A DIFFERENT WORLD

I know we are all on the same planet.  I know that everywhere a person goes, and what ever the lifestyle of the people who live there, these places and people are in their own normal just as we are.  It’s such a rewarding experience to be able to stay in a new place long enough to soak in these outside-the-box daily details.  That’s what five weeks can do ... it’s the difference between being tourists (who never really get past being outside observers) and visitors (who have become pretty much locals with our morning walks along the sea wall).  The local hardware store is about to name us their most regular customers as well.  There’s been a home improvement project to keep one of the visitors busy or he might have gone a bit squirrelly.

But, as our time in this pretty place comes to an end, I’m struck with how many ways it is different from what our usual normal is, even if we are on the same planet.

For starters there are the tides.  Ocean tides.  Not much call for prairie people to think about them, but here, every time we go for a walk the water is a different depth.  Sometimes it’s lapping waves over the top of the sea wall, sometimes small sand beaches have been exposed and moms have brought their young children down for a cool off swim.  Sometimes the water level is somewhere in between and I wonder if the tide is in the process of ebbing or flowing at that moment?  In the mystical dance between the moon and the oceans, whose turn is it to lead?  At Ettalong beach the other day there was no wondering at all - we could see the water pushing in.  As a general rule Australians are powerful swimmers: they need to be.

There is also this small thing of them driving on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car.    We visiting Canadians are exclusively passengers here (even though I have tried to get into the driver’s door on a couple of occasions, I assure you it was by accident). They tell me that it’s not so strange.  That either way - our “keep right” policy or their “keep left” one, the drivers are always in the middle of the road.  All I can say is I might get the hang of driving straight down a road (and a straight road is pretty hard to come by here) but turning a corner would undo me.  It would be a natural instinct to keep right no matter how wrong that was.

Then there’s the birds.  Exotic parakeets and cockatoos are everywhere.  Ibis wander the water’s edge looking elegant.  Cuckoo birds live up to their name with a call that sounds like demented laughter, and some of their pigeons look like they are forever experiencing bad hair days.  The ones we hear the most though have to be related to our crows.  They look the part but instead of the hoarse, grumpy challenge of the North American bird, these guys sound depressed and despondent.  Maybe it’s the heat.  I’d be depressed too if I had to wear black in this heat.

Another thing that we have been trying to get straight is our sense of direction.  It’s trickier than you think.  We’re on the other side of the equator, remember.  Moss grows on the SOUTH side of the trees.  I think I’ve asked which direction we are walking nearly every day.  Finally we’ve come up with a sure fire way to tell ... the solar panels on peoples’ roofs will be facing NORTH to catch the most sun.  And yes, I am aware that sounds completely wrong.  Deal with it: I have to.

And on a more personal note, another sign that we are in a different world is that all these walks I’ve been talking about - we have been taking them together.  The Farmer even calls them “romantic” walks when he asks me if I want to go to the hardware store with him again.  At home he is unlikely to walk across the yard with me, so this definitely weird, even if it’s on the same planet.

A Day in the City

For a little country girl such as myself there are many different things to think about than just spiders and snakes ... although walking into a random web in the dark does incite a whole alternate perspective than doing the same thing in  Canada.  With one I go “Gross!  Gross!  Gross!”  I hate the webs worse than their makers at home.  With the other my heartbeat kicks it up a notch and I think “Where is the bugger, and what does he look like?”  But, so far, so good.  No anti venom needed.

There are also the different perspectives of very rural - what I’m used to - and very urban.  I spent a good part of today seeing a world renown city through the eyes of a country girl.

For starters, even though we are only an hour from Sydney’s city center we did not drive there; that would just have been silly.  We boarded a train, sat back and relaxed while the well oiled wheels of mass transit took care of the trip.  No traffic worries.  No parking problems.  A wonderful view of the Opera House when we crossed the Harbour Bridge.  Who could ask for anything more?

Next was the tour of the Queen Victoria Building.  Built in the 1800’s to be a shopping center and refurbished in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s for the same purpose.  The architecture is beautiful, the patterned tile floors and three story stained glass windows are exquisite.  The shopping was out of our league there though - shops selling estate jewelry, art work with price tags starting in the four digit range and climbing, dress shops displaying only twenty or so examples of their designer wares.  Even a cup of breakfast tea was $18.00: we passed.

Where we did spend our time and money was on the street malls.  As has happened with many city centers, certain sections of streets have been closed to traffic so that pedestrians can wander from store to store (in Australia it is from shop to shop) without the hindrances of traffic or traffic lights.  A single food court with more ethnic options than I’ve ever thought about serves the whole area.  Here and there are street buskers selling their pencil drawings or singing for pocket change.  Some shop signs are names I know, some I’ve never heard of.  The ones I know are the ones that surprise me; being so far from home I seem to expect everything to be different.

As the day wore on it was only the teenager who felt she hadn’t spent enough money.  Or maybe she just had more energy.  At any rate her mother and grandmother found themselves a shady place to sit as she investigated more shops.  To the uneducated eye our seating arrangements were blocks or balls of concrete seemingly scattered helter skelter along the edges of former streets.  Anyone who pays attention to world news stories knows that they really are strategically placed crowd protectors should evil climb into a truck and try to mow down as many innocent bystanders as possible in a bid to be the leading news story for the next day or two.  When they first became necessary these terroist deterants were huge and ugly but city planners have now integrated them into street furniture, a very smart move.  People appreciate the seating, and achieving this safety feature without constantly reminding the public of the danger they are in makes for more leisurely shopping.

It got me thinking about where I was, though.   When I’m watching the news in my safe little living room at home the horror stories they tell are worlds away.  No terrorist is ever going to target a tiny prairie town; how safe I am!

The shoe was on the other foot today.  I was on an open street shopping mall in a famous city.  I travelled there and back on mass transit.  While we were buying my ticket for the ride home four policemen quietly raced through the station presumably answering an urgent call we never heard about.  Was it a false alarm?  Or something so serious the public was better off not knowing about it? That probably is over the top paranoia, but like I said ... it got me to thinking.

At the end of the day I was struck with the irony of it all: here I am on guard for poisonous spiders and snakes when the most dangerous animal on the planet is the two legged kind.

Road Warriors

The Australians are trying to show the Canadians as much about this country as they can while we’re here.  Considering it’s actually a complete continent all by itself makes the job a bit daunting.  There is no way, even if we spent our entire five weeks touring, that we could begin to take it all in.  None the less, we have covered some of the basics.

The first time we visited they took us camping starting from their home a lovely little seaside town, climbing winding, curving roads up away from the ocean to the tablelands inland.  Flatlanders such as ourselves are both inspired by the steepness of the roads (and drop-offs from the roadsides) and a smidge terrified of the possibility of weak brakes.  We drove through farmland and vineyards, ending up at a place called Bourke, which is where the land changes over from useful farmland to desert outback.  The dirt is rust red, you’d never think it could grow anything but when the rains come it does.

Our second trip over here we all flew across the continent to Broome.  There are two ex-pat Canadians in the family in Australia and they couldn’t live farther apart - kind of like one living in Halifax and the other in Prince George, BC.  This put us farther north and in hotter weather.  The temperatures were really high and the humidity was off the scale but they have a place called Cable Beach ... miles of sand and sea, impressive tides, and I can say I have stood in the Indian Ocean, taken a sunset camel ride, and watched crocs sunning themselves along a river’s edge ... from a bridge above ... no need to get any closer!

So here we are on trip #3.  The plan this time was a camping trip to the south, where it would be cooler.  We only had seven days and nights but judging by the number of pictures I have taken we crammed a lot into that time.  We took the coastal highway and drove over where they had to build a sea bridge because the road continually washed into the ocean.  We stopped at a lookout and watched as people parasailed off the cliffs.  We had a picnic lunch at an inland spot where the kids paddle wheeled to burn off energy.  There were places where pools had been built into the shoreline so that the tides wash in and refresh the water and a place where the surf roars through tunnels in the rock and blows water meters into the air.

And that was just the first day.

After two nights near the ocean we went inland for a farmstay.  The land looks strange - alien, even - very hilly, the grass bleached to a pale yellow, great gum (eucalyptus) trees, mis-shapened by the winds, dark green against the background, and weird eruptions of rock jutting out of the ground - souvenirs of volcanoes from eons ago.  It looks like a harsh place to live and yet the place where we stayed had rose gardens so it must be more hospitable than it looks.

The weather cooled with some rain as we headed back to the coast for our last three nights.  Australia is one gigantic island so the beaches never end.  The one we discovered on our last day was perfection .... a mile of fine sand littered with sea shells and rocks polished smooth by the surf.  The water was crystal clear.  At the far end the beach ended in volcanic rock formations: the kids climbed them, we explored them, the surf pounded them.  If I ever win the lottery I would love to build a beach house on the dunes above that beach.

Yesterday was a marathon drive home but we made it and today I have been sorting through my photos, amazed at how much we crammed into such a short time.  From here on the pace will slow down, there will be morning walks along the sea wall, more watching the kids surf, and at least a little checking Facebook to see what kind of cold we are managing to miss at home.