The Land of OZ

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  Sydney, Australia
Saturday, August 27, 2005

In the Land of Oz

Since I posted my last installment before I actually left Kenya, I'll pick up with the day I left. My brother and nephew took me to Nairobi to catch a "red-eye" flight, so as a special treat we made dinner reservations at The Carnivore restaurant. The specialty - as the name suggests - is meat. Dinner is a "set-price menu" and consists of soup, salad, a potato and lots of different kinds of meat. During the course of the meal, various waiters come with spits of meat and carve it right onto the plate. In addition to beef, chicken, lamb and pork, we were offered (and enjoyed) camel, crocodile and ostrich (both roasted and in meatballs), and were directed to the appropriate sauce to go with the meat. Of the "wild" meats (they are all farm grown), I enjoyed camel the best. Sorry if this offends any vegetarians out there, but I did thoroughly enjoy the meal. For dessert we had strawberries in clotted cream and tea. (It's that British influence.)

After dinner, they dropped me off at the curb at the airport to check in. Jomo Kenyatta International Airport does a security screening before you even enter the terminal, so there was no sense in having anyone try to wait. I got through the security check and had a short wait before the counter opened to check in for my flight. Once I was checked in I headed to the gate area and had a long wait before they opened the gate. At the gate I had another security check. This time the security agent objected to, of all things, a pair of tweezers that have been in my shaving bag for years, but he let them through because they weren't sharp.

01 ANZAC Memorial

Ah, the vagaries of security checks! Between Nairobi and Sydney I flew Emirates airline, and it is a great airline. Even though we left at 00.45 (that's 12:45 a.m.), there was a meal service with roast lamb that smelled delicious, but I was still satisfied from dinner, so I passed up dinner for a nap on the leg from Nairobi to Dubai.

Later in the morning we arrived at Dubai, where it was 34º C (about 93º F) at 06:45 - a.m.! Fortunately the airport is well air conditioned, and we faced the heat only between the plane and the bus that took us to the terminal. Even though we had come directly from the plane, we had to go through another security check before being allowed to proceed to the departure area. On the next leg of my journey I discovered some more interesting things about Emirates. They have two cameras mounted on the aircraft: one facing forward and one facing downward. Watching take-offs and landings on screen was fascinating, as was watching sunrise the next morning. Each seat has its own monitor with about 500 channels of information, communication and entertainment. I watched "Phantom of the Opera" and learned to play Mah-jongg (electronic version; I still don't know how to stack the tiles!). We arrived in Bangkok in the evening for a re-fueling stop, and it was interesting to see that they have located a golf course between the two runways. (I spent Monday flying from Nairobi to Dubai to Bangkok.)

Between Bangkok and Sydney I enjoyed some real sleep. Although I was the first person in line in Nairobi, the agent was unable to get me a seat in the emergency-exit row out of Kenya.

02 Sydney Harbour

Instead, she put me at the front of the cabin, and I was delighted to find that there was plenty of legroom. From Dubai to Sydney, she had put me in the middle seat of the emergency row, so when I got to the gate in Dubai, I asked if they could change my seat to an aisle seat. I wound up in the center of a set of four (in the middle of the aircraft). However, there were only two of us in that row, and there was still plenty of legroom and an empty seat on either side of me. Between Bangkok and Sydney I had the row all to myself, and I was able to stretch out full length with several pillows and a couple of blankets. Nice! All in all, it was pretty pleasant, and I traveled in comfort - which was a good thing, since the trip lasted 24 hours from initial take-off to final landing, and went through 7 time zones.

Coming into Australia was interesting. The Australian authorities are concerned about the importation of foreign pests (They have enough domestic ones.), so we had to declare all sorts of things. I had a power bar from LA and a candy bar, so I had to declare food; I had been on safari in Kenya, so I had to declare that I had been in Africa and in a rural area. That put me in the inspection line. The food items were, of course, fine (They really are concerned with homemade foodstuffs), and all they wanted to do otherwise was inspect the soles of my shoes. Fortunately the shoes I wore on safari were also the ones I wore on the flight, so I didn't even have to open my suitcase and was on my way.

03 Koala

The people who had nothing to declare got their bags x-rayed - again. From there I was soon out the door and catching an airport shuttle into The City.

When I got to the hotel in Sydney, I discovered that the only casualty of the flight was the loss of the key to the lock on my backpack zipper. We broke the lock so I could get out my camera and sunglasses. It's the middle of winter here, so the temperature was in the upper 60's (Fahrenheit) with bright sun. Since we had arrived at 07:45 local time, it was too early to check into the hotel. They put my bag in their luggage room and gave me a map so I could wander a bit. I did a self-guided orientation tour and took the monorail that loops through the central business district, Chinatown, and Darling Harbour. Then I walked through Hyde Park (arriving at the ANZAC memorial just in time for the daily "Act of Remembrance" and going inside for a look at the exhibit on the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) and stopped at the fountain to read about it. During my whole trip, I have been mistaken for a local (my sister-in-law says it's because I don't wear sneakers and jeans, so I don't look like an American): in Munich a sales person stopped me on the street to give me a flyer for the local "Home Depot"-type store; in Salzburg and Bad Dürrnberg people asked me for directions; in London a carful of Brits stopped and asked me if I knew where a certain pub was. So, now I've been in Australia for fewer than three hours since touchdown; I'm standing at a fountain trying to read the dedication through the spray of water; I have a camera slung over my shoulder; and an Aussie asks me if I know where the Art Gallery is.

04 kookaburra

Fortunately, since the concierge had given me a map and orientation, I did know where the Art Gallery was. From the fountain I continued through the Domain (visiting the Art Gallery on the way), around Mrs. MacQuarie's point, through the botanical garden and to the Sydney Opera House. Along the way, of course, I stopped to take photos and shoot some film. From the opera house I made my way around Circular Quay and down George Street back to the hotel. By this time it was late afternoon, so I checked in and went up to the room. Once I got settled in it was time to find dinner, relax and get to bed early. (So it's now the end of Tuesday.)

Wednesday morning I was up early for an excursion to the Blue Mountains. Our first stop was Featherdale Wildlife Park, where we saw wallabies, koalas, cassowaries, kangaroos, kookaburras, echidnas and wombats. I didn't get to see a Tasmanian devil - they were holed up for the day - or any dingoes, but I did get to pet a koala and feed a kangaroo. Then we drove up into the Blue Mountains. On the way our guide, Steve, told us lots of interesting factoids. Among them was that the word kangaroo probably is derived from an aboriginal reply to an explorer's query "What is that animal?" Not understanding English, the aborigine said something that sounded like "kangaroo" but actually meant, "I don't understand." The Blue Mountains are the second largest valley system in the world, surpassed only by the Grand Canyon system in the U.S. The Blue Mountains are part of the barrier range of eastern Australia and prevented expansion for many years.

05 wombat

They were finally "conquered" - and the outback opened - by three explorers: Wentworth, Blaxland and Lawson, all of whom have townships and topographical features named after them and who also were important in Australian politics. The explorers before them, coming from England as they had, tried to find passage through the valleys of the Blue Mountains, only to be confronted by impassable cliffs. Wentworth, Blaxland and Lawson tried the ridges instead and found a way through the mountains. Today, the Blue Mountains are almost a suburb of Sydney.

Arriving in the Blue Mountains, we saw Wentworth Falls and the Jamison Valley, looked at the "Three Sisters" (a rock formation that is supposed to be three sisters turned to stone by their father to protect them while he fought with their suitors; unfortunately the father was killed and no one could turn them back into flesh), had lunch, rode the world's steepest train (54º grade; it was formerly a mining train used to bring ore up from the valley), walked through a temperate rainforest, and returned to the ridge via the "sceniscender" - an aerial tram (made by a Swiss company). Next we stopped in a park and learned to throw a boomerang. Mine actually came back to me on the first throw! At a lookout point on the way back, we stopped for tea and learned to play the digeridoo. (The name is onomatopoeic from the sound that it makes and not an aborigine word at all.) All those years of playing the trumpet made it easy to get sound, but learning how to breathe would take some practice, since the sound isn't supposed to stop - the player uses what is called "circular breathing." After a stop at Sydney's Olympic Park, we took a boat ride down the Parramatta River (The name means "the place where eels lie down" - the river used to be full of eels) and back to Sydney Harbour. The views of the harbor were spectacular.

Thursday I bought tickets for the "explorer bus" so I could hop on and off at leisure. First I just enjoyed the ride through various parts of the city, getting off at Circular Quay so I could buy tickets to the opera. For lunch I stopped at the Hard Rock
Café. Years ago when I visited my brother, who was living in Mombasa at the time, he took me to the Hard Rock there. (It has since closed.) It was the first time I had ever been to one, and I bought a polo shirt. Since then, I've been collecting Hard Rock polo shirts whenever I go to a new one, so I wanted to add a Sydney shirt to the collection. When I came back to the bus stop, the police had blocked off that side of the street because of a demonstration/sit-in by university students against a fee hike. It isn't just California that wrestles with budget issues. (We've had student protests at the CSU and UC systems recently, too; the Cal State and University of California systems keep raising fees so that many students are finding it increasingly difficult to pay for their education.) Finally, they moved on and became a "parade" accompanied by almost as many police as protesters. One bystander said he'd never seen so many Australian policemen in one place before. At last the bus came, and I continued the bus route. In the evening I went to see "Hansel and Gretel" by Engelbert Humperdinck (the composer, not the singer) at the Sydney Opera House. They did a very nice job with it, but Humperdinck was no Bach, Verdi or Puccini. The second half was the best part, with the witch doing a pretty "campy" job. Her hairdo reminded me of pictures of Bette Midler in Disney's "Hocus Pocus.")

Friday I toured on another "explorer bus." This time I got all the way out to Bondi Beach, one of Sydney's best-known surfing beaches. Since it was lunchtime, I had some fish and chips - delicious. When I got back into The City, I decided to go into St. Mary's cathedral. Just as I entered, the organist began playing the other "Toccata and Fugue in d" by Bach. (Not the one associated with horror movies) She was practicing and having some issues with page turning, but it was wonderful to listen to, so I stayed. From St. Mary's I went to the Australian museum. It was after 16:00, and the museum closes at 17:00, so the guard let me in for free. I enjoyed a fairly brisk walk through the exhibits. Then I walked through Hyde Park again, went into the NSW State Library, stopped at Martin Place to view the cenotaph (war memorial: "Lest we forget"), and returned to the hotel to pack.

As I checked out of the hotel on Saturday and told the concierge that I was headed to New Zealand, he told me that he was a Kiwi and suggested some places to go and things to do. He also told me, "There's no infrastructure in New Zealand, so we spend our time inventing new ways to kill ourselves." That's why New Zealand is a center for white water rafting, sledging (on modified "boogie boards"), bungy jumping, "zorbing," etc. To find out what I did in New Zealand, though, you'll have to wait until I post my next installment.

So, until next time, G'day mates!

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