Roos and Rocks

It's been ages since I've uploaded pictures. Fortunately, I'm at my friend Siall's house, and she has a PC, and she's at her office today, granting me precious access to her desktop and all the wonders it has inside. Siall was one of my housemates my last year of university, and she is also the woman who midwifed my cat Wishbone, who is now 13-years-old (the cat).

At any rate, we're going back to November 6th here. On my last day in Melbourne, I walked around the city's botanical gardens with my cousin Ruthie and her husband Gary. There we coincidentally ran into my cousin Steve and his wife Lisa and also Casey, the girlfriend of my cousin Jeremy, and their dogs. When we ate breakfast at the Canteen, we ran into them again, including Jeremy, no small feat in a city of over 3 million people. When Ruth and Gary dropped me off, I wandered around Federation Square during the Melbourne Cup. The Melbourne Cup is a huge event in Oz. Even the Prime Minister John Howard and his competitor Kevin Rudd (Australia will elect one of them on November 24) bet on the horses. Beyond the obvious fanfare of attending a gambling event, the women dress up in fancy prom-like outfits and don gigantic hats. It's a big deal. At Federation Square the races were projected onto a wall and here again on a big screen TV in the courtyard. Everyone and their mother bet on a horse. The horse who won was named Efficient, and he wasn't a favorite to win. I didn't bet on a horse, although Efficient is the type of name I might've bet on. While the racing horses are treated incredibly well and eat better than we do, there are many horses which are bred for racing and which don't become racing horses and which are treated horribly.


At the Federation Square I went inside the ACMI, which is something like the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and watched a few documentaries and animated shorts. One documentary was of Melburnian Yiddish women over 60 who do yoga; it's entitled Stand on Your Head. Also good for a laugh was Babs and Bob's Trip to New Zealand, a 6-minute documentary. Babs brought her video camera with her to New Zealand, and when she saw the red light was on, she thought the camera was off and vice versa. She gave the tapes to her Melburnian daughter to edit, and, appalled, she found the entirety of the footage was video of the ground. When Babs thought her camera was off, she carried it lens-down -- hours of footage of stones, gravel, shoes, toilets.

Following that and an art exhibition of indigenous painters, I walked along South Bank and up to the tallest building in Melbourne, 3800 meters high. Up there it's easy to familiarize oneself with the layout of the town.


Fast-forwarding ahead, I then left for Alice Springs, the town nearest to Uluru, the large sandstone rock in almost the dead center of Australia and considered to be the cultural heart of the country. Before leaving for Uluru and other geological formations, I spent the day in Alice. My favorite place was the baby kangaroo rescue facility, where we were taught to save baby kangaroos, called "joeys," from their mothers' pouches were we to find them killed in the road. They also let us hold the joeys. Here is my German friend Andre with a joey. And, here I am too with a joey named Amy. Amy licked my hand and tried to kiss me.


In the evening I walked up to Anzac Hill and watched the sun set over Alice.

The next morning I rose early and went to Kata Tjuta, arguably more sacred than Uluru. The Aborigines keep many of the mythical stories related to Kata Tjuta secret because of this sacredness. Uluru, in contrast, is more accessible.

The campsite was rather kingly. Each tent contained a bed, mattress, and sleeping bag, a stark contrast to my Colorado camping trip, in which Kimberly and I bore our camping gear on our backs and slept in a megamid during an electrical storm.


While Uluru is one solid monolith, Kata Tjuta has five or six humps. Here is one of them.


The next morning I circumambulated Uluru, just beyond sunrise. Uluru is a peaceful rock. I didn't climb it, out of respect for the Aborigines and their requests.


Here is a waterhole on the side of Uluru.


Along certain faces of the rock are cave paintings. These paintings are important to the Aborigines, in that they represent sacred stories and are ways of teaching their descendants how to survive. Not only might the Aborigines, here called the Anangu, pass on creation stories, but they also might draw maps of how to survive in the vicinity. Included on the map are plants and animals. In this drawing, the concentric circles represent waterholes or towns. The U or C shape represents a person. The line next to the C represents a digging stick.


That evening I went on my first camel ride. The camels are adorable and friendly. They'd bow their heads low so that I might pet their noses. They also enjoyed being scritched behind the ears. As I rode on one camel, I'd pet the ears of a caravaning, neighboring camel.



The following morning I hiked through Kings Canyon and walked past several features called "The Lost City" and "The Garden of Eden."


The base of this canyon is entitled the Garden of Eden, because it resembles a tropical jungle. Gigantic cycads, ferns, and eucalypts thrive in the water at the bottom.


The sandstone, mudstone, and silica formed these stratified layers.


Before leaving the center of the country, I said goodbye to my new friends and walking companions. Here are Julia and Philip from Stuttgart, Germany, and Hitesh "H" from Birmingham, England.

Pajama Party in the Toilet

A few days ago I went on a tour to Kakadu, a forested area near Darwin (Northern Territory, Australia) which is something like the size of Sweden. On the way back from one of the many waterfalls and plunge pools, one guy on our tour started screaming in agony. He had to be helicoptered out.

Meanwhile back at camp, while the guide was away, we dragged our camping mattresses into the toilet to play cards.

More on all that later....

They Are Biting Me

The mosquitos bit me yesterday, first in the morning before hiking Kings Canyon and second while out fossil-hunting. I found some shells imbedded in a rock in the dead-center of Australia. I left the rock at the hostel though, because customs would never let me bring a rock into New Zealand. Who knows where that rock's been (over the past few million years)!

My little battery-operated mosquito repellant which I'm convinced works purely when you believe that it does was off at the time. I still might convert to Deet (tm).

I'm in Darwin now (named after the evolutionist) and it feels like 30 degrees out! That's 90 degrees for you Farenheiters.

Sanctuary in the Dandenongs

Yesterday I went to the Rickett's Sanctuary. At the Dandenongs, a mountain range outside of Melbourne covered in huge stands of eucalyptus trees, is a natural reserve where William Rickett used to live. Although he wasn't an Aborigine, he experienced kinship with the Aborigines and incorporated much of the Aboriginal iconography and symbology into his carvings and sculptures. Around the forest area near his house he carved stumps into faces and people. He also employed a gigantic kiln for the use of making giant clay sculptures -- self-portraits, aboriginal children and old men, and strange and absurd displays of people sometimes with possums and sometimes with guns or crosses or swirls. He would blend Christian symbology with Aboriginal symbology and, in one instance, a sculpture featured a white man with a hat of bullets and bearing rifles. Below the war-like man were two crosses etched in aboriginal swirls; on one cross was an aboriginal man crucified, and on the other was William Rickett himself. William Rickett was a strange and unique man, and I was alternately awestruck by his use of poetry and dumbfounded by his use of absurdity.

In each corner and cranny, you could see a sculpture or engraving. Here's a sampling, including my trite picture of a furled fern.

To melt and become
As the living waters
Running and singing
A flow of life in
My Dreaming



This collection of children's faces reminds me of a sculpture I gave my mom after attending university.


Trite picture of a furled fern:


A gum tree is a eucalyptus tree. The website Aboriginal Art Online describes the Dreaming: "The Dreaming is a term used by Aborigines to describe the relations and balance between the spiritual, natural and moral elements of the world. It is an English word but its meaning goes beyond any suggestion of a spiritual or dream-related state. Rather, the Dreaming relates to a period from the origin of the universe to a time before living memory or experience -- a time of creator ancestors and supernatural beings."

I raise my eyes to the gums overhead
They filter the sun's golden gleaming
And I think once again of a friend
I once had
Who's part of my Bushland
Dreaming

Food and Family

On the 31st, after returning to Christchurch, Michele and I went to the Buddhist Centre for lunch. This would be my fourth time there. I ordered the laksa, which is a Singporean dish.


Michele then got hold of the camera. Spicy food, yes, is good. My nose is long enough to reach the soup. The law of foreshortening did not work to my advantage here.


That evening the sky turned pink and orange and we biked to Misceo's for dinner. We toasted over Monteith's award-winning amber and Old Dark. The following morning I flew to Melbourne, Australia.

I have a few reflections to make about New Zealand. Remind me if I forget. Of course, it would be possible to make the reflections in December, upon returning there. Meantime, I'm realizing it's not so easy to have this journal keep up with my thoughts on things. For the most part, I've been enjoying myself, although I've alternately been overwhelmed and a bit too clearly gaining perspective on my life back home. A couple of "no longers" have surfaced in my invisible commitment list. And, many of my "no longers," or Nevers, have surpassed Maybe and entered the realm of Definitely. In other words, I'm shifting my personal vows, committing to a healthier work schedule, to a life of adventure, and--on the other side of the spectrum--relaxing my views on marriage, which I used to think was stupid.

It also seems to me that Israelis (and Jews in general) are an adaptable, adventurous group. If it were up to me, I'd allocate the money used for nuclear warheads and military research for Israeli resettlement. I don't want to weigh in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at all -- just to say that Israelis like money and moving around, so why not give Israelis gobs of money to go travel or buy houses in France, the U.S., Australia, and the like? Israel is a huge desert anyway. The Bible, if I remember correctly, called it a "highway." Who wants to live on a dark, desert highway? Imagine if the U.S. government said to the Israelis, "We're not passing judgment, don't think anyone should win this land, but we know you're adaptable, so here's gobs of money. We were going to spend it on warheads, but instead we're spending it on you. Go find a lush, beautiful place. Call it paradise."

OK, crazy theories aside, I'm now in Melbourne, Australia! Before a couple weeks ago, I thought I had only one cousin here, but from thinking there was a Helen here, there grew a Nathan and a Linda, and then there grew a Ruth and a Henry, and some of them had kids and some of their kids had kids. So, the family grew exponentially from there. Many of the following photos are for my family, whom I probably just upset with my presumptious and wild ideas about creating peace in the Mideast, so feel free to read on or not. When I was in high school, I was the only kid in class who read all of our assigned Moby Dick readings, including the part about who was the son of whom. What I mean is, I won't blame anyone for skimming the part about who begat whomever -- or for skimming in general. By all means, look at pictures.

While Nathan was at work, one of the first things Linda and I did on Friday morning was run errands. First we dropped off the kids at their school, and then we stopped by three different food places. This is why I love my family, and this is why I love Melbourne. My family loves food. This town is positively dripping with food. It doesn't matter that Linda has a fully stocked pantry; we had to buy bread and cookies and a variety of prepared salads. Even then we weren't going to sit and eat our purchases. We took our grocery bags to Louie's, owned by a South African Jew, and bought breakfast. Louie's, as the guy who sat next to me on the plane said, is the best deli in Melbourne (and probably anywhere). I've never seen a lunch place like this. The tables had to be shoved in the back to make room for the display cases of stacked quiches, lasagnas, breads, meats. Foccacia breads were hanging on racks. Stored foods, as in olive oils, jams, olives, biscuits, and coffees, were lined on shelves. Paninis, sandwiches, cakes, cheeses, all fresh and beautiful and good -- the room was slathered in food.

That night I met more family members and together we had a Friday night ritual supper, where I met George, who would've been contemporary of my grandmother, and his descendants. I was still on New Zealand time and tired by 8, but I drank wine and answered all sorts of questions, though my relationship to everyone is probably considered distant by most. We're all second and third cousins. But, for us, descendants of holocaust survivors and others who were lucky, we all have to stick together. I did feel as if they were family, beyond just the label that they are. Many of them looked like me or like others of my close relatives. Beyond that, they had certain expressions and interests and ways of communicating that just reminded me of home. That type of familiarity is strange and instinctual. I'm not saying I had more than polite conversation with everyone; I didn't. As with all social gatherings, I only immediately connected with a small fraction. But, even were there one connection, it would be enough.

On Saturday Nathan and Linda took me to the Healesville Sanctuary, where we could see native Australian animals (wallabies, koalas, bilbies, platypuses). As you all know, I love animals and love places like this, nothing like zoos. Here the animals are well taken care of and given proper habitats. There is even a wildlife hospital, which is also an educational center, on sight.

Here is a koala who was supposed to be mating with any of three other female koalas. According to the Keeper (that's what they call the caretaker), though, he hasn't been interested. Koalas sleep about 20 hours a day and eat and groom for the rest, so there may not have been time for him to be seduced.


This koala was extraordinarily placid. His mom had been hit by a car, and someone had turned in this koala when he was a baby. The Keeper mentioned that most koalas don't let you hold them in this way.


Here is Eva, Nathan's daughter, in front of a kangaroo.


This morning the whole family met for brunch at Brighton Beach. (Yes, this one is called Brighton, too.) It's probably a good time to mention how we're all related. My dad's mother, whose name was Miriam, had a first cousin named Eva. Eva had two siblings, Leon and Etka. They were, of course, also first cousins to Miriam. Eva first moved to Paris and then to Melbourne to be with the rest of her siblings. Nathan was the child of Eva and George. Nathan married Linda, who is from Mozambique and Portugal. They're my hosts and have two kids, Phillip and Eva.

Etka had two daughters, Helen and Ruth. Leon had several kids, whom I haven't met, but one is named Henry. Ruth married Gary. They have three sons (David, Michael, and Ben) and one daughter, Sarah, whom I haven't met. Henry has three sons (Jeremy, Steve, and Antony) and one daughter, Cara. Cara, who looks like my first cousin (also named Miriam), married an Israeli named Zac. Together they have a daughter named Mika. Steve married a woman named Lisa; they have a son named Luka. Jeremy brought his girlfriend Casey. Antony brought his girlfriend Amanda. Zac brought his sister Shani.

We had to spread out to two tables. Here they are, beginning from the lower left-hand corner and going clockwise: Steve, Ben, Phillip, Eva's arm, Linda, Gary, Ruthie, Jeremy, Me, Casey, Amanda, Antony, Lisa, and the back of Luka.


From another angle, here they are beginning with the smiling guy on the left and going clockwise: Ben, Phillip, Eva, Linda, Gary, Ruthie, Jeremy, my eyes, the top of Casey's head, Amanda, Antony, the back of Luka, and Lisa.


At the other table, here is another group, beginning in the lower left-hand corner and going clockwise: David, Zac, Nathan, go across to the white pillar to leave off the three people in the back, Shani, Mika, Cara, and me.


In this picture you see Mika, Zac, and Nathan.


Here are Lisa and Luka, a bit too backlit but cute.


Here are the sisters, Ruth and Helen, daughters of Etka. Helen is about to turn 50 and Ruth is in her 50s. Wow is all I can say to that. Beyond witnessing how young-looking these gals are, I was glad to hear that the three siblings (Leon, Etka, and Eva) who were my grandmother Miriam's cousins all lived to a fairly old age.


Here Phillip (Nathan's son) plays with Ben (Ruthie's son).



Nathan, Linda, Phillip, Eva, Ruth, and Gary then took me on a drive along the beach (Brighton and Sandy). Australia is experiencing a terrible drought, and it hadn't rained hard since May, but today it poured. Whereas most people would consider today to be horrible weather, everyone was delighted about the rain. We saw the Cerberus, a purposefully sunk iron warship, which was used around the turn of the 19th century and then sunk to break the tide. We saw the Melbourne skyline, too. Here is Phillip who, as he passed me, said "Missed." I don't think I missed. What a cute boy he is!


Here are Linda and her daughter Eva.


These are the famous bathing boxes along the shore. People paint them so as to personalize them, and they cost an exorbitant amount to have. They sit low on the cabana scale -- don't you think so? But, they're cool-looking!


Tomorrow we plan to go to Rickett's Point or something like that, and I have to figure out where to go after Melbourne. Eva, the three-year-old girl, asked me if I would live with them forever. I told her that she'd have to find me a job first. She nodded her head in earnest, said OK, and walked away as if to go find me one.

Tranz-Alpine Train, Punakaiki, and Greymouth

This past month I've experienced being very behind with this travel journal. Prior to today my online time was limited. This entry's photos cover Monday and Tuesday of this week, the 29th and 30th. By the next entry (or so) I'll complete my coverage of New Zealand (until December, of course, when I'll be back).

On Monday morning I took the Tranz-Alpine train to Greymouth. This is a special train trip which some folks book their New Zealand tickets expressly for. I say this because Dawn, the woman who sat next to me on the journey (before we walked to the viewing car), said that she flew to NZ mainly for this train trip. I spent the majority of the train ride (the entire morning) in the viewing car, which has open-air access to the outside world. I leaned on the railings and my head out of the car, like a dog.




At Arthur's Pass I got out just to get this picture of the engine.


When I arrived in Greymouth, I took the shuttle to Punakaiki, which is famous for its "Pancake Rocks." Over millions of years the skeletons of tiny sea animals formed limestone, which upsurged, and later eroded. No one really knows how these rock pillars formed, except that one theory (my favorite theory and why I mention it here) is that the pillars were composed of limestone and mudstone. During the erosion process, the alleged mudstone would have disintegrated, leaving these pancake stacks.

Sometimes during high tide and stormy weather, these rocks seem to spout water. They're called blowholes. While I was there, though, they remained calm. It was a beautiful day. I've had such good luck with weather but do wish I would've seen the stacks look like waterfalls, too.

Afterwards, I walked two kilometers up the road, alongside towering limestone cliffs and ferns and flax galore (pungas, nikaus, kie-kies) to the Truman Track, which took me to the coast. I passed a small waterfall, quite a few boulders, and walked out to where these gulls were bathing.


Upon returning to the hostel, I met a German woman named Kirsten, and we walked together toward the pancake rocks so as to see the sunset. These photos are just views from the road and the hostel. The shuttle driver had said that this stretch of ocean road has been considered one of the ten most scenic coastal drives in the world. I would agree wholeheartedly.




That night I took myself out for pumpkin soup at a local pub, had a hot tub on the shore, slept soundly enough to wake up early and walk out to the Pororari River. There I rented a kayak and wetsuit and booties. While doing so, a young woman named Gina arrived and wanted some companionship, so we kayaked together. At first I was hoping for a solitary morning journey, especially since no one I had spoken with had rented a kayak and I was being prideful and adventurous. Later, not only was I glad for the company, but Gina urged us to push on upriver, even when it seemed time to head back. She was right; the current took us back downriver so quickly that it was worth it to explore further than the time seemed to allow. (My shuttle was leaving at noon.)










I took the only shuttle leaving for Greymouth that day. That evening I went to the History House, where I saw pictures of turn-of-the-century (19th century, that is) ships with broken hulls, strange scuba gear, and photos of rugby players from the 1920s. These were funny photos, guys with combovers and socks up to their knees. They sat cross-legged and looked kind and sensitive. Compare them with the All Blacks team, who look so mighty and exude coolness (except for when they're sore losers after their recent disappointment in France). Following that, I went on a tour of the Monteith's Brewery. The brewery had changed their name three times to arrive at the sparkling name of Monteith's, which sounds like someone's dental work, but they happen to have award-winning ambers and darks, and, yeah, I'd say, "Not bad." Guinness, given its creamy quality is still preferable, but the Old Dark brand is still quite yummy.

After the brewery tour and tasting, I joined a few of the people from the tour next door at Speight's, the competition. Speight's beer is also not bad, but I continued drinking Old Darks. Eun Ju (which may not be spelled correctly) is from Korea, and the other two are from the UK. They told me the fascinating story of how they met, on the Internet no less! She's Glaswegian and he's from London. She was told never to marry an Englishman, but there you go. Perfect match and a delightful couple. We treated each other to beers and good conversation.

The next morning, Wednesday, I was up early to catch the bus back to Christchurch. Here's sun-up from outside the hostel.

Backlogged Videos

Now in Melbourne with my family, I'm happy to be on a PC again. As a result, it's possible to upload videos. My main desktop, when it was possible to use it, in NZ was a Mac. Keep in mind these aren't high quality docs but dinky, dorky snippets taken with my really cheap camera. But, because dorkiness in action is always good for a laugh, you might like to view one or two of these. In this video we're at the Orana Wildlife Park. Michele wanted to take a photo of me with the llama, but she ended up taking a video instead. Notice how Sean-Penn-esque I get at the end. (It is tough to be on the other side of the lens, really.)

The day after we went to Peel Forest. (Was this two weekends ago? Time is moving slowly.) We stopped our hike (in the Antipodes they call hiking "tramping") for a brief moment, and Richard started carrying on about Cat Stevens. He tried to get us to remember the song that goes "Matthew and Sons, Matthew and Sons...," but we were too dense to remember it. By the way, later that evening Richard played us the song, and I completely remembered it, especially remembered Andrew's son Duncan, who at age 4 would sing that bit that goes "all day, all day, all day...." Cat Stevens is wonderful, isn't he? It's a "wild world."

This past Monday, the 29th, I took the Tranz-Alpine train to Greymouth from Christchurch. It was the best train ride I've ever been on. One car is a viewing car, and you can lean out and practically over the railings while the train zips over bridges, trestles, rivers, ravines, under jagged mountains, and into tunnels. This video doesn't show off the beautiful scenery, but if you're a train buff, it gives you a sense of being on a moving train.