Lone Pine, Downfall

7 May
Brisbane
Sunny, mild
4560 steps

Today was our day to visit the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, via the Mirimar Cruise. The weather was wonderful, most sunny with a few clouds, mild temperatures and a gentle breeze. It had rained overnight, so we were worried, but it turned out quite well.

The cruise goes about 15 kilmoeters down the Brisbane River, a tidal river that changes course four times a day. It comes with a full commentary about the city of Brisbane and its history, the boat, and the Sanctuary. The Brisbane river floods once in awhile; I suppose it happens in conjunction with a typhoon. The flooding in 1974 submerged 75% of the city; the commentatior asserts that it would have been possible to use the Mirimar to navigate the local country club.

We arrived at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, where a BBQ lunch was waiting for us. We had grilled beef and chicken, rice, salad, and fruit. It was all pretty good -- the beef was a little chewy, but it had a good flavor. The students were free to explore on their own, until a bus picked us up at 2:15.
I went to the snake show, which was very low-key. A tour guide came out with a carpet python, and talked about snakes and their life cycles. It was more for children, I guess, but I still enjoyed it. The snake was frisky -- it crawled into the tour guide's shirt, and she had to call over a fellow worker to coax it back out again.
I also went to the sheep dog show, which does not compare with what we will see on Monday at the Australian Woolshed. I fed kangaroos; they always seem so grateful -- the wallabies are more shy. And I wandered about seeing the other animals, such as the birds, the wombats, the lizards, and the dingoes.
We took a bus home, a different process from other years, when we rode the boat back. It was faster, and actually a little less expensive.

I went to the 3pm showing of Downfall, a German movie about the very last days of the Third Reich, as Berlin was falling. The actor Bruno Ganz played Hitler, and while he certainly turned in an excellent performance, there were many other strong points to the movie, as well as other story lines:

• We see a lot of Hitler's and Goebbel's final days through the eyes of Hitler's personal secretary, Frau Trandl Lunge. She was a loyal secretary, perhaps naive -- but as the real-life Frau Lunge says at the end of the movie, "being young was no excuse. I should have known." The story of her escape from the Russian forces is another part of the movie.
  
• We see a young boy who fights against the Russian tanks, and earns an Iron Cross for destroying a couple. His father does not want him to fight, but he does, only to have a change of heart after his friends die and he sees the horrible violence of the Battle of Berlin up close.
  
• It's conflicting to watch the German people as they suffer at the end of the war -- you feel terrible that they are going through this, yet at the same time, you cannot forget the concentration camps, the imperialist policy, Stalingrad, and all the other crimes for which they had to answer.
  
• It is even more disturbing to hear Hitler and Goebbels both make essentially that point -- that the German people are getting what they deserve, that they (Hitler and Goebbels) had no compassion for the people as Germany fell around them, that the people elected Hitler and swore allegiance to him, and that the people let Hitler down.
  
• The movie is hard to dismiss, at least in part because it refuses to make any of the Nazis into caricatures, as we so often see in wartime movies and cartoons. There are people who are heroic, such as the Nazi doctor who works feverishly to save as many soldiers as he can, and who stands up to the last remnants of the Brownshort thugs. There are nuanced debates among the generals about Hitler's sanity. Hitler himself is seen at times as a gentlemanly towards his personal staff, including Frau Junge.
  
• Eva Braun and Frau Goebbels were really quite insane. Frau Goebbels in particular should be judged as harshly as possible by history. It is a horrible mother that nurders her own children.
  
• The ultimate point of the movie may be that Hitler did not die alone because he did not rise to power alone. There were plenty of people around him who fed his ego and galvanized the support of a nation that, in the final analysis, wallowed in his madness.
  

The movie is in German with English subtitles, and runs for over two hours. I hope you get a chance to see it, though you should expect it to be difficult to watch.

Tomorrow is Mother's Day, and is a free day for the students. Monday, we go to the Australian Woolshed for a look at Australia's sheep industry.

Brisbane

Brisbane
6 May
Sunny am, late afternoon clouds
7430 steps

We left the Wattle Lodge and Canberra early this morning, up in time to see a beautiful sunrise after a cresent moon. Our coach driver knocked over a sign on the way to the Canberra airport. My senior colleague believes that he wasn't used to a coach as big as the one he was driving that day.

One thing that came up while we were meeting with the good folks at the US embassy yesterday. Do you know that you -- my fellow American citizens -- pay about three times as much for sugar as the rest of the world? And that's not the just white stuff you put in your coffee; we pay too much for all the sugar we use. Ponder for a moment how much you'd save, and then tell your friends and your congressman. We should really think about this.

As we yook off from the Canberra airport today, I thought about the first time I ever flew in a plane -- for several of our students, the flights in this course are their first; that's why I started thinking about it. I was 12, and my mother and grandmother were taking me out to Long Island, where my uncle and his family lived. I remember taxiing out to the runway, thinking "This isn't so bad," and then feeling terrified when the engines throttled up and we hurtled down the runway going 'way too fast! The bumpiness suddenly smoothing out when the wheels left the ground, the turbulence as we passed through the first cloud layer, my ears popping for teh first time, my certainty that the plane was going to break apart when I heard the loud bang -- someone explained to me that it was just the landing gear, of course. And of course, there's the first view of the horizon above the clouds, and the absolute knowledge for the very first time that the earth is round and you can see its roundness and sense its life-laden blue glow.

The ground around Canberra is very dry, apart form the aggressively irrigated bits of farmland. Locals were telling us about a severe drought lasting for a few years now. It looked as if storms might be heading in, but they appeared to have broken up. Good luck for us in the course, but not so good for the citizens of ACT.

We arrived in the Brisbane airport about 10:30, and made it to the TinBilly hostel about noon. It's definitely a place for the young; my colleagues and I are very much out of place here. After we put our bags in our rooms, the students were free to explore for the rest of the day. My colleagues and I walked down to the Queen Street Mall and took a quick look at the casino -- I quickly lost $10 AUD, as usual. I do not understand my senior colleague's luck. My junior colleague is wise enough to realize that the only way to win is not to play. I returned to the hostel and read awhile, then napped.

This evening, we ate at a passable restaurant, the Pig 'n' Whistle, after which we took a stroll around the South Bank Parklands, on the opposite side of the Brisbane River. The opera season starts May 14 -- frsutrating for me, as I'd love to see an opera down here some year. The Queensland opera seaon opens with La Boheme; Puccini holds a special place in my heart. Maybe someday ... they are also doing a stage version of The Hobbit -- sounds weird. In addition the the ads for the opera, we also saw some very entertaining street acrobats -- imagine two Australians pretending to be a Russian Siegfried and Roy without the animals and with contorns and you get the idea. The tights were red, and they had yellow stars on their left bum.

This next bit is somewhat directed to my lovely wife, but you all should read it, as I suspect you may never hear about this movie otherwise. Is the movie Downfall being released in American theaters? I will go see it in a day or so, and let you know more about it. The downfall is that of Adolph Hiter, it is a tragic account of his last days. I expect it to be difficult to watch; after all, he is one of maybe three of the most wicked men of the 20th century (along with Stalin and Pol Pot), and probably among the most wicked to ever live. It's hard to be sympathetic. The reason that my lovely wife might be interested in this is that Hitler is played by Bruno Ganz. If you ware familiar with the movie Wings of Desire or its sequel Far Away, So Close, then you have seen him as the angel who becomes human.

Tomorrow, we head off to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. Many of our students are excited at the opportunity to hold a koala; many of you parents will probably see a photo of that soon. We also celebrate the first of six birthdays we will have on the trip.

Parliament, the Embassy, and the ANZAC War Memorial

Our day tour in Canberra turned out much better thamn I thought it would -- I was very nervous about moving about, being on time, and having programs of interest to the students, but it all turned out just fine.

We began at the Australian Parliament house a little after 9am. There were some school groups ahead of us, so we didn't start our tour until 9:30am, but it really did not matter much. Our guide was a native of Thailand, I believe, though I'm sure she was an Australian citizen -- she certainly knew her stuff, as my junior colleague discovered when he asked her a couprl of tough questions.
Australian government, though a parliamentary system, is still organized in a way similar to our own. There are two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Representation in the House is proportional to population size -- they solve some of the apportionment problems by allowing the size of their house to vary. Each state is equally represented in the Senate, though the territories have fewer votes there. Tax bills and expenditure bills must begin in the House.
Of course, the Prime Minister is the head of government, so that makes things somewhat different, as the powers of the executive branch and legislative branch are therefore merged in Australia. There are some other differences, too, such as the mandatory voting of the citizens.

The parliament building is beautiful, and full of symbolism for the Australian people and its land. White marble columns in the entry represent the eucalyptus trees, while dark red columns in the lobby stand for teh satinays. The color theme of the senate chamber is the ochre of the central desert, while the house is the sea green of the ocean. There's earth from the Olgas around the outside of the building, and a large representation of an Aboriginal painting serves as a central location on the front of the building. The roof of the building is a park -- the people walk over the representatives. And above everything is the Australian flag, waving atop four stainless steels pillars.

There is nothing obstructing the view between Parliament House and the ANZAC War Memorial. That, too, is intentional. If a government is going to send its young man and women into harms way, one hopes that they take a good, long look at the War Memorial before doing it. The visit to the ANZAC War Memorial and Museum was emotional for some of our students; I saw at least one getting a little choked up. It is a memorial; I believe that the Australians have done their best to list every one of their casualties in every action they've ever been in. Many red poppies adorn the long list, put there by families of teh fallen. Even names of those killed in the Boer War have their poppy.
The museum is one of the better ones I have seen. There are relics, memories, battlefield diagrams, trophies, and a retelling of the history of it all. I think I've talked about the heartbreaking Gallipoli campaign in another year's journal, so I want to just say a few things about the Battle of the Coral Sea. At the time of WWII, the Japanese had invaded New Guinea and were setting their sights, so it was thought, on Australia. Australian troops were engaged in Africa, and the British were unwilling to release them so that Australia could defend itself. But along came the American troops. Because of our commitment to help and our subsequent involvement in the Coral Sea, Australia was saved, and then in turn played a major role in the rest of the war. Australians recognized that we were probably better to have as an ally, at least in part because we did not treat them like dirt (I think the Brits have never quite realized that they don't own it anymore.) That was the birth of the Australian-American alliance, the strongest we have, in my opinion.

Preserving and nurturing that alliance is the job of the staff of teh American Embassy, one of our stiops today. The staff members we spoke with reveal a deep level of patriootism and service that I frankly sis not expect -- and I believe was not due to any kind of party affiliation. I think that a few of our students might be thinking about foreign service now, and I can't blame them.

Well, there are people waiting to use the machine, so I think I'll sign off now. We leave for Brisbane tomorrow; I'll write more after we arrive.

Canberra

4 May
Canberra
partly cloudy
<1000 steps

I'm at one of those overpriced internet kiosks, so please be patient with the spelling and sentence structure. This will also probably be short.

I was at my usual internet place in Sydney this morning, writing about Kings Cross, when their network froze and my entry was lost. I when that happens. I will try to recreate it, but I know that I'll fall short. I was writing about Kings Cross, as I don't think I've ever dealt just with the environs in the part of Sydney where we stay.

I know that I've alluded to the nature of Kings Cross, and it's deserved -- but to compare it with USA sleaze is unfair. Kings Cross is the area immediately around the intersection of Darlinghurst Road and Williams Street -- it's a little over a block long. The block contains many small shops: internet cafes like the one where I usually work on the journal; diners, pastry shops and other eateries; backpackers travel agents; and of course the trade. There are s that troll for business; it's best just to ignore them and move on -- to me, there's nothing attractive about that sort of thing at all; I see the economics of it all and none of the ism.
There are also street people: some aboriginals, but also out-of-luck white folks, too. They sleep on benches until the police chase them along; they beg for change; some of the women try to pick up men. It's all very pathetic and sad.
There's no doubt a business going on, but I really don't think that it leads to a lot of violent crime in the Kings Cross area -- that probably takes place out in some of teh western suburbs of Sydney, where there's more gang activity.

The internet cafe that I use is a small shop, probably a converted boutique of some sort. They've crammed about 40 older computers into it, running Windows. It's run by a Taiwanese family, who are very nice and seem to remember me from year to year. It's $3 for essentially unlimited time. Apart from the network crash this morning, I've always been happy with the place.

I don't recall describing the staff at the Bernly. The owner and his wife are immigrants from Italy, I think they speak at least four languages. They treat us very well; the owner is taking the faculty of the course on a private tour of Sydney when we return late in May -- I'm not sure exactly what a 'private tour' includes, but my senior colleague did ask him if he was a good driver. The owner has also arranged for us to have a group photo taken before we return to the States, so that's nice. Other staff members are from Germany, Indonesia, Turkey, and Korea; they are as friendly as the owners.
The faculty stay on the ground floor. We have 'en suite' rooms that include a bath and fridge. The floors above are for teh students. Some rooms share a bath, and allow for four guests per room.
The top floor gives a very nice view of Sydney; Kings Cross is at the high point between central Sydney and the ocean. If you were to continue east from Kings Cross, you'd eventually reach Bondi Beach.
The Bernly is on Springfield Avenue, one block west of Darlinghurst. It's a very short, narrow residential street that ends in an alley serving as the back door to the shops and boutiques of Kings Cross. We are within two doors of a medical clinic, and a half-block walk to the Kings Cross station of the subway. It is quite convenient. There's an IGA grocery store right across the street, and a street vendor selling fresh produce a little farther along.

There are also a variety of restaurants. Last night, we took the students to Out of India for an Indian-style banquet. I was a little nervous; I was not impressed with the Indian cuisine my graduate school friends at SIU would prepare for me. But it actually turned out quite nicely -- I was especially impressed with the tandoori chicken and the beef vindaloo, very spicy. So, I could be convinced that I misjudged it. The restaurant's owner claimed that Bill Clinton ate there and said it was the best meal he had ever had.

Our trip today to Canberra was very short. We stopped at a McDonalds in Goulburn -- they're the same all over, but we can't eat adventurous every meal. Our hostel here is somewhat outside the city, which is a bit disappointing, as it limits the amount of exploring the students can do. But it's a nice place: clean rooms and kitchen facilities; nice activity areas, and a friendly staff. We ordered 20 pizzas from Dominos for dinner -- and that is a bit of an adventure, as I don't think that Australians really do pizza well. I will never understand why someone would use BBQ sauce as the base for a pizza, though sdome of the students say they like it.

Police Museum, Library, Blue Mountains

Sunday, 1 May
Sunny am, showers late pm
4450 steps

I visited the Police and Justice Museum near Circular Quay today. When we first started running this course in 2000, my younger son wanted to be a detective when he grew up, so I first went to this museum on his behalf. It's a very nice, smaller museum, the publkic face of a historical archive of the NSW police. Each time I have visited (2000, 2001, and 2005) there has been a different special exhibits along with the permanent display collection. The special exhibit focuses on jails in Australia this time. The jails were built upon the polygonal model -- is it called the panoptikon? There were floor plans, photos, displays of the prisoner uniforms, weapons made by prisoners, and many other things. The prisoner weaponry was impressive. The most ingenious device was a nasty-looking crossbow, while the most bizarre was a shiv hidden in the handle of a ping-pong handle.

Notable quotes: A prison is "a machine for grinding rogues honest." [Jeremy Bentham, about the new model of prison]

There are two additional deaths to add to the list of NSW police killed in the line of duty. One was killed on 14 January, 2001, while anopther was killed on 3 April, 2002. So, unfortunately, the example I use in my statistics class about deaths of NSW police got a little larger.

There is also an exhibit on the Aborigines and the law. I have nothing new to add, apart from this quote: "They seem'd to set no Value upon anything we gave them, nor would part with anything of their own ... This, in my opinion, argues that they think themselves provided with all the necessarys of life." [James Cook, logbook of the Endeavor, 1770]. Clearly, Captain Cook was writing about his first contact with the Aborigines.

"Warra, warra!" This is what the Aborigines shouted at the first ships to enter Botany Bay. It translates as "Go away, go away!" I visited the NSW library to start researching my project on the panhandling laws and aborigines. I picked up the above quote, along with some other useful but not directly relevant information. I may have more when I visit Canberra in the next few days.

It was odd that only the reading room of the library was open. I would have expected more, since the children are off from school for the weekend.

Monday, 2 May
Cloudy am, sunny afternoon
7520 steps

Today we went to the Blue Mountains, a system of canyons cut into the plateau region west of Sydney. A blue mist hangs in the air; there are several stories about this, ranging from moisture to koala farts. I walked a lot through the rainforest, so my legs are pretty sore now.
Everything in Sydney seems so nice, soi it's a real eye-opener for the students to take the train through the western suburbs -- the poor people must live somewhere, of course(!) The train passes through many depressing neighborhoods, clearly dominated by gangs and drugs. It does put Kings Cross in perspective.

When walking in the woods, people should be quiet.

Tuesday, 3 May
Sunny all day
<1000 steps

Today was a day to do laundry and grade journals. I am a little less than halfway through journal reading. My laundry is all done, though. And I even sent my lovely wife and my charming mother flowers for Mother's Day. The florist is just across the street from this internet cafe, so I will pass it along to the students.

And a note to my two sons: SUNDAY IS MOTHER'S DAY. SUNDAY IS MOTHER'S DAY.
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Sunday Morning

Potts Point, Sydney, Australia
1 May
Sunny warm am
4560 steps (on Saturday)

Okay, so I saw this sign that said "Undercover police are patrolling this area for kerb crawlers," and I had to find out what is a 'kerb crawler.' You can look it up yourself, if you really want to know, but it has something to do with what Kings Cross is known for in these parts. And to the parents: we are officially staying in Potts Point, not Kings Cross. It just that Kings Cross is where the McDonald's is. And it's where this interne cafe is.

Yesterday was the day we introduced the students to the Harbor Ferry system. There are a few moments that are consistent across the different years that this course runs, and one of those happens when we go to Circular Quay (pronounced "key"). We board a subway at Kings Cross, transfer at the Town Hall stop to a different subway. All of this is underground. The subway car then climbs and emerges from underground, and goes above the Quay for a splendid view of the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House! It has never yet failed to take the students' breaths for awhile; we build a few minutes into thechedule so that the students can take photos of it all from the platform.

We use the ferry to go out to the Taronga Zoo. Again, we've had nice weather so far, and the trip out was sunny and mild, with little chop from the water. Getting into the zoo ran smoothly. This involves getting into a cable car that goes up a hillside to the zoo entrance. We then spend a couple of hours walking down the hill, back to the ferry. We let the students explore on their own, of course.

Last year, there was a lot of construction going on at the zoo, as they were installing several mega-habitats. I expected it to be finished this year, but it looks as though they have a ways to go before it's all done. They have finished the food court, an indoor/outdoor eatery that offers a reasonable selection. No peacocks attacking me for my meat pie this year (see the 2000 journal). I had a greek salad, it was okay.

There was not too much that was different from prior years. I always like the bird show, so I never miss that. We did find two echidnas in their enclosure. An echinda is a monotreme, probably most closely related to the duck-billed platypus. It's an egg-laying mammal, but unlike the platypus, it has no teats; mother's milk comes from sweat-like glands on mother's underside. The female carries the egg externally, altering her belly by muscular contractions to create a pouch for it.
Echidnas most closely resemble out porcupine. They're not exactly quills on its back, but rather short stubby pointed sticklike bristles -- you'd not want to step on one. When threatned, the echidna digs a little hole and hunkers down so that it looks like a little pile of stubbly grass. I can't imagine any predator looking at this as a tasty critter, so well-adapted are they. We had seen one last year at the zoo, and I think it's on the DVD from last year. The neat thing about seeing two this year was that one was camoflaged, as I described above.

In the afternoon, we took the ferry over to Darling Harbour to walk through the Sydney Aquarium. My faborite part of the aquarium is the reef shark tank. It's a chance to see some of the big sharks and rays moving around, as you walk through tunnels built into the tank. I could watch the big stingrays move through the water all day; they appear to fly through the water rather than swim, with their graceful wing undulation.

In the evening, my senior colleague and I went to the Sydney Opera House to see Influence, a play by David Williamson. Williamson is one of Australia's most prominent playwrights, though you may not have heard of him. He wrote the screenplays for the movies Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously, and has written many other plays performed at the Opera House. The first year I was here, a student and I went to see The Great Man, and last year, my colleague and I went to see Amigos.
Influence is an episode in the life of a hate-mongering radio talk-show host: the dealings with his aging ballerina 'trophy' wife, his teenaged daughter by his first wife, his sister, his father who was secretly a Croatian war criminal from WWII, his chauffer, and his Turkish housekeeper. Many references to the world today, to 9/11 and its effect on Australians, to the influence of hate shows. It's edgy black comedy, and not for the sensitive. But I like his writing a lot, and hope to see more over the next few years.

I send a note of congratulations to the senior biologist at my home college, on the birth of her daughter. If you know Lynne, pass it along.
Today, I am going out to Watson Bay for a walk around, and then I'm going to see what the Sydeny Public Library has to offer.