had some qualms about getting one for an Alaskan cruise. Afraid we'd never use it. But we did. It afforded protection from the elements and tremendous views as we sat in the deck chairs and watched the coastline slipping by. I'd recommend it.