We're here in 2009!

24 April
Sydney
Sunny and Mild

Welcome to the 2009 edition of my Australia journal. Things will be a little different this year, as I am also doing a course blog for the college, http://ecaustralia.blogspot.com. Students will also be posting to that blog -- you should find a lot of very nice photos along with accounts of their experiences. So, I will use this blog to record my own, thoughts, as I have in the past.

I brought the Jornada once more, so I will be writing my entries on it and posting later. For those of you who enjoyed reading all my mistakes from years past -- tough!

I also have a very nice camera, a Canon Rebel XS. This is a digital SLR, which means for me that I can enjoy the benefits of both. But, I do not know just how much image editing I will be doing while down here.

The rules will be the same as they have been in years past: I will never use the names of anyone on the course; I will keep the blog rating at 'PG' -- after all, my lovely wife's young cousin is reading this. The goal of this blog is the reader's enjoyment, with the added hope that the reader will learn something about Australia and why it's important to know these things. And, to be truthful, a secondary goal is for me to outgas a little.

With that in mind ... the trip down was unusually stressful this year. We left the college on time, and were sailing down Interstate 81 with no cares, when we suddenly found ourselves at a dead stop in the midst of snarled traffic. We probably waited a half hour before the driver got us off 81 and onto one of its side roads into Scranton. The delay percolated for us, since that meant we got into NYC right around the rush hour.

Of course, none of it mattered, since the flight was about an hour late getting into JFK. The 747s that Qantas uses on the QF107-108 route from JFK to Sydney are cycled, so as soon as the passengers got off the plane and it was serviced, we got right on. But that hour delay persisted until we arrived in Sydney.

After that, things went pretty smoothly. The Hyde Park Barracks tour guides were happy to accommodate our late arrival, and so we were back on track pretty quickly.

The Hyde Parks Barracks was built in 1817 at the direction of the legendary governor Lachlan Macquarie. It's original purpose was to house convicts; before this, convicts lived in tents or sheds. It was not a prison -- the land of Australia would serve as that just nicely. Convicts who ran off into the bush faced so many dangers that few ever attempted it. After about 30 years, the flow of convicts to New South Wales stopped as new colonies were founded, so the building became a dormitory for women immigrating to Australia. Still later, it was used for government law offices, until the 1980s, when work began to convert it to a museum.

Our next venue was the Australian Museum for a tour of the Indigenous Australians exhibit. Our tour guide was a young woman, perhaps a little older than the students. The museum's plan had been for me to do the bulk of the talking, with her adding a few bits here and there, but it quickly became apparent that she was very much ready for the job of giving us a quality tour of the exhibit, and I gladly let her take it over. Needless to say, she has credibility to speak about her people in a way I just lack. She spoke of her father and of his life as a member of the Stolen Generation, those aboriginal children who were taken from their families when young and raised in boarding schools far away, disconnecting them from their culture, and preparing them only for a life of servitude. She also spoke of other family members and their struggles to rebuild their lives and communities. And she did it all in a way that was friendly and cheerful, without any anger at all.

One of the other tour guides was shadowing us -- I think that our guide was new, and on probation. I made sure to tell the veteran guide that I thought ours was doing a magnificent job.
After the museum, the students' time was their own, and I came back here to write in the journal and rest up for tomorrow. ANZAC Day.