Disaster Down Under

I have been following the Australian fires on the BBC website and also got an email from a friend in Melbourne this week. She told me that the town of Maryville, which we visited to see some waterfalls last year, is virtually unrecognizable. It is so sad to know that people have lost their homes and their family because of arsonists. Here are some pictures of the waterfall and the beautiful trees that used to surround them.

Interesting Documentary

On the flight from Melbourne to Hong Kong I watched an interesting documentary about how Australians developed their unique accent. According to the documentary, after the first fleets arrived from England and other people migrated to Australia, the children of these immigrants created this unique accent which set them apart from their parents. It was amazing to see that up until the 60’s and 70’s media outlets only wanted to hire television announcers and such that had British accents. You really didn’t hear people on the television with a true Australian accent.

For a country so large, the variation of the accent is not there like it is in the U.S. But for size, I don’t think any English speaking country has the accent variation that the UK has. It is quite amazing.

Last Day in Melbourne

What was I going to do on my last Sunday in Melbourne? I had a full work day on Monday ahead and then a late night flight that night, so this was my last free day.

I walked down to the local coffee shop and had my last latte in a small glass. I then took a trip to the well-known Victoria Market. Victoria Market is a mixture of farmer’s market and flea market. I picked up a few small gifts and just enjoyed walking around. To the rest of the world Ugg boots are pretty popular and you can get them at the market for a good price. I am told by an Australian that they just consider them house slippers and not anything that you would really wear out. I thought about getting A a pair but couldn’t imagine spending $89 Australian dollars on house slippers!

From the market I walked to Fitzroy, one of the suburbs of Melbourne known for their cafes and contemporary art. The buildings were interesting and the shops were funky. It was a good day.

When the Monday work day was over, and I was taking the tram to meet a colleague for dinner, I was a little sad to leave. It had been an absolutely exhausting month, but I also got to see a tiny bit of a country I never imagined seeing and I met some wonderful people.

Ripping on the United States

I was recently instant messaging with my buddy M in Houston. I had to tell him that while I was in Australia that someone from the UK said to me that if they had lived in the U.S. when they were getting a divorce, they would have shot their husband in the leg. They wouldn’t kill him, they would have just hurt him. I told him that I had to explain to this person that even though we can buy a gun in the U.S., shooting people still is illegal and unacceptable. M’s response was, “Do they think that it’s like Deadwood in the U.S.?” I’ve been surprised by other crazy comments about my home country. I won’t go into it here because I’d rather the idiots not get their due. That one was just too funny. Let’s just say, ignorance can be universal.

Federation Square - Melbourne

Do We All Speak the Same Language?

It was interesting getting a chance to experience Australia and the Great Ocean Road with people from the UK. There were things they found different that reminded me of home and probably vice versa. For example, going out to breakfast during our Great Ocean Road trip just seemed like what you should do on vacation, but my UK travel partners found this a real change of pace. At one of the breakfasts the eggs were served on thick sourdough toast and one of them found this very unique. I thought to myself, that’s Texas Toast! Before we left to go on our trip I called their hotel room and asked if I needed to pack some dress pants, not sure if we would be going to any nice places for dinner. This resorted in a lot of offline discussion, which led me to believe that they were deciding whether this would be a completely casual trip or not. But what was really happening is they were trying to figure out what I meant by “dress pants”. They would have called them smart trousers. This made me laugh because both phrases are strange.

When I was on the wine tour with people from the UK and also some Aussies there was a lot of discussion about how the two cultures greet each other. An Aussie who had lived in the UK said she had a strange reaction when meeting someone from the UK and being asked “Are you alright?” which is the equivalent of “How are you?” in America. She said it sounded like she was always being asked whether she was physically ill. I sat there in silent agreement. Of course the person from the UK had to explain that it was better than the Aussie greeting of “How are you going?” Again, I sat there in silence thinking, yeah, that’s kind of a weird greeting too.

Some of my favorite Aussie terms:

G’day

No worries

Brekky – breakfast

Bikky – cookie

Pumpkin - squash (they say butternut pumpkin)

Favorite popular drink – lemon, lime and bitters – refreshing and delicious!

Some Chess in Melbourne

This Picture Says It All

Get a statue erected in your honor and it gets "anointed". Even the birds in Australia subscribe to mowing down the tall poppy!

Melbourne Gaol

I was looking through my pictures and realized that I had not posted anything about my visit to Melbourne Gaol. That spelling of the word really threw me off. I’m so used to seeing gaol spelled as “jail” that I wasn’t sure how to pronounce it.

I was able to tour the old jail from the 1800’s as well as the newer jail built in the early 1900’s. The old jail was quite creepy with descriptions of some of the infamous prisoners jailed here including their death masks. The most famous is the death mask of Ned Kelly. For those unfamiliar with Kelly, we were told by the tour guide that he held the same legendary status in Australia that Jesse James held in the U.S.

Cookies Everywhere

Almost every café or coffee place in Melbourne has cookie jars filled cookies but I never saw anyone buy one. One common cookie in the jars are yo yo cookies. Every morning I would walk past a bakery that had the most beautiful yo yo cookies in the window so one Saturday I went in and bought one. It was very disappointing, so much so that I didn’t finish it. This is unheard of! Anyway, it kind of turned me off to trying any other cookies in the cookie jars.

Kangaroos in the Wild?

Our last stop on our Great Ocean Road adventure was to the Anglesea Golf Course, supposedly the home of some kangaroos. Sure enough, there they were, lounging around the course as golfers went about their business. As we were looking through the fence to see them a tourist with a camera came out to the course to take some pictures and quickly got told off by the golfers. The kangaroos hopping around the course are an every day occurrence; the photographer was just a nuisance.

Split Point Lighthouse

We hiked all along the lighthouse and saw some beautiful coastline. You can see from these pictures, the weather was shifting from sunny to rainy in forty minutes that we were there.

Lunch on the Run

One of my fellow travelers was desperate to take a dip in the water, so while she was trying that out, I went in search of lunch. The Fat Cow Café was right across the beach. With a name like that I had to check it out. I got a terrific goat cheese and spinach toastie (grilled cheese to us Americans) to go.

Koalas in the Wild

There are points along the Great Ocean Road where you suddenly see cars pulled off to the side and people standing along the road looking up into the trees and you begin to figure out what is happening, there is a koala in view. We stopped three times along the road and saw several asleep, an occasional stretch of a leg here and there. On our last day we stopped at a spot well-known for koala sightings and we saw four or five high up in the trees. Even if I used my zoom on my camera, I couldn't get a good picture. As we walked along the path we saw a very short tree with people gathered around it. We couldn’t believe our luck. As you can see from the pictures, he was in a very low-lying branch. Locals call these creatures smelly and mean, but look how adorable this little guy is.

The Smell of the Outdoors

Several times during our Great Ocean Road trip we commented on how amazing the air smelled. I imagine part of it is due to the eucalyptus trees.

Gas?

Australia reminds me of the American West in how desolate the road can be. I remember H and I driving to Las Vegas years ago and how spread out gas stations and rest stops were. The same is true, even more so, in Australia. I was getting nervous that we were running low on gas since the towns that had a gas station were not plentiful. We ended up being fine getting back to Apollo Bay but we did try and stop at an interim town that had some very old gas pumps that had this sign in the window of them. It made me laugh. Forget that your almost out of gas, have a burger!

Trouble Ahead

After getting soaked once again walking from Loch Ard Gorge, we decided to head back to Apollo Bay, with a pit stop at Moonlight Head, the site of a shipwreck. The road to Moonlight Head with good weather is winding and a bit treacherous. While we were driving there, the sky decided to open up and it looked from the branches lining the middle of the street, we might be sleeping in the car, stuck on the road. We skipped Moonlight Head and tried to get out of the storm. I felt so bad for my travel companion doing the driving.

Loch Ard Gorge

We had a quick break in the weather and stopped at what ended up being my favorite part of the whole journey. Because it had been raining so hard, this site was not as populated with tourists as the others. It was so beautiful and massive. I tried to take some pictures with people in them so you could get an idea of scale.

Rainbows on the Drive

We tried to press on to see other things along the Great Ocean Road that day, but the weather was vacillating between rain and sun. We did get to see some rainbows as a result of this. We were basically driving through the middle of one that stretched over the road.

The Twelve Apostles

The Twelve Apostles is the third busiest tourist attraction in Australia and was the busiest place we visited. From the pictures in the tour book it looked interesting, but the pictures give you no idea of scale. It is massive. We got caught in a major downpour at this site. I noticed from the pictures that I took there that you can see a changing sky.