The Final Installment of the Adventure in Oz

I am now a visitor in Singapore. I am rounding out my final few weeks here, and then I will be heading back to California to start a new adventure a little closer to home. There are so many stories to tell about that, but before I can get to them I MUST finish the tale of my odyssey in Oz.

I have lots of thoughts on moving back and leaving Asia - I've already chatted with friends in 8 countries who are happy for me, but sad that I'm leaving - even though in some cases I haven't seen them in person more than once in my entire time here. Yet, I feel sad that I will no longer be a short flight and only one timezone away. We've all been laboring "side-by-side" across a region 7,000 miles tall to build something great out in the wild wild east.

It's been an amazing ride that has been such a strong factor in my own perception of the world and its cultures, that I will need some time to really reflect on exactly how much I am taking away from this experience. In the meantime, I still have a slightly older story to tell...

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I will be using pictures to guide my memory as I recount the odyssey of my Aussie road trip way out woop woop. When we left off, Melanie and I were returning to Sydney from our Northern jungle adventure in Queensland. Eric was flying in from California to join us for my birthday and then for our whimsical rural odyssey road trip.

Melanie wanted to pet a koala, so after a few days gorging on devonshire tea in Sydney and celebrating my birthday at Bondi Beach, we headed to Featherdale Wildlife Park on the way to the Blue Mountains. Australia is full of these wildlife parks, kind of like mini-zoos with animals a lot more up close and personal. I always find it fascinating to think that these animals are normal in Australia - going to one of these parks for an Aussie is almost like Americans going to a "zoo" containing raccoons and squirrels. Instead of goats in the petting zoo, Aussies have kangaroos and dinosaur-resembling emus.

This wasn't the first time I'd pet a koala or kangaroo, since I'd been to Australia a number of times before and no trip is complete without a little trip to the wildlife park, but every time I'm struck by how oily koala fur is. Their fur is thick and matted, and they have killer claws for climbing trees, but they stay looking cute and cuddly, dozing off to sleep as tourists come by and pet them. The kangaroos have softer fur, especially the babies, and I wondered if the kangaroos at this park ever needed to go on diets. The park sells kangaroo food that is used all day to attract them out of their sleeping stupor, but almost none of the kangaroos were interested - I would probably not be interested either if people were waking me up all day to feed me alfalfa from an ice cream cone.

The Australian wildlife parks also often have a collection of Australia's infamously deadly reptiles. Here is a close up of the world's deadliest snake, the inland taipan. This snake is so deadly that at any one time it has enough potent venom to kill 80-100 people. Its bite is more than 700 times more powerful than a cobra bite, and yet there isn't a single recorded case of someone dying from this snake! He really did look scary, even through glass, but apparently in the wild he would be the one slithering away from me. I hope he'd slither away fast....

We got only a few feet away from a 14-foot saltwater croc. Luckily, this was the closest that we got to one (at least that we knew about - perhaps Melanie and I were just moments from death on those Queensland beaches....), but the boys cleaning the cage didn't seem to mind the lack of bars as they poked it with sticks to distract it from eating the guy trimming the bushes around his watering hole. How 5 guys could stand inside a cage just feet from this crocodile, poking him with sticks, and not even appear to be paying close attention is one of the many wonders of Aussie culture to me. "Hey Mick, I was so pissed last night I don't even remember!" "Yeah! Good on ya!" {Snap} "Mick? uh oh, we lost another one...."

After petting koalas and escaping deadly snakes, we headed to the three sisters by Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. It was wicked cold and we stayed outside just long enough to take pictures before heading somewhere inside to find food. I was sad to discover that the lovely "aboriginal" folk tale about how this rock formation came to be is apparently not aboriginal, and was cooked up by the tourist industry because people weren't as interested in the story of how the soft sandstone eroded over thousands of years. How is that not interesting?

Eric and I jumped in front of many Australian landmarks - Katoomba was the first of this trip. After our photo session we went into Leura, a close-by tourist village, to try to find food. Given that it was wicked cold in July, many places in Australia have taken to a "Christmas in July" theme, to which this town was very conducive. I half-expected Santa to come right down the chimney of the old Victorian house that was now the Thai restaurant where we ate dinner. It is funny that even for people who grew up in a country where December is summer, they still feel Christmasy when it's cold outside. Along with devonshire tea, sports hooliganism, and the accent, Christmas in July is probably a holdover from the British who must have had a hard time living in the wild bush and burning a yule log when it was 100 degrees outside.

After exploring the wildlife at the designated park, we explored Sydney's very own wildlife by visiting the fruit bats in downtown. In the Botanical Gardens you can stroll past statues of historical figures, eat a lovely ice cream, and walk below trees full of cat-sized bats who hang out all day, occasionally stretching their huge wings to let everyone walking below know that indeed, they are huge bats. The best part about the Sydney bats is standing at the edge of their area and watching unsuspecting people walk past, look up, and say "holy shit -are those bats?!!!"

After Melanie headed back to the US, Eric and I embarked on an unplanned odyssey. "What should we do? I dunno, wanna drive?" So we decided to rent a car and head in the general direction of Melbourne with 5 days and an Atlas that labelled every town in Australia as "A quaint little town."

Our first stop was Wallongong, "Australia's next tech capital" (or so the investment-seeking literature in the hotel room stated). We headed out of Sydney via the Princes Highway and decided we'd go as far as we wanted and then stop. We had a GPS and a car full of stuff, and everything else was up to whim.

The first night we decided to get to Wallongong because it seemed like one of the biggest cities on the map between Sydney and Melbourne. When we thought we were getting close, we asked our GPS to show us hotels, and surprisingly it pointed out the only hotels were right on the side of the road. We pulled into a small town, confused about how this could possibly be the largest town between Sydney and Melbourne, (but it is Australia, who knows?) and pulled up to the only accommodation, a road house on the freeway.

When we walked in everyone stared at us. People were playing slot machines and watching footie and drinking a lot of beer. We walked up to the bartender and shyly asked about accommodation. Looking surprised she said, "yeah, we have a room - but it's not ensuite." We asked if she could show us and she took us around a dark dingy staircase to a tiny hallway with cockroaches scurrying across the floor. "Holy shit! What did we get ourselves into? We're only a few hours from Sydney, and this is the biggest town?" Old drunken, wrinkled people stood in their doorways smoking and followed us with their eyes silently as we walked past. "It's only $50 a night," the girl shrugged. "This is $50 a night! What did we get ourselves into!" I thought. After walking back downstairs past the cockroaches, I decided that I'd rather sleep in the car than at this deliverance-inspired lodging and we decided to get back on the road.

About 10 minutes later, the sign to Wallongong popped up on the side of the road and we discovered for the first of many times on that trip, that GPS was not actually the greatest tool on earth...we'd almost spent the night in a random dirty town 5 miles outside of Wallongong! Instead, we found our way to a modern Novotel to a room with a balcony, a whispy curtain, and an Italian restaurant across the street. The next morning, watching the sun bounce off the sea through the curtain, I appreciated more than I thought I could have, the fortune of saying no to Mr. GPS.

Throughout our odyssey, Eric and I decided that we would go where the wind and the road signs pointed. On a number of occasions, this policy led us down unpaved dirt roads labelled "scenic tourist drive," which, while sometimes scenic, frequently led us down 3 hour detours that popped us back onto the main road about 2o feet past where we started.

On one such occasion, we were looking for another "quaint little town" from our atlas and turned down a road towards "Tilba Tilba" (not to be confused with the neighboring town of "Central Tilba.") After about 10 minutes on a dirt road seeming to lead farther and farther towards the center of a primeval forest, we stopped to figure out our plan and take in the scenery in the mysteriously dusty forest (above). About 2 minutes after stopping and taking some pictures, we were moments away from death as a massive oil tanker came charging down the windy dirt road towards us, no doubt surprised to see hapless tourists snapping pictures of the trees. Being run over by an oil tanker was pretty much at the bottom of my list of expected dangers at that moment in the rural hilly forest (about on par with being eaten by a shark), and I felt like the surreal experience was sent as a good reminder of how our luck could go when we least expected it. After our near death experience, we quickly turned our car around and found our way back to the main road where the actual turn out for Tilba Tilba was 20 feet farther...

That night we stayed at the Two Story Bed and Breakfast (the town was known for its very descriptive names). We went into the general store next door to inquire about the bed and breakfast and the woman running the store also happened to own the bed and breakfast.

"Do you have an ATM?" we asked

"Just check over at the post office" she informed us. We walked outside and discovered that the post office was on the other side of the wall. We waited for a moment, and she joined us through a door from the general store. "Now loves, what do you need?" I pinched myself to make sure that I wasn't actually in a Monty Python skit...

We wandered around the cute little town until 5pm when we could join the "session" down the street at the only place open - the pub. We had to wait until 7 for the food, so we decided to pass the time by trying out every beer on tap. We learned that one of the stores on the main street (and only street) was closed because the owner was bitten by a snake and had a stroke- "but that's not so bad, he was lucky really..." Mick assured us. Mick was the name of 4 different farmers taking in the social scene at the pub that night, and by the time 7 o' clock rolled around we'd been invited to eat venison from someone's deer farm, and had witnessed a verbal contest for who had the biggest possum. Mick won that contest...

Along the road we also came upon the Bega cheese cooperative. It isn't every day you have the chance to taste 10 kinds of cheddar cheese, so we stopped to check it out. Bega is the oldest dairy cooperative in Australia, and I like to think of it like stopping in Kraft, Nebraska, except with a beautiful ocean just over the bend from the cheese factory. Bega has made its way all the way to Singapore, and it was actually exciting to see where it all begins. We knew at that point, that we'd been on the road in rural Australia a bit too long :).

In keeping with our random rural odyssey, we managed to make it to the Victoria border not on a main highway, but on a small dirt road. We were once again, ever so slightly out of place, as one kind woman slowed her car and asked us if we were lost and if we needed directions as we stood by our car taking pictures with the Victoria sign. "Nope, thanks!" we said. She looked a bit dismayed, but continued on her journey. Later that day we discovered the town of Bendoc, which has an old rusty gas pump, a closed servicemen's club, and a bridge, and then drove through another primeval forest with huge 10 foot tall ferns before we reached the next closest town, 5 hours down the road - it was the same town we started in....

Along the way, we managed to see a lot of wildlife. Unfortunately, most of it was dead. Despite the warnings, we counted 57 skippies carked on the verge (dead kangaroos on the side of the road), 17 carked wombats, 7 carked foxes, and 5 carked rabbits. No one collects the carcasses, so they lie on the side of the road while nature takes its course, and we only counted carcasses that were intact enough to identify. There's something disturbing about seeing the animals rotting by the road, like no one cares enough, but then I'm reminded that in nature, no one cares, and that leaving them there to be eaten by birds is actually the most natural result for them. Still, while this is natural, I'm certainly glad that we don't have the same policy for people, it would be an ugly world if we just left people there...

Along with our hunt for real rural Australian life, we were also on a hunt for the best devonshire tea. I could eat devonshire tea all day, but luckily, I don't live in a place where that's an option. If I lived in Australia, I'd have to live close to the beach so that I would have motivation to get outside and exercise all the time to make up for the excessive amount of scone consumption.

The best thing about Devonshire Tea in Australia is that it doesn't even have to include tea. It's the term for a scone with clodded cream and jam and a hot beverage - either a "coffee" which could be any drink that has espresso (although not a watered down American coffee - if you want that you have to go to Starbucks because they're the only people in Australia serving drip coffee), or your choice of tea. If you're lucky, they'll have a good espresso machine and loose leaf tea, and even when you've been driving for days in the countryside, it's likely you will stop by a mom n' pop tea shop that has some of the best coffee you've ever tasted. The winning scones were on the 3rd floor of QVB in Sydney, but the scones from the quiet beach-side towns certainly won in atmosphere...

One day while driving, we approached another "quaint little town" according to our atlas. The town of Bombala wasn't exactly what I would call quaint, unless you call a freeway stop "quaint." But Bombala had two things that endeared it to my heart forever- a historical road house B&B with a renovated jacuzzi bathroom, and wild platypi.

Having been to Australia 6 times, I have made it a lifelong dream to see the elusively shy duckbill platypus in the wild. Many Aussies chuckled and wished me luck, but there by the road was the Shangri-la of all Australian turn-off signs - "Platypus Reserve."

We drove down a dirt road for about 10 minutes and arrived at a river bank with a little observation area and sign. We had arrived at the largest concentration of wild platypi in New South Wales. There they were - just below us, frolicking in the water! After tromping through jungle water in dangerous creeks in the North in search of wild platypi, Bombala, NSW won the award for best wildlife in my book. We stood there squinting and taking pictures for about half an hour before some birds came and the platypi disappeared under the water.

After visiting wild platypi, and relaxing in the historical road house jacuzzi, we hit the road again and made it to the town that includes the turn-off for the snowy mountains. Since we'd just been frolicking in the sun at the beach, we decided it would add contrast to our Australian experience to play in the snow in the mountains. One thing everyone should be aware of - the Snowy Mountains, aren't very snowy....

Growing up 2 hours from Lake Tahoe, I didn't realize how much I took fluffy piles of snow for granted until driving up to the Snowy Mountains to witness the almost complete lack of snow in the middle of winter. It wasn't that it was a bad snow year, we stayed in Jindabyne, a town that was purposely built below the snow line because in Australia it is illegal to drive where it could snow without proper tires, even when the weather is nice.

We thought we'd go throw some snow-balls, but discovered that to even get to the snow we'd have to pay over $100 just to take a funicular up to where there was snow. So alas, we took a little walk in the chilly air, and packed up the car and headed back, with only pictures of snow in the distance and fantasies of Tahoe skiing to tide us over.

On the way back towards Sydney from the Snowy Mountains, we were lucky enough to encounter another one of Australia's wonders- the huge fiberglass objects. In my previous Australia experiences I've been fortunate enough to see the big banana, the giant prawn, and the enormous quoka, but the giant merino was quite a treat. It was the largest of the giant objects I've seen, and even had a museum of Australian wool farming inside of it! The Merino looms above a gas station and sells $15 tea towels, and I have to say that they could improve their customer experience more if they included a giant merino devonshire tea cafe. Alas, we had to settle for learning about the Australian wool industry, pawing at cashmere scarves, and taking pictures under its utter....

To really finish up the Australia experience we stopped through Canberra to check out the capital. Bill Bryson didn't like Canberra very much in his book, "Down Under" and many of the Aussies I know who had been there said "Don't bother" so we headed into the capital city to experience boredom for ourselves.

It was quite sprawling and there were many people looking stressed out in suits, and for the most part it reminded me very much of Sacramento. It certainly wasn't as busy or grandiose as DC, and it had an air of a small town wanting to be big - just like Sacramento. We went into the old parliament buildings that were a museum to Australian democracy where old Australian ladies explained the history of Australia's parliamentary system to us, making sure that they referenced the differences between England and the US.

One difference - we don't still have pictures of the Queen all over our museums of democracy. We also don't have big scepters in our democracy, which I think is a real shame. Think if Obama could sit above congress with a big wand-like scepter, maybe even with a crown. Now THAT would be exciting. Sadly in Australia these days, the queen isn't around enough for the scepter to really get enough use. If the queen had been around, then it probably wouldn't have taken until the 1960's for the Aussies to install a women's bathroom at their parliament house. I learned all about how much the few female parliamentarians put up with, while reading the placard in the first women's bathroom, which contained a boarded up urinal (did they expect women parliamentarians to be a temporary problem?). It was a good reminder of how far women have come in such a short time.

On our last night out woop woop, we stayed at "Australia's oldest consistently functioning inn" in a "quaint little town" called Picton, which was a reasonable day's drive from Sydney. Even though it was relatively close to Sydney, it still had a rural feel, and when we rolled in at 7pm, the only place in town to sleep that was still open was the George IV pub. We took a room that had a creaky bed and a door that wasn't exactly the right shape to cover the opening, and it definitely felt like it hadn't changed at all since it opened early on in Australia's criminal history. The bathroom was outside, across the pub's outdoor back area where people could go to drink after they'd been kicked out of the pub. It was a crazy night.

We went to the pub for food and drink and slowly people with instruments started surrounding us. We asked if we should move and a farmer named john said, "oh, no. Not at all!" And as the evening went on, more and more people gathered around us. "Are you sure we shouldn't move?" we asked. "Of course not!" And so we were surrounded by mandolins, guitars, and violins, as all the local musicians came in for their Thursday night jam session at the pub.

People played Irish and Aussie folk songs and drank, and I felt like I'd been transported to a different time -where music night at the local pub was the entertainment of the week. It was AWESOME. John discovered that I sing, and after a while I agreed to sing "Summertime," and some of the musicians sang and played along with me. After I was done, John said "It looks like you do deserve the prime seats!" ("I knew it!" I thought, "We were supposed to move!"), but for the rest of the night, we didn't have to defend our prime seats any more, and we sat with the crowd, singing and listening as people played as much of the song as they could remember and then moved on to something else.

At the end of the evening, prompted by the bartender yelling "everybody out!!!" the group requested one last song and I decided to finish it off with an aria. I sang "Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix" from Saint-Saens' "Samson et Dalilah" and watching the room full of drunk farmers sitting quietly and listening was amazing. Music really does bring people together, and the next time we go through Picton, we're invited to join Thursday music night officially :).

After over a week experiencing a different version of Australia than I'd ever seen, we returned to Sydney for some R&R before heading back to California and then me back to Singapore. As we watched the sunset on Sydney Tower, a storm brought a rainbow that seemed to say, "time to leave Oz." After a long journey down the brown dirt road, we were finally ready to go home.