The Camps in Australia--Part II

 

After Melbourne, we flew to the Uluru Region in the outback, and from there to the rain forest and the Great Barrier Reef. All three are UNESCO Heritage Sites.

On Thursday, February 2, we flew from Melbourne to Ayres Rock in the middle of the desert. None of our flights within the tour had enough leg room for Roland, but the real comedy of errors started when we arrived at Ayres Rock Airport. There was no gate, and at first they announced that they didn’t have enough rolling stairs to let us out of both the front and rear of the aircraft. Then they told us that the one set they could find didn’t want to align with the doorway. They finally got it to work and let us off the plane, but it took a while. (They blamed the problem on being short staffed.)

That was in the morning, In the afternoon we visited Walpa Gorge and Kata Tjuda, which are both red rock formations rising out of the middle of the desert in the Uluru Region. The next two photos show Walpa Gorge and Kata Tjuda.

It was very hot in the desert, so we were happy when the sun went down. Our tour group joined many others for a traditional tourist activity, which is to drink champagne during sunset while watching the light reflect off Ayres Rock. (The sunset was actually in the other direction.) The photo at the top of this post shows us holding plastic champagne flutes with the light shining on Ayres Rock in the background.

I got up early enough on Friday morning to see the sunrise across from our hotel, but it wasn’t that special. Then most of the group (including Roland and me) went for an up-close look at Ayres Rock and to hear about its meaning to the indigenous people, who have most of the responsibility for governing the area. Guides have permission to tell a few of the tribal legends in brief but not the longer versions, which are sacred.

As we were driving around the rock, the bus driver told us that a particular part of it was so sacred that, although we were allowed to see it, we were not allowed to take photographs. But when we got to the point where he said “no photographs,” I thought he meant just right there, so five or so minutes later when there was some really cool erosion art, I thought it was okay to take pictures of that. After we passed it, the bus driver said we could take photos again, and I thought “oops” and erased the ones I had taken. Fascinating as the images were, I have no desire to be disrespectful.

There was some erosion art that we were allowed to take. By “erosion art” I mean art that God created through the erosion process—no human hand involved. The next two photos show erosion art shaped like a crocodile and a heart (at the top of the image).

We also saw some relatively recent human paintings made by the tribe to teach its younger members about their heritage. You can see some of it in the next photo.

That was an early morning excursion, after which we left the Uluru Region to fly to Cairns. Australia’s travel routes are still seeing the effects of COVID, and the only direct flight wouldn’t accommodate all of us plus its regular passengers. As a result, we had to take three separate flights. All of them were late, and it was after midnight when we finally got to our hotel. It was even worse than it sounds because we had to be on the bus at 8:00 a.m. for the next day’s activities.

Saturday was dedicated to the rain forest. We started with a guided walk through Mossman Gorge, where we learned about the various plants and some of the culture of the local tribe. The guide told us that she was lucky to be from a younger generation because in the recent past many children from indigenous tribes were taken from their parents as infants, adopted by white families, and never knew where they had come from. We heard that several times while in Australia.

From there we went for a cruise on the Daintree River, where we saw three crocodiles (four including the one that ate Roland in the photo below). On the way back, we drove by part of the  Coral Sea, which is where the Great Barrier Reef is located. The next photos show Roland being eaten by a crocodile, our boat, a real crocodile, and the Coral Sea.

On Sunday, February 5, we went to the Great Barrier Reef. Because it is protected, there are only a few areas where commercial entities are licensed to take people to snorkel and view the reef. We boarded a boat that took us to a pontoon platform sitting over the reef. That’s the next two photos.

It was raining when we started out but had mostly cleared up by the time we got there. I wasn’t interested in snorkeling, so we started by taking rides on a glass bottom boat and then on a semi-submarine. The next photos show some of the coral we saw on those rides. If you look closely, you can see fish in the first one.

Although I wasn’t interested in snorkeling, Roland tried it. The next two photos show Roland in his stinger suit (to protect against jelly fish) and getting into the water. Unfortunately, he had trouble getting the flippers on even though they were the same size as his shoes. He didn’t get very far before one came off in the water. After retrieving it, he swam back to the platform and left the water. He did get a brief glimpse of the coral before that happened, though.

Monday was a free day, so we slept in, did some laundry, watched the St. Paul’s service on the internet, and just generally relaxed. I had a bug for dinner. Technically, it’s a Morton Bay Bug, which is related to lobsters and crabs. It was very good. So was the potato salad that came with it, and I wish I had the recipe. That’s the bug in the next picture.

Roland’s favorite part of the trip had us getting up at 3:00 a.m. the next day for a hot air balloon ride. It took an hour to get there and an hour to get back and a long wait for the balloons to inflate. Our group had a balloon to itself, but there were two others as well. The ride was supposed to be about 30 minutes, but it may have taken a little longer because the crew had trouble finding a landing spot. Then they let the passengers help deflate the balloon, which Roland did while I took photos. Most of the ones below are self-explanatory. The animals in the third photo look like kangaroos but are probably wallabies (they look similar but are smaller) because the balloon operator said there was a family of them living in the nearby woods.

The rain forest and Cairns are in the northern part of Australia and nearer to the equator, so they were as hot as the desert. That made us happy to fly back south to Sydney, where it was cooler. I wrote about Sydney last week, so stay tuned for New Zealand.

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.