25 April (ANZAC Day)
Sydney
Sunny and Breezy
Today we saw a portion of the ANZAC Day March in Sydney, and then spent the reminder of the day at the Taronga Zoo. It was also a day to acquaint the students with Sydney's subway system and the ferries. And what a fun day it was, too!
ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and constituted the main contribution of the Australians to the British efforts in WWI. "Diggers" (the nickname the ANZACs earned) fought in the major campaigns throughout Europe, but it is their service in the battle of Gallipoli that the people of Australia remember the most.
The Gallipoli Peninsula lies between the Aegean Sea and the Dardanelles, the straits that lead to Constantinople (as it was named then). Whoever controlled Gallipoli controlled the strait, so if the British could take the peninsula, they could then send ships in to assault the stronghold of the Turks. The role of the ANZACs was to attempt to take the bluffs held by the Turks. Of course, the enemy was dug into the hilltops, and could spray the slopes with machine gun fire and shell many of the positions on the beaches. It would be a tough fight.
On April 25, 1915, the ANZAC troops landed at what would come to be called ANZAC Cove. They dug trenches into the hillside, slowly making their way up the hill. Several of the skirmishes of the battle have become legendary themselves; in particular, the high-water mark of the battle occurred at Lone Pine and the Nek, two attempts at assaulting the Turkish trenches that proved to be especially bloody -- and unnecessary, since they were intended as diversions to permit a British landing that actually went unchallenged before the assaults began. In all, about 8000 ANZAC troops were killed in the battle.
The objective of taking the Turkish trenches was impossible, and though they never achieved it, the heroic character of the ANZACs, and by extension all the Australian military, became evident to soldiers everywhere. ANZAC Day began as a day of remembrance for these particular soldiers. Over the years, it has evolved into a day of remembrance for all Australian veterans; it thus plays a role similar to the one played by our own Memorial Day. Because it occurs in late autumn here, ANZAC Day will often turn into a long weekend for families during which they might plan their last getaway before winter; it thus bears some resemblance as well to our Labor Day.
We arrived at the parade shortly before it began at 9 am and stayed about an hour. The march was a lot more festive than the rainy one I saw last year, and the students were very happy to cheer right along with the Australians. Many marching bands throughout, along with just about every military unit imaginable. Not only were combats units represented, but all the support units: intelligence, hospital, communications, and many others.
But this march in Sydney lasts over four hours, and we had other things to do. We left a little after 10 am for our visit to Taronga Zoo.
The Zoo has changed a bit since last year's visit, with a remodeled entrance and a new venue for the seal show, but many of the familiar things were still in place. In particular, we all attended the free flight bird show. Most of the birds in the show were predators, but there were a few galahs, cockatoos, and other parrots in minor roles. The star of the show is an Andean condor; with a wingspan of about 10 feet, it is quite an impressive sight -- especially when it flies just a few inches over your head!
The Zoo has many other pleasant features: walk-through enclosures for encounters with kangaroos, wallabies, emus, and tropical birds; darkened halls for the night animals; a play area for families with children; and many others.
Including a seal show! In past years, we would leave the Zoo at 1:30 and head over to the Sydney Aquarium, but I found it to be too crowded and hectic last year, and so decided to drop it from this year's course, and simply letting the students spend more time at the Zoo to compensate. So, I got a chance to see the seal show, at which they introduce the audience to several seal, some from Australian water and some from elsewhere. The seals are very smart, capable of many complicated behaviors. One jumped from the later and did an aerial summersault; another balanced a ball on its nose, yet another waved to the crowd with its flippers.
We broke up for the day at the zoo; some students staying to visit the other animals, others going off on new adventures. I came back to the hotel to write this journal and to plan tomorrow's Blue Mountain Adventure.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)