Australia Trip Report (Ken)
A Circuit Around Australia:
An Exploration of the Impact of Australia on an American
September – December 2014
BACKGROUND AND SOME PRACTICAL INFORMATION
On September 20, 2014, David and I departed Santa Fe via Amtrak for Los Angeles, and from there, by plane, to Brisbane, Australia, changing planes and flying on to Cairns, in northern Queensland. We traveled for the next 10 weeks, making a circuit around the eastern half of the country. From far northern Queensland, we flew to the “Red Center” – the central red rock desert region, using Alice Springs, Northern Territory, as our starting and ending point. From there, we took the legendary train, The Ghan (named for the Afghan migrant laborers of the 19th century, who built the rail line) to Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. We traveled along the coast from Adelaide to Melbourne, including the famous Great Ocean Road. After a stay in Melbourne, we took the ferry from Melbourne to Tasmania, where we spent almost two weeks, and after returning, continued along the coast from Melbourne to Sydney. From Sydney we went inland to the Blue Mountains, and then northward, returning via the Waterfall Way to the coast of northern New South Wales, and from there headed north back to Brisbane, which we visited at the end of our journey, and from whence we flew back to Los Angeles, taking Amtrak from there back to Santa Fe. We arrived home on December 4, almost 11 weeks after departing.
In planning the trip, I broke it up into 9 “segments” – this made it far easier to get a handle on such a lengthy trip and plan it as a series of 9 itineraries. Into each segment I dumped the major suggestions I received, most critically from an Australian couple I befriended on my February 2014 journey to Antarctica. They were extremely knowledgeable about their country and invaluable in suggesting an itinerary that would give us a good sense of Australia. For each segment of the trip, they provided suggestions of what to visit that were right on target. Given the vast size of the country, it was agreed that we would have to forego the western half of the country, essentially all of the gigantic state of Western Australia. We also did not make it to the north coast of the country, of which the city of Darwin is the most well known name.
Once we got to Cairns, the formal beginning of our trip, we rented a series of cars, except to fly from Cairns to Alice Springs and to take the train from Alice Springs to Adelaide. We took one of our rental cars on the ferry from Melbourne to Tasmania. It is really difficult to explore an enormous country like Australia if you limit yourself to the big cities and nearby areas. A major part of the attraction of Australia is the natural world and we wanted to make this a major focus of our trip. So rental cars were essential. In fact, in the Red Center, which is famous for its unsealed (unpaved) rough roads, we felt a 4-wheel drive was essential and so we sprang for a Toyota Prado, and it was a wise decision, as the rental car companies will not let you drive a regular car on any unsealed road, which would have seriously impacted our ability to explore this region.
Unlike our experience driving in Europe, we found it easy to navigate roads in Australia, in part, I suppose, because there are so many fewer. Signposting was clear, and they use road numbers (following the British system, with M for motorway, and then A, B, and C numbered roads for national highways down to local roads). Also, the major roads have names – a nice touch – e.g., the Larapinta Highway, the Princes Highway, and so on. A very attractive aspect of driving in Australia is that there are almost no billboards to clutter the scene. There are official small signs listing accommodations or restaurants ahead, but the kind of loud, screaming billboards that mar so much of our countryside is completely absent. Except around the largest cities, freeways or other types of divided highways are uncommon. But many uphill sections of otherwise two-lane highways would add a passing lane (“overtaking” in Australia) to get past slow trucks, so we made reasonable progress. In some coastal areas the road was curvy and there were many small towns to go through but usually in these areas we were making many tourist stops anyway.
We camped between 50-60% of the time in Australia. There were two reasons for this. Australia is almost the size of the United States, with 1/15th of the population, which means for much of country, towns (and gas stations) are few and far between, but parks and reserves are plentiful. To get a better sense of the outdoors, we wanted to spend real time in it. But also, we knew, well in advance of the trip, that Australia is a quite expensive country, and to make the trip affordable to two retirees, we decided to save money by doing a fair amount of camping, and cooking our meals when we camped. Since we travel light, and didn’t want to deal with a lot of luggage, so we bought all new camping gear before leaving home – tent, sleeping bags, air mattresses, and a stove the size of a Bic lighter. The criteria were super-lightweight and very compact. It is amazing the technical improvements in outdoor gear in the last few years. We were able to fit all our camping gear in one duffle bag!
We also quickly learned that even a cup of coffee was expensive (usually $4 AUD – Australian dollars) for an albeit well made, but no free refills small cup. So it did not take long to decide to make our own good coffee (I had brought a filter holder and filter papers) and buy simple breakfast supplies. With rare exception we always made a simple breakfast and carried basic lunch supplies. (So basic and simple, that we returned to the U.S., each down almost 10 lbs., which pleased us greatly.)
Parenthetically, I should mention that even when we stayed in a hotel (usually every 3rd or 4th night, except when in cities), we found that they had an electric kettle, usually a toaster, and sometimes a basic kitchen with pots and pans, a few dishes, wine glasses, silverware, etc., which was a great convenience, and one of the countless features of travel in Australia we enjoyed so much. Australian wine is good and we always stocked up on a few bottles of the less expensive wines so that each evening when we camped, we would begin mealtime with a “happy hour.” (Early on, we bought a small box of 4 wine glasses, so that we could drink our wine “properly.”) We also learned, from Australians about “clean skin” wines – a weird term that refers to wine produced in excess by top-flight wineries, and sold under labels that had virtually no brand-name meaning, but were excellent and cheap.
FLORA AND FAUNA
I had a few vague goals in wanting to visit Australia, but basically I was curious about this big, empty country about which I knew a little history, but not much. I’d met my share of Aussies (pronounced Ozzies) and found them, generally, delightful. I did know that I wanted to see a continent that had ecosystems largely unknown anywhere else in the world, because of Australia’s long geographic isolation. I was fascinated by the stories of unusual plants, and I also knew that most of the animals and birds were unique to Australia. As a birdwatcher (the term in Australia is a “twitcher”) I figured this would be a wonderful opportunity to see an almost entirely new set of birds, and in this I was not disappointed. I identified a total of 120 species, only 17 of which were not new (most of the 17 were ones I had seen 4 years previously in New Zealand). I wisely invested in the “bible” of bird ID books for Australia – The Field Guide to the Birds of Australia, by Graham Pizzey and Frank Knight. It proved invaluable because of its completeness, detailed illustrations, and descriptive precision. It was a splurge in that we were trying to travel light and this book was heavy indeed.
One of the highlights of the trip was becoming familiar with many of the birds. In terms of day-to-day sightings, Australian birds are probably as “exotic” as any one will see in any part of the world. It wasn’t long before such splendidly magnificent birds as rainbow lorikeets, crimson rosellas, and sulphur-crested cockatoos became everyday sightings, not much different from seeing house sparrows and robins in U.S. cities. But we never tired of seeing them, they were such spectacularly beautiful creatures.
Not only was seeing all these beautiful and unusual birds a treat, but hearing them was also. With all the camping we did, one of the magical experiences was the sound, starting shortly before first light. It was a veritable symphony – perhaps more 20th century atonal – of unusual calls and warblings, different from any I have ever heard in parts of the world considered “the tropics.” It wasn’t difficult to get up with the early sunrise, because the weird but pleasant chorus of sound paved the way and roused us from deepest sleep. Lying quietly as the song washed over us was a special aspect of being out in the bush.
Of course, all the animals were new and different and strange to our eyes. Not only were they unusual looking, but they all have funny-sounding names to our ears, names that seem to have been invented by Lewis Carroll, writing an addendum to Alice in Wonderland. I mean, doesn’t a wombat sound like a name for a child’s fairytale? Same with wallaby, quol, echidna, koala, pademelon, and even kangaroo. We were always on the lookout for these never seen before (at least in the wild) species. And we came away with some pretty good sightings, but missed a few iconic species, such as platypus and cassowary. But we saw kangaroo, euro, three species of wallaby, emu, echidna, koala, saltwater crocodile, and several of the most venomous snakes in the world, so we did pretty well.
Finally, a fascinating aspect of Australia for me was that all the plants, shrubs, and trees, were new, different, and often, strange. If you looked at a pastoral rural scene, or a nearby hillside, at first glance, it might look like somewhere in Britain or the eastern U.S.; once you let your eyes focus, you realized the individual species were unlike anything you had seen before. There are well over 100 species of eucalypts (as they say), many called gums (e.g., ghost gum, red river gum) and as many different species of banksias (named after the early scientific explorer Joseph Banks) and characterized by upward standing “cobs” and unusual flowers. There are also a variety of proteas, which I had thought were only found in South Africa – another most unusual looking plant family. Since we were in Australia during the Southern Hemisphere’s spring and early summer, we got to see many wildflowers and shrubs in bloom, all new to me.
In the cities and towns, the jacarandas, poincianas, and silky oaks were in full bloom, making for dazzling sights. It took a little getting used to to see irises, rhododendrons, azaleas, and daffodils blooming in October!
GUIDEBOOKS, MAPS AND WHEN TO TRAVEL
As guidebook, we used the latest edition of Lonely Planet’s Australia. Normally I avoid Lonely Planet guides, because everyone seems to use them, so you always wind up in restaurants and hotels that every other traveler (especially young ones) is at. But we made an exception – several Aussies began the Lonely Planet series, many decades ago -- and they really know their country. For detail, depth, wealth of maps, and coverage of the whole country, it clearly was first in its class. So the only two hardbound books we carried were the bird field guide mentioned above, and the Lonely Planet guide. Although all this is now available on electronic devices, I find travel guides work much better for me in hardcopy. We also bought a good road map of eastern Australia in the National Geographic series and one of the Northern Territory. (All of our recreational reading was, however, on our Kindle Paperwhites.)
Interestingly, buying expensive maps ahead of time is probably not necessary, at least for travel in Australia. One of the many pleasant surprises about Australia is that virtually every town, even small ones, had an official Visitor Information Centre (designated by a lower-case italic yellow “i” on a blue background). These were uniformly excellent – helpful, knowledgeable staff, a wealth of detailed local and regional maps, and brochures that were useful as we explored not just the immediate area, but the road ahead. The staff often knew their region very well and suggested things to do and places to visit that even the Lonely Planet guide did not mention.
We chose to travel in Australia in their springtime, for several reasons. We wanted to avoid the holiday period (Christmas, New Years, summer vacation in January) when we knew all the parks and beaches would be mobbed with Australians. We thought that in most parts of Australia it would not be too hot or too cold. Finally, knowing we would be camping, the springtime had the advantage of long days, giving us time to set up our campsite and cook our meals while still light.
In some ways, we chose well – mostly, everywhere we went was considered “off season” and we could always get a hotel or a campsite. But we discovered that Australia has four school holidays spread throughout the year, most of about two-weeks length, rather than only a winter break and a long summer holiday like we have. We got to Cairns just at the start of one of the two-week holidays, so things were a little crowded in that area. And while we tried to plan our itinerary to be in the tropical north at the beginning before it got to hot and sticky, and to get to Tasmania much later, after it had started warming up, it wasn’t perfect. At the beginning of October, the Red Center was already going over 100oF and the south coast of the mainland and Tasmania were still quite cold. In fact, in Tasmania, the temperature almost never rose above 60oF, and in the west, we encountered freezing temperatures and significant snow in early November, the equivalent of our early May. We had not expected this and our lightweight sleeping bags were marginal for these conditions.
While the days were long, some states do not observe daylight time, so it got light earlier than even we were willing to wake up, meaning we did not get the full benefit of the longer days. And spring is, in Australia, as in most parts of the world, a very windy season, and we encountered our share of wind. While the days may be getting shorter in the fall, it is a more stable time of the year, with temperatures that are still comfortable, so there is a good argument for visiting from late February to April, when summer holidays are finished and you can have things to yourself.
PARKS AND CAMPING
Camping in Australia is somewhat different from how it goes in the U.S. Camping in national parks in Australia is more complicated. One major difference is that the national parks in Australia – which are extraordinarily numerous (there are 800 national parks and reserves just in the state of New South Wales) – are managed by the individual state governments, so that the policies governing camping reservations, obtaining a site, fees, etc. vary dramatically from one state to another. The state of Victoria made life the most difficult for travelers, because almost all camp sites must be reserved and paid for via the Web, or using a phone (which we did not have – and if you use a phone, you pay an extra penalty). For us, never sure exactly where we would end the day (depending on what we were doing, what the weather was like) this was an impossible way of doing business.
Some of the more popular parks had Visitor Centers where you could obtain a campsite and pay for it. By and large, though, the majority of the parks did not have the kind of developed campgrounds we are accustomed to at U.S. national parks. They either did not have camping at all, or only bush camping (that is, well away from one’s vehicle, which would not work for us on this trip). Occasionally less developed campgrounds existed and were free, but these tended to have no or minimal facilities. We used them on rare occasions, as they were often quite nice, as long as you were near an accompanying picnic area with a toilet and a picnic table (public campgrounds in Australia never had picnic tables at individual camp sites).
What turned out to be far more common and convenient were caravan parks, the most popular approach to camping in Australia. These are commercial campgrounds, but they are much more than “campgrounds.” These are a – to us, odd – mixture of mobile home park (with “permanently” sited mobile homes) along with sections for traveling RVs (“powered sites”) and “unpowered sites” for tents and smaller caravans that did not need to use power. Unpowered sites were the least expensive, but were nevertheless a bit pricey, running from $25 - $40/night (the Australian dollar is worth a little less than the U.S. dollar). But you usually get quite a bit for your nightly fee – a very nice “amenities block” (the term for the toilets, sinks and hot showers buildings), a camp kitchen (sometimes fully furnished with pots and pans, dishes, utensils of all types, and always including an electric kettle, toaster and hot plates or stove). Sometimes there was a “rec room” section where one could relax and read at night (or watch TV), and in warmer areas, a swimming pool. So caravan parks had some real advantages to offer. We could always show up later in the afternoon and get a site. The one thing we had to be careful about was making sure to arrive no later than 5 or 6, as the office usually closed by then.
Also, we found caravan parks an excellent way to meet Australian couples and families – we might be preparing dinner in the camp kitchen along with other families at the park, for example. One time, in the midst of a very cold, stormy night in Tasmania, the camp kitchen, located in a large (unheated) shed, was also used for a bingo party to raise money for the local community to have an advanced piece of medical equipment. We had a whole evening to observe the fun, the joking around, and the community spirit, and also got to know a visiting Australian couple who were also camping there, and though it was almost as cold inside as out, we had a memorable evening.
One of the remarkable – to us – features of Australians going “camping” was the quantity of gear they take with them. Typically, the tent is an enormous structure with a huge vestibule, where a table and chairs can be set up (and is inevitably set up). All the trappings of home are part of the ensemble. This meant we usually did not have much competition to use the camp kitchen or picnic tables, as most family parties had all their own equipment and stayed at their individual site.
THE PUBLIC REALM IN AUSTRALIA
One of the many aspects of Australia that powerfully impressed us was the high quality of public amenities. The amenity a traveler picks up on first throughout Australia is public toilets. Public toilets are available everywhere – at the many roadside rest and picnic areas, in town centers, basically everywhere (this was characteristic of New Zealand also). The toilets were uniformly well maintained, clean, devoid of graffiti – in short, a blessing for anyone traveling, and a marked contrast to the situation in the U.S. Even the underground subway system in Sydney had clean, respectable toilets used by everyone, unlike the scruffy dangerous ones we have. (We even found the occasional public toilet with showers!) Picnic tables were abundant along all major roads and highways, and often were covered, for sun and rain protection. A feature of all picnic areas, developed campgrounds, and caravan parks, is the “barbecue” – this is nothing like what we Americans conceive a barbecue to be. It is, in fact, a propane-fueled large metal sheet that can be used to sauté and fry meat and vegetables, and is very popular with Australians. The fuel is provided at no charge to the user and is an integral part of camping meal preparation in Australia.
A related feature that also impressed us was the superb condition of all public parks, reserves, wetland areas and the like. Lookouts, blinds, picnic areas, were almost, without exception, well constructed and in good shape. Signage was outstanding – no matter how remote we were, there were attractive signs explaining geographic and marine features, local plants and birds, and also (more about this later) the Aboriginal understanding of the place, how the plants and animals were used, and the myths associated with the location. I cannot emphasize enough what an outstanding element this was in our travels around Australia. On a related note, trail signage was clear and we almost never got lost.
All this was indicative of the importance Australians seem to give to the public realm and, for us, this was a clear and obvious contrast to life in the U.S., where we feel increasingly, shared, public amenities are allowed to deteriorate and looked down upon, while private benefits (especially for the wealthiest) get the focus. Again, more on the implications of this situation later. Libraries, community centers, visitor information centers, schools, public town-wide Wi-Fi – it was all there. Public buildings were often modern, attractive (without necessarily being architectural icons) reflecting a commitment to giving high status to public facilities.
A public institution that impressed us was the ABC or the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. We could usually find a radio station on the car dial for the ABC classical music service (there is also a channel for news exclusively). It was consistently intelligent and well put together. Interview programs with musicians and programs examining some aspect of music were in-depth and of a very high quality level. Discussions had enough time to really explore a topic thoroughly.
As a very outdoors person, I was particularly impressed by one very significant feature of the Australian willingness to give the public sphere great value. I probably have been in no other country where so much of the land has been dedicated to outdoor recreation. It isn’t just the wealth of national parks throughout the country – on this score, we do quite well. It was all the reserves, nature sanctuaries, “council” parks and public trust lands set aside, often within or adjacent to even the smallest towns. This was particularly noticeable along Australia’s endless coast, where private homes and “developments” (much less than we have) do not “own” the beaches and seashore areas, but are set well behind it, and the beach, the cliffs, the dunes, are all in the public domain. In other words, private ownership does not take precedence when it comes to priceless treasures. Except for some towns and small cities, the long coastline we traveled – in South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales was entirely publicly accessible. There were beautifully developed bicycle paths and walking “tracks” (the Australian term for “trail” or “path”) everywhere we poked around, and almost without exception, they were clearly signposted, with maps, estimates of length and time to traverse, level of difficulty, and interesting features covered on the signs. And because Australia has a low population density, this wealth of outdoor recreation places were never crowded, yet the country – at whatever governmental level – was willing to invest to make it all attractive and high quality.
POSITIVE ASPECTS OF AUSTRALIA
Let me turn to a few things that struck me as we spent time in Australia. The rewarding aspect of having 10 weeks in a country is that certain patterns begin to emerge. While I don’t pretend I am any kind of expert, one does start seeing cultural elements with repeated exposure. So here are a few.
First, I enjoyed Australian English. The accent, of course, is distinctive and interestingly, far more uniform across regions in Australia than is the case for American English. While a Boston, New York, Chicago, Texas, Oklahoma, upper Midwest, or Alabama (or “Southern”) accent is quite distinctive, to take just a few of the most prominent examples, we were not aware of regional accents in Australia, and this was pretty much confirmed by Australians themselves.
I had read some Australian novels and watched a number of films, and then bookmarked several Web sites of Australian terminology and slang, to better understand what I expected to encounter. What I found is that quite a number of the slang terms I became familiar with are not much used in Australia (e.g., tucker, crook, fair dinkum, sheilah) but others remain in use and were part of the pleasure of traveling in an English-speaking country, where the language differs from your own. Such terms as G’day, no worries, mate, the bush, and bloke, are widely used. I totally enjoyed the use of no worries in response to a request, a substitute for you’re welcome, or where we would say no problem. It seemed the quintessential expression of the Australian’s positive, sunny outlook on the life.
My estimate is that Australian English adheres to British usage about 75% of the time, American/Canadian usage 25% of the time. So they say truck, eggplant and zucchini, as we do, instead of lorry, aubergine and courgette as the Brits say, but most terms stick to the British use (e.g., mind the step, carpark, way out). I also like the fact that Australian terminology seems more direct and unequivocal. They don’t say restroom but toilet (which is what it is) and designate the doors with male and female (which is as blunt as it gets).
As Americans do, Australians have a penchant for turning many words into shortened, slangy forms, but they do it different than we do. A number of common words are shortened with a sing-song quality, always ending in a vowel. A few common examples: brekkie (for breakfast), Macca (for MacDonald’s), truckie (truck driver). There are a whole bunch of proper nouns that contain an “s” in the middle, that are shortened and get a double-s – the double-s always is sounded as a “z”. Everyone knows Aussie for an Australian (pronounced Ozzie). But Tasmania becomes Tassie (pronounced Tazzie) and Brisbane becomes Brissie (pronounced Brizzie). I am sure there are many more examples, but these are the ones that we saw and heard all the time.
Australians were uniformly friendly. I used to think compared to most peoples, Americans were friendly to strangers on the trail or on the street, with a nod or brief greeting. But it was nothing measured against the Aussies. Countless times a total stranger passed us and gave us an enthusiastic hello or good morning or G’day that seemed well beyond pro forma. I had always heard Australians were like Americans as New Zealanders were like the British. Australians have a reputation – some at least – of being boisterous and a bit rowdy – but we found very little of this. They were soft-spoken, genuinely polite, rarely loud or pushy or demanding. To me, they seemed, on the whole, much lower key and less aggressive than Americans.
The friendliness came out in other little ways. At one point in our trip, we started losing pressure in one of our tires (it was the first time we had a vehicle that gave us a dashboard warning of low tire pressure and indicated the specific tire). We weren’t sure if the dashboard warning was correct or not, so we checked the specific tire a few times at petrol stations. Being a mechanical dunce, I had trouble using the air pumps (which were always free, by the way). I was always able to ask the attendant if he would check the pressure and add pressure if needed. Not once did I get a scowl, not once was the individual unwilling to help out. I couldn’t help comparing it to what my experience would have been like at a typical gas station in the U.S., with an attendant in a bullet-proof cage – someone who wouldn’t come out to help, even if s/he could.
Another example: drivers were unaggressive and patient. Not only does everyone stick to the speed limit (in part because surveillance cameras seem to be everywhere! – more on this later) but drivers routinely pulled into special-purpose turn-out areas if they were holding up vehicles behind them, so that others could travel at their desired speed. Nice touch.
At one isolated campground, the guy in charge did not charge us – he said we were non-Australians, and he wanted to be welcoming to us as visitors. Somewhere else, a couple celebrating their anniversary invited us to their hotel to have a beer on the terrace. In short, in their quiet way, we found Australians extremely (and genuinely) friendly – it never felt pro forma.
I often find there is a real “edge” in public life in the U.S., with the feeling that things could quickly blow up or get a bit ugly. Once interactions start going wrong, they tend, I think, to ramp up and get uglier. In Australia it was the very opposite. When the inevitable jostlings of public life occurred, Australians were quite deft at reducing the tension level, avoiding an angry scene, and making light of what could easily spin out of control. I feel there is a kind of “road rage” that permeates much of American life, and this was completely absent in Australia. In 10 weeks, we witnessed only one display of public anger, when a pickup truck cut off two bicyclists. Within hours of returning to the U.S., waiting for our Amtrak train at Los Angeles’ Union Station, there was a very angry scene – that went on for a long time – between a down-and-out black veteran and two security guards. All too normal in the U.S. but it made a strong impact on us, because it had been absent in our lives for so many months while traveling in Australia.
Another observation: the extent of obesity in Australia was much, much less than we are accustomed to. Australians really look like fit, healthy people. While they have MacDonald’s KFC, and the usual fast food chains, I think there is something about their food supply system and their eating habits that are overall much healthier than ours. Little examples struck me. The eggs we occasionally bought in a supermarket were like real farm eggs, with rich orange yolks and lots of flavor. A few times we bought a punnet (nice English term – a small plastic tub) of cherry tomatoes in a supermarket and they tasted like real tomatoes, with a delicious acid/sweet balance. So whether their eating habits are better, their food supply system more small scale than our horrendous agro-industrial approach, or they exercise more, the net result is that while we saw some overweight people, but nothing like the obesity epidemic that characterizes the U.S.
And yet another observation. Australians don’t seem terribly religious in the conventional sense. We saw very few churches in towns, as we would see in any small U.S. town. Religious one-upmanship, so much a part of the U.S. political scene (“I am more Christian than my opponent, I wear my Christianity on my sleeve”) seemed completely absent in Australia. As we looked for radio stations while driving, we never once picked up a “Christian broadcast” station of the kind of fundamentalism/evangelicalism stridency that is universal in the U.S. Religion is quiet, small-scale, and understated – at least that is how it seemed to me. A much more comfortable and tolerant approach I think. I cannot assess the degree of spirituality that characterizes the Australian people, but for me, it was a very comfortable setting to have other people’s religious convictions not shoved in my face all the time.
SOME PLACES THAT WERE HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR TRIP
I’ll switch gears for a moment and mention a few special places we visited that will linger with me for a long time. In listing these “highlights” I want to emphasize that throughout the trip we saw and did countless utterly wonderful things and it is with some hesitation that I pick a few out over others. That being said, I will mention the following:
· Cape Tribulation, Queensland – this exotic cape was the destination for the very beginning of our trip, in far northern Queensland (north of Cairns). It is the only place in the world where two different UNESCO World Heritage ecosystems adjoin, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Daintree Wet Tropics Rainforest. We had booked ahead for a farmstay on an tropical fruit farm right at the Cape, with the most delightful older couple. As their extended family was visiting, they upgraded us from the dark room we had in the main farm house to a much more expensive separate cabin with a porch looking out on a gorgeous view. The ecology, fauna and flora of this quietly spectacular area were unique.
Finke Gorge National Park, Northern Territory: This park is in the same area as the better known Kings Canyon and Uluru/Kata Tjuta (Ayers Rock/The Olgas) National Parks. We definitely needed the 4WD vehicle we rented for this place. The isolated campground was lovely, and the surrounding dramatic red rock country comparable to southern Utah. Palm Canyon contains red cabbage palms – the only palm trees growing in the desert “Red Center” and 800 miles from the nearest tropical palm areas – this is a remarkable geographic anomaly.
· Uluru/Kata Tjuta National Park, Northern Territory: The National Park now bears the Aboriginal names for what, in our Western superciliousness, was called, for countless decades, Ayers Rock and The Olgas, respectively – European names for totally forgettable individuals. One highlight of our stay was going to an Aboriginal talk on the grounds of the Ayers Rock Resort (which is also the only place one can pitch a tent) that demonstrated the construction techniques of various Aboriginal hunting weapons and discussed how they were actually used. As we learned more and more about Aboriginal adaptation to their environment, our respect and awe for their mastery grew and grew. Other highlights of our visit included watching sunset descend on Uluru, and doing the 11 km circumnavigation of this enormous outcrop. And one of our finest hikes, on a cool, brilliant morning, was the Valley of the Winds loop around Kata Tjuta (The Olgas – the Aboriginal words mean “Many domes”) to see some of the most spectacular red rock formations on the planet.
· The Great Ocean Road, Victoria – a long and spectacular coastal stretch of the State of Victoria’s coastline (the entire stretch west of Melbourne) with many scenic turnouts and coastal walking paths. Fortunately, we had allowed ourselves lots of time to do this so we tried almost all the turnouts, nature reserves, walking paths, etc., because they often turned out to be serendipitous surprises – surprises we wouldn’t have had the luxury to take a chance on without sufficient time. The coastline of the Great Ocean Road (this area also includes several of the great Australian multi-day walking tracks) is unlike any other of the great coastlines we’ve visited – it is not at all like Big Sur, Newfoundland, or the southwest coast of Turkey, to give a few examples.
· Port Arthur Historic Site, Tasmania: This is part of an 11-site UNESCO World Heritage designated place that documents the convict origins of Australia. Of the 11 sites, Port Arthur is probably the most extensive, and so the most significant in providing a dramatic understanding of this brutal early history of Australia. The site is enormous, and we spent an entire day there - we needed the entire day at a minimum. Excellent museum, informed staff, restored structures, creative use of audiovisuals, and a totally honest assessment of what life was like for this brutalized population. An absolute must-see.
· Cradle Mountain – Lake St. Clair National Park, Tasmania: This huge national park is just one of four adjoining national parks that cover much of Western Tasmania and collectively are a UNESCO World Heritage designated area. The Cradle Mountain section of the park is, for mountain scenery, possibly the most spectacular and unusual (to my taste) in Australia, though admittedly there were a number of other places, like Kosciuszko National Park (Mt. Kosciuszko is the highest peak in Australia) that we did not visit. Still, the Cradle Mountain section of the park had an austere, other-worldly beauty to it unlike any other place we visited, amplified by a recent snowstorm, as we had unusually cold weather when we were there. The challenging track to Cradle Mountain summit, which I did, is also the beginning of the Overland Track, one of the most famous multi-day walks (along with the Milford Track in New Zealand) in the world, and one I would still love to do! The hike up to Cradle Mountain summit was the most demanding, in terms of skill, I’ve ever done, and I had to stop about 10 minutes short of the top as fog, mist, and wetness set in and made climbing the enormous boulders very risky (any fall would likely have been fatal).
· MONA – The Museum of New and Old Art, outside Hobart, Tasmania: This museum was founded by a lower class Tasmanian who made it big through gambling winnings. It is perhaps the top cultural site in all of Australia, and with good reason. The building is partly built into a limestone quarry, and has a fabulous view over the water. The art is mostly “new” but it is all displayed in a most non-standard museum fashion. The artists come from around the world, the work is without exception cutting edge and stimulating and surprising, mixed, here and there, with some very old pieces (e.g., Cycladic statues from 3000 BCE, gorgeous inlaid Moroccan boxes). The spaces vary from intimate to gigantic, and in much of the museum you are walking along the dramatic limestone walls that were the quarry. No labels on the walls – instead you are given an iPod with the appropriate app. We found it the most exciting museum we have been in in a long, long time.
· The Blue Mountains, New South Wales: These are justly famous, but I always assumed it would be a bit like a stay in the Poconos or the Catskills – gentle rolling hills. This preconception might have been formed due to their proximity to Sydney. The dear friend we stayed with in Sydney told us of a couple who had a few cabins they rented out, and he called them about staying there – we were going to be there on a Friday and Saturday night, and thought there wouldn’t be a chance. But in fact, both cabins were unreserved, and turned out to be simple but beautiful, in woods filled with proteas, banksias, and eucalypts, complete quiet and isolation, and within walking distance of the most spectacular formations and canyons imaginable. The scenery at our doorstep was far more dramatic than we had imagined, a gorgeous amalgamation of the best mountain scenery in the Eastern and Western U.S.
· The Waterfall Way, New South Wales: We knew nothing about this, but our Lonely Planet guide listed this route as one of the top 10 things to do in New South Wales We had to drive up through the interior to reach the town Armidale, where one picks up The Waterfall Way. This route passes through a series of national parks, which are again, collectively, a UNESCO World Heritage designation. Spectacular canyons and waterfalls awaited us, some beautiful old towns, and lush rainforests and mountain chains where rare birds can be seen. Passing through the tiny town of Ebor, next to the stunning Upper and Lower Ebor Falls, and asking around, we found a basic pub hotel where we paid almost nothing to set up our tent in the back, had access to a shower and toilets and a covered deck to prepare dinner and breakfast. We were the only campers in this beautiful setting.
I haven’t mentioned any of the cities, but we did spend enough time in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, to get a good feel for them. Each was unique and provided a very enjoyable experience. While most Australian restaurant food is not outstanding – fish and chips is pretty standard pub restaurant food – when we were in big cities we could try both sophisticated restaurants and really good ethnic restaurants (Korean, Vietnamese, North African). I am not discussing our urban experiences, as the big cities are reasonably well known. I will just say that when we explore a city – any city – we do it intensely, mainly on our feet, poking here and there, and concentrating on the urban fabric, the streetscape, historic and modern architecture, museums (usually art, but not entirely) and the interpenetration of the natural world with the built environment. Our exploration of Australian cities was no exception.
EATING AND DRINKING / HOTELS AND RESTAURANTS
Speaking of eating (and drinking) we were surprised that beer, practically the national drink in Australia, and therefore, we assumed, inexpensive, is more expensive than anywhere in the world. A pint of “on tap” (i.e., draft) beer could run as much as $9 AUD. Wine, however, was reasonable, and we, of course, only ordered Australian wines, and if possible, wine from the state we were traveling in. In the case of beer, apparently, the government taxes are very high, though it doesn’t seem to slow Australians down. (However, Australia is much stricter about blood alcohol levels, as are most advanced countries, in its standard for DWI to being intoxicated -- so we were very careful how much we drank, if we still had to drive – the limit is 0.05% blood alcohol, whereas in the U.S. it is 0.08%).
This relates to another observation. Restaurants and hotels tended to be expensive when measured against comparable quality in the U.S. The same for visitor services like tour operators (for example, going on an all-day reef tour out to the Great Barrier Reef). We asked why a cup of coffee (albeit very good) or a meal was so expensive. The answer: service workers in Australia get a living wage. So a very nice feature of travel in Australia is that 1) all taxes are included in the price and 2) no tipping. When you get the check at a restaurant, it is exactly what you expect, because it matches the prices of what you’ve ordered from the menu. So when that is taken into account, the difference in cost was greatly softened. And there was the knowledge that the kitchen staff, the hotel cleaning staff, the wait staff, were all paid an adequate wage – yet another of the marked differences we found between Australia and the U.S. that made Australia such a congenial society for us. (There was also the fact that Australians, like Europeans, are not fanatical about taxes, the way we are obsessed, so the sales tax – or VAT or GST - does not have to be separately broken out so you know how much the government is “stealing” from you - our philosophy!)
THE DARK SIDE OF AUSTRALIA’S HISTORY AND SOME RECENT CHANGES
Australian history has its dark side, like ours. In fact, in the case of both countries, I would say that to talk about a “dark side” is to considerably underplay the centrality of the darkness. Already alluded to is the convict history, which lasted for almost the first 100 years of Australian colonization and settlement. Both David and I read Robert Hughes The Fatal Shore, published in the 1970’s,perhaps the first popular book to explore in-depth the truly horrendous story of convict life in Australia, without attempting to downplay it in any way. I came away with the sense that no one was able to top the British for sheer, unremitting sadism.
There are two other areas where Australia has a very ugly story to tell. The most significant is its historic treatment of Aboriginal peoples. We may think of Aborigines as an undifferentiated people covering all of Australia, but in fact, like Native Americans, there were countless tribes and groups (almost 800) each speaking a different language. They had been in Australia 40,000 years and become extraordinarily adept at learning to live off the land, and live well and sustainably.
The arrival of Europeans was an unmitigated disaster. It wasn’t long before Aboriginal peoples were considered no better than vermin and murdered without consequence. Their lands were taken, their knowledge extirpated, though they largely developed very sustainable ways of living and the Europeans caused ecological damage beyond imagining. They were forced into Christianity, put on squalid reservations, forbidden to practice their religion or speak their language. Their children were stolen. Hard as it is to believe, it was only in the 1970’s that they began to be enumerated in the national census!
The other great blot, though of shorter duration, was Australia’s “whites only” immigration policy that favored primarily those from the British Isles, and secondarily those from northern European countries. Asians, and needless to say, Africans, were entirely excluded. Justifications for this policy, which dominated the first 2/3 of the 20thcentury, were blatantly racist. (A great place to learn all about this immigration history is at Melbourne’s Immigration Museum).
Our two great Original Sins, of course, are slavery and its post-slavery consequences, which is integral to any understanding of American history and who we are today, and the attempt to wipe out the American Indian, and the consequences of that to this day.
Interestingly, it is in only the last 30-40 years that attitudes, both in Australia and America, have gone through an almost total flip-flop, in which the wrongs of the past are at least acknowledged, and in which a concerted effort is made to present the contributions of these persecuted and mistreated peoples in a positive life.
The turn-around in the case of Aboriginal peoples is truly startling. Many traditional natural areas have been returned to the tribal groups to whom they once belonged, and if there is management for public use, such administration is by the original owners. Traditional names have replaced the European names (not just Uluru for Ayers Rock, but virtually everywhere). The lore, the knowledge of how to survive on the land, the uses to which indigenous plants were put, hunting, fishing, etc., are highlighted in signage everywhere. These people and their ways are honored and acknowledgement is made – on monuments, placards, park signs – everywhere – of the wrongs and injustices done. Demeaning terms for Aborigines are nowhere heard (not that we ever heard, at least). It is a truly an incredible turn-around in just a few decades, given that before then the treatment was largely disgusting. It made us feel much more comfortable to travel in the country, but I also realized had we come here as younger travelers, in the 1960’s, let us say, I would have encountered a very different society.
Our picture of Aborigines is based on images of the peoples that have inhabited the desert regions of the center and Western Australian, but Aboriginal tribal groups lived in every part of Australia, and their physical features vary greatly, as do their skin color. So, typically, the only Aborigines we, as casual visitors, “see” are those that fit our pre-conception. But there are many, and varying first peoples in Australia, many of whom we would not even recognize as such.
The same about-face is evident when it comes to non-European immigrants, who are now very visible throughout Australian society, particularly in urban and built-up areas. Asian faces are are seen everywhere, including as newscasters on TV. And just about everybody accepts how much richer Australian society is by virtue of being as diverse as it is. It was a refreshing aspect of spending time in the country.
Although the changes in both Australian and American society are both quite recent, beginning around the same time, I would have to say that we have much further to go. This is because, in my opinion, African-Americans constitute a much more significant component in American life (larger percentage of the population, much longer history, going on four centuries), and therefore, overcoming the injustices and damages of the past is a much more challenging undertaking, and so we are nowhere near the end of our racial strife. What was apparent to me is that our racial difficulties are much more evident, day-to-day in American life, than is the case of Aboriginal peoples in Australia. As a result, public life in Australia has a much calmer tenor than in the U.S., where evidence of the legacy of racism is pervasive, as has been dramatized particularly in 2014.
A real highlight of our travels in Australia was our exposure to Aboriginal culture, folk art, and painting; usually because of the focus all the major museums have given to it. Major state museums in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane have sections devoted to Aboriginal ethnology or traditional art or contemporary art, or to all these elements. In Alice Springs, in particular, we found several serious galleries that supported Aboriginal artists and that had work of the highest quality. Even a few of the Aboriginal Visitor Centers in natural areas had a section devoted to local artists. We made it a point, for every museum we visited, to make the Aboriginal section(s) our first stop. We came away with an absolute fascination for the way Aboriginal peoples interpret the world.
AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY – POSITIVE IMPRESSIONS
As we spent time in Australia, we gradually learned more about the kind of society Australians have created and came away impressed, especially when compared with how much of an outlier the U.S. is vis-à-vis the rest of the developed world (civilized world?) What we learned was particularly surprising, because Australians have, in our minds at least, always had a reputation for the kind of free-wheeling, independent attitude that characterizes Americans. The reality proved quite different, and in many ways, refreshing.
Australians have had universal health care for 50 years. While what is provided appears to be a fairly basic level, everyone gets the critical, essential health needs taken care of. People who can afford it do buy supplemental private insurance, but that is built upon a universal system, and from what we could tell, it works reasonably well.
Australians eliminated the death penalty 50 years ago. The U.S. keeps it, along with a few of the most brutal regimes on the planet, but most people around the world consider it barbarous. Many Americans still think the death penalty appropriate.
Gas is more expensive in Australia than in the U.S., though not outrageously so, and it is certainly less costly than in Europe. Regardless, Australians just go about their business without spending much time or energy tracking the fluctuations of the fuel they put in their vehicles. However, we saw numerous indications that they put more effort into getting energy usage per capita down than we do.
Like the British, they take the weather as it comes. Weather forecasts are brief and sound pretty much the same from one day to the next. We seem to have a fascination with the vagaries of the weather that goes beyond any other society. For Australians, they feel, on the whole, their weather is pretty damn good, and so they don’t spend much time thinking about it from one day to the next.
Australia has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world. Obviously, it is not perfect, as the recent hostage-taking in Sydney demonstrated, but homicide by shooting is a tiny fraction of what it is in the U.S. (including, as we are beginning to understand, the high rate of police shooting of civilians compared to any other industrialized nation). It is instructive how Australia and the U.S. reacted, in terms of public policy, to two terrible massacres, one in each country.
In 1996, a lone gunman entered Port Arthur Historic Site (which I described above as the most important remnant of the convict past in Australia) and between the visitors and staff he shot there, and people he took as hostages outside the Site and then shot, he murdered 35 people. His name is never mentioned and at the Historic Site, no staff will talk about it – they will give you a sheet describing what happened, so those who inquire can learn the details of what happened without them reliving this horrible event by talking about it over and over.
And of course we have had any number of mass shootings, with the Newtown, Connecticut murder of little schoolchildren and teachers the one that perhaps most affected our country. What was the outcome in each case? In the U.S. gun obsessions, ownership, extreme statements of 2nd Amendment rights, are even more fanatical than before Newtown. In Australia, the opposite occurred. The country said “Enough!!!!” and passed the most rigorous gun control measures anywhere, and they have stuck and they have been effective.
COMPARING AUSTRALIAN LIFE WITH THE SITUATION IN THE U.S.
Perhaps much of it has to do with our utterly corrupt political process, in which money – carloads of money – controls virtually all public policy, from perpetual electioneering (4 years of electioneering, no days of governing) to endless lobbying, so that no public policy that the majority of the country wants stands a chance. The distortions and corruptions that money has visited on our society may exist at some level in Australia, but it is relatively inconsequential compared to what has happened in our society, and so measures in the public interest can become law.
What we experienced was a society that seems more egalitarian than ours. We have a society with extremes of income inequality that are now the most pronounced in the developed world – extremes not seen in a 100 years in the U.S. itself. Because we oppose most government regulation, the extremely rich – private individuals and corporations -- get the final say. From listening to the news and talking to Australians, this does not seem to be the case there. Oh, of course, it is not a perfect society – we heard about crimes and criminals all the time, and people would moan that in the old days they never locked their doors and now they do, etc., etc., etc., but all the same, Australian society and daily life felt qualitatively different and more rational than ours.
From what we could tell, equality of station in Australia is more a reality than in the U.S. Yes, there are some very rich people, and some complaints that they have too much influence in Australian life. Overall, though, workers seem much better treated. As previously mentioned, there is no tipping in Australia, and people pay their taxes (which are higher than in the U.S.) without grumbling because they get so many fine social services for it and because they believe that is what a “good society” does for its people. People get generous vacations and are not afraid to use them. There is paid family leave. The workplace life of so many workers in the U.S. has become utterly toxic and hopeless. That is not the fate of ordinary working stiffs in Australia.
One could, perhaps, argue, that Americans work so much harder than any other people, including the Australians – in fact, on many measures we do – and our country is more economically vibrant. But here’s the kicker – the average American worker is worse off than 30 or 40 years ago - both household income and total assets are lower than decades ago. So, yes, someone is making a killing off our economic progress, but not the average American worker. For all that hard work, he or she gets less, has minimal vacations, expensive health insurance (if any), etc., etc. Australia does not seem to treat its working people as disposable “inputs” like raw materials.
Anyone living in an American city is likely to frequently see people who are down and out, scruffy, swallowed and spit out by our society. Most people in Australia looked pretty ordinary, like you and me. There were few obvious displays of extreme wealth, but on the other hand, far, far less signs of homelessness and experiences of public begging than the average American is likely to encounter.
As indicated with the experience of gas station attendants helping out with our tire pressure (and free air pumps), Australian society – like many others – appears to have decided that a little economic inefficiency, if it enhances human values, is a price, so to speak, well worth paying. What has happened in the U.S. in recent decades is that we have become technologically adept at squeezing every last nano-cent out of every process, even if it also squeezes out the joys of human interaction. Australia seems to still hold on to a notion that people being nice to people, even if it interferes with a bit of optimizing the economics of a process, is a value to be cherished. We seem to be ahead of everyone else in ditching this treasuring of the human touch.
In fact, Australia felt like what I recalled life to be when I was growing up in the 60’s and 70’s – an America that doesn’t exist anymore. A kinder, gentler society (for the middle class, at least, which was a pretty significant component then of U.S. society, and a component that realistically believed in progressive improvement). (Not so good for blacks and other minorities, needless to say). Australia was probably the first country I have traveled in where I began to find myself thinking – “If I was 35 years younger, and having experienced The Conservative Revolution in the U.S. for 35 years, I could really see moving to, and living in, Australia, which seems to embody the values and ideals we once actually lived. Australia felt extraordinarily comfortable to me.
A part of me liked living in a country that is not a World Power and so feels no need to be at the center of every world crisis, and exert its military force. It is off in a (not so much anymore) corner of the globe, minding its own business. It seemed so refreshing to be in a country where people enjoyed life and did not feel they had to be at the center of everything that happened in the rest of the world.
A FEW MINOR NEGATIVES
There were, to be sure, a few minor negatives we noticed. These did not seriously affect our positive experience of Australia, but they were aspects we noticed:
· Paradoxically, for all the wonderful natural areas that Australia has set aside, Australians using the tracks (walking paths, trails) litter shamelessly. With rare exception, there was more litter – particularly toilet paper – than I have ever seen in the U.S. or Europe or even in some Third World countries. I have no explanation for this.
· The use of surveillance cameras in widespread, and seems to me more pervasive than in the U.S. – it is much more like Great Britain which is famous for having CCTV in just about all public spaces. Surveillance of highways not only for speeders (which may explain why almost no one exceeded the posted speed limit) but for those who were in Bus Only lanes was extensive.
· Related to the previous bullet, there is a bit of the “Nanny State” in Australia. Even proud liberals like us (who think, on the whole, regulation is not automatically a bad thing) thought some of the signs to “help” us were a bit much. This is particularly evident on the roads, where there are signs every few miles about how falling asleep at the wheel “kills” and therefore, do consider pulling over at the next rest or picnic area. I cannot stress enough how frequent were reminders of what was good for us were – it did seem a bit much after a while.
IN SUM
So, on balance, the negatives were considerably less on the scale than the positives. Australia came across as a cohesive, friendly society where citizens value the benefits of shared sacrifice (e.g., paying taxes for social welfare, ensuring that everyone can have a decent life, preserving the environment for the enjoyment of all). They are removed – figuratively and literally - from most of the world, though in this day and age, of course, no one is isolated any more. We returned home finding Australia had a lot of aspects worth considering in constructing “the good life.”
Travels that stimulate thinking about such matters well after one has returned are the best kind, I think.
Ken