April 26
Sydney
Mostly sunny and mild
We were awakened twice during the night by the hotel fire alarm. It's a little different than what I've experienced in the States; the alarm sounds in the room as well as in the halls, and one then hears a voice saying that the fire alarm system has been activated and the hotel guests should stand by. So, one has time enough to throw a few clothes on and retrieve the passport and money. After a few minutes, the sound changes from a beep to a wail, and the voice instructs the guest to evacuate.
The first alarm was at 3:30am. After getting downstairs, we waited outside for just a moment before the firefighters arrived, and then a little while longer before they gave the all-clear for us to return to our rooms. The firefighters said that someone was probably smoking and set off the alarm.
We were all awakened again around 6am. The drill was more or less the same, but then they discovered smoke coming from an electrical closet on the third floor, and kept us out while they checked it out and let the smoke dissipate. They shut down the suspicious air conditioning unit and stuck around for a while to make sure that there was not anything else going on. WE all got to go back to our rooms around 6:45 but like many of the students, I just stayed up and started my day. My guess is that we'll have some repair guys in the building soon.
As my lovely wife will attest, this is not my first experience with hotel fire alarms. But I have to say that the Y Hotel's fire alarm system seems to be more considerate of the guests. Announcing that the alarm has been activated but that we should stand by presumably allows the hotel staff to check out whether an evacuation is truly necessary. That's more than we got at the Holiday Inn at Atlantic City, where my lovely wife and I found ourselves outside in our pajamas on the Boardwalk at midnight -- in January -- with our two children who were very young boys at the time. That time, it turned out that some idiot was smoking in the stairwell and set off the alarm. A whole building evacuated and a fire department called because of a cigarette?!
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I spent the day on laundry, errands for the course, and a walk around the Botanical Gardens. I always get a bit of sticker shock the first time I do laundry over here. The machines are $3 for a load of wash, $3 for dryer time. I bought a box of laundry soap that should last me the course with some left over for my colleague or the students.
In general, the cost of food and other daily needs has risen a troubling amount in the last two years. And since we're much closer to parity between Australian dollars and US dollars, we really feel it more while traveling. The course money is good, and my colleague and I plan on throwing in some extra meals along the way, so the students will be fine. But I can see that it's affecting the Australians; the economy is a constant topic on the news. There are two forces driving food prices here at the moment: the price of oil; and the severe drought affecting much of the country's breadbasket. So, Australians are hunkering down for a rough patch.
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The Botanical Garden was very pleasant. The weather has improved, so a lot of folks were out walking, picnicking, playing rugby or Frisbee, and generally enjoying the return of good weather. We arrived at the tail end of a two-week period of dreary skies and showers. It was good for filling the catchments and easing the drought, but the gloom was foreign to Sydney; it's tuned to sunshine.
The flying fox colony in the Gardens put on a very good show for the camera bugs. They were squabbling and flying about. Though they are classified as bats, they are neither nocturnal nor carnivorous, preferring to eat eucalyptus blossoms and/or farmer's fruit. A couple of them even obliged flying about for a moment so that I could get a good couple of photos. We'll see how they turn out.
It is now the morning of the 27th; we will leave in a little while for Canberra. The course is off to a very good start. The students are good traveling companions: not too many problems, and when problems have come up they've let me know right away. Of course, sometimes there's nothing I can do, but it's still good for me to be in the information loop. And they've acquitted themselves well also, doing what we've asked of them with little complaint. I am very happy to have this group traveling with me.
On to Canberra!
Saturday, April 26, 2008
ANZAC Day
April 25
Sydney
Partly Sunny and Mild, Windy
(NOTE: This didn't upload properly the first time around, fo that's why it's out of order. Sorry about that!)
ANZAC Day is a day of remembrance and commemoration for those who have served in the defense of Australia in some way.
The date of April 25 commemorates the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops joining the Battle of Gallipoli against the Turks. The Gallipoli Peninsula is a mountainous region alongside the Dardanelles, the strait leading to Constantinopole. Control of Gallipoli was therefore critical for the British; with the strait open to the British, an attack on the Turkish avenue into Europe was possible. Of course, the Turks had gun emplacements on the hilltops, heavily protected with machine gunners dug in all along the hillside. The ANZAC objective was to assist in capturing the hilltops by fighting their way up the hill, trench by trench. That they threw themselves into this with grit, tenacity, and pluck, earned the ANZAC soldier a reputation that has become legendary.
Of course, this came at a heavy cost to the ANZAC troops, with thousands dying in the battle. Moreover, the British commanders had their priorities backwards in the battle, worrying about freeing the channel for the British ships instead of concentrating on the hills on Gallipoli first. Without support, the ANZAC troops had no hope of taking the summit; the greatest success was getting so many ANZAC troops down from the hillside that had pretty much turned into a trap for them.
ANZAC Day became a day of remembrance in 1916, though it caught on as a national holiday only slowly. But by the late 1940s, the holiday began to look much like it does today. The events of the day include: 1) a pre-dawn 'stand to' attended by veterans and immediate family; 2) a parade march through the city; and 3) a commemorative service following the parade. Some Australian cities will vary this a bit, but the format is pretty much followed in Sydney. And of course, the holiday has grown in meaning so that it now is a day of remembrance and commemoration for all veterans in any military action in which Australia has taken part.
The pre-dawn service is considered private, so I skipped that one and advised the students too do the same. (I certainly could have gone, as I am still jet-lagged enough so that I am awake and ready to start my day at 3:30am! I'm sure the same is true for many of the students.) I put the 9am parade into the student's planner, though I told them that they did not need to attend the parade as a group.
I wandered around Hyde Park for awhile before the parade began. The area to the north was serving as a staging area for the marchers, and there were some vendors selling tea and sausages. A group of youngsters sold me a sprig of rosemary, an herb worn on this day in remembrance.
I watched the parade from a very nice vantage point along George Street, across from the Queen Victoria Building. I hope I got some nice photos of the event; I'll post them if they turn out. Standing next to me was a man from California visiting Sydney for the third time, so we chatted a bit during the parade. I was eventually muscled out of my spot by a family that was rather rude, but I was pretty much ready to go anyway, as the parade had already gone on for two hours.
The format of the parade is pretty straightforward: lots of marching bands, lots of bagpipes and drums, and lots of marching veterans. No floats. Veterans and sometimes their families march behind the banners for their battalion, regiment, or corps. Almost every type of service is honored. Of course infantry, light horse, armored divisions, naval, and air force were present. Signal corps, intelligence units, medics and nurses had their banners. Even ones that I would not have thought of were there: the Dental Service had a banner, as did the Entertainment Corps and the Carrier Pigeons. Even the War Correspondents had a banner. There was a unit of French and Polish veterans, and US veterans of the small ships corps had their place as well. No wonder it lasted so long.
The bagpipes and marching bands seemed to play either Scotland the Brave or Waltzing Matilda. I must have heard both of those half a dozen times each. But I love bagpipe music, so I enjoyed it.
The commemorative service began in the early afternoon, and lasted about an hour. It featured a choir and another bagpipe and drum corps. The speeches were not very memorable -- but I don't suppose the speeches at these services ever are. It was moving in the same way that a Memorial Day service is. During both the parade and the service, I was struck by the personal connections between the participants and the bystanders; a portion of the crowd would start cheering for a particular veteran who was also a great-grandfather; or a mother would take a picture of her son as he marched with the band.
I spent the rest of the day running a few errands regarding the course and photographing ibises in the park. Tomorrow is a free day, so I'll use the time to get my photos developed and do laundry. I also hope to wander about the Botanical Garden and maybe get a picture or two of a flying fox.
Sydney
Partly Sunny and Mild, Windy
(NOTE: This didn't upload properly the first time around, fo that's why it's out of order. Sorry about that!)
ANZAC Day is a day of remembrance and commemoration for those who have served in the defense of Australia in some way.
The date of April 25 commemorates the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops joining the Battle of Gallipoli against the Turks. The Gallipoli Peninsula is a mountainous region alongside the Dardanelles, the strait leading to Constantinopole. Control of Gallipoli was therefore critical for the British; with the strait open to the British, an attack on the Turkish avenue into Europe was possible. Of course, the Turks had gun emplacements on the hilltops, heavily protected with machine gunners dug in all along the hillside. The ANZAC objective was to assist in capturing the hilltops by fighting their way up the hill, trench by trench. That they threw themselves into this with grit, tenacity, and pluck, earned the ANZAC soldier a reputation that has become legendary.
Of course, this came at a heavy cost to the ANZAC troops, with thousands dying in the battle. Moreover, the British commanders had their priorities backwards in the battle, worrying about freeing the channel for the British ships instead of concentrating on the hills on Gallipoli first. Without support, the ANZAC troops had no hope of taking the summit; the greatest success was getting so many ANZAC troops down from the hillside that had pretty much turned into a trap for them.
ANZAC Day became a day of remembrance in 1916, though it caught on as a national holiday only slowly. But by the late 1940s, the holiday began to look much like it does today. The events of the day include: 1) a pre-dawn 'stand to' attended by veterans and immediate family; 2) a parade march through the city; and 3) a commemorative service following the parade. Some Australian cities will vary this a bit, but the format is pretty much followed in Sydney. And of course, the holiday has grown in meaning so that it now is a day of remembrance and commemoration for all veterans in any military action in which Australia has taken part.
The pre-dawn service is considered private, so I skipped that one and advised the students too do the same. (I certainly could have gone, as I am still jet-lagged enough so that I am awake and ready to start my day at 3:30am! I'm sure the same is true for many of the students.) I put the 9am parade into the student's planner, though I told them that they did not need to attend the parade as a group.
I wandered around Hyde Park for awhile before the parade began. The area to the north was serving as a staging area for the marchers, and there were some vendors selling tea and sausages. A group of youngsters sold me a sprig of rosemary, an herb worn on this day in remembrance.
I watched the parade from a very nice vantage point along George Street, across from the Queen Victoria Building. I hope I got some nice photos of the event; I'll post them if they turn out. Standing next to me was a man from California visiting Sydney for the third time, so we chatted a bit during the parade. I was eventually muscled out of my spot by a family that was rather rude, but I was pretty much ready to go anyway, as the parade had already gone on for two hours.
The format of the parade is pretty straightforward: lots of marching bands, lots of bagpipes and drums, and lots of marching veterans. No floats. Veterans and sometimes their families march behind the banners for their battalion, regiment, or corps. Almost every type of service is honored. Of course infantry, light horse, armored divisions, naval, and air force were present. Signal corps, intelligence units, medics and nurses had their banners. Even ones that I would not have thought of were there: the Dental Service had a banner, as did the Entertainment Corps and the Carrier Pigeons. Even the War Correspondents had a banner. There was a unit of French and Polish veterans, and US veterans of the small ships corps had their place as well. No wonder it lasted so long.
The bagpipes and marching bands seemed to play either Scotland the Brave or Waltzing Matilda. I must have heard both of those half a dozen times each. But I love bagpipe music, so I enjoyed it.
The commemorative service began in the early afternoon, and lasted about an hour. It featured a choir and another bagpipe and drum corps. The speeches were not very memorable -- but I don't suppose the speeches at these services ever are. It was moving in the same way that a Memorial Day service is. During both the parade and the service, I was struck by the personal connections between the participants and the bystanders; a portion of the crowd would start cheering for a particular veteran who was also a great-grandfather; or a mother would take a picture of her son as he marched with the band.
I spent the rest of the day running a few errands regarding the course and photographing ibises in the park. Tomorrow is a free day, so I'll use the time to get my photos developed and do laundry. I also hope to wander about the Botanical Garden and maybe get a picture or two of a flying fox.
Photos on Flickr
If you look at the left side of the page, you'll see a link to my Flickr account. I've uploaded a few photos I took with the Canon and the stupid digital camera. Enjoy.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Taronga Zoo and Sydney Aquarium
April 24
Sydney
Breezy and cloudy with afternoon rain
Finding the Kinkos this morning facilitated uploading the journal entries, and should help also with uploading what photos I do take. I'm doing much less than I did in the past -- my colleague is doing the course blog at http://ecaustralia08.blogspot.com and should have many nice ones there.
I'm pretty happy that I've gone back to film. It lacks the immediacy of feedback, but the shutter opens without a delay when the button is pressed. And I just went too long with cameras that behaved that way to ever be comfortable with the digitals -- at least until they find a way to shorten the delay so that I don't notice it.
We introduced the students to Sydney's mass transit system today, taking them on the subway and then a couple of ferry rides. My colleague went out earlier and bought day passes for all of us. $16 (Australian) gets a ticket that is good until 4am the next day on all the subways and most of the ferries.
Our ferry to Taronga Zoo was one of the rivercats, which is a little different than what we encountered in the past. The older green and yellow ferries are still in use, and in fact we did ride on those back from Taronga and over to Darling Harbour later in the day. I prefer the older ones; ferry rides are best done on an outside deck, and there's only space for 28 outside on the rivercats. There's plenty of outside room on the older ferries.
So far, I'm pretty impressed with this group of students along with us. They've been engaged in the course experiences with little complaining. More importantly, they seem to be pretty friendly with one another. A group that looks out for one another will do very well as we progress through the course.
The last time I was in Australia was 2006, and in that two years a lot has changed at Taronga Zoo. Several habitats have come online, such as the one for the elephants. The cable cars we ride up to the top of the zoo glide right over the elephant habitat, much to the delighted surprise of the students who rode up with me. The ocean animal exhibit that includes the sea lions and the little penguins has been relocated into a more sophisticated viewing area, though the old empty and drained pools have not yet been dismantled.
New to me was an outdoor riverbank habitat that includes a platypus -- it was in its burrow when I was there, unfortunately. I also did not get a photo of the echidna, though my colleague did. But I did get nice photos of some black swans and other birds, and can also include photos of tree kangaroos and swamp wallabies in next year's course booklet.
The bird show had an unexpected moment involving an Andean Condor, the only non-native bird in the show. It's an enormous bird, with a wingspan of nearly ten feet, and when it soared above the crowd at the show, it startled several birds in the area, who started squawking and chasing it around. Though the host treated it as a humorous event, it was pretty clear that the handlers were concerned. The birds used in the show all have tracking devices installed, and so the bird would be found should it not return; the staff was no doubt more concerned about what damage the local birds might do to the condor. But it did come back eventually and finish the show. All in all, it was an enjoyable experience, as usual.
There is also a new attraction nearby the Aquarium, a nature center called Wildlife World. I hope to scout it out on Saturday to see whether it would be suitable for future years. It looks to have several enclosed ecosystems and might serve as a good introduction to the rainforests and plains regions.
We arrived at the Sydney Aquarium in mid-afternoon, right around feeding time for the estuarine crocodile. The handlers come out with a large fish that looked like a barramundi, and, protected by a thick Plexiglas shield, held the fish over it and waited for the croc to jump up to take the fish. It obliged after a moment, much to the delight of the crowd.
It was also feeding time for the little penguins. They are every bit as cute as the koalas, and seem to have a better temper about them.
One exhibit feature that caught my attention was a visitor-controlled camera that allowed enhanced views of some of the tanks. The visitor could manipulate the position of the videos camera and control the zoom factor, with the image showing up on a screen nearby the tank. This allowed a person to concentrate on features of the small fish not otherwise visible.
We dispersed at the Aquarium. It's located in Darling Harbour, a very busy area that caters to tourists with many restaurants, shops, and other museums. I came back to the hotel to begin working on their first quiz, taken on Sunday.
When my colleague returned in the evening, we went out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and then visited a nearby supermarket. Food prices down here have gone up so much in the last two years! It is quite unbelievable. Bananas have always been ridiculously high here -- they grow the darned things in Queensland, but I think those are shipped to Asia, with Australians buying imports from the Philippines. But everything else is expensive as well, very different from what I had become accustomed to in past years. It's oil prices, of course, but also the drought here has driven up food prices, too. It's worse than in the states.
Tomorrow is ANZAC Day, and I hope to see some of the students at the parades and services. It will be interesting to see what the Australians do.
Sydney
Breezy and cloudy with afternoon rain
Finding the Kinkos this morning facilitated uploading the journal entries, and should help also with uploading what photos I do take. I'm doing much less than I did in the past -- my colleague is doing the course blog at http://ecaustralia08.blogspot.com and should have many nice ones there.
I'm pretty happy that I've gone back to film. It lacks the immediacy of feedback, but the shutter opens without a delay when the button is pressed. And I just went too long with cameras that behaved that way to ever be comfortable with the digitals -- at least until they find a way to shorten the delay so that I don't notice it.
We introduced the students to Sydney's mass transit system today, taking them on the subway and then a couple of ferry rides. My colleague went out earlier and bought day passes for all of us. $16 (Australian) gets a ticket that is good until 4am the next day on all the subways and most of the ferries.
Our ferry to Taronga Zoo was one of the rivercats, which is a little different than what we encountered in the past. The older green and yellow ferries are still in use, and in fact we did ride on those back from Taronga and over to Darling Harbour later in the day. I prefer the older ones; ferry rides are best done on an outside deck, and there's only space for 28 outside on the rivercats. There's plenty of outside room on the older ferries.
So far, I'm pretty impressed with this group of students along with us. They've been engaged in the course experiences with little complaining. More importantly, they seem to be pretty friendly with one another. A group that looks out for one another will do very well as we progress through the course.
The last time I was in Australia was 2006, and in that two years a lot has changed at Taronga Zoo. Several habitats have come online, such as the one for the elephants. The cable cars we ride up to the top of the zoo glide right over the elephant habitat, much to the delighted surprise of the students who rode up with me. The ocean animal exhibit that includes the sea lions and the little penguins has been relocated into a more sophisticated viewing area, though the old empty and drained pools have not yet been dismantled.
New to me was an outdoor riverbank habitat that includes a platypus -- it was in its burrow when I was there, unfortunately. I also did not get a photo of the echidna, though my colleague did. But I did get nice photos of some black swans and other birds, and can also include photos of tree kangaroos and swamp wallabies in next year's course booklet.
The bird show had an unexpected moment involving an Andean Condor, the only non-native bird in the show. It's an enormous bird, with a wingspan of nearly ten feet, and when it soared above the crowd at the show, it startled several birds in the area, who started squawking and chasing it around. Though the host treated it as a humorous event, it was pretty clear that the handlers were concerned. The birds used in the show all have tracking devices installed, and so the bird would be found should it not return; the staff was no doubt more concerned about what damage the local birds might do to the condor. But it did come back eventually and finish the show. All in all, it was an enjoyable experience, as usual.
There is also a new attraction nearby the Aquarium, a nature center called Wildlife World. I hope to scout it out on Saturday to see whether it would be suitable for future years. It looks to have several enclosed ecosystems and might serve as a good introduction to the rainforests and plains regions.
We arrived at the Sydney Aquarium in mid-afternoon, right around feeding time for the estuarine crocodile. The handlers come out with a large fish that looked like a barramundi, and, protected by a thick Plexiglas shield, held the fish over it and waited for the croc to jump up to take the fish. It obliged after a moment, much to the delight of the crowd.
It was also feeding time for the little penguins. They are every bit as cute as the koalas, and seem to have a better temper about them.
One exhibit feature that caught my attention was a visitor-controlled camera that allowed enhanced views of some of the tanks. The visitor could manipulate the position of the videos camera and control the zoom factor, with the image showing up on a screen nearby the tank. This allowed a person to concentrate on features of the small fish not otherwise visible.
We dispersed at the Aquarium. It's located in Darling Harbour, a very busy area that caters to tourists with many restaurants, shops, and other museums. I came back to the hotel to begin working on their first quiz, taken on Sunday.
When my colleague returned in the evening, we went out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and then visited a nearby supermarket. Food prices down here have gone up so much in the last two years! It is quite unbelievable. Bananas have always been ridiculously high here -- they grow the darned things in Queensland, but I think those are shipped to Asia, with Australians buying imports from the Philippines. But everything else is expensive as well, very different from what I had become accustomed to in past years. It's oil prices, of course, but also the drought here has driven up food prices, too. It's worse than in the states.
Tomorrow is ANZAC Day, and I hope to see some of the students at the parades and services. It will be interesting to see what the Australians do.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
The Barracks and the Museum
April 23
Wet and Cloudy
We arrived about a half-hour late, after a flight that was a little choppy at times. The pilot told us that he was battling headwinds all the way down, and that was the result of the delay. Looking at the flightpath -- one of the things you can do on the QANTAS 747s -- we could see that he made some course corrections, most likely to avoid the more intense storm activity.
The airport was a little nuts with the arrival of Fifty Cent, the Wiggles, and a woman who I think was the actress who played the female barber in the movie Barbershop. Fifty Cent had a police escort out of the building. Lots of paparazzi. I had never seen that in person before; it is very reminiscent of the way our guppies behave in the tank at home at feeding time. But, we eventually got to our coach, and the driver brought us straight away to the Y Hotel just off Hyde Park.
It has been raining here for 11 consecutive days. They have been living with a severe drought, sop they really need it. And we thus far have been able to dodge the raindrops. But it made the walk through Hyde Park less than spectacular. The weather should improve today and tomorrow.
Our visit to the Hyde Parks Barracks was very good, as usual. The Barracks was one of the first public buildings constructed in Sydney. Governor Macquarie, determined to create a true colony from the tent city around Port Jackson, had the convicts construct the Barracks so that they would have a proper building to live in. The conditions inside were appalling by modern standards, but no doubt an improvement over life in a small tent.
Our tour guide Sarah was engaging and informative; the students learned a lot. (or so I hope!) But they were pretty worn out from their flight and had few questions. I always learn something new from the tour guides, as each new one has something a little different to offer. Sarah spent a lot of time discussing the Convict architect Greenway, and interesting character. He was cheeky enough to insult Governor Macquarie's wife for some of her suggestions about her design of the Barracks.
The Barracks now sports a wing on the hulks, the floating prisons Britain used before and during the colonial times. I always thought that the hulks were just moored on the Thames somewhere, but they were distributed throughout the Empire, including three off the Australian coast. The museum has recreated some of the rooms on the hulks. It was dreadful. Twenty people crammed into a room the size of a dorm. Those confined on the hulks described it as worse than death.
In the afternoon, we went to the Australian Museum for our tour of the Aboriginal Exhibit. This is the season for a lot of 'school holidays' in which the school children visit museums and parklands. The museum was very loud and crowded, and we could tell that it was stressing out our tour guide Sheryl. But she, too, was very engaging and informative, and doing her best to keep a good humor while trying to talk to us over the din.
The exhibit presents Aboriginal spiritual beliefs, daily life, ongoing culture, and survival in the face of white conquest. Much of the exhibit is concerned with the Stolen Generation, those Aborigines who were taken from their families as children and sent away to native schools to learn white ways.
Turns out that Sheryl was almost a part of that. Her mother was Aboriginal but her father was white. She and her mother were not accepted by the father's family, and so her mother took her back to her home mission in outback New South Wales. But as a light-skinned Aborigine, she could very well have been a part of that episode in Australian history.
Sheryl's description of her mother reminded me of Ruth, the mother of author James McBride. You can read about Ruth in his book The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. Both women had large family's and, though dirt poor, saw to it that their children received the very best education possible. I gave Sheryl the title and suggested that she take a look at it.
For dinner, my colleague and I went to an Indian restaurant nearby, and had a very nice meal. I had beef curry, and Dale had Tandoori chicken. Very nice and reasonably priced.
Tomorrow: the Taronga Zoo and the Sydney Aquarium.
Wet and Cloudy
We arrived about a half-hour late, after a flight that was a little choppy at times. The pilot told us that he was battling headwinds all the way down, and that was the result of the delay. Looking at the flightpath -- one of the things you can do on the QANTAS 747s -- we could see that he made some course corrections, most likely to avoid the more intense storm activity.
The airport was a little nuts with the arrival of Fifty Cent, the Wiggles, and a woman who I think was the actress who played the female barber in the movie Barbershop. Fifty Cent had a police escort out of the building. Lots of paparazzi. I had never seen that in person before; it is very reminiscent of the way our guppies behave in the tank at home at feeding time. But, we eventually got to our coach, and the driver brought us straight away to the Y Hotel just off Hyde Park.
It has been raining here for 11 consecutive days. They have been living with a severe drought, sop they really need it. And we thus far have been able to dodge the raindrops. But it made the walk through Hyde Park less than spectacular. The weather should improve today and tomorrow.
Our visit to the Hyde Parks Barracks was very good, as usual. The Barracks was one of the first public buildings constructed in Sydney. Governor Macquarie, determined to create a true colony from the tent city around Port Jackson, had the convicts construct the Barracks so that they would have a proper building to live in. The conditions inside were appalling by modern standards, but no doubt an improvement over life in a small tent.
Our tour guide Sarah was engaging and informative; the students learned a lot. (or so I hope!) But they were pretty worn out from their flight and had few questions. I always learn something new from the tour guides, as each new one has something a little different to offer. Sarah spent a lot of time discussing the Convict architect Greenway, and interesting character. He was cheeky enough to insult Governor Macquarie's wife for some of her suggestions about her design of the Barracks.
The Barracks now sports a wing on the hulks, the floating prisons Britain used before and during the colonial times. I always thought that the hulks were just moored on the Thames somewhere, but they were distributed throughout the Empire, including three off the Australian coast. The museum has recreated some of the rooms on the hulks. It was dreadful. Twenty people crammed into a room the size of a dorm. Those confined on the hulks described it as worse than death.
In the afternoon, we went to the Australian Museum for our tour of the Aboriginal Exhibit. This is the season for a lot of 'school holidays' in which the school children visit museums and parklands. The museum was very loud and crowded, and we could tell that it was stressing out our tour guide Sheryl. But she, too, was very engaging and informative, and doing her best to keep a good humor while trying to talk to us over the din.
The exhibit presents Aboriginal spiritual beliefs, daily life, ongoing culture, and survival in the face of white conquest. Much of the exhibit is concerned with the Stolen Generation, those Aborigines who were taken from their families as children and sent away to native schools to learn white ways.
Turns out that Sheryl was almost a part of that. Her mother was Aboriginal but her father was white. She and her mother were not accepted by the father's family, and so her mother took her back to her home mission in outback New South Wales. But as a light-skinned Aborigine, she could very well have been a part of that episode in Australian history.
Sheryl's description of her mother reminded me of Ruth, the mother of author James McBride. You can read about Ruth in his book The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. Both women had large family's and, though dirt poor, saw to it that their children received the very best education possible. I gave Sheryl the title and suggested that she take a look at it.
For dinner, my colleague and I went to an Indian restaurant nearby, and had a very nice meal. I had beef curry, and Dale had Tandoori chicken. Very nice and reasonably priced.
Tomorrow: the Taronga Zoo and the Sydney Aquarium.
The Plane Flight
21 April, 2008
Los Angeles Terminal
About 10:45 pm local time
We've been traveling for about 14 hours, now, and are not quite halfway to our destination. Our flight QF 108 stops at LAX for a crew change and plane servicing for not quite two hours, so we have about an hour before we re-board.
Our travels have been pleasant thus far. We arrived at JFK about 45 minutes ahead of schedule, and were whisked through an expedited group check-in arranged by a very nice fellow at the QANTAS desk. I lost my extra toothpaste to the good folks at TSA -- it was a last-minute decision I made to take the extra tube from my office, with the intention of transferring it to my checked bags, but I forgot. No big deal.
The students this year have already shown me up. I have always taken a bit of pride in my ability to pack light, but several of them are carrying much less than I am. Of course I can make the excuse that since I am more or less running things (with all due respect to my able junior colleague), I have to carry extra stuff -- but the truth is that I felt the need to just pack a little more. Some of it is the old guy stuff that I need these days, but I'm carrying a lot of photographic equipment that is adding weight. I'm tired of digital, and I've pulled the old 35mm Canon AE-1 out of mothballs and will load it in Sydney for some serious work once I get there. So, the bags are fully loaded.
This is a personal newsflash for my nephew Davis. The Wiggles are sitting next to me here in the waiting area of the airport. Some Australian mothers with children in tow came up for autographs; I spoke with them for a moment about their good work, and some of my students took some pictures -- so I guess one of my personal missions has already been accomplished.
We're back on the plane now, about 9.5 hours left on the flight. As far as my body is concerned, it's around 9:30 am, well past the time I'd be getting up. My in-flight entertainment system is not working properly, so all I can do is to jump into the middle of movies, and I'd rather write in the journal instead.
At that stage of the flight when we are waiting at LAX, word often spreads about any special passengers we have on board, so we all learned pretty quickly that we were flying not only about the Wiggles but also of the rapper Fifty Cent (fiftycent? Fiftycent? FiftyCent?). I wonder if they might perform together?
Okay, that's sort of a joke. And for the benefit of folks my age and older ... Fifty Cent is a rapper, as I said. The Wiggles have children's TV show that is similar to Barney and Friends -- I make that comparison for two related reasons: 1) it is the show that my sons insisted on watching when they were very small; and therefore 2) it is most likely the show that my students watched when they were toddlers, as my students are my older son's age or a little older. For my generation: think of Barney with Dr. Dre (I guess?)
I only learned about the Wiggles a few weeks ago while visiting my wife's brother and his family, helping to welcome their latest addition, daughter Evelyn. Her older brother is the nephew I wrote about above. He is completely mesmerized by the Wiggles show, dancing and moving right along with it. My brother-in-law watches along with him, and reports that the show contains humor for the children as well as for the parents.
The Wiggles began as a rock band called the Cockroaches, and enjoyed some success. Their leader left the band to pursue a degree in early child development, and slowly, with the help of some others in the band, reinvented itself into the Wiggles.
=====
It's much later in the flight now; we are just 4.5 hours out of Sydney. The organization UNICEF has an interesting way of fund-raising on these international flights. The headphones that the crew distributes comes with a small envelope into which you are invited to put the loose change from the country you've departed. The pitch is this: you won't need that change and you won't get rid of it, so you may as well give it to them.
Now I have a special place in my heart for UNICEF. For many years, I have used data published in the annual State of the World's Children in my statistics course, and have thus read about and seen some heartbreaking stories and what they do to help. When I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006 and underwent the surgery, it was certainly tempting to feel sorry for myself and wallow in self-pity. I kept one of those annuals with me at all times then- the one that focussed on child labor. And every time that I started feeling that life was so unfair to do this to me, all I had to do was to find a photo of a child engaged in some dangerous and/or degrading job. Shame cures a lot.
We've had a bit of a bumpy flight, not horrible, but more than I'm used to on these flights. Of course, this is only my 12th time across the Pacific, so I hardly qualify as an expert. But it was bouncing around enough to make me feel a bit queasy -- I hope it wasn't the salmon.
Truly, QANTAS does know how to treat its customers well. The meals are excellent, the entertainment system is rich enough to keep you busy for most of the flight -- even when its not working properly. If you wish, you can stay informed about the progress of the flight: position, flight speed, altitude, temp outside the cabin (roughly -40F), time to destination, and lots more. In addition to the three meals, you get a snack bag mid-flight, and they just woke us up a little bit ago with juice and fresh fruit.
The students appear to be handling the flight well: a few minor complaints that boil down to the universal one: this flight is too darned long! (Maybe they should move Australia closer.
I watched I am Legend earlier in the flight. I enjoy watching Will Smith; he always seems to be enjoying his work so much. The story follows the Richard Matheson book more or less -- I read the book many years ago, and therefore may not recall everything exactly, but I think the intelligent but vampiristic humans in the book were more like the ones seen in The Omega Man, an earlier movie based on the same book. I'm pretty sure that the circumstances at the end end of movie differ a lot from the book as well.
I also watched The Kite Runner, a movie set in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the USA. It tells the story of two boys: one the Pashtun son of a professor, the other the Hazarra son of a household servant. The boys are friends, and fly kites together in competition. The competition consists of two-person teams of kite fliers attacking the strings of the other fliers with the goal of cutting their strings. The winner gets to keep the kite of the loser, provided he can run and find it -- this was one of the duties of the Hazarra boy, hence the title of the movie. It is an incredibly sad and moving story, taking us from the Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion to the era of the Taliban.
Australian television showed a series a few years ago called Bush Mechanics, and they had three episodes for viewing on the plane. Every episode of the half-hour show features four Aboriginal men from the Warlpiri language group north of Alice Springs, and some adventure they have that somehow involves a car they must keep alive. In one episode, they must drive from their village to another over 700km away in order to perform a concert for some children. The car breaks an engine mount, and its roof caves in from weight of the instruments, and the men must figure out how to overcome these problems. In another episode, they have to stop a radiator leak, make brake shoes out of mulga wood, and repair a flat tire with spinifex grass. Interspersed throughout are stories from elders about their dealings with cars 'way back when, and little vignettes about problems people have encountered with their cars and the bushcraft they used to solve it. A neat weird little show. I had seen two of the three episodes they showed of the flight, but one of them was new to me.
Los Angeles Terminal
About 10:45 pm local time
We've been traveling for about 14 hours, now, and are not quite halfway to our destination. Our flight QF 108 stops at LAX for a crew change and plane servicing for not quite two hours, so we have about an hour before we re-board.
Our travels have been pleasant thus far. We arrived at JFK about 45 minutes ahead of schedule, and were whisked through an expedited group check-in arranged by a very nice fellow at the QANTAS desk. I lost my extra toothpaste to the good folks at TSA -- it was a last-minute decision I made to take the extra tube from my office, with the intention of transferring it to my checked bags, but I forgot. No big deal.
The students this year have already shown me up. I have always taken a bit of pride in my ability to pack light, but several of them are carrying much less than I am. Of course I can make the excuse that since I am more or less running things (with all due respect to my able junior colleague), I have to carry extra stuff -- but the truth is that I felt the need to just pack a little more. Some of it is the old guy stuff that I need these days, but I'm carrying a lot of photographic equipment that is adding weight. I'm tired of digital, and I've pulled the old 35mm Canon AE-1 out of mothballs and will load it in Sydney for some serious work once I get there. So, the bags are fully loaded.
This is a personal newsflash for my nephew Davis. The Wiggles are sitting next to me here in the waiting area of the airport. Some Australian mothers with children in tow came up for autographs; I spoke with them for a moment about their good work, and some of my students took some pictures -- so I guess one of my personal missions has already been accomplished.
We're back on the plane now, about 9.5 hours left on the flight. As far as my body is concerned, it's around 9:30 am, well past the time I'd be getting up. My in-flight entertainment system is not working properly, so all I can do is to jump into the middle of movies, and I'd rather write in the journal instead.
At that stage of the flight when we are waiting at LAX, word often spreads about any special passengers we have on board, so we all learned pretty quickly that we were flying not only about the Wiggles but also of the rapper Fifty Cent (fiftycent? Fiftycent? FiftyCent?). I wonder if they might perform together?
Okay, that's sort of a joke. And for the benefit of folks my age and older ... Fifty Cent is a rapper, as I said. The Wiggles have children's TV show that is similar to Barney and Friends -- I make that comparison for two related reasons: 1) it is the show that my sons insisted on watching when they were very small; and therefore 2) it is most likely the show that my students watched when they were toddlers, as my students are my older son's age or a little older. For my generation: think of Barney with Dr. Dre (I guess?)
I only learned about the Wiggles a few weeks ago while visiting my wife's brother and his family, helping to welcome their latest addition, daughter Evelyn. Her older brother is the nephew I wrote about above. He is completely mesmerized by the Wiggles show, dancing and moving right along with it. My brother-in-law watches along with him, and reports that the show contains humor for the children as well as for the parents.
The Wiggles began as a rock band called the Cockroaches, and enjoyed some success. Their leader left the band to pursue a degree in early child development, and slowly, with the help of some others in the band, reinvented itself into the Wiggles.
=====
It's much later in the flight now; we are just 4.5 hours out of Sydney. The organization UNICEF has an interesting way of fund-raising on these international flights. The headphones that the crew distributes comes with a small envelope into which you are invited to put the loose change from the country you've departed. The pitch is this: you won't need that change and you won't get rid of it, so you may as well give it to them.
Now I have a special place in my heart for UNICEF. For many years, I have used data published in the annual State of the World's Children in my statistics course, and have thus read about and seen some heartbreaking stories and what they do to help. When I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006 and underwent the surgery, it was certainly tempting to feel sorry for myself and wallow in self-pity. I kept one of those annuals with me at all times then- the one that focussed on child labor. And every time that I started feeling that life was so unfair to do this to me, all I had to do was to find a photo of a child engaged in some dangerous and/or degrading job. Shame cures a lot.
We've had a bit of a bumpy flight, not horrible, but more than I'm used to on these flights. Of course, this is only my 12th time across the Pacific, so I hardly qualify as an expert. But it was bouncing around enough to make me feel a bit queasy -- I hope it wasn't the salmon.
Truly, QANTAS does know how to treat its customers well. The meals are excellent, the entertainment system is rich enough to keep you busy for most of the flight -- even when its not working properly. If you wish, you can stay informed about the progress of the flight: position, flight speed, altitude, temp outside the cabin (roughly -40F), time to destination, and lots more. In addition to the three meals, you get a snack bag mid-flight, and they just woke us up a little bit ago with juice and fresh fruit.
The students appear to be handling the flight well: a few minor complaints that boil down to the universal one: this flight is too darned long! (Maybe they should move Australia closer.
I watched I am Legend earlier in the flight. I enjoy watching Will Smith; he always seems to be enjoying his work so much. The story follows the Richard Matheson book more or less -- I read the book many years ago, and therefore may not recall everything exactly, but I think the intelligent but vampiristic humans in the book were more like the ones seen in The Omega Man, an earlier movie based on the same book. I'm pretty sure that the circumstances at the end end of movie differ a lot from the book as well.
I also watched The Kite Runner, a movie set in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the USA. It tells the story of two boys: one the Pashtun son of a professor, the other the Hazarra son of a household servant. The boys are friends, and fly kites together in competition. The competition consists of two-person teams of kite fliers attacking the strings of the other fliers with the goal of cutting their strings. The winner gets to keep the kite of the loser, provided he can run and find it -- this was one of the duties of the Hazarra boy, hence the title of the movie. It is an incredibly sad and moving story, taking us from the Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion to the era of the Taliban.
Australian television showed a series a few years ago called Bush Mechanics, and they had three episodes for viewing on the plane. Every episode of the half-hour show features four Aboriginal men from the Warlpiri language group north of Alice Springs, and some adventure they have that somehow involves a car they must keep alive. In one episode, they must drive from their village to another over 700km away in order to perform a concert for some children. The car breaks an engine mount, and its roof caves in from weight of the instruments, and the men must figure out how to overcome these problems. In another episode, they have to stop a radiator leak, make brake shoes out of mulga wood, and repair a flat tire with spinifex grass. Interspersed throughout are stories from elders about their dealings with cars 'way back when, and little vignettes about problems people have encountered with their cars and the bushcraft they used to solve it. A neat weird little show. I had seen two of the three episodes they showed of the flight, but one of them was new to me.
On the Ground in 2008
This is a very quick note to let all know that we have arrived safely in Australia and have begun the course. We visited the Hyde Parks Barracks in the morning and the Australian Museum in the afternoon. I will post more about this in the morning, but since there are some annoying yobbos nearby, I'm going to move along now.
--charlie
--charlie
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