The Camps in Australia--Part I

 

Roland and I just returned from a trip to Australia and New Zealand, so my next four blog posts will be a mini travel log. We went to Australia first, so I'll start there, although not in chronological order. We began and ended that part of the trip in large cities, so I'll describe them both now and leave the rest of Australia for next week.

We had booked a land tour with EF Go Ahead Tours, but we arrived in Melbourne two days early as insurance against travel delays and to give us more time to deal with jet lag.

Our hotel was across the street from Flinders Street Station, a commuter railroad station that is modern inside but classic outside, as you can see from the photo. The Australian Open (tennis) was going on at the time, and the entire city was obsessed with it. Even the hotel greeted us with chocolate tennis rackets, although they weren’t full size.

Our first full day in Melbourne was a Sunday, and we went to church at St Johns Southgate (Lutheran Church of Australia) before taking a cruise up and down the Yarra River. On the walk from the church to the river, we passed the Melbourne Arts Center, which reminded me of the Eiffel Tower. During the cruise, we passed under a number of bridges, some of which were so low they almost took my head off. Melbourne makes good artistic use of its bridges, though. The next photos show the Melbourne Arts Center, and the sculptures on one of the bridges.

The next day we didn’t meet our tour group until dinner, so we spent our free morning at the Immigration Museum. It had very little about Australia’s settlement by convicts since that occurred in Sydney rather than Melbourne, which was mostly settled by gold-seekers. The museum had several exhibits about the First Peoples (our equivalent of Native Americans and not treated any better—maybe even worse). But there was also a lot about later immigration. Around 1901 Australia adopted an Immigration Restriction Act that required all non-Europeans to pass a dictation test to immigrate to Australia. Apparently the officials would dictate about 50 words in a European language they were pretty sure the applicant wouldn’t understand, and anyone who couldn’t write them correctly was denied entry. Eventually they repealed the dictation test but tried to encourage a white society with a Bring Out a Briton campaign in the 1950s. The next two photos are a political cartoon showing Father Christmas being denied entry because he couldn’t pass the dictation test and a poster for the Bring Out a Briton campaign.

Tuesday, January 31, was our first full day with our tour group. We took a bus tour of the city with stops at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Fitzroy Gardens, and the Shrine of Remembrance, which was built to commemorate the ANZ (Australia and New Zealand) Forces who fought during the Battle of Gallipoli during World War I but has since come to include all wars. The most interesting thing in the Fitzroy Gardens was Captain Cook’s birthplace. Yes, he was born in Great Britain, but his house was purchased and transported to Melbourne brick by brick. Then we had a free afternoon and spent it at the National Gallery of Victoria. The next two photos show Captain Cook’s birthplace and the city skyline taken during our bus tour.

On Wednesday we took an excursion to the Yarra Valley, where we started with a ride through the forest on a train called “Puffing Billy” and ended with wine tastings at two different vineyards. While on the road, we saw our first kangaroo, which ran in front of the bus and disappeared among the grape vines. Unfortunately, the only photo I got is very fuzzy.

From Melbourne, we flew to the outback, but I’ll write about that next week.

Our final days in Australia were spent in Sydney and started with an early wake-up call so that we could beat the other tour companies to a popular viewing spot for the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We were successful and were just finishing up when the other groups began arriving. After that, we continued our bus tour of Sydney, which included the famous Bondi Beach. Then in the afternoon Roland and I took a tour of the Sydney Opera House. The photo at the top of this post (taken by our tour director) shows Roland and me with the opera house and the bridge in the background. The ones below are Bondi beach and another view of the Sydney Opera House.

We spent the next morning at the Taronga Zoo. We had been told that we weren’t likely to see many Australian animals in the wild (and that proved true), so we took what we could get by going to the zoo. The photos show a koala, a wallaby, a male red kangaroo (notice the muscles on him), and an Australian rooster strutting his stuff.

On the boat to and from the zoo, I took pictures of Fort Denison, which was once used as a mini Alcatraz, and of people walking on the very top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Apparently the bridge climb is a popular activity, and several people on our tour did it. Maybe they’re even in the photo.

With a free afternoon, we had hoped to visit St. Mary’s Cathedral and then walk along a street filled with impressive government buildings and through the botanical gardens on our way back to the hotel. Unfortunately, our plans were interrupted by a violent thunderstorm and we had to take the train back before we even made it to the cathedral. Paying for public transportation in Sydney is interesting, though. You pay by using your credit card at a post on the platform, and it appears to be an honor system as you don’t get a ticket and nobody checks.

Roland ordered kangaroo for dinner on our last night in Sydney, and Kathryn tried his. It tasted okay and was more tender than beef. Don’t worry that we were eating an endangered species, however. In spite of our experience spotting (or not spotting) them, kangaroos are as common in Australia as deer are in the U.S.

Next week I’ll cover the middle of the Australian leg of the trip when we saw the outback and the Great Barrier Reef.