Playing Catch Up - Please Bear With Me

I apologize for the bewildering last post, but I was a bit flustered by the internet cafe time ending and I was annoyed that I couldn't post pictures. It's been a while so this post will catch up on all the things I've been meaning to write, and recap some of the stuff from our last post.

So this'll be a long post, please bear with me. There's a prize at the end.

The previous blog was titled "Due to the risk of kangaroo attack..." I did not make this up. We did actually see that on a sign at the Anglesea golf course near Melbourne, which is known for having kangaroos lounge around on the golf course. We stopped to take a photo.

Kind of reminds me of the Leo J Martin course back home, which is overrun with geese. I wonder what the local rules are if you hit a kangaroo.

The golf course was out on the Great Ocean Road, which I kind of slammed last time but did have some nice scenery.

One other thing about the Great Ocean Road - it's pretty rural. At one point there were cows on the road. Funny thing was, this wasn't the first time we had encountered this - it happened in New Zealand as well.

After the Great Ocean Road, we drove through a resort town in Victoria called Lakes Entrance. The motel we stayed at delivered breakfast through a hole in the wall in the back of your room.

From there, we made our way to Canberra, the national capital. Here's Gina in front of Parliament House.

We got to watch Parliament live in session. Government is lively here, as we were able to watch an hour and a half of "Question Time", which we found enoromously entertaining. Various ministers were asked questions live in Parliament, and the opposition party made loud and obnoxious noises while the ministers answered. During the 90 minutes, 30 opposition ministers were warned for their behavior and a half-dozen were kicked out - one for eating lunch.

I stand by my previous comments on Canberra as a planned city. It was growing on me when, just as we were leaving, we drove down their equivalent of the National Mall. There was not a soul in sight. It was kind of sad. This photo illustrates my previous comment that everything is behind a layer of trees:


From Canberra we made our way to a town in the Blue Mountains with the wonderfully Australian name of Katoomba. The Blue Mountains are a range close to Sydney, not terribly high but astoundingly and deceptively rugged. They are called Blue Mountains because the eucalyptus gives them a blue tinge. Here's a photo of the "Three Sisters" formation:


Thereafter we visited a tourist attraction thoughtfully called Scenic World. It was nice, and we took the time to take some photos mimicing the fantastically dorky and stupid poses the Japanese tourists make when posing in front of a tourist attraction. Here's me with a miner statue:

And here's Gina on the world's steepest railway:

Anyway we had fun, suffice to say it was a bit campy. We're in Sydney now, where the internet is mercifully only $2 an hour. You all know me. I am an internet addict. This is a little slice of heaven for me.

Since I have some time, I have some thoughts on Australia if you are willing to hear me out. It strikes me as a country where the "No Worries" principle governs everything. As I mentioned before, Australia was only federated in 1901 and before then was governed as six separate countries. Being here has challenged the way that we tend to think, which is that everything is as it always has been. Australia as a country is barely 100 years old and the wild west spirit is alive and well here.

The feeling that people should be self sufficient manifests itself everywhere. Gambling and alcoholism are rampant here, civil litigation is almost nonexistent, and people live in horrifically remote places and think nothing of it. Aborigines are left to themselves where they are amongst the world's most destitute. I am left with the thought that Australia is very much a rough and tumble because it is such a young place. It's a country not long detached from its founding by convicts and hearty sailors, yet is very British; these two opposites very often come to a head. This is a very hard thing to describe. They drink tea and play cricket, but have a Marlboro man ideal that is very tangible, manifested in Australian rules rugby - perhaps the most smash-mouth sport on the planet.

Get this - in the late sixties, the Prime Minister, a guy named Harold Holt, went diving off the coast of a peninsula not far from Melbourne. He went under and was never seen again. Only in Australia can the head of state simply go missing. Theories abound, but most likely he was taken by a shark. Nowadays the guy's practically forgotten, having been Prime Minister for only two years - and the only memorial to him in his hometown of Melbourne is a private swimming pool. Only in Australia can they lose a head of state on a semiurban beach and memorialize the guy in such a tongue-in-cheek manner.

We mentioned the story to a security guard we were chatting with at Parliament House in Canberra. His comment? "These things happen."

I mentioned to the guard that I found it fascinating that you could walk into Parliament House, go through airport-style security and thereafter have pretty much free reign of the place. The guard made a comment that we can feel safe now that we're in Australia, implying that we were able to flee the violent day to day life of America. This is a comment I have received several times here in Australia - they have a perception of America as a very violent place.

Here's the thing that was really galling: that morning, one person had been shot dead in downtown Melbourne during rush hour. A man had gotten in a fight with his girlfriend and was literally dragging her through the streets by her hair; when two men went to her aid, both men and the girlfriend were shot. It was kind of like someone getting shot in Government Center during the 8:30 AM rush hour. And this Melbourne shooting wasn't terribly out of place - in 2002 a student at Melbourne's Monash University went nuts in a dorm and killed two people; and in 1996 at the Port Arthur historical site in Tasmania, a gunman killed 35 (!) and wounded 37. Now what's the more violent place?

Anyway, sorry for the ramble but despite having these thoughts kicking around my head for several days I am not sure I articulated them very well. We have been reading Bill Bryson's brilliant book "In a Sunburned Country," which is much more astute at describing all this. We highly recommend it.

In closing, here's your prize - a photo of Gina feeding the birds in Tasmania.