Circumspencing the Globe

The Land of Oz

If I had to pick a place I’ve been most excited to visit on this trip, this is it. Australia. Oz. The Land Down Under. Where summer is winter and spring is fall and flushing toilets spin the other way. Where the landscape can be harsh and the people the friendliest a bloke will ever find.

When my dad was a boy in London, his family almost moved to Australia, but circumstances did not permit the move.  Some years later, after his father died prematurely, my dad and his mother decided to move far from London.  My grandmother favored Australia, but they came to America instead.  I came close to being born Australian. Or rather, since Dad wouldn’t have met Mom if he’d chosen Australia, I came close to not being born at all. There wouldn’t have been an “I.” So I’m glad Dad chose America, so that I could be and being, I could travel to Australia.

For me, much of the allure of Oz is it’s mixture of British and Californian. I’m a native Californian born of two English parents. Oz smacks of England because it was colonized by the Brits. As in England, Aussies drive on the “wrong” side of the street, eat with a knife and fork, and have a Union Jack on their flag. Oz smacks of California because Aussies are laid-back, with a “no worries, mate” mentality and a thriving beach culture. So, landing in Oz felt like coming home.

If you haven’t taken a gander at a map lately, you might not realize that Australia, an island and continent unto itself, is about the same size as the USA. But its population is not much more than 20 million. By contrast, the USA’s is over 300 million. So Aussies have a lot of elbow room. Almost all of them live along the periphery–mainly along the east coast–rather than in the inhospitable “bush” or “outback”–the barren middle bits. Oz has more than its share of dangerous animals, plus animals found nowhere else on earth: kangaroos, koalas, Tasmanian devils, etc. The country is divided into six states: New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Northern Territory, plus the ACT (Australian Capitol Territory), something like America’s District of Columbia I think.

Historically speaking (in a nutshell): the Aborigines are believed to have settled in Australia around 44,000 B.C. Europeans (Dutch, French, English) arrived in the early 1600s, but Captain James Cook’s landing on the east coast in 1770 marked England’s formal claim on the land. The “First Fleet” of English settlers arrived in Sydney in 1788, a collection of mostly convicts (751 of them), as well as soldiers and officials and their wives.

About 15 years later, a second convict settlement began in Tasmania. During the first third of the 19th century, Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide were also settled. In the 1840s, no more convicts were transported to eastern Australia. In the 1850s, gold was discovered and the rush was on, drawing many foreigners to Oz. In the 1880s, a 560 kilometer pipeline was laid from the foothills of Perth to the goldfields around an outback town called Kalgoorlie. (I’m writing this blog from remote Kalgoorlie.)

Oz became a federation of colonies in 1901. During WWI, many Australians died, along with New Zealanders, in an assault on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey. (This is the subject of a stirring movie called “Gallipoli” featuring a young Mel Gibson.)  During WWII, when Japan attacked the South Pacific, it was the USA that saved Australia. During the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, Australia sent troops in alignment with the USA.

Only as recently as 1967 were the Aborigines granted full citizenship status. They make up roughly 2.2% of the population. In the recent elections, the Labor Party prevailed for the first time in many years, and the new president announced an apology to the Aborigines for past abuse.

Despite the amazing natural setting that makes up Australia, the biggest appeal is the Australian people themselves. Whenever I’ve encountered an Aussie while traveling abroad, the Aussie is the most fun-loving, easy-going person in the room. When I landed in Perth on December 3, I met the Aussie who, in my book, takes the cake. In order to preserve her privacy, I won’t use her real name. We’ll refer to her as “Kidman.” I’d met her on the internet. After seeing a picture of her embracing a stocky wombat, I knew I wanted to meet her (and the wombat). We’d corresponded some, and boy, could that wombat write.  Kidding.  When Kidman learned I planned to visit Oz, she offered to find me a place to stay, with one of her friends or family members or in her own home.

She and her roommate–let’s call her “Watts”–met me at the airport. The other housing options fell through, so Kidman and Watts put me up in their house. (This meant displacing Watts’ cat because of my allergies.  Don’t know if I’m allergic to wombats–the wombat doesn’t live there.) I ended up staying a full week. Kidman gave me access to all of the comforts of home–TV, telephone, internet, meals, homemade dessert, laundry–everything. She let me accompany her to a mid-week Bible study and a Sunday worship service and the beach where she plays volleyball. She insisted on driving me to the train station on the day I left. And all of my expressions of gratitude were met with, “no worries, mate.”

Kidman also tried to school me in Australian speech patterns. She said that when I can properly say the word “no,” I will have learned how to speak “Australian” (pronounced “strine”). I have been practicing the Aussie “no.” It takes a lot longer to say than a one-syllable word should. The way the Aussie’s say it, it could be spelled something like nah’-ooo-wra.

Anyway, Perth is the capitol of Western Australia (W.A.) and sits on the western edge of the country. You could say Perth is not only “down under” but also “far over.” Western Australia is massive, comprising one third of Australia’s land mass. But only just over 2 million people live in W.A., making the state practically empty. One guy from the east coast told me life is slower on the west coast and people live there for a more relaxed quality of life. Two thirds of W.A.’s population lives in Perth. Perth is considered the most remote city of its size in the world.

Kidman’s vacation coincided with my stay, so we took a three-day roadtrip in her car through the Southwest. We spent the first night with her cousins in a very small town called Cranbrook. They taught me how to bounce an oblong Australian football and allowed me to (attempt to) feed their neighbors’ (aloof) alpacas (which look like the offspring of a llama and a sheep). The next morning we stopped for coffee in a small town called Denmark (population 2,000) and then traversed the Tree Top Walk, suspended canopy bridges connecting tall trees in the Valley of the Giants (Walpole-Nornalup National Park).

We spent the next night on a kangaroo farm in a place called Northcliffe (population 240). I saw baby kangaroos (joeys) peering out from within their mothers’ pouches. More astounding, I saw them squeeze into the pouches from the outside. Head first. And some of these joeys were almost as big as their mothers. How they managed to fit into the pouches I cannot tell you. Sometimes claws and elbows jutted out. But the pouches are extremely pliable and sturdy, another miracle of nature.

We saw two male kangaroos sparring, muay Thai style. They jabbed with their arms, dodged jabs by leaning their heads far back, kicked with both legs by springing backwards onto their tails, sometimes knocking one another to the ground. All without Xience energy supplements. I’m sure it won’t be long before the UFC’s Dana White signs them up for bouts in the Octagon.

The next day we drove to Pemberton (population 800) where we climbed the spiraling protruding metal poles to the top of the 61 meter high Gloucester Tree Lookout. Then we had lunch in the beautiful town of Margaret River (population 6,000), known for its wine, cheese, chocolates and surf. Our final stop was in Busselton (population 11,000), where we had tea with Kidman’s grandmother. (During the week, I also had the pleasure of meeting Kidman’s other grandmother (who smothered me in welcome hugs and kisses) and both of her parents.)

After we returned, I spent my last two days exploring Perth and the surrounding area on my own. I walked up to King’s Park for its unparalleled vistas of the city and had dinner in a lively area called Northbridge. I happened upon the Perth Christmas Parade, a festive procession of dance groups, bagpipers, floats, camels, unicyclists, jugglers and the like, representing such groups as the auto club, Samba enthusiasts, St. Bernard owners, drum cadets, Scandinavians, local TV and many others. On my last day, I took a train to Fremantle, a popular weekend destination for Perth locals. Known as Freo to them, the quaint harbor town is full of cafes, pubs, art shops and opal retailers.

Finally, on Monday, December 10, I left Kidman and Watts (and the cat). Kidman set her alarm in order to be awake to drive me to the train station where I boarded the eastbound “Prospector” train. After chugging along through the red-sanded outback for about eight hours, the train came to a place called Kalgoorlie. More about this place next time.

Tags: Australia, Perth, Travel, West Australia

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.