Rottnest Island

When I first arrived in Perth, while I was waiting to make contact with Katy, I checked my bag at this place called the Travellers Club, and it was there that I scheduled a tour of Rottnest Island. The guy working the desk at the Travellers Club suggested that I skip the bus tour and hire a bike to take myself around the island instead. The island is 26 kilometers around, so I was little unsure of whether I would be able to make it the whole way around the island, but I decided to do it anyway. I also rented snorkel gear and planned to explore the reef.

The tour consisted of a trip by ferry from Perth Jetty (this makes me wonder what the difference between a pier and jetty is…) to Fremantle, or Fremo to the locals, then another ferry from Fremo to the island. On the first ferry a Thai woman named Natty Knight (that is her real name) who looked to be in her early thirties sat down across from me and was very friendly. Taking the tour to the island is research for her work. She is in Perth because she married an Australian, and she now has a two year old son with him. She and I bond on the trip and we talk about everything there is to cover in two hours: Vietnamese food, travel, boys, movies, the sham wow guy. On the way back she even offered to set me up on a date with an Aussie.

When I get to the island, Natty and I part ways because she is taking the eco tour and I have opted to rent a bike and snorkel gear. Riding around the island is not as difficult as I have feared, but it is hot and there are a lot of flies. Rottnest island is so called because of the quikas (I’m sure I’m misspelling the name), a rodent-like creature that lives only on that island. There are no private vehicles on the island, but there are a few buses that run around the perimeter every 10 minutes or so. A very few people live in Rottnest, but most of the people are vacationers. If you are visiting, you can camp, rent a bungalow on the beach, or there are two hotels and one backpacker’s hostel. The beaches here are absolutely pristine, with beautiful blue water and white sand beaches covered in a soft grass.

The first time I stopped to use the snorkel gear, I trekked through the scrub to get to the beach, and was pleasantly surprised to find absolutely no one in sight. The wind was so strong that from the highest point on the rocks above the beach, about 20 feet up, I could lean into the wind and it would support my full weight. When I scrambled down the rock to the beach, the area was so isolated that I didn't even bother trying to find cover before changing into my bathing suit.

I swam around a little and had a great time, then walked up and down the beach a while before deciding to head back to the rode to continue my ride around the island. It wasn't until I was walking back to my bike that I noticed the Do Not Enter sign. I had unknowingly been swimming in protected, research only waters. The beach was beautiful, though. As I found out the more I explored the island, the other beaches may not have been overcrowded, but I definitely couldn't have changed privately without finding a toilet.

The Art of Mooching

When I was busy daydreaming about this around the world trip (and not so busy actually planning for the trip), I would often imagine myself using connections to find somewhere to stay in every city. Asking strangers for a place to stay may be all good in theory, but in actual practice is very awkward. The thought of asking for a ride to the airport makes me feel obligated to offer my first born child as compensation for the inconvenience, so you can imagine how I felt about asking for a place to stay.

So when Carol told me that she had a friend in Australia and it sounded like that friend might be in Perth at the same time I was, I emailed Anna planning to keep the conversation to things to do in Western Australia. Luckily for me, however, Carol had already suggested to Anna that I might need a place to stay. Anna is a former child of the Australian bush, with a passion for fashion and dual American/Australian citizenship. She is the oldest of five kids and spent much of her childhood dodging snakes and spiders in the middle of nowhere north of Perth. She is adventurous, smokes Benson & Hedges, and is a has funny opinions about Geminis. Of course, I know none of this when I call Anna. I wasn’t even aware that Carol had paved the way by asking Anna if I could stay with her. All I know is that according to Carol, Anna is wonderful, a YA and literacy author, and that Carol thinks I will like her.

After psyching myself up to face the telephone (I hate not being able to read people's faces), I ring Anna. Anna answers, and we get to talking. Next thing I know, I'm doing something totally out of character and asking Anna if I can spend Christmas with her family. As I suspected (because, really, who can say no to a question like that) she says yes, please do, then gives me the phone numbers of two of her sisters-- Kate and Helene. More cold calls. I'm told Kate is the sister I can stay with in Perth and Helen is the sister organizing Christmas dinner in "the Margaret River area," as I was calling it at the time. (I had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that the town is called Margaret River. No "the," no "area" needed. On a side note: On this trip, I once seriously referred to Tasmania as “the Tasmanian island.” The look I got when I said that was the same look I gave one of the schoolies I met in Victoria when she told me that she was going to university next year to get, what’s it called, some kind of bachelorette degree.)

In the end I took Anna’s advice and called Kate and Helen, and they were both great. Kate immediately eased my awkwardness by straightforwardly telling me that she had no idea who I was. Helen was good to talk to as well, and even made what I am reasonably confident was a joke about how uncomfortable the family will make me feel for crashing their Christmas dinner.

When I arrived in Perth on December 15th, I had a couple of hours to waste until I met Kate. I finally caught up with her and had just started to make some encouraging noises about how great Perth is, when wham! Katy hits me with the long and complicated story of her daughter, Naomi's, love life. By the time we get back to Forrestfield, the suburb where Katy and 33 year old Naomi live, I feel like I've known her forever. Kate talks quietly like someone who is losing her hearing, but laughs loudly and often. By the end of the 20 minute car ride, I am completely enamored with her, and at the same time terrified to meet the rest of the family in case they are nothing like her. Later that night I meet Naomi, and Nay, as they call her, is indeed nothing like her mom, but not in the way I feared. Naomi is a different breed of kind and welcoming. She is upbeat and hilarious, and she gesticulates wildly when she’s telling stories, generally in some elaborate miming fashion which results in her short blonde hair in disarray.

Without even having met Anna, I know this is going to be a great Christmas.

The Great Ocean Road

For the last three days I have been out of cell phone range, without access to the internet, and basically hidden from the world at large. It was great.

The trip started out in Mooney Ponds, a neighboring suburb to the one where I'm staying, with Liam's karate test. The proud parents (and I'm including myself among them) sat along one side of a gym wall and watched their kids do some solo exercises then spar. To my great disappointment, the whole testing process was nothing like the karate kid, though one parent did say "wax on, wax off." The entertainment value came when the students were asked to do as many sit ups and push ups as they could in a minute, then had to shout out their number in front of the whole group. Colette explained to me that it's standard practice to fudge the numbers a little, but I got to see it firsthand.

Leaving the dojo, Shane drove me straight to the airport where I rented a car from the not-so-Thrifty. But no matter the price--the car in spot 015 was a cherry red, mostly automatic, brand new sedan, and I fell in love. (I say mostly automatic because even though you didn't have to shift gears with the foot pedal, you could still shift gears with the gear shifter. At least I hope I was supposed to do that... It took me about 50 miles to figure out there was a gear after 4th. My knowledge of driving manual is limited to what I learned from the song Hot Rod Lincoln and my experience biking up hills.) It was a little dicey getting out of the airport, but once I was on Western Ring Road, I had a great time just driving. Melbourne has some really terrific local radio stations, and PBS was doing a live music week. All the way to Queenscliff I blasted live music by Aussies I had never heard of and ignored the GPS telling me I was speeding.

That night I stayed in Queenscliff in a huge dorm room occupied only be me and a Sri Lankan who had just started a job in Geelong. Queenscliff is a lot like a seaside version of Sleepy Hollow. The town is isolated enough and old enough that it would be weird not to see some kind of ghost trying to cut your head off.

Barely escaping Queenscliff with my life, I drove up the Great Ocean Road to see the Twelve Apostles, and in the process came across some other pretty terrifying, but less famous, stretches of ocean:

Bells Beach is where the last scene in Point Break takes place--the one where surfer cum bank robber Patrick Swayze escapes the tyranny of this world by throwing himself into the raging sea. Somewhere along the same coast the former Prime Minister of OZ, Harold Holt, was swept out to sea never to be heard from again. At Cape Otway in the late 70s a plane pilot pulled an Amelia Earheart and just disappeared. His last radio transmission? "There's some kind of strange aircraft hovering over me."

Be it at the hand of aliens, headless horsemen, or a killer rip tide, there are a lot of ways to die on the surf coast. As it turns out, there are a lot of ways to die in inland Victoria as well. In a well intentioned but largely ineffective attempt to keep people alive, the Australian government (except the roos sign, pictured below) has decided that the best thing to do about these dangers is to post a sign. Deadly snakes in the area? Post a sign! Risk of kangaroos running your car off the road? Post a sign! Miles of the deadliest coastline in the world and only a few hundred unpaid lifeguards to keep an eye on you? Post a sign!

But if you brave the snakes and the cliffs and the rip tide and the kangaroos, and if you know (I didn't) that there are no bears in this part of the world, and if you keep on that hiking trail and don't give up until you reach the uppermost point of the cliff, or you go ahead and walk out into the water even though you're swimming alone and the signs say not to, you'll see why the surf coast is one of the greatest places on earth. The wind is freezing and just a little bit scary when it comes off the water, making the waves choppy and big. The views are amazing--a little bit like the cliffs in the fictional Maine of Dark Shadows, or maybe an unpopulated California.

I spent one more night in Queenscliff, then planning to return the car on Tuesday, made my way up to Torquay for a surf lesson before I drove back to the airport. However, when I got to Torquay two things happened: the surf shop only gave lessons in the morning, and the sun came out. Heartened by the prospect of spending another night on my vacation within a vacation, I told the car rental company that if they really wanted their car back they could come and get it, then promptly signed up for a lesson on the following day.

Wednesday came and the surf lesson was one of the more painful two hour sessions of my life. Exhausted, sore, and bruised, our group of 5 finished the lessons with every single one of us having stood up on our boards. Pretty much, we rock. My class consisted of two other couples, both from the UK. One couple in particular, Chris and Charlie (Charlie is a girl), were very nice and the three of us had lunch together after the lesson. After lunch I left Torquay to return to Melbourne. My three days on the coast were some of the best in Melbourne, and even though I'm so sore lying down hurts, I can't wait to try surfing again in Perth.

Wine Tour of the Yarra Valley

The last time I went on a wine tour, my partner in crime (ahem, Mom) and I drank so much we could barely stand up at the end of the day. So, it was with some trepidation and a newfound respect for the spittoon that I agreed to go on a wine tour of the Yarra Valley (see map) with Colette. The tour was actually the Christmas party for Colette's exercise class. There were 25 of us all together, mostly women but some men, aged 20 to 60 years old.

We met outside of the gym, Re-creation, in Essendon where there was an ancient party bus waiting to take us to four wineries in the Yarra Valley east of Melbourne. The bus was painted a solid white from roof to runner, with a list of occasions for which the bus might be useful handwritten across the top. Suggestions included nightclub tours, hens and bucks nights, bus parties, pub crawls, and wine tours. Colette, Colette's friend Amelia, and I were among the last to arrive, so when we got on board we were greeted by people staring at us from seats lining the walls of the bus (see photo of Colette, me, and Amelia from left to right). Because the bus windows had been painted over when the bus was painted white, the inside had a dark, sleazy night club feel.

Right from the beginning the atmosphere inside the bus was relaxed. No one except Matt (the trainer who had organized the outing) knew everyone, but most people knew at least a few others on the bus. This mix of familiarity encouraged good conversation and the hour or so drive out to the first winery was pleasant. At the first winery, Domaine Chandon, we had our pick of one of three sparkling wines. I chose a sparkling red, mostly for novelty's sake, and liked it. But, not having had breakfast (and having sworn to myself that this tour wouldn't be a repeat of last time) I only sampled one of the other wines at Chandon. The winery was one of those big commercial places with a beautiful view of the valley and a huge dining room designed to show off that view; however, I was left with the impression that it wasn't anything special.

The next winery, Yering Station, is vineyard, hotel, and day spa. The place is absolutely beautiful. Lord knows why, but as I travel I find myself scouting out wedding locations, and this place ranks pretty high. Especially if you could use the Yering Station facilities but serve Mandala wines. (In case anyone cares, another prime wedding spot would be the Botanical Gardens in Wellington.) The wines here were too sweet, though. The photo of me was taken at Yerring Station.

We only had lunch at the third winery, Balgownie Estate, and didn't have time to sample the wines there. Lunch was a perplexing tomato, goat cheese, melon, and liquor appetiser followed by a comparatively normal rissoto. I sat between Colette and Lou, a girl about my age who I ended up making friends with. I've been feeling too forward lately, so not wanting to scare her away, I gave her my full name and asked her to look me up on facebook. Let's see if this social networking thing is as good as everyone claims.

The final winery was by far the best. We only had about 30 minutes here, but the wines were delicious! I don't have the vocabulary to even begin to describe them, but the name of the winery is Mandala--look it up, you won't be disappointed. The 2007 Yarra Valley Chardonay and the 2009 Margaret Valley Savignon Blanc were the best.

We were finished by 4pm and piled back in the bus. I am proud to say that I managed to stay sober(ish) throughout the whole day, but I can't say the same for some of the other people on the tour. A group of blonde thirty-somethings sitting in the back of the bus were still drinking on the way home. One girl in particular, Nicki, was a riot. She discovered the karaoke machine on the bus and started us off with an ear-splitting rendition of Cindy Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun. When she couldn't remember the words she started pole dancing and at one point swung her leg up across the bus driver's shoulders. Later, when the whole bus was singing Sinatra's New York, New York, an out of control high kick sent Nicki's shoes flying clear across the bus.

Other highlights of party bus karaoke were when we discovered someone on the bus could actually sing (shocking, I know), and when everyone sang along to an Aussie song, Down Under. If you're not familiar with this song, I encourage everyone to navigate off this page for a sec to discover Men at Work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNT7uZf7lew. Lyrics include such gems as: "I come from a land down under/ where beer does flow and men chunder" and "Buying bread from a man in Brussels/ He was six-foot-four and full of muscles/ I said, "Do you speak-a my language?"/ He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich."

Ahh, Australia, land of beer, vegemite, and the Hills hoist. And damn proud of it.

Graffiti

Lately I've been spending a lot of time in Federation Square. It's the outdoor plaza across from Flinder's Station and it's home to a few restaurants, a tourist office, free wifi, and a couple of museums. It may have been voted number five on the 10 ugliest structures in the world list, but it's number one in my heart. I mostly go there for the free internet. Anyway, being downtown I see a lot of graffiti, something Melbourne is known for, apparently. I've been meaning to post pictures, so here they are.

Finding My Happy Place: Healesville Sanctuary

A funny thing happened Tuesday evening. I was taking a break from watching Kath and Kim (thanks for the suggestion, Alex) to go outside to enjoy the beautiful sunset, when a god-awful sound like a fire alarm started to go off in the tree by the shed. Worried that I had accidentally set off someone's home alarm, I went to investigate. Then the sound stopped, and started up next door. Puzzled, I went back inside to refill my glass of wine, and by the time I came back outside the noise had started up again. So I went over to the tree to investigate, and I determined that it's some kind of overzealous cricket. Strange, but true.

Tuesday was a good day; I finally made it out to Healesville Sanctuary. In the morning before I left I checked my email and Alia had left me a list of suggestions about what to do in Melbourne and as luck would have it, Healesville was on it. The trip out via public transportation took about the same amount of time as I spent at the sanctuary, but I'm glad I traveled that way. First I took the train to Flinder's Sta. where I had to wait a half hour for the train to Lilydale (an eastern suburb). While I was waiting, I met an older couple from Tassie. Thank you, Emma, for the terminology. That's Tasmania to everyone else. Incidentally, Tasmania has the oldest population of any OZ state or territory, so it makes sense that the people I meet from there are in the over 65 crowd.

The man initiated conversation with me by saying that it's bad when your grandchildren know more than you do. The issue was that he couldn't figure out how to check a text message left by his grandkid, but he said it in a conspiratorial kind of way, as if I had grandkids and I know what it's like to be left in the dust by technology. Luddite though I am, I know how to text. (Though I still don't get why people use abbreviated slang like 'ur' for 'your' when it's actually easier to type 'your' than 'ur' using T9 text predictor software. You may be thinking, who cares?, but I actively worry about these things. More to the point, I worry about what other people think when I text a full word instead of using a standard abbreviation. Do they think I'm being pretentious or just uncool? Will they hold it against me? On a side note, I read an article in the wonderful Mx that claims the English language has gotten too complicated and the texting generation is doing their part for the evolution of the language by unintentionally weeding out the worthless words. Which may explain why 'ur' could mean either 'your' or 'you're' when it shows up on ur cell. What it doesn't explain is why non-English speakers do the same thing).

Getting back to Healesville trip...

I boarded the train about 9:45am and there were only a few of us in the car. Me, the Tassies, a young couple in high school uniforms all but groping each other. (Sadly, this is not an uncommon sight on a train in the middle of a school day. Do truancy officers still exist? How about good taste officers?) Also on board were about six middle aged people laughing, and from what I overheard, headed to a funeral. I felt a bit awkward about not sitting with everyone else because, as per my usual, I picked seat most likely to discourage human contact. However, that didn't stop me from eavesdropping on everyone else's conversations. I'm practicing for a future career as a secret agent. Shhh. Don't tell.

Which reminds me: The Thomas' dogs (who I'm currently sharing a family with) killed some kind of bird the other day then dragged it on to one of their dog beds. I'm pretty sure it was Pepe the Chihuahua that did it. Ted the Jack Russel is too cynical and Bonnie the white fluffy one is too old. Have you seen a dead animal lately? It looked sort of deflated and its legs were bent at odd angles. Creepy. My first thought when I saw it, other than the gag reflex, was how much worse it would be to see a dead person. That's when I crossed 'spy' off my possible future careers list. Sadly 'Somalian pirate' had to come off too.

An hour later, I arrived at Lilydale Station, where I made my way to the bus stop and proceeded to wait another hour for the bus to the Healesville Sanctuary to arrive. Again, I meet an 'older adult' and we get to talking. When we figure out it will be another half hour before the bus appears, he offers to split a cab with me to Healesville. I decline because I'm afraid I'll never be able to find my way back if I don't take the bus there, and how serendipitous that I did! The bus drivers (there were two because I had to transfer in Healesville) were so helpful. One even wrote down the bus schedule for me (by hand!) and made sure I knew how to get back to the Lilydale station. I would still be lost in the boonies if it weren't for him. By the way, is it me, or is niceness a quality that's inversely related to one's proximity to large urban populations? Just a theory I'm working on.

The Healesville Sanctuary houses only native Australian animals. These include the emu, the flying fox, various kinds of rats, marsupials of all sizes, kookaburras, dingos, and the adorably vicious Tasmanian devils (also marsupials, btw). My favorite were the echidnas. They are hedgehog-looking creatures about the size of a bread box that walk like body builders (or like Dan Stephan--if anyone reading this knows who he is--the valedictorian of my high school the year after I graduated). Actually, the echidna and Dan have a lot in common. Both enjoy warm weather, have an unusually high center of balance, and hide from predators by burring themselves in the underbrush. I kid, of course. Dan hates warm weather.

Amazingly, I spent three hours getting to the sanctuary, three hours there, but only about one hour on the return trip to Melbourne. And, I don't really know how to explain this because I'm not quite sure it actually happened, but somewhere on the way back I found my happy place. When I worked at Corwin, Brynn and I used to take a mid-afternoon break from the overactive air conditioning on the second floor to go outside. For 10 minutes a day almost everyday from December '08 to April '09 we would talk about weekend plans, poetry, boyfriends, and that elusive thing called happiness. Well guess what? After a year of talking about it, I found it. The sun felt like it was about three feet from my neck, the flies were swarming, and I spent hours on public transportation. There was no particular reason why Tuesday was such a good day. It just was.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It's raining in Melbourne--something I was fairly sure never happened. The rain started yesterday afternoon and has been going for almost 24 hours. I was going to go to the flea market today, but the rain killed those plans. All is well, however, because now I have a chance to catch up on the blog.

Since my last post I have been to work with Shane and Colette a few times, visited the Hawker Brownlow offices, experienced the Melbourne night life, and eaten (very) authentic Chinese food. Oh, and I've also discovered the Mx, Melbourne's BEST daily newspaper.

I heart Mx (think Milton Glaser's I heart NY design). People hand it out for free at Flinder's Station--that's the main train station where all lines intersect--and sometimes I'll ride the train just to pick up a copy. The paper walks that thin line between trashy tabloid gossip and legitimate human interest news stories where entertainment lives. The paper is dominated by photos, no story is longer than 200 words, and they are often violent, shocking, or both. It's a little bit like reading yahoo news in paper form. Don't get me wrong, though, I love every word of it. Especially, and after this I'm done praising the paper, the missed connections. I've borrowed that term from Craigslist--I'm not really sure what Mx calls it. For those who don't know, missed connections are written by fellow commuters who write in to the paper in the hopes of contacting another commuter they were unable to approach in real life. The ads usually go something like this: To the girl/guy on the 6.15 train to Craigieburn/outside Melbourne Central wearing a red dress/loading a barbecue on to the 9.22ish train for Sardinham, you made my day/were absolutely beautiful/have a nice smile. Want to meet?/Have coffee?/Grab a drink? They're wonderful, and they work! On Friday an Indian woman responded to a missed connection placed on Thursday. It was touching. I keep reading them secretly hoping one is for me.

All the missed connections in the world, however, can't beat the shops on Church St for sheer entertainment value. After a solid week of great shopping, including the Queen Vic Market, Myer, and other delights, I thought I would be sick of looking at clothes, but apparently they still hold their power over me. Church Street is where a lot of Australian designers have their stores. It starts out incredibly high market (I saw a sun dress for $1000+, no joke) and as you go south, so do the prices. Susan, a colleague of Shane and Colette's, said she once created a Melbourne scavenger hunt for some students that involved finding the most expensive wedding dress on Church St., among other things. I have to get a hold of that scavenger hunt and try it myself! Which reminds me, I think there's a potential market for alternative tours. You could do the shopping tour of Melbourne, and of course, the Underbelly tour.

The Underbelly tour is an idea Shane and I have been working on based on the book and TV series by the same name. It would involve taking visitors around to all the places where members of Melbourne's mafia underground were assassinated. Maybe we should wait until the matriarch of the Moran family is sentenced, though, to ensure we don't end up on some mafia hit list.