Several days into one

There are svereal days here. This is the first day I could get to a machine.

May 2-4
Canberra
Partly sunny and cool

This was a day of travel, from Sydney to Canberra. Our drive was about six hours, leaving at 9 and arriving a little after 3. We made a few stops: at Berrima, at Goulburn, at Lake George, and at Mt. Ainslie. We finally arrived at the City Walk Hotel, where I am writing this.

Berrima is a pleasant village off the Hume highway, about 90 minutes south of Sydney. When driving in to the town, you could easily imagine that you were in a New England town in the autumn, as there are so many deciduous trees about. What makes this surprising to me is that the native trees in Australia: eucalyptus, banksia, paperbark, etc., are all evergreen. There should be no fall, no fall color. Yet, there it was, all around us. I don't know that the importation of the European species of trees has had a deleterious effect on the ecosystem in the same way as the introduced animals have, but it may well have. In any case, the upshot is that there is fall color here.

We stopped for lunch at a McDonald's just off the highway in Goulburn. The similarities and differences between McDonalds in Australia and in America are evident: there's a pastry shop built into the store, as well as a deli section. And of course, the burgers have a nice slice of beetroot on them. I don't know how that got started, but it's an interesting taste. One student pointed out that the beet adds a sweetness similar to ketchup. I think it's more like sweet pickle relish, but the idea is the same.

After lunch, we made our way down to Canberra. We stopped for a few minutes along Lake George, a dried-up catchment for the surrounding mountains. It is not so many years ago that the lake was full; one can find photos from the 50's of boating on the lake. The coach driver told me that there had been a few inches of water here and there last year after a winter storm, but that was the exception. The stations lease the lakebed for grazing; as we drove by we could see many sheep wandering about. The entire area is so very dry. They have been in the grip of a drought for several years now, with little sign of it abating. There are numerous water usage restrictions in place in the Goulburn area. It seems to be a very different situation from that which we've run into in the Alice Springs area. I do wonder if Australia is a continent in transition, with arid and arable regions interchanging.

Our hotel is the City Walk, a very nice budget hotel right off the central shopping area in Canberra. It's going through a remodeling right now -- hence the delays in posting these journal entries (no internet). But it's very clean and fairly roomy, so I think we'll be using it next year.

. . .

It's now May 4, and we are waiting at the Canberra airport for our flight to Brisbane. I thought I'd catch you up on our activities from yesterday: Parliament House, the U.S. Embassy, and the ANZAC War Memorial.

We began our day tour at Parliament House, the seat of Australian government. It is a striking building, with architecture laden with symbolism. You can see it from anywhere in Canberra, it seems; four angled aluminum struts like boomerangs supporting a large Australian flag. The building itself though is mostly below ground, with parkland above it -- so the people are above the government, not the other way 'round. The interior of the building is very beautiful, with a freshness to its design appropriate to a young country.

Our guide was very friendly and knowledgeable, not only of his own government but also of our own. Australia's government is similar to ours in that it is bicameral, with a house of representatives apportioned by population, and a senate equally apportioned by state. It is unlike ours in that it is a parliament. The party that controls the house forms the government, with the party's leader becoming the prime minister. So, there's no real separate executive branch.

Oddly enough, I found a star guide with aboriginal constellations and legends at the souvenir shop. Seemed like an odd place to find such a thing, but I'll take it.

Our next stop was the U.S. Embassy. Now I'll frankly admit that this is a part of the tour that makes me the most nervous -- I don't think anything bad will happen, it's just that foreign policy stuff not my thing at all, so I assume that the students will be bored to tears by it. But the fact is that the students respond very well to the officers' stories, and I think we usually get a few students who begin thinking about a career in the Foreign Service after this meeting. We had brief presentations by three section heads: public affairs, economics, and political. These were followed by a question-&-answer session in which the students acquitted themselves very well, coming up with questions that I would not have thought of.

We broke for lunch at the city's central area, actually not far from our hotel. Most of the students opted to buy lunch in the food court on the lower level of the main shopping area. I had a kebab plate from a Turkish place, very good. It included tabouli salad and some humus, one of my favorites. There was a little boy and his mum sitting nearby us, and the boy kept his eye on me the whole time. The exotic American. Probably, I just had food in my beard.

Our last stop for the day was the ANZAC War Memorial. For me, the War Memorial is always a bit of an emotional stop. I do not think that there's one bit of romance to war, and it a testament to just how stupid we are as a species to get ourselves into these bloody debacles. But having said that, I have found in recent years a fascination with the strategies and tactics of battle, and the way that the will of the troops seems ultimately to be the deciding factor in who will carry the day. It seems that the best military leaders understand this, and the best troops will seek these leaders out and fight beyond their strength for them.

There's an example of this showcased at the ANZAC War Museum that involves US and Australian troops cooperating for perhaps the first time. In WWI, US troops were under orders not to take commands from the Australian General Monash, who they had heard was an excellent and unconventional tactician. So, they went to his camp. took off their US uniforms, put on the ANZAC's, and fought with Aussie troops in a successful battle in France (and I will look up the battle for you, gentle reader). It was the first of a series of cooperative ventures that would culminate in the ANZUS treaty.

Australia was attacked by Japan in WWII, and their troops were away defending British interests in Africa. There was very little to stop Japan from occupying at least the northern half of Australia -- except us. At least one objective of the Battle of the Coral Sea was to push Japan away from Australia, and Australians viewed our entry into that battle as a rescue. Australians have not forgotten that, and have stood with us ever since, even when they don't like our actions.

I found The Black Diggers at the ANZAC souvenir shop, too! I had read some at the NSW library, but am very happy to have my own copy now. When we're at Magnetic Island, I might take the ferry back into Townsville to do some more work on my project.

We are currently on the flight to Brisbane, and are about to start our descent, so I will sign off for now.

. . .

It is now May 5. We returned from Lone Pine Koala sanctuary awhile ago, and I wandered about until I found this Global Gossip location on Edward St. near the Eagle St. Pier. I am pretty impressed with Global Gossip, and will try to find them wherever I can.

Lone Pine is a wonderful sanctuary. If you've ever watched the Animal Planet channel and have seen a show on koalas, it's likely that it was filmed at Lone Pine. The sanctuary is committed to protecting the koala, which these days is very endangered due to loss of habitat -- that means that people are cutting down the eucalyptus forests to build more. It's probably a losing battle, but they're fighting the good fight.

But there's so much more at Lone Pine: kangaroos that you can feed by hand, emus, wombats, sheep and sheep dogs, injured birds that are cared for, dingoes, and many other Australian animals. We were there for over 2 1/2 hours, and the students could have stayed for the rest of the day.

The one disappointment was that the flying fox colony was gone! We always take the Mirimar Cruise up the Brisbane River to see the fruit bats, a huge colony that covers an entire island in the river. but as we approached the spot, the boat pilot told us that the bats had flown away a few days before. As we left the boat, I asked him what was going on, and he said that the bats had been leaving in the winter for the last few years, but they had never left this early. I wonder if this signals a change in their behavior. If so, that would be pretty sad; seeing the colony on the cruise has always been a high point.

I'll post some photos of the last few days at Flickr. We are at the Australian Zoo tomorrow -- that's the one run by Steve, the Crocodile Hunter. Then we leave Sunday for Townsville and Magnetic Island. If you don't see a new post for a few days, it's because I'm in transit. But I will write when I can.