IndianPacific - 2

Thursday, Sept 13

I arise early, as is my wont, and head down to the lounge car about 5:30. Here’s a sunrise picture.

Train staff are going to serve a pre-breakfast at 6:00 because we’re stopping for our first “whistlestop” tour – this one in Broken Hill – at 7:00. There are a couple of Aussie old bulls in the lounge and the talk soon turns to politics. After finding that I’m from USA, they give me a primer:

There is soon to be an election for prime minister and the incumbent, John Howard, of the Liberal party (which is Australia’s conservative party – go figure) is trailing badly in the polls to his Labor Party opponent. A lot of what I hear is “grrrrrr, bloke, grrr bloody, grr, hmmph, youknowwhatImean,” but some of the points I pick up are: Labour can’t manage the economy. Last time they were in their Treasurer was a bloke who had managed three coffee shops into bankruptcy – and he was put in charge of the country’s money!! The public’s memory is short, they say. Howard has been in about 11 years, and people have forgotten how bad the economy was before then and what the Liberals have done since then to fix it. There’s a whole new generation of voters, too young to remember and too uninterested to care. (Incidentally, Don told us that if you don’t register to vote, or if you don’t vote, you’re fined. Everyone is required to vote. I need to look up some statistics on that. Where’s the internet when you need it?)

Australia’s big trading partners in Asia had disastrous stock-market crashes a few years ago, but Australia was largely cushioned from the blow, thanks, I’m told, to people who understand how the economy works. Everyone in Labor’s leadership is a union member and they can’t manage anything – like coffee shops! (I pick up a paper later in the day and the Liberal Party’s number two man is cited as saying: ‘(the) Opposition Leader (is) an economic illiterate backed by a “gaggle of trade union leaders.”… “the most lightweight leader of a political party that I have seen.”’ Nothing like being forthright.)

I think Howard’s been our best ally in thinking clearly and speaking coherently about the radical Islam threat, so it will hurt to lose him from the world scene. Australia has 550 troops in Iraq The Labor leader’s plan is to bring them home at a rate of 10-15 per month. You can’t do that, my instructors say. They’re a unit. To dismantle them slowly is going to leave a body that can’t function as a unit. It puts comrades at risk.

Anyhow, I enjoyed my instruction in Aussie politics from the Liberal side.

Broken Hill, well into the outback, came into existence when silver was discovered in 1883. They’re still actively mining silver, lead, and zinc and the town’s population is 23,000. Our tour bus driver estimated that BH had another 100 years of mining left, others are more pessimistic. There’s an underground ore seam 4.5 miles long by about 800 ft. wide (he didn’t say how thick) -- they call it the line of life (which is how I translate the “loin of loife”) -- that’s being extracted.

Our first stop is the airport where a unit of the Royal Flying Doctor Service is located. On the way we pass under a sign that says Airport, our driver points out. It used to say Welcome on one side, Farewell on the other. That was for Queen Elizabeth’s benefit, who visited quite a while ago, but now it just says Airport. Makes you kind of sad.

As we drive around town, our driver helpfully points out several retirement homes. I guess he’s made a judgment about the interests of the IP passengers he sees on his bus. BH has lots of well-kept miner’s cottages and a nice downtown collection of 100-year old public buildings, so I can see why BH could be something of a tourist destination. A town brochure lists several B&Bs.

W.r.t. the Flying Doctors, there are 22 such installations covering 80% of Australia to the extent that anybody anywhere in that vast open expanse who needs a doctor can be reached within two hours. Also, the service has scattered medicine chests around the country for ready access. Also, people in the outback have body maps, so someone in pain can tell the doctor by phone or radio, “It hurts between my A and my B! Nobody pays for service – government pays 2/3 of the program’s cost; various citizen fund-raising activities -- rodeos, bake sales, … -- pay for the rest.

One other stop on the tour was a combination art gallery and jewelry store. I bought a postcard copy of a local artist’s rendition of the Red Centre. Here’s a picture of it (guess I could have just photographed it in the store and saved $1):

Somewhere out of Broken Hill Dick sees a couple of kangaroos in the real wild. I’m on the other side of the car with my nose to the laptop, so I don’t see them. Later, while we’re stopped on a siding, Dick sees an emu hen(?) with five chicks near by and I get a good look through binoculars.

Around Broken Hill the terrain is quite barren. Later, around lunch time as we angle southward toward Adelaide we get into wheat-farming country – pretty and green.

In Adelaide the weather has turned rainy. We take a bus tour with only one brief stop to get out. The original city is surrounded by parkland on four sides and the city is known for its gardens. We get some glimpses through wet windows. We also see a lot of small to elaborate period homes, well-preserved or restored. Adelaide is known as the “city of churches,” and we drive by quite a few fine old specimens.

My big thrill is that the bus went by the Newmarket Hotel where my Mom and I memorably stayed in 1991. It looks like it’s been refurbished. A lounge is prominently advertised. The surrounding neighborhood looks friendlier. (I had thought about skipping the tour and making a pilgrimage to the Newmarket on my own, but I had decided seeing the city that Mom and I didn’t was the better choice.) Later I talked to bus driver and he confirmed my impression that the Newmarket is surviving and thriving.

We leave Adelaide about dark.

Cheers,

Rob

IndianPacific - 1

Wednesday, Sept. 12, after our meat-pie lunch at the Lord Nelson we take a cab to Central Station and find the platform for the IP, if I may abbreviate it that way. We’ve been concerned because the directions we received said take only a small bag on board; have large bags shipped on the baggage car, with no access until Perth. The IP folks on site tell us, though, that if you’re going to Perth, you’ll probably need all your stuff in your compartment with you – and there’s room for what we have. I had packed with the idea that I would have only my small bag, but was glad, nevertheless, to take them both on board. The compartment is small, but with enough room for me and the two bags.

We’re also told when we board to wait in our cabins until our “car-manager” comes by to instruct us on safety and other essentials. I get my lecture, but Dick doesn’t. He can’t leave his cabin, just down the row from mine. I go find the car-manager and she comes to instruct and free him. Part of the process is to give our meal-sitting preference – early or late. We wanted early, but those slots were filled before they got to us. Late dinner is 8:00pm, but when you consider that they fold your bed down while you’re at dinner, maybe it’s better to eat later.

Anyhow, when we get back from dinner, my bunk is down and apparently so are the others in the car, but Dick’s isn’t. He’s starting to think they’re picking on him and is about ready to push the emergency button, which we’ve been told is a no-no except in life-threatening circumstances, to get some attention. (Not really – Dick wouldn’t do that.) He finds the staff and they rush to take care of him.

At dinner we sat with Don. Don was traveling from Sydney, his home, to Adelaide to see his brother and sister who he hasn’t seen for 40 years. Dining car was very noisy and Don’s voice was soft and his accent was pretty thick, so I didn’t get a lot of this directly, but Dick and I discussed it afterwards, so I think this is the story.

Don volunteered to fight in Vietnam against his family’s wishes. They turned their back on him. When he came back, he got the sort of abuse from his fellow citizens that many Vietnam vets got, here as well as the US. All very traumatic, but after 40 years he’s going to try to reconnect with his family. Hope he is successful.

One other thing: Dick like milk with his meals. He makes the request; some times they bring milk. Still picking on him.

Full train day tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Cheers,

Rob

Sydney -day 4

Sept. 12. Sydney, Day 4

We leave this afternoon on the Indian Pacific train. But first: I wake up early. The Harbour Bridge beckons. I decide to walk across it and back and am rewarded with this view of the Opera House from the Bridge at 530am.

From one end of the walkway to the other is about 20 mins.

I’m fascinated by the Bridge. That’s the Sydney icon for me. As Bryson notes, it’s always popping up in your line of sight – above a leafy residential street, over the top of low buildings, end of busy avenue, as a ferry rounds a point, … It’s known affectionately as the “coat hanger,” and you can see why. Its magnitude - the massiveness of the pylons and girders - relative to a fairly short harbour-crossing makes it stand out. It’s not one of those wispy modern bridges you see – the ones that impress you with their apparent lightness and hide their real strength.

This bridge carries 10 lanes of traffic, I think, plus a light-rail line, and a pedestrian lane on one side, bike lane on other side.

This is our last morning in the Lord Nelson. We do both breakfast and lunch there – finally have a meat pie. Quite meaty and well-spiced. In between we manage to use our phone card successfully – repeated failures the day before, at a cost of AU50c each! The card, though, is phenomenal once you get connected – 300 mins. for US$8. Good to talk to the folks at home. We also check e-mail and I blog-post our Sydney notes and pictures for your edification and pleasure. [Note added later. A week later we - Dick, actually - get the idea to call the card's customer service number. Turns out we've been interpreting things wrong. The card has access numbers listed by cities. That means use them only in those cities. We've been using the access number of the nearest city when we've been out in the bush. Wrong. That requires more money in the machine for a long distance call. We've been putting in 50c, as in Sydney, so, boom, when that's spent the line is disconnected. There's another access number for calls outside the listed cities. So, as of today, 9/18, we're using the phone card correctly. I think we're paying more for it, though, when we have to use the national number. But, it's worth it to hear the voices of all of you to whom we have been fortunate enough to speak.]

Across the way from the Lord Nelson is a historical observatory, now a museum, and we spend an hour there. Lots of telescopes and associated gear plus a very interesting video is playing on the voyage of James Cook that led to the discovery of Australia. His reason for being in the south Pacific was to observe the “transit of Venus.” That’s when Venus passes in front of the sun, from the right perspective on earth. This happens twice in an eight-year span about once a century. I don’t have even a glimmer of the mathematics/geometry involved, but by measuring this transit it’s possible to get an accurate estimate of the distance from the sun to the earth and from that be able to measure distances among the other planets more accurately than would otherwise be possible.

Now, I’m leading up to some interesting statistics. There’s a famous paper in which successive estimates, by different laboratories, of the earth-sun distance are compared. Each lab, as should be the case with scientific work, included “error bars” to express how uncertain their measurements were. It turned out, though, that each successive estimate did not fall in the error bars of the preceding lab’s estimate. So, the error bars weren’t really capturing how uncertain an estimate was. Important sources of uncertainty had been left out. The author’s point was that better methods were needed to evaluate uncertainty.

OK, sorry for the diversion. Back to Cook’s voyage. After catching the Venus transit, he sailed on SW and found New Zealand. Sailed its whole circumference and mapped it, I believe. Milford Sound is a fiord on the west side of the south island – very scenic and much visited. When Susie and I were there in 2003 we were told that the entrance to the Sound is difficult to see from sea and so Cook missed it. In the video, Cook and company saw the fiord and the botanist on board wanted to land and explore. Cook said, No, too dangerous. Fiords are too deep to anchor in so they would be hard-pressed to keep from being dashed on the rocks. Of course, he won the argument.

After doing NZ, the next issue was how to go home to England: east, around S. America, or west, around Africa. If west, they would look for what was then called “New Holland,” parts of which had been discovered by earlier European explorers. The decision was West. Lo and behold, land ho! That’s where the video ended. Cook named their landing point, Botany Bay, for his botanist, then sailed up and mapped the east coast and claimed the land for England. He missed the Sydney Harbour entrance. When the first load of prisoner-settlers came, they didn’t like Botany Bay and found their way north a bit to what was to become Sydney Harbour.

Here's a last morning's view of Sydney. Really a great city.



Cheers,

Rob

Blue Mountains

Sept. 11. Blue Mountains

Tuesday, 9/11, was devoted to a tour of the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mtns.aren’t high – about 3300 ft., but they’re rugged and densely forested in some areas. They get their name from the bluish haze produced by gas emitted by the eucalyptus trees.

It took about 25 years before the settlers penetrated and crossed the mountains due to terrain and Aborigine resistance. They found the sort of land that was urgently needed for raising crops and livestock. Prior to that, con men in Sydney sold maps to the geographically-challenged convict/settlers purporting to show a route through the mountains emerging in China and freedom! I guess not enough of them got back to Sydney to warn others of this scam.

We made several Blue Mtn stops: the Blue Mountains National Park, where we saw kangaroos and cockatoos in the wild, sort of. They're accustomed to gawkers. Also saw Wentworth Falls and a rock formation called the Three Sisters.

Nice mountain vistas all along the way. That's my passport pouch cleverly disguised as a paunch under my poncho.

Just past the Three Sisters we stopped at a site where a cog railroad used by coal miners had been converted into a tourist railroad – the steepest incline RR in the world, the sign said: a vertical drop of 250 meters over a distance of 450 meters. It’s like being on a roller coaster with brakes. Weather turned cold and windy, with light rain, so we opted for mechanical conveyance up and down the cliff front as opposed to an hour and a half bushwalk.

Cheers for now,


Rob

Sydney

Sept. 9

Arrived Sydney 730 am. Shuttle took us to the Lord Nelson Brewery and Hotel – the oldest hotel in Sydney, located in the Rocks area of the city. Pub door was open, we went in. Nobody around. Shades of the Newmarket in Adelaide 16 years ago (see previous posting below). We hear people on the stairs – the stairway behind the pub leading up to the rooms. It’s a couple of patrons of the hotel. They tell us it is a functioning hotel and where to find receptionist. We find her. She’s very helpful. We’re too early to get into our room, but we can leave our bags in office and she directs us to the Rocks market, a popular weekend gathering place where we have some brunch, it now being several hours since our Qantas breakfast. The whole hotel experience here is very nice - it was a good choice.

On our way to the market we passed the Holy Trinity Anglican Church, also known as the Garrison church because, historically, soldiers were garrisoned in this area. We had decided to go to church here, so that’s where we returned after brunch.



At church a small congregation in lovely, old church, very formal, mostly older people, except one young man, the student minister, with family, including noisy child. Had a communion service. There was tea after the service and we had a nice conversation with pastor’s wife and student minister. Maybe more on this visit later.

One connection (?): On the flight over I couldn't sleep and spent most of the time reading Deliverance, by James Dickey - the book behind the movie most everybody has seen. Well, the preacher's sermon was from Psalms 3, concluding with this verse: Ps 3:8: “From the Lord comes deliverance." Question: Is Dickey using “deliverance” in any sort of Biblical/allegorical sense? I doubt it. His canoeists got their deliverance by violence and dishonesty. Their actions were more in line with: Psalms 3:7 “Deliver me. Strike all my enemies on the jaw.” Anyhow, that's more than enough amateur theology.

After church we caught the City Sightseeing bus for a tour of the downtown area. Well, much of it; I noticed they skipped the Opera House stop. This was no doubt due to the meeting of APEC (the Asian Pacific Economic Co-operation – one newspaper columnist I saw noted this doesn’t make grammatical sense and is not a good acronym – too similar to OPEC, a similarity that tripped up W). APEC ended today with a wrap-up at the Opera House.

There were lots of complaints in the newspaper columns and letters about security provisions. These economic summits tend to spark passionate, sometimes violent protests, so Sydney had prepared diligently – lots of police and barricades. There were signs up on many streets designating them “clearways,” meaning no parking and don’t get in the way of official vehicles should they need the road. Seemed inconsistent with Sydney's relaxed view of itself, but you can understand the official concerns, too.

Here's a representative city shot from the top of the bus

It's a great and beautiful and friendly city. Clean and attractive.

After the bus tour we went back to the hotel, unpacked, and removed 24 hours of grime, plaque, and whiskers from our bodies, teeth, and faces. Back to the street – our on-and-off tour book pass is good for 24 hours. We made our way to Darling Harbor, a popular gathering place, and found something to eat – seafood. Finished the day with an after-dark water-taxi tour: out from Darling Harbour, under the Harbour Bridge, around the Opera House, then return.

Monday, Sept. 10, was more Sydney touring: the Opera House, the Sydney Tower, and a ferry to Manly, on the north side of the entrance to Sydney Harbour. Here's an Opera House view and the Manly beach:

The Harbour Bridge fascinates me. Bryson writes, in In a Sunburned Country, about how the bridge keeps popping into view unexpectedly -- down a tree-lined side street, over the tops of low buildings, at the end of a busy avenue, ... I had same impression. Monday night we walked halfway across it, then Wednesday morning I walked all the way across and back. Got a 530am picture of the Opera House that looks pretty special. You'll have to wait, though, because I didn't get it transferred to my flash drive before finding this internet cafe. Stay tuned.

Cheers,

Rob

History

Some data: Australia is the sixth largest country and largest island in the world. It has 20M (million) people and an area of 3M square miles. By way of contrast, the USA figures are 300M people in 3.5M square miles. Australia is five times the size of Alaska, ten times Texas.

The Indian Pacific train trip from Sydney to Perth (coast to coast, E/W) is 2700 miles long; driving distance from Washington DC to LA is about the same.

Geological Origin: Australia is estimated to have separated from the Asia/Africa land mass on the order of 100M years ago. As a result, Bryson says, 80% of all plant and animal life in Australia exists only in Australia.

First humans, the Aborigines, arrived, presumably by boat, by various estimates from 40,000 to 70,000 years ago (source: Wikipedia). This would have required a sea crossing of at least 60 miles, though something I read said that a glacial period could have shortened the distance. It would also have required enough colonists to propagate the population. Much is unknown. Bryson was amazed that he found little interest (his book was published in 2000) in understanding the origins of the Aboriginal people.

European Contact and Settlement (source: Bryson): There is evidence of European presence in Australia as early as 1525, but the real story starts with James Cook's discovery and flag-planting in 1770. He sailed along the east coast and found it to have "a very agreeable and promising aspect." Little did he know what lurked inland. Also, his voyage was during the wet season. This picture of Captain Cook from Wikipedia.




A few years later, England was casting about for a new place to send its undesirable citizens (the United States having been lost). How about Australia? Accordingly, eleven ships with a colonization group of prisoners and guards (1500 people total) left England in 1787. The trip took eight months and they arrived in mid-summer -- not the conditions that Cook had seen. Seeking a better location, the fleet sailed a ways north and settled in what is now Sydney Harbour. They were ill-prepared, but they survived and eventually prospered.

Further settlement and expansion took place over the next century and six colonies were formed. In 1901, these colonies became a federation and thus created the Commonwealth of Australia. Roughly, Australia has been a country half as long as has the United States.

OK, got the boring stuff out of the way.


Bryson tells this story with more humor. One incident: a French ship arrived at SE Australia quite soon after Cook did. A few days earlier, Bryson says, would have "saved the country two hundred years of English cooking."

G'day

Rob

Book Notes

I did a variety of reading to get ready for Australia. Friend, Ann Look, loaned me her book, In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson. Bryson is a humorist and travel writer – I had previously read his book on hiking the Appalachian Trail, A Walk in the Woods, but didn’t know he had “done” Australia.

A recurring theme in Bryson’s Australia book is the many unpleasant ways you can die there. First, there’s the whole interior of the country – extreme heat, lack of water. Bryson says, “Australia is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile, and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents. Only Antarctica is more hostile to life.”

Bryson also worries about Australian animal life: the world's top ten poisonous snakes are Australian. Additonally: crocodiles, poisonous spiders, and various venomous sea creatures. We'll be careful.

Bryson rode the Indian Pacific train. He loved it. "It was like being given a preview of what it will be like to be in your eighties. All those things eighty-year-olds appear to enjoy -- staring vacantly out windows, dozing in a chair, boring the pants off anyone foolish enough to sit beside them -- took on a special treasured meaning for me. This was the life!" Can't wait -- for the train, not being eighty.

Before my 1991 trip my sister, Verla, sent me a National Geographic with an article about the “camel lady.” Robyn Davidson left a comfortable life in Brisbane in the 1970s to spend two years in Alice Springs learning about camel care & handling. Then she took a string of four camels 1700 miles across the desert to the west coast. Her book, Tracks, tells her story. I re-read that book and was struck by the emotional aspects of her experience. She writes a lot about what it’s like to abandon a modern lifestyle for a primitive, Aborigine-like type of existence. Physically, it was very tough, too, as you might imagine, especially when marauding bands of wild camels threatened her camels.

For more background reading I went to the Albuquerque library and Amazon listings for "Australian fiction." Checked a few out of the library. The Secret River, by Kate Grenville was a good piece of historical fiction, an award-winning book about a British convict sentenced to death, for theft, whose term was commuted to exile in Australia in the early 1800s. His wife was sent with him, in essence, to be his parole officer. They end up settling along a little-known river and the book deals mostly with raising a family there and dealing with elements, other settlers, and the Aborigines in the area.

Bryson notes that Australians he met didn't want to talk about the Aborigine "problem." The situation twenty years earlier is addressed in Davidson's book. I also read the Rabbit-Proof Fence and Susie and I watched the movie which is about three half-breed girls taken from their families and sent to a government boarding school. They escape and walk 1200 miles to get home.

I've been reading Aussie newspapers and there are frequent stories about current Aborigine issues and government programs. As we know, it's not easy finding the right way to merge immigrant and indigenous peoples and cultures.

Incidentally, a friend advised us that Australia still requires a criminal record in order to get into the country, so when Immigration asks, say yes.

Last spring, when we were in Fredericksburg, TX, I picked up The Old Patagonian Express, by Paul Theroux. He left his home in Boston, then by catching successive trains, where possible, traveled to southern Argentina -- Patagonia. He's written other books based on his train travel. These are not guide books. He writes about people he meets, what he eats and drinks, troubles encountered trying to get from one point to another, books he reads while traveling, etc. He's a bit of a curmudgeon, but in an entertaining way.

Theroux also writes about travel-writing. When he started thinking about writing about his travels, he had found that most travel writing was a bore -- just about sight-seeing. He had found that "half of travel was delay or nuisance." So, he wrote about his travel experiences. One quote: "When something human is recorded, good travel writing happens." In my abbreviated, bloggy way, I'll try to remember that.

People have remarked about our (Susie's and my) willingness to write, expose ourselves, about troubles we have encountered in our motor home travels. Well, those misadventures were some of the most interesting things that happened so, given they weren't tragedies, it seemed appropriate to tell it like it was. We weren't consciously following Theroux, but still consistent with his approach, I like to think.

At any rate, I'm taking a couple of books on this trips that Theroux took on his. If I get around to reading them, I'll let you know about it.

Four days until departure!

Cheers,

Rob