Author Archives: underthings: wandering through the precincts of oz

the 20-year old toyota landcruiser roars happily as it bounces along a mountain goat trail through australian bush country. it’s exhilarating riding shotgun with reuben gregor, son of our hosts on kangaroo island, as he powers up a jagged rock face, downshifts into a gravel-strewn gulley, then grinds upward again to a promontory overlooking a craggy beach.

they don’t make SUVs like that anymore. the odometer shows 286,000km

the last hundred meters’ descent to the water would be suicide by car, so we all clamber out and do a slip-and-slide down a rocky slope to a sliver of white sandy apron separating the cliff face from the swirling surf where we hope to snorkel for abalone and crayfish.

welcome to kangaroo island’s south coast. next landfall, antarctica.

it’s not a day for snorkeling, at least not here. we had brought wetsuits to brave the 16 degree celsius, (60F) water, but crashing waves are stirring up the rock pools. visibility is near zero.

ruben is apologetic. he says there’s another cove just a few kilometers away that’s better protected. we’ll have to walk, though, because even the land cruiser can’t negotiate those cliffs. and there’s no trail. not even a kangaroo track.

reuben knows the territory. he has worked these cliffs trapping feral cats that are a menace to the island’s indigenous species. he’s wearing solid walking shoes and socks.

reuben’s cousin, michael, is psyched for the hike, too. but he’s wearing flimsy flip-flops. big mistake.

my sandals offer some protection against the gravel and thorns. by the time we reach the third crest, however, i’m agonizingly aware of a strategic blunder. i’m listing badly to starboard under the weight of a gym bag stuffed with gear i had packed in preparation for any eventuality… except this one. my one “good” shoulder is on fire.

with every step i’m thinking, if it’s bad now, what kind of hell awaits on the way back. michael, it turns out, is wondering the same thing. his feet are being shredded by razor-sharp stones turning his thongs to mincemeat. the prudent course of action is obviously to swallow our pride and turn around. so after an hour and a half of bush-bashing, we’re back to where we started. no joy.

after two hours of cooling our heels, made bearable by the picnic michael’s wife caroline and reuben’s wife tracy had packed, we see three tiny dots rise up over the horizon. as the sun sinks low in the afternoon sky, reuben, along with michael’s 14-year old daughter sarah (who borrowed her mom’s boots) and sade, another young woman in the party with good shoes, straggle back to base, triumphant.

reuben hoists the booty tub up to michael, who swings it around for us to examine the prize: five massive abalone and one crayfish. the ladies proudly show ’em off. michael reckons each one of these beauties would fetch $100 at market.

ultimately, it’s been a grandly successful day. reuben has put food on the family table, thin-sliced and pan-fried. a feast for the land lubbers back home.

it wasn’t an easy task, he admits, because he’d forgotten the sharp knife he uses to liberate the abalone from the rocks. his only blade was a tiny shard strapped to his belt. fortunately, it worked.

for me, the day was a mixed blessing. to add insult to the injury of my miscalculation, i found that a large bottle of sun screen that was in my bag had burst open during the trudge. everything was slathered in white goo. spf 50+, too. it’s now thoroughly protected.

on the other hand, i could not imagine a better way to experience real australia. how many total strangers are privileged to be invited into a fun-loving, seafaring, welcoming family like the gregors and hobbses, who accept me as one of their own for a wild seacoast diving expedition and picnic? you can’t buy that.

there’s a moral to the story. when in the bush, be prepared, and travel light. yes, it’s a contradiction; australia’s full of ’em. it’s up to you to choose. don’t ask me. i’m a bush moron.

a summertime christmas carol adapted for a kangaroo island holiday

merry christmas from the little town of penneshaw, south australia, (population: a few). penneshaw is the ferry port of kangaroo island, where three wise men in front of st. columba’s church are breaking out their surfboards to catch a quick wave before depositing frankincense and myrrh (no gold, it’s too expensive) before baby jesus lying in the manger. st. columba’s has anglican services twice a month, catholic mass once a month, and apparently nothing on christmas.

wetsuits are required for surfing, however. even though it’s high summer, the yuletide temperature peaked at 23 degrees celsius, which is more or less 76 fahrenheit, and the water temp is a bracing 65 fahrenheit, or between 18 and 19 centipede.

kangaroo island is either australia’s third or fourth largest island by area, depending on how you measure. most people count the main island as a continent, but among the locals, that’s referred to as the north island. it’s about 30 minutes away by ferry. officially, kangaroo island is third, after tasmania and melville island.

we ferried over on christmas eve after a pleasant two day drive from canberra. we overnighted in a town called mildura. stayed at the best western motel and dined at the motel restaurant, where the woman who waited on us (definitely not a waitress), assured us that the chef had worked at michelin starred restaurants in europe. in this time of covid, every chef is just lucky to have a job.

the food was indeed quite good, and the presentation well done, but we made the mistake of trying a local specialty, the salt bush salad, and were ravaged by thirst the rest of the evening.

we made several other stops along the way, including at a covid testing facility on the border between the states of victoria and south australia. since we had passed through the state of new south wales on the way over, we were required to have the test entering SA. thankfully we both tested negative, though we have to have another test on day five.

we stopped for lunch (pernille’s open faced danish sandwiches and hard boiled eggs) under a tree in a sweet blink-of-an-eye town called karoonda. this is rich farming country, and karoonda brought me back to the 1950s in el paso’s lower valley along the rio grande river before housing subdivisions displaced pecan orchards and cotton fields. oh, sweet memories of being a five-year old playing in the dry bed of an irrigation ditch behind escobar’s dairy.

we arrived on kangaroo island five hours early. our reservation was for the 9p.m. ferry but we were there before four, and they loadmaster squeezed us on. apparently the recent outbreak of covid in sydney had forced some cancellations, so we made it in time for dinner and a sunset drive.

the western half of kangaroo island was hit hard by the bush fires that ravaged parts of australia last summer. we plan to check that out but first we check in at our island beach b&b, the adagio. our hosts, pierre and branka gregor, know every inch of the island’s 4374 square kilometers. pierre, we learn, is chairman of the tourism commission, so we’re in good hands.

the aussie sense of humor never ceases to amaze. on a hill overlooking penneshaw we encounter a ‘photo stop’ where a clever sculptor has placed a cutout of a kangaroo appearing to serve up a slab of the north island. i’ll have mine medium rare, thank you.

they say you never get a second chance to make a good first impression, and this island’s teal and turquoise coastal waters are an inviting introduction. the lichen-crusted rocks along penneshaw’s seafront serve as a fitting contrast. not exactly traditional christmas colors, but hey…

…..more to come. the western part of the island beckons.

we touched down at melbourne international early monday morning, dec. 7th and dropped our bags at a midtown hotel. pernille went off to do diplomacy, and i went off to explore.

the city of five million seemed to be in the grip of a bad hangover.

melbourne, and the entire state of victoria, has been in complete lockdown for most of the year. no one in or out by land, sea or air. tight restrictions on movement. it worked. zeroes across the board for more than a month.

we were among the first allowed in since the reopening.

out on the streets, the city is doing a rip van winkle, groggily awakening from a long slumber to find a changed world. life in the age of covid may never be the same.

even a cup of coffee was hard to find.

up one semi-deserted street and down the next until – hold on! – commotion! police!

in front of the state library of victoria, officers with shoulder mounted cameras were monitoring a bunch of scruffy characters in hammer and sickle gear folding up tents and hauling away pots and pans and bedding.

over the previous days, as melburnians huddled in their homes, the aussie communist party, along with a sister group called the community union defence league (known by the acronym cudl. cute!) had built a tent city on the library steps offering shelter and a hot meal to the homeless. it had attracted a crowd.

performative? sure. but there are more people “living rough” since covid. communist party flyers advertising an “open air homeless and community service” were welcome in many quarters.

with the lockdown over, however, melbourne’s finest rousted them from their sleeping bags with an ultimatum: take it down by noon, or we will. it was getting close to noon, and the hammer and sickle gang was in “beat the deadline” mode.

communists in australia seem to be a different cup of tea than those back home. in most of the the u.s., “communist” is a dirty word, though it’s enjoying a heyday under several aliases.

here, it seems, they’re loud and proud, gaining followers by providing services for the downtrodden.

the group’s organizer, wearing a jacket with the party logo boldly emblazoned across his back, says communism is attracting young people faster than his organization can keep up. “I’m 27, and i’m one of the oldest in the local party,” he explains. “some of them are almost too young.”

ok, not that young!! a few blocks further on, at federation square, a family of immigrants from nepal is taking pictures in front of the christmas (chrissy to aussies) display to send to relatives in kathmandu. nepal is a hindu country, though interestingly, the communist party currently holds power there. the silver and blue belled tree accented by steeples from the nearby st. paul’s cathedral makes a nice backdrop no matter where you’re from.

federation square is among melbourne’s favorite meeting places, drawing more than 10 million visitors a year (pre-covid) with its family-friendly events and fantastic, free museums, so i popped into the national gallery of victoria and spent a chunk of the afternoon catching up on local lore. two of my faves were the legendary bad-guy hero ned kelly, australia’s billy the kid, who was hanged at melbourne gaol (jail) in 1880; and the story of “waltzing matilda”, the unofficial national anthem. (would you recognize the official one?)

_{Ned Kelly was a notorious criminal, feared as a robber and murderer. Despite this, he had many sympathizers who believed he was a symbol of the Australian spirit – an enduring underdog with the courage to challenge the authorities}.

— state library of victoria website

it seems in every australian museum you’ll find a celebration of the art and culture of the continent’s first peoples, and a warning about the impending doom of climate change.

a serious case of aching feet told me it was time to circle back to the hotel, where we had deposited our belongings what seemed like eons ago. taking off my shoes, i glanced out the window to see the australia 108 skyscraper, our next door neighbor. the residential tower was completed just a few months earlier, and initial reviews have been mixed. an apartment on the 100th floor, the highest residence in the southern hemisphere, is advertised at $25 million (pssst! i hear they’re offering discounts)

what came as a surprise is that melbourne is among the world’s major financial capitals. two australian cities make the list of the global top 15, with melbourne trailing sydney by a shade in the rankings, but closing the gap. the victorian capital is a city of 21st century gleaming glass towers.

we arise early the next morning because it’s going to be a short day in melbourne. we’re due back home in canberra by early evening. so it’s off to experience the “magnificent mcg”, the hallowed melbourne cricket grounds. the “G”, as its known, has witnessed many glorious moments in sport, including the 1956 olympic games, the commonwealth games and many fabled football (footy) finals.

(everything is abbreviated in australia; abbreviations are “abbys”, i think)

the mcg seats a measly 100,024 fans (fannys?), which according to some internet websites ranks it among the 10 largest sports venues in the world. number one on the list may surprise you. answer below.

australia was hosting india in a big cricket test that day, but not in melbourne, so the cavernous building was deserted. still, it was awe-inspiring to walk through the olympic village and stand at the site of the 1956 games that i had imagined as a boy from newspaper reports and black and white TV snippets. australia might have been on another planet, for all we knew back then.

a walk around the perimeter of the “G” provided a great introduction to some of australia’s sports legends. names like dennis lillie, don bradman, leigh matthews and ron barassi are the australian equivalents of american heroes like michael jordan, mohammed ali, babe ruth and jackie robinson.

and aussie olympians betty cuthbert and shirley strickland de la hunty are right up there in the firmament of stars with americans babe didrikson zaharias, martina navratilova and jackie joyner.

the “G” is not just a sports venue, either. in addition to the olympics and the 2006 commonwealth games, it also hosted queen elizabeth three times; in 1954, 1970 and 2006, as well as pope john paul in 1986. billy graham’s evangelistic crusade drew a record crowd of 130,000+ in 1959. but safety regulations don’t allow that size crowd any more.

one last “foot”note, and not an insignificant one. australian rules footy began on the lawns outside the “G” more than 160 years ago. and the melbourne clubs are among the best. this year the grand footy final was between two melbourne teams, but covid forced a relocation of the match to brisbane. that was a rare occurrence. every other footy final since 1902 has been staged at the mcg, except 1924, 1942-45, and 1991.

and just in passing, there’s the rod laver arena, site of the australian open, a grand slam tennis tournament, right next to the mcg. the 2020 open (opie?) was probably the last international sports competition in melbourne before the nine-month lockdown.

the 2021 event will be pushed back from january to february to give players time to quarantine and acclimate before the tourney begins. qualifying matches for men will be held in doha, for women in dubai.

 australian open tournament director craig tiley expressed the emotional importance of maintaining this glorious sports tradition, and the global spotlight that comes with it, in healing the psychological scars inflicted on melburnians.

“it has taken 8 months of working alongside government authorities here in victoria, nationally and interstate, to give us the opportunity to present an australian open that will play a major role in both the economic and psychological reinvigoration and rejuvenation of melbourne and victoria.

craig tiley, aussie open director

that should have been enough for a mad dash through this great metropolis and financial center. this piece is already too long for a blog post (sorry, mom), but on the way home i’m accosted by an oversized silver chimpanzee. my camera pulls itself out of my pocket.

meet david greybeard. he’s eight months late because of you-know-what, but he’s finally here, unveiled this morning while i was wandering through sportsland.

david is an inflatable sculpture by australian visual artist lisa roet to commemorate the 60th anniversary of british ethologist jane goodall’s pioneering work that gave the world new insights into chimpanizee behavior.

a check of the jane goodall institute home page revealed some other startling insights. for instance, while observing chimpanzee behavior in the gombe stream national park in tanzania, what type of shoes did jane wear most often?

see, bet you didn’t know that. and another thing you probably didn’t know is what is the largest stadium on the planet? it is the rungrado may day stadium in pyongyang, north korea, which seats 150,000 fannies.

and so with this whirlwind at an end, the airport beckons. the melbourne arts center’s final message is a whirlwind warning:

due to safety regulations, david greybeard will need to be deflated when winds are above 40 km/hr.

but not today.

oh, and by the way, i walked everywhere during the visit, except to and from the airport. no ubers, no trolleys (though they are free in the city center), 100% shank’s mare.

(a two-fer)

our second visit to sydney was off to an inauspicious start. we had driven from canberra this time because flying in oz ain’t cheap. we booked a room at a hotel that was half the price of the fancy place we stayed at the first time with the great view of the sydney opera house. but we were still in the swank business district known as “the rocks”.

however, as can happen when you try to save a buck, when we got there the hotel was…gone! we drove up to the address, 26 clarence st. and found 36, and 16, but no 26. it was sunday evening and the street was quiet, but the spot where 26 should have been seemed to have been taken over by the wynyard metro station.

we drove around the block a couple times, up a block, down a block, scoured the other side of the street. (probably broke a few traffic laws.)

pernille had been certain she’d made a reservation at a real hotel, but she began doubting herself.

then, just at the point of despair, we spotted a clue. a small sign bearing the letters “LN” above a nondescript metal door that read, “combined fire hydrant and sprinkler booster” on one side and “wynyard walk and fip mimic panel” on the other. a very clever disguise, lest anyone might suspect there was a hotel lurking there.

next to that door was a shadowy alcove with a tall metal panel that slid open as we approached to reveal a bare room with a modest desk adorned by a single bottle of hand sanitizer. behind the counter stood a bangladeshi immigrant named anwar.

welcome to the little national (LH) hotel. emphasis on the “little”.

anwar escorted us into the elevator up to the reception desk on the fourth floor, (called level one). After check-in, he took us up to our closet. (o.k., room). it was all of 8 feet (2.5 meters) wide. “but it’s a deluxe corner room with a panoramic view,” anwar pointed out. “and you can see the bay.”

sure enough, two of the room’s three walls were glass, and we could see ferry boats gliding by in the distance through the tiny slit between two massive skyscrapers staring back at us. fourteen floors below, we had a view of a city street, and above the street (if you look closely) an elevated highway.

anwar gave us a two-minute tour of the room, which was a marvel of efficiency. as he left, i handed him a tip. “thank you,” he said, “that’s the first tip i’ve ever received”. the hotel, he said, had only been open four days. we were among the first guests.

this little gem of a hotel is exploring a new concept in urban accommodations, catering to business people on a budget who want to stay at a stylish place in the heart of the business district, but don’t want to pay exorbitant rates. it’s tucked almost invisibly into a corner of the metro station, providing instant access to the city’s mass transit system.

most rooms are only about six feet (under two meters) wide, with a queen-sized bed up against the far wall, accessible from only one side. not great for two, but ideal for business people looking for an upscale, downtown crash site a short walk from a great restaurant and bar scene designed around an inviting waterfront promenade.

there’s a lot within walking distance in central sydney, and while pernille does what diplomats do, i’ve got a day to explore.

my first destination is the sydney tower, an observation deck that juts out from the downtown skyline. but when i get to the admission window, which is in the middle of an obscenely opulent shopping mall, i learn that the price for a ticket to go out on the observation deck is $82. no thanks. instead i walk another block to hyde park, where an iconic statue of captain cook still stands, 250 years after his historic arrival in sydney harbor, although there have been calls for its removal.

my intention was to get a picture of the tower, but my eye caught an interesting angle of the two landmarks together. what i didn’t notice til later was that i had inadvertently caught the good captain in a compromising pose.

moving on, it was a gorgeous spring day in the park. i stood for half an hour watching a group of eastern european men playing chess.

not a word of english was spoken, the matches were intense, with long periods of silence punctuated by fiercely competitive commentary; and finally, applause.

the park holds many attractions, but the art gallery of new south wales is beckoning. along the way, however, i’m drawn into the imposing roman catholic cathedral of st. mary. the afternoon sun streaming through the stained glass windows is heavenly.

the museum did not disappoint. my favorites included this tribute to non-traditional aussies who made a significant contribution to the growth of the nation.

there’s a great story behind these stunning portraits. here’s the condensed version.

in 2016, artist peter drew inspired volunteers all over australia to paste screenprinted posters of long-dead aussies on public walls in their local communities. the ‘aussie’ posters became a familiar sight on city streets. these photos are of people who sought exemption from a dictation test required by the immigration restriction act of 1901. the test gave immigration officials wide discretion to refuse entry to non-europeans. it was repealed in 1958.

this arresting presentation also caught my fancy.

as the afternoon sun faded, i headed back to the LN to meet pernille to hunt for more adventure. this time i found the place first try.

hunger was setting in, so we decided to head out to the rocks to satisfy our hankering for mexican. we discovered, however, that because of the tourist shortage, most restaurants were shut. we were nearing exhaustion when we stumbled on a pub called the glenmore tucked away on a side street next to what our google map said was “el camino cantina”, which translated into english means “place to get a margarita”.

at the glenmore’s front desk, we confess that we don’t have a reservation (harrumph, harrumph) and beg for a table. we are escorted upstairs onto a sunny patio, and seated at a little table in the back. the first thing we notice is that the patio has an excellent view of, what else, the opera house. the second thing we notice is that a pitcher of beer is $29. the third thing we spot is a group of women standing up to leave a table right on the railing facing the harbor.

“of course,” the waiter says when we ask if we could be bumped up to first class. so as the evening shadows roll across the landscape toward the operatic sails in the harbor that captain cook traversed exactly 250 years earlier, we slide into place at the table of honor, order a pitcher of $29 beer and sit back to soak in the psychedelic symphony.

and as we ponder our second pitcher, (it’s like baseball; after a while the pirates need a relief pitcher), the sky erupts to a brilliant ochre, evoking images of the old classic song “red sails in the sunset”.

after reaching peak brilliance, the ephemeral evening light and the memory of long-ago music dissolve together, as a blanket of darkness envelopes the bay.

with eyes half closed and brain half clouded with suds, i could almost see captain cook’s high masted ship, the endeavour, sailing into sydney harbor. i began to wonder if the designer of the opera house, the danish architect jorn utzon, had been conjuring sails in his mind’s eye as he imagined his grand creation jutting out into the bay.

i checked the internet for confirmation of my theory, but it turned out to be a figment of an overactive imagination, or ‘fake news’. utzon apparently was imagining shells, not sails. perhaps we could rewrite history for the opera house’s 50th birthday. isn’t that what journalists do?

i discovered, however, that i wasn’t the first to imagine the red sails theme. in 1984, the sydney rock group midnight oil released a “red sails in the sunset” album, which according to widipedia:

…is significant for becoming their first No. 1 album in Australia – it also entered the United States Billboard 200. The album cover by Japanese artist Tsunehisa Kimura featured a photomontage of Sydney – both city and harbour – cratered and devastated after a hypothetical nuclear attack.

midnight oil’s music reflected their involvement in the anti-nuclear movement and other political and societal issues. not bad rock and roll, either.

oh, and one last thing. despite the photographic evidence presented above, cap’n cook is not a pervert. a “full frontal” photo shows him to be the picture of propriety. that’s a spyglass in his hand.

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