Dunedin

February 19, 2002-Confusion
(photos:Larnach Castle,
Castle Foyer)

The last email you received was sent from a McDonald’s cyber café in Dunedin, New Zealand. It’s the first of its kind that I’m aware of. They only charged $NZ 5/hour. They had a café where you could get fancy coffees as well. The only thing that was hard to find were hamburgers. After our hard day yesterday, David passed out at 9 PM. He had to get up to brush his teeth before he could go to sleep for the night. Fortunately, he slept so well that he was unaware of my sneezing & blowing. Now that Karen and Ron are home, & Karen,s parents know they’re fine, I can tell you that this is their cold. It’s a humdinger. I’m feeling better today & think it’s drying out.

The first thing David noticed this morning was that, contrary to what I told you, our car doesn’t have white wall tires. The tires are coated with a pale clay-like mud that gives the appearance of the old white walls. We must have picked it up on the dirt road leading to the clay cliffs. The next thing David noticed was that the steering wheel of the car was missing. I watched him get into the wrong side of the car & settle himself in. I knew it wouldn’t take him long to discover his mistake. That darn steering wheel just keeps moving around. Even after all these months we do have lapses.

I feel like I should be saying, “Beam me up, Scotty.” We drove to Dunedin today. Dunedin actually means Edinburgh & it’s reminiscent of a Scottish town. Established in the late 1800’s, its main industry is the university. Gold miners almost took over during the rush, but it seems as if the establishment prevailed. The centerpiece of the town is The Octagon. It’s an 8-sided park around which several old stone buildings are situated. These are the massive structures typical of old world European cities. The railway station & St. Pauls Cathedral are notable among these & are riveting for their sheer bulk as well as their intricate Victorian & Edwardian architectural features.

Royal Living

This is the closest we have ever been to Antarctica & it’s suitably blustery. I was happy to see our room had an electric heater. The ones they use here are quite efficient. They’re wall mounted & thermostat controlled. Our hotel is on the Otago Peninsula, one of those strips of land that’s breathtakingly beautiful & breathtakingly terrifying at the same time. Why these people don’t use guardrails is beyond me. As it turned out whether we took the high road or the low road, we would have ended up at the same place. The road climbs to its peak & falls off into Otago Bay & the ocean. I’m running out of superlatives to use to describe sun glinting on water, but you get the picture. We’re staying in the guesthouse of Larnach Castle, the only castle in New Zealand. They say that as if you’d expect NZ to have lots of castles. Our room overlooks that superlative view. As we approached the gate to the grounds, a guard stopped us. He checked our reservation & told us to proceed down the road & ring the bell at the castle door.

The grounds are exquisite with a variety of flowering plants that add interest to the tailored hedges & more formal gardens. There are walking paths along the edge of the promontory & numerous places to sit & gaze out over the water. Of course, you have to be careful not to get blown over the side. This is the end of summer here & fireplaces are being used. That gives me the creeps. The people in the next room must be thrilled with the weather. I heard them talking outside the door to our room. They have distinctive Southern USA accents. Our room is supposed to be “romantic.” There’s a brass 4-poster canopy bed that creaks & sways precariously. It’s netted in a lacy shroud that almost strangled us until we tucked it up & out of the way. The windows only have shades & they’re not well behaved at all. One keeps inching up from the sill. I think it’s trying to tell us there’s a magnificent view to be seen & not to waste time doing other things like sleeping.

We toured the castle this afternoon. The story is that William Larnach married a rich 17-year old heiress & made the most of it. They built this palatial house, had several children, & then she died of apoplexy. Not to worry, he just married her sister so that his children would have someone to raise them. Wife #2 died of an infection after having a fibroid tumor removed from her “womb.” Wife #3 seemed to have had her own problems, & she too died. The house is a majestic towering 3-story mansion crafted by the best Europe had to offer. There are so many different woods used, including Douglas fir from America, that I couldn’t name them all. The “castle” was bought in 1967 by the Barker family & has been lovingly restored. Their children are continuing the project.

We ate dinner in a restaurant that’s in a row of old Victorian terrace houses. The name of the place is A Cow Called Berta & that’s why we tried it. The owners had no reason for the name but wanted something that would get attention. It worked. The furnishings were very period & the food was delicious. The desert we didn’t have was a white chocolate & almond fudge cake.

Toby

Primeval

February 18, 2002-Sounds Like
(photos:Higher than Niagara Falls, Boat on Milford Sound, Half-mile long tunnel)

Our trip to the Milford Sound started promptly at 6:40 AM. The bus was small & the group numbered only 17. It was nice to be able to see some off the beaten track sights & get to know some of the people. It was an international group. The U.S. was represented as well as Switzerland, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, S. Africa, N. Ireland, England, Israel, New Zealand, & Australia. David got to try a little Hebrew with the Israeli, but she was a flight attendant with El Al so her English was very good.

Our bus driver was very knowledgeable & we learned a lot on the five-hour drive to the Sound. It’s only a 30-mile distance as the crow flies, but if the crow wanted to walk, it had to use our route. Most of New Zealand is national park land. The first settlers were Maoris who mixed freely with the European whalers & sealers. That’s why there are no full-blooded Maoris alive today. The Irish & Chinese came to the southern end of the S. Island during the gold rush. This area produced the most alluvial gold in the world. Now Queenstown & environs caters to farmers, tourists, trekkers, & adrenaline rush junkies. There’s no shortage of rafting, bungee jumping, hang gliding, etc. It’s the coldest, driest, & warmest part of NZ. Due to the fast snowmelt, you can ski & golf in the same day. Milford Sound itself averages 200 rainy days a year. It didn’t disappoint today.

The driver told us that although NZ has 4 million people, at times there are 100 million sheep. After the meat packers get finished, there are 43 million. Most ewes have twins, so the birth rate replenishes those slaughtered each year. The reason for such few black sheep is that there are scarcely any black rams. Makes sense.

The Maoris & Europeans cleared the land using fire for different purposes, but it had the same result. Eighty per cent of the original ground cover is gone. The Maoris burned to hunt. The Europeans did it to clear farmland. As I mentioned in an earlier email, there were no real predators here, so the native birds are flightless. This worked well for them until Europeans brought rabbits in to keep the grass trimmed for sheep. When the rabbits got out of control, rats, weasels, & stoats were introduced. Now, all the bird life is endangered.

American elk, moose, & European red deer were introduced for hunting. No moose has been seen for 40-years, but some deer have been found that have moose DNA. In 1905, when the elk & deer became too plentiful, hunters were called upon to cull the herds. With the advent of helicopters hunting became high tech. One man was infamous for painting a sign on his horse that said, “horse” so it wouldn’t be mistaken for a deer. Eventually, some deer & elk were captured & todays domesticated stock began. Elk & deer are crossed & NZ exports its venison.

Our first stop was at Te-Anau & the lake of the same name. The lake has about 270 miles of shoreline. Chances are that if you took a boat out on the lake & stepped ashore at a remote spot, you would be the first person to set foot on that land. There are incredibly few people & fewer boats. The mountains here could be called the smoking mountains because as the mist rose they appeared to be doing just that. That’s how our Smokeys got their name. They’re lovely to look at now, but in the winter there are avalanches & cars are required to use tire chains.



Our tour was called the BBQ Bus Tour because we stopped at a shelter for a yummy lunch of beef sausage & kebabs cooked by our omni-talented driver. While he cooked, we hiked through a cathedral-like forest of towering beeches to a waterfall.

We drove through a pitch-black ½ mile long tunnel on the only road that has access to the Sound. The tunnel is very basic. There are no lights or supports. It’s just gouged out bare granite. As we emerged, the driver played the tape of the song “Looks Like We Made It.”

By the time we got to our boat, I felt as if I’d been traveling all day. I had developed a terrible cold & eventually used up an entire roll of toilet paper blowing my nose before we got back to the hotel at 7:45 PM. The driver told us that although a sound & a fjord both had extremely steep walls, the sound was “V-shaped” at the bottom & the fjord was “U-shaped.” Fjordland Park lived up to its reputation. The clouds cleared enough to add dramatic shadows & texture as we craned our necks to see to the top. The weather was balmy & we spent a good deal of time on deck. The waterfalls were plentiful & varied from a powerhouse that was taller but much narrower than Niagara Falls to those barely sensuous strands of water-trickle that slithered & meandered down the crenellated cliff face. The wildlife was sparse, but we were treated to several fur seals sunbathing on a rock. Ever the small world, we met some people from Sun City in Las Vegas. They lived in Summerhill friends of ours live. They didn’t know them & we didn’t get their name. They’re all involved in the computer club there so I’m sure they will get in touch.

On the way back to the hotel, we were reassured to see that although New Zealand does not have poisonous snakes, it does have ominous road signs. This one read, “ Slow! Watch for Road Slump.” Evidently, due to the changing weather conditions, roads can be undermined & start to lean one way or another.

Toby

First Sights

February 17, 2002-Love
(photos:Lake Tekapo& Mt. Cook,
Omarama clay cliffs,
Queenstown)

I’m in love with the South Island. Picton was a picture postcard of a town. We pulled into Marlborough Sound under clear skies. Believe it or not, the sky is still clear two days later. In fact, it’s hot & our hotel doesn’t have A/C.

So as not to disappoint us & disillusion us about New Zealanders capacity for screw-ups, Thrifty car rental didn’t have the car we ordered and had to downsize us since they were having trouble getting the cars back from Christchurch. It’s a good four hours away & that’s where we were headed. They were extremely apologetic & gave us free insurance, a free day of usage, a $25 discount certificate for our next rental (that would be Perth), & a free day rental the next time we used Thrifty. They didn’t date the certificates so we could use them anywhere anytime. Now, that’s an apology! We have a Nissan Pulsar with Bridgestone white wall tires. I didn’t know white walls still existed. A Pulsar is the size of a Corolla. The first hurdle we had to surmount was to figure out how to turn off the radio. Fortunately, there was a manual & we can read.

I don’t know why, but with as much as we’ve seen of the natural beauty in the world, we’re still startled & remark out loud when we come upon it again. Immediately on leaving Picton at 7 PM, we were in the mountains. These were emerald hills of dark pines givvingway to even larger rocky peaks covered in tall yellow grasses. The requisite livestock was about, &, Karen, I’m sorry to report that we saw five black sheep in one pasture. Lucky for us, the signs said that the road was “open.” This was a main highway (two-lanes & the occasional railroad crossing), but many roads close here due to snow, rockslides, or washouts. The roads seem to be well maintained, but, as David said, that’s easy to do when you have only three roads in the country. There was no one on the road with us for a good hour. For a while, we thought there was a curfew.

As the mountains changed to hills, we found ourselves on the Kaikora Coast in the Marlborough wine district. Every district seems to have its wineries on the South Island. These looked quite elegant & varied from ultra-modern glass & timber affairs to those reminiscent of Tuscan villas. We began to catch glimpses of the ocean between the hills as if it was teasing & flirting with us. We rounded a bend & were faced with the power & wrath of the Pacific as it beat the rocks & black sand beaches in a frenzy. It definitely reminded us of the other Pacific Coast Highway. There were even a couple of dozen surfers plying the waves to add to the ambiance.

We got lost trying to find our hotel & came across a curious type of gas station. Yes, we tried to ask for directions. There was no one at the station. The pumps either took credit or debit cards. They required pin numbers, but didn’t like the ones David keyed in. We moved on & eventually settled in by midnight.

Directions don’t seem to be a New Zealand thing either. The woman at our hotel told us how to get back onto the highway this morning. She was lovely, helpful, & dead wrong. We had a long drive to Queenstown (nine hours with stops) so, with the delay, we ended up eating breakfast at McDonald’s. Kiwis don’t say “brekkie.” They don’t tend to use diminutives the way the Aussies do. This Mc D not only had the rest rooms paneled in exquisite pine, but the entire dining area was paneled. They also had red & white check fabric tablecloths & flowers on the tables. I wondered how they cleaned the cloths between patrons. Ha! The best thing was they had beef sausage.

Back on the highway we went & we learned a new term. Here they have “rumble strips.” Those are edge lines that make noise when you drive on them. Our route took us through the Canterbury Plains & its mountain passes, somewhat fading wildflowers, rolling hills & scrubby desert tussocks to the edge of the Southern Alps. It was love at first sight. Snow covered Mt. Cook loomed over it all. Lakes Tekapo & Pukaki were startling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen water the color of robins egg blue. It was caused by rock flour floating in glacial melt. The water wasn’t clear. It wasn’t murky, but was milky in tone.

As if things couldn’t get more interesting, we found the clay cliffs of Omarama. We paid the $5 to drive down a dirt road & walk two miles (round trip) to see where the scenes of the dark city of the evil villain in Lord of The Rings was filmed. They look just like in the movie, only they’re the color of sand. I imagine there was a little computer enhancement going on. They look like giant crystals that point skyward & are sculpted in incongruous & fantastic patterns that vary from columns to lacey etchings.

Queenstown

We finally rolled into Queenstown. Now there’s a city with an approach. On one side there’s the Remarkables Range, & they truly are. They’re barren, granite, towering, & form the backdrop to the Frankton Arm of Lake Wakatipu. The town climbs the hills facing Queenstown Bay & it spread out before us as we rode the gondola to the top. This time there were no tunnels to obscure the view.

We just had enough time to see a kiwi preserve before dinner. Kiwis are monogamous. Females are larger & more dominant. The males sit on the eggs for eighty days before they hatch. Adults are about the shape & size of a basketball & can live forty years. We also saw a “morepork.” That’s the name of a bird whose name comes from the sound it makes.

And now for dinner! We finally found great pizza….but it had a broken piece of a dish in it. At first I thought it was my tooth. The manager offered to replace the pizza & since we were trashed after such a long day, she made it a take away. We didn’t check the box until we got to the hotel, but it was half pepperoni. I called the restaurant & she was very apologetic. Am I using that word a lot? She sent two more pizzas to the hotel by taxi. We gave some to the front desk & made friends for life.

David is in bed now. We have to get up at 6 AM for a 12-hour odyssey to the Milford Sound & Fjordland.
February 18, 2002-Swiss

I would like to welcome Ursula & Sven to the list of people who receive this email. We met them on our trip to Milford Sound. Ursula also emails friends & relatives at home in Switzerland. She offered to add me to her mailings, but she writes in German. Ursula does me one better. She takes her laptop everywhere & writes as she goes.

Toby

Farewells

February 15, 2002-Great Start
(Photos:Oriental Harbor,
Wellington architecture)

What a way to start the day. We looked out the window of our room & saw a horse & rider taking a practice run. They looked so intent & in sync. I hope they both had sunscreen on. According to the paper, the sun exposure today was such that if you were in the sun with no sunscreen on for 17 minutes, you would burn. Scary stuff.

The email is delivered so fast it’s amazing. We were at an Internet café sending you all email & Karen was at the café at another computer. The mail I sent appeared in her mailbox within minutes. It’s magic. They’ll be going home tomorrow. I know that the email I sent today will beat them.

Driving in New Zealand has been quite different than Australia. Drivers here don’t give way at crosswalks or yield to other cars. They’re very aggressive. I wonder if the Maori disposition prevailed over the British.

The New Zealand dollar is worth a lot less than the U.S. & a bit less than the Aussie. But money seems to fly out of our wallets at an incredible rate of speed. What the Kiwis have done is raise their prices to reflect the value. An example is that parking for a sports event near their arena is $NZ 30. That’s high given they earn in NZ dollars what we do in U.S.

I’m a frustrated person. I didn’t realize that David was superstitious about buying things for the baby before it was born. There are some really adorable things here in teeny tiny & tiny sizes, but I’ll have to restrain myself. We’ll have less money flying out of our wallets now.

Camouflage

We had a long drive to Wellington today. We started early knowing it would take about eight hours including food stops. We went by way of Lake Taupo, the largest lake in New Zealand. It was azure, sapphire, & turquoise at the same time. It’s flanked by three mountains one of which still had a bit of snow on top. Of course the requisite clouds were hovering above ready to drip on us, obscure the sun, or move aside & allow for a fleeting ray to get through.

Our quest for the day was to find a black sheep for Karen to photograph. Since the countryside was speckled with white sheep dots, we thought it would be pretty easy to spot a black one. The problem was the cows. There were lots of black ones mixed in with the sheep. We tried to convince Karen that the black cows would appear to be black sheep if photographed from the distance, but she was not buying it. It would have been a tedious drive, but the topography kept surprising us. We would be lulled by the green hills & pastures only to round a bend & see a gouged out concave hillside of granite that formed a semi-circular wall in a valley. We topped a hill & found ourselves in a desert. We were so startled that we checked the map & sure enough, it was marked as such. We did doze on & off & Ron read the paper, but sheep quest kept us alert until we found one.

We passed up the chance to use a Super Loo & went to McDonald’s for one potty stop. The rest rooms were paneled in a lovely pine. They looked like saunas. Karen wondered why Australians & Kiwis don’t get it yet about the environment. They seem to use wood lavishly.

Rocky Ending

We arrived in Wellington & found it to be a shabby city with an over-rated view. Our hotel certainly fit into the shabby description. The service was what we’d learned to expect. A woman at the desk told us our rooms were on separate floors even though the reservation card in our name showed they were next to each other. She said that the twp rooms were for us & that the Ciminis were getting another room on another floor. She then told us there was no cart or person to help us with our luggage. The manager stepped right in & rectified both issues then became our bellman. He directed us down to a dingy garage & told us we could park the van there. The aisle was so narrow & the spaces so small that David had to ask someone to park the van for him. There was no way he could back that monster into the space with right hand drive.

When we finally got up to the room, we discovered that our document folder was gone. It had our travelers checks, passports, & airline tickets in it. After we searched our luggage, we went back down to the hellhole of a garage & ransacked the car. When we came upstairs David was beside himself. I was already thinking of how to contact American Express & ask them to earn the fee we paid for their platinum card. We finally thought to ask the Ciminis if they might have picked it up while collecting all the loose stuff from the car when we took the luggage to the rooms. Sure enough, it was in the bag with their documents. What a relief that was!

We celebrated by riding the cable car up to Kelburn expecting it to be a scenic ride. What we found was that the cable car went through a series of tunnels & when it finally emerged the view was of the disjointed skyline of Wellington with the harbor as a backdrop. The newer buildings that rose up like gnarled fingers on an arthritic hand spoiled what should have been stunningly beautiful. They were singularly & collectively ugly. At the top of the cable car line was an entrance to the botanical gardens. We took an hour to walk through the gardens as we worked our way back down to town. Karen happily identified the plants for us & we thoroughly enjoyed being out of doors. Part of the park is an historic cemetery that includes an old Jewish section. The Jewish community was small & the old synagogue was on a site that is now under an off ramp of the motorway. We’d actually ridden over it on our way into town. It was an odd feeling to learn that. February 16, 2002-Lost and Found

I know that Karen & David are good friends, but I never expected her to go to the extreme of sharing a horrible experience to make David feel better about his screw-up yesterday. She knew she had consciously put their return tickets in an envelope that went in their document folder but couldn’t find them this morning. We looked in our bags & they looked in theirs. We tore the car apart. Just as they were thinking of calling Qantas, David asked to look at the envelope with the used tickets in it. There it was hidden behind the carbon of a spent ticket just waiting to be found.

We were more than ready for breakfast after that fiasco. We found a food court in a market near the Te Papa Museum. The three of them had steak & eggs, & I got a bit more adventurous. I had Indian roti (hand made flat bread) stuffed with egg & onion with a side of mild chicken curry. It was a real waker upper.

Ticky Tacky

The museum was quite modern, creative & somewhat attractive from one angle, but someone had decided to install windows that were different crayola colors on one side. It was really ugly. I’ve found Wellington to be very tacky. It’s almost as if they only buy paint remnants that no one bought the previous year. The Museum Hotel that overlooked both the museum & the harbor was painted black. There was no other color present on the entire building. An old Victorian brick structure had the bricks painted bright red & the sandstone trim was coated in stark white. Perhaps they were trying to add kitsch to the scenery, but they missed by a mile. We found that the best view of the town was when we left it to take the Ciminis to the airport. They flew home today. We drove along Oriental Parade & admired the quaint gingerbread homes that hugged the hills & clustered near each other on intimately tiny lots. It was only on our trip back through the city to catch the ferry that we got close enough to those homes to see that they were raggedy.

We did make a quick tour of the museum. We’d seen most of what it had to offer at different venues, but the interior of the museum was worth the time. Maybe the architects & designers here are better at interiors than exteriors. It hugs the harbor & spirals up six levels of well-presented exhibits. Primary signage for exhibits is bilingual in English & Maori. The explanation of how the building was constructed with quake isolators caught our attention & reminded us of what a volatile place this is.

I’m now on the Lynx Ferry, a catamaran from Wellington, North Island to Picton on the South Island. We’re crossing the Cook Strait. I’m plugged into an outlet near our reclining seats. There’s a gift shop, play area for children, & snack bars. As we searched for lunch, there seemed to be nothing that wasn’t pork. The young man serving us nodded sagely & said. “ Ah, kosher.” We were surprised he even knew the term, & as I was about to ask him, he volunteered that one of the crew was kosher. “Righty O,” he said & pointed us to a roasted veggie sandwich & chicken roll-up.

The ferry ride on the high speed Lynx is two hours. It takes five hours by regular ferry. It seems odd to me that two states of a country would be separated by five hours of water. But then there’s Hawaii. I guess it takes us seven hours to get to Chicago, but that means we’re driving over land not water for three hours of Ohio, three hours of Indians, & one hour of Illinois.

Toby

Maori Culture

February 14, 2002-Tamaki
(photo:Maori Warrior)

There is definitely a Maori presence in New Zealand that transcends cultures. They’re an integral part of the social system here. They appear in all walks of life & in a variety of jobs. Tonight we went to the Tamaki Maori Village to learn why.

We were supposed to be picked up at 5:15 PM so we went to the lobby to wait. At 5:35 PM, I went to the desk to ask if they would call about the pick-up. They said they were just getting ready to call our room to tell us that they got a FAX saying the bus would pick us up at 6 PM instead. David noticed that the time the FAX arrived was 10:15 AM. I let them know that we’d cut our touring short to be on time. An apology was offered. A bit later, the young man I’d spoken to asked if we would like complimentary coffees while we waited. I asked him if that was his idea & he said that it was. He then added that he’d probably get into trouble for doing it. When we got back to the hotel this evening, we went to the desk to set up a wake up call & mentioned that we didn’t get one this morning. The clerk was very apologetic & seemed genuinely upset. Maybe there’s hope.

The bus ride to the village set the mood for the experience tonight. The driver was Maori & explained the order of events & some cultural etiquette as we drove. We were asked to pick a chief to represent us as a tribe when we were met with the traditional Maori challenge. The Maori warrior would be announced by blowing a tone on a shell. He would make hostile sounds, be bare-chested, have his face tattooed, carry a weapon, make his eyes bulge, & stick out his tongue. This posturing was to indicate that our flesh looked good enough to eat. Yes, they were known to be cannibalistic at times & to hang the steamed heads of their enemies from posts. He said that if we followed protocol a peace offering would be tendered & we would be invited into the village. If things went wrong, we would get back on the bus, go to Burger King, & our chief would foot the bill. We would know we were in his good graces when he walked up to our chief & offered the Maori greeting. Right hands are clasped, left hands are placed on each other’s shoulders, & noses are rubbed twice. If you rub noses three times, it’s a marriage proposal. Rubbing noses symbolizes sharing of the breath of life & binds the friendship.

Fortunately, we had a wise chief who could follow instructions. As for me, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the muscular legs of the gorgeous warrior. We entered the pa, the Maori fort, through trenches surrounded by tall spiked stockade fencing. We passed through a model village where Maoris demonstrated different crafts, customs, songs, dances, & games. Karen recognized a stick game she’d learned as a Girl Scout.

We went into a large meeting hall & the Maori show began. There were speeches made & poetry recited in their language that was translated for us. There were dances & songs. They explained they used to have an educational system where chosen children were sent to study with priests & warriors were trained. Some of the games were actually to strengthen arms & wrists & develop eye-hand coordination & peripheral vision. They showed us a hakka, which I now understand, is a battle dance to psych the warriors. They sang prayers to farewell their dead & praise the living. There were demonstrations of musical instruments including the guitar. The guitar had become popular among the youth & the elders used it as a way to entice young people back to learn about traditions. The performance was visually stirring & viscerally moving. It was loud, confrontational, forceful, & performed with pride. The narrator was blunt in telling us that they have come a long way since they almost died out from disease brought by Europeans & from inter-tribal warfare. They attribute their survival to the missionaries who united them in peace.

Dinner began with a prayer & was prepared in a traditional hangi. That means that the chicken, lamb, fish, vegetables, & steamed pudding were placed in baskets on steaming rocks, covered in cabbage leaves, earth, covered with wet fabric, & left to cook for three hours. All I can say is that the cranberry & mint sauces were very good & much needed. David liked the food a lot. We were given time to shop before we were serenaded by our bus drivers who did renditions of “Down By the River Side” & “You Are My Sunshine.”

We boarded the bus in great spirits, but the fun wasn’t over yet. As we got to a roundabout, the driver started singing “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” as we & the other buses kept going around & around the traffic circle. Since we had been entertained all evening, it was now our turn to entertain the driver. We were asked to sing songs representative of our country. David got a bit teary eyed when we sang “America.” When it was the turn of the New Zealanders to sing, the driver suggested the national anthem. To our surprise, it was in the Maori language. The non-Maoris knew it as well. I guess they have to learn both versions in school. And that’s one very good example of the difference between the aborigines in Australia & the Maoris in New Zealand.

Toby

The Nose Knows

February 13, 2002- Making Lemonade
(photos:Lady Knox Geyser,
Thermal Pool)

It’s a dark stormy night. Cold air crept in from the South with a fierceness born in the recesses of Antarctica. But, no worries, the sun has shone today in New Zealand and natives were optimistic.

Our destination was Rotorua a town that turned a major negative into a selling point. It’s known for thermal activity, spas, and the all-pervasive stink of rotten eggs. We spent the day getting there but enjoyed the journey. We stopped at a vineyard, oohed at the delicate wines, aahed at the luscious scenery, remarked at how we hadn’t seen cornfields since leaving Ohio, and admired the elegance of farm raised Bambi deer in the pastures. I guess that’s what gave Karen a taste for venison tonight.

Rotorua was charming if somewhat depressed with empty storefronts and massage parlors dotting the main street. We went directly to the museum and Government Gardens. One movie centered on the early culture and legends of how the thermal springs came to be. Never mind scientific explanations about tectonic plates and the splitting off of Australia and New Zealand from Gonwanaland (when all the great continents were joined). The Maori story tells that when the founder of New Zealand came from Hawaiki, he met a monster/man. The newcomer parted the earth, the monster was swallowed up, and the anger of the monster has fueled the thermal infernos ever since. Tribes living in the area had a good life. Steam vents provided warmth, heat for cooking, and curative baths. As Europeans arrived, Maori settlers learned to capitalize on these assets. In 1886, an elder predicted that because Maoris were greedy, they’d be punished. Sure enough, Mt. Tarawera erupted and buried the village. The special effects of the show included our seats shaking and reeling

The other film was news footage interspersed with interviews with survivors from Company B of the 28th Battalion, an all-Maori volunteer unit in WWII. They fought bravely and suffered extensive casualties losing 2/3 of their troops.

As we left the museum, the sulfurous odor assailed us and the rose gardens seemed to be the place to go. Each bush was dangerously over laden with roses in displays as spectacular as I’ve ever seen.

When we checked into the Rydges Hotel it was fitting that our room not only overlooked Lake Rotorua, but in this odoriferous town, a horseracing track too.

February 14, 2002-Thar She Blows!

Happy Valentine’s Day. In keeping with the impending holiday of love New Zealand was target marketing the pink dollar. They realized that a lot of gay people are DINKS (double income no kids) or SINKS (single income no kids).

The Lady Knox Geyser at the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland blew at exactly 10:15 AM each day. How did the geyser adjust for Daylight Savings Time? In the mid 1800’s, prisoners planted pine forests that cover the hills today. The hot springs were used as an outdoor laudromat. The addition of soap to the springs caused the tension to break down between the cooler surface water and the hotter water belowground. The geyser was activated and their laundry went for a ride on the plume Today it looked like a giant science project. Soap powder was poured into the hole to activate the eruption on schedule. The white cone of the geyser leapt from the earth to a height of 7-8 feet; a frothy burbling began; a large white bubble formed looking as if Casper the Friendly Ghost was trying to escape. The froth overflowed and the waterworks spouted at least 100 feet into the air. The mist quickly cooled and was carried across the spectator area creating a larger splash zone than Shamu the whale at Sea World ever dreamed of.

We continued exploring as we walked through pungent odors on paths and boardwalks amidst thermal pools, steaming craters, and lakes creating a natural palette of green, red, violet, yellow, ochre, and blue.

We drove through a volcanic valley of wonders. The ground had convulsed leaving hills at odd angles. Karen was determined to get a picture of sheep, but wasn’t prepared for the camera savvy nature of the flock we chose to photograph. As we pulled to the side of the road the sheep started plodding uphill away from us. When Ron put down the window, they turned in unison and posed. As the window went up, they turned their backs on us and continued their climb.

In the afternoon Karen shopped while Ron, David, and I went back to the Government Garden area and the Blue Baths. They were opened in the 1930’s to replace hot spring baths that were started in 1885. It was the first place in the world allowing coed and mixed race swimming. The building was restored to its original art deco glory and one pool is still used for bathing. No one knows why they’re called Blue Baths since the original ones were a dirty green color, but the name has stuck. Until more recent years, the water was untreated and so cloudy that at the end of the day pool employees joined hands and walked across the bottom to see if anyone had drowned.

Toby

New Journeys

February 10, 2002-Old Friends
(photos:Auckland,
Paiahia,
Waitangi Meeting Hall)


We watched the opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics last night. I was almost overcome with emotion when it began. The country has come such a long way since 9/11 & this was a very courageous event. As the Native American tribal representatives came together for the first time, I knew we were in for a spectacular evening. Being in Australia now, everyone was comparing it to the Sydney Olympic ceremonies. Unfortunately, in my mind, the show went downhill from there. I’m sure you all saw it & may feel differently, but the sight of the dancers in those exquisite costumes gyrating to rock & roll seemed ludicrous. I was embarrassed for them. It didn’t matter to me that Robbie Robertson was half Mohawk & half Jewish. With the geniuses in Hollywood, I thought they could come up with something better. The staging didn’t seem to use the space to the best advantage either. The coup de grace was when the Native Americans left the arena & were followed by the pioneers. That was a nice touch. The annihilators following the annihilatees.

We went to meet Karen & Ron, friends from Akron, at the airport this morning along with thirteen Japanese tour guides. They weren’t meeting the our friends, but they were meeting the same plane as we were. Everything went off without a hitch until we got lost on the way to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. David tried to back up after passing a turn & backed into the car behind us. Being an American driver, he looked over his right shoulder before backing up. Being a left side driving country, the car was in his blind spot. Damage was minimal, but David was very upset. The insurance companies will handle it all. When we spoke to Syd Bruce, he said that’s what they’re for & no worries.

The best things the Karen and Ron brought us were an ultra sound of the new baby & videos of Alex, Vikki, & Daniel. I understand that the ultra sound is a limited edition copy. We will cherish it & return it to its rightful owner via Karen and Ron. With the help of Karen, we were able to distinguish between the head & the tusch. Alex sent us a great drawing of the present goings on & the future with the new baby & possibly a new home for them all. We only got to see one of the videos they made with greetings from them, a dance & song by Alex, & pleas from them all for us to hurry home so that they can stop going to the soup kitchen & start going out to eat with us again.

February 12, 2002-Land Of Big Cloud

Our travel day started smoothly enough & our plane was even early. We’re in Auckland, New Zealand now. The only reason we know this is that the signs say so. But as we landed an unheard of hour early, there was no question that this was the “land of the big cloud.” We’re now convinced there was no need for special effects in the filming of Lord of the Rings. Every cloudbank, mist shrouded mountain, & fog blurred landscape was authentic. There’s an ethereal beauty about this place that may be best appreciated when seen through a surreal haze.

The first hint that the stars were not lined up in our favor was when we sought out the Thrifty Car Rental kiosk. It wasn’t in the row with Hertz, Avis, & Budget, but was off site. We were picked up by shuttle & hauled to their office along with our combined luggage. At last inventory there were three suitcases & seven carry-ons. The full sized Holden (GM here) Commodore wagon we’d reserved was nowhere to be seen. We were shown to a sedan & flatly refused to even try to get into it. We ended up with a bright red Toyota van into which we settled with a permanence formerly seen when squatters claimed land in the Oklahoma land grab.

It was 7 PM when we headed north for Paihia in the Bay of Islands. That’s the area where the Maoris first settled. It’s one of the closest points to Hawaiki where they thought the souls of the dead would return. It was a 3-4 hour drive, but we were slowed by rain & fog. Leaving Auckland was lovely. The harbor is wall-to-wall masts with marinas crammed with sailing boats of all sizes waiting to set out. The topography gently rose until we were climbing small mountains lined with lush pine forests that also managed to support towering palm trees & tree-sized ferns. Karen kept exclaiming at the variety & intensity of the greens & we tried to recall the words to “this is the forest primeval.” Ron thought we’d found Brigadoon. At one point I rolled down my window to see if the tinted glass was enhancing the colors. It was not. We cruised past marshes barely visible through the shroud of low hanging clouds & climbed to heights that looked down on fjord-like crevasses.

Plagues

As the day grew shorter, the drive grew longer, our hunger mounted, & our boredom increased, we resorted to tried & true methods of staying awake. Karen was anxious to see a black sheep, so we sang “Baa Baa Black Sheep” as an enticement. We got a bit punchy when the paved surface of the road disappeared without warning & we found ourselves in the fog, in the dark, in the rain, & in the middle of a cloud encapsulated gravel mountain road. That was the first time that David invoked the “F” word. Just as Ron wondered whether we were keeping up with our “pestilence schedule,” the major road on which we were traveling crossed unmarked railroad tracks. That was the first time that Karen invoked the “F” word. Immediately after the tracks was a cow crossing sign. If the train don’t get you the cows will. In keeping with the pestilence theme, we didn’t recall that the plagues visited upon the Egyptians during Pesach including anything about cows. We were desperate for food & all the restaurants were closing, so we stopped to ask for a suggestion. In keeping with the mood, we ventured into Killer Prawn. It turned out to be excellent, lifted our spirits, & gave us the energy to plow ahead through the murk. I must mention that in a stroke of brilliance Karen ordered a plate of assorted chocolates & candied fruits as dessert. We packed it into a “to go” box & went.

Why did we even imagine that at 11 PM with only 67 kms to go, we were home free? The first indication of a problem was a sign indicating that the only way to Paihia was by ferry. No one had mentioned a ferry. How late did the ferry run? Why couldn’t any of us read at this hour? The next sign clarified things. We didn’t need the ferry. We rolled up to the hotel at 12:30 AM & feared there would be no way into our rooms. We couldn’t find the office & David was frazzled. The manager was looking out for us & we finally settled into an amazing set of rooms for six hours of sleep. We had to be at the boat for the dolphin cruise at 7:30 AM.

Soaked and Snubbed

It was a dark & rainy morning as we trudged to the boat. The weather hadn’t cleared, the seas were moderately high, & we doubted that the trip would leave. We were optimistic & had worn our swimmers under our clothes. Fortunately, or not, Tammy, our skipper, & Floppy (I’m serious), our dolphin expert, told us that the boat had radar. No worries. We hummed the theme to Gilligan’s Island as we embarked for a 4-hour cruise through pea soup. True to its name, Bay of Islands is just that. We passed isles of all sizes & shapes that skulked behind the mist. It was an eerie game of hide & seek as they lurched into view & then vanished as quickly. Several dolphin watch boats were out at the same time & worked co-operatively in locating the pods.

Dolphins are a fickle bunch & swap pods at will. Females control their ovulation & thus procreation, but that doesn’t mean sexual abstinence. Oh no! Those little lumps of libido spend 60% of their time enjoying social sex. They don’t care if their partner is male or female either. The dolphin could be the new symbol for the bi-sexual community. The first pod we spotted had babies swimming along so we couldn’t get into the water with them. The mothers were fiercely protective. What we could do was strip to our bathing suits & crawl onto the foredeck in the rain.

Because the water was choppy, holding the handrail was not enough. When we got to the edge of the bow, we laid on our stomachs with our heads suspended over the edge. Since the boat was a catamaran, the dolphins could swim under it. That’s exactly what they did. They made sport of racing us, coming up from the rear under the boat, rolling to their sides so they could look up into our faces, & squirting us with water from their blowholes. The more of a reaction they got from us, the better they liked it. I had a theory that there is a “human watch” that dolphins pay to go on. Do you get the picture? We were half naked, spread on our bellies on a wet deck of a rolling boat, getting rained on from the top & splashed from the bottom. It was cold, we were wet, it was amazing fun! Some people were shivering so violently their muscles visibly quivered in spastic jerks. Is it any wonder since Ron was lying next to me that I asked him to lie on top of me? Being the gentleman that he is, he just rubbed my back to get the circulation going again.

We moved on to another pod in hope that we could get into the water with them & I sandwiched myself between David & Ron for warmth. By this time, several people were making good use of the plentiful seasickness bags. Karen said she was ready to be dry. It was only 10:30AM. We didn’t find the pod until 11:30 AM. In the interim we saw some fairy penguins at sea & a thrasher shark. It was comforting to hear there has never been a fatal shark attack in New Zealand since that Europeans had come. I wonder what the Maoris used to do to provoke the sharks?

David was the only one of us who put on the snorkel gear & got it on with the pod, as it were. The pod found the humans uninteresting & swam away. David had such bad leg cramps from the cold water that he didn’t stay in long at all.

Gods and Goblins

We got as dry as we could, put on our damp clothing, & headed for Waitangi, the site of the signing of the treaty with the Maoris. The grounds were lush & the orientation movie was beautiful, candid, & informative. They refer to the Europeans as “white goblins.” We plodded across wet lawns to see a war canoe & toured a cathedral sized meeting house with walls covered in woven grass mats. Each mat had its own complex geometric pattern. The rafters, pillars, & entry were carved with elaborate “tiki-like” gods that were graphically sexually explicit.

We made the uneventful cloud enshrouded drive back to Auckland where we’re staying the night. Along the way we found out that the only sun they have had in months was from Xmas to New Years. In the daylight, the North Island of New Zealand reminds me of the Alaska we saw in summertime. Everything is a little shabby & looks as if it’s dressed in castoffs.

Karen did see her black sheep. In fact there were several of them. The fields are speckled with sheep & cows. And we learned that this was the chosen home of a Viennese artist who we enjoyed while we were in Austria. The hand of Hundterwasser is apparent in much of the decorative tile work that crops up in unlikely & mundane spaces. For those of you who are familiar with him, yes, there are Hundterwasser public toilets in New Zealand.

Toby

Growth

February 6, 2002-Littlies

Do you remember the couple that was trying to get pregnant? They are the parents of an18-month-old. Well, we just got an email that they’re pregnant & it may be twins. They had been trying for 18 months (that’s what they said) & she had been taking fertility drugs. Now Australia will have one or two more “littlies.” Yes, that’s the diminutive for small child. I guess we’re guilty of calling kids “kiddies,” so we can’t throw stones in this case.

February 9, 2002-Immigrants

There are 133 ways to apply for immigration to Australia. Shall I count them? We had dinner at congregant's the other night. He’s the Columbian who has been trying to get his relatives a permanent visa for Australia. He finally succeeded in finding a bureaucrat who’s sympathetic to his cause & the plight of his nephew. If you recall, the nephew is an architect who was working on a government building. His life was threatened by the guerillas unless he left the project. He’s now unable to work. Things are looking up & the nephew, his wife, & three children will be moving into their uncle's house when they arrive. In fact, the uncle is planning to make it a permanent arrangement & will be adding a second story to their home to accommodate the family. They’re amazing & generous people. I also heard of a man who was trying to get a permanent visa as a retiree. They made him lose weight. I guess they take physical health seriously when they plan on paying for your medical care.

We received an eviction notice yesterday. Evidently, the congregation signed a 6-month lease for our apartment & it’s up on Feb. 28th. They have the option of extending it for 3- months at a slightly higher rental. David was really concerned about the notice. I thought it was funny. At worst it would mean we’d have to move in with the Bruces or leave early. We need to get visas for India & Kenya when we return from New Zealand, so we’d need a couple of weeks for that. It might mean we’d have to spend extra time in Australia on our own. Believe me, we could fill it. We gave the letter to Syd Bruce last night & we all had a laugh. He’ll handle it. No, we’re not leaving early.

As a matter of fact, David called our Akron travel agent this morning & finalized our itinerary. We leave here on April 4th after David mails our last parcel to the U.S., picks up our rental car, & we each get haircuts. We’ll travel into New South Wales by way of the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) to see Canberra. Then we’ll head for Sydney. We leave Sydney on April 12th & fly to Delhi, India by way of Hong Kong. We’re flying Cathay Pacific so there’s no way to avoid Hong Kong. We have a 7-hour layover there so we’ll go into the city. We’re in India for ten days before going to Kenya. We tour Nairobi & go on a safari until May 3rd. We then head for Cape Town, S. Africa for six days. Amsterdam is our last foreign destination since we’re flying KLM. We’re there three days before winging it to Detroit & Cleveland. After juggling all the flight times & time zones, we’ll get home on May 12th, Mother’s Day.

I just got a voucher for $30 towards a haircut at the shop I’ve been going to. It’s automatic when you’ve spent a certain amount. They noted in boldface that my “expiry” date was 7-4-02. It took a while to realize that it meant

April 7, 2002

We had a wonderful Japanese dinner at Cha Cha’s. It had been a long time since we were in Japan & we were ready for that taste again. A lot if not most of the restaurants here are BYO. In this case, they didn’t have beer or diet pop so David took a walk to the bottle shop up the street to get our supplies. No worries.

We pick another set of friends up at the airport in Brisbane tomorrow at 8 AM. We’ll tour with them all day & only take them back to the apartment at night if they beg us. We’ll take them to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary so they can get up close & personal with the koalas, roos, & emus. Then we’ll head to our favorite spot in the Hinterlands, O’ Reily’s. There we’ll once again do the treetop climb of the rainforest. We’re up the next morning to go back to the Brisbane airport to fly to Auckland, New Zealand. When we’re on the road I’ll try to avoid the use of apostrophes so you don’t get gibberish in your emails.

Colonies

Now, to give you a head start on learning about New Zealand. You’re about to learn more than you ever wanted to know. Although it was a surprise to me, I’m sure many of you more geographically cognizant recipients of this email knew that New Zealand is part of Polynesia. It’s one of the most isolated countries in the world & the last to be inhabited by humans. When the Maoris came just 1300-2000 years ago, they called it Aotearoa, “land of the long white cloud.” The descendants of the Maoris came from Polynesia, by way of Hawaiki. Yes, there’s a reason there’s so much similarity between things Hawaiian & Maori culture & language. Abel Tasman, a Dutch explorer sighted the landmasses in 1642, but the extremely aggressive & warlike Maori tribes deterred early Europeans who tried to land. Good old reliable ever-present Captain Cook mapped the islands in 1796, & the first mission was set up in 1814. In 1840, the British declared New Zealand a colony. Brits & Maoris in the Bay of Islands area of the North Island signed the Waitangi Treaty. The trouble with that was that there were two versions. There are still disagreements & negotiations going on that stem from that treaty.

With a population of around four million inhabitants, the joke that sheep out number the people is true. Although a small & new democracy, New Zealanders have been in the forefront of social reform. In 1867, four Maori seats were established in Parliament. New Zealand was the first in the world to give women the vote in 1893. They established compulsory, free schooling by 1877 & a free health system by 1938. The country declared its non-nuclear stance in 1986, which resulted in non-alignment of its armed forces with those of the U.S. & Britain. In 1933, a woman was elected a Member of Parliament. There is presently a transgendered woman as a Member of Parliament. In 1997 they elected a woman as Prime Minister. The only indigenous mammals are two varieties of bats. But the best thing is, there are no snakes. The introduced mongoose ate them all.

Toby

Great Issues

February 5, 2002-Sex Obsessed?

From the tidbits I’ve been sending you may think Australia is a sex-obsessed country. It’s just more open than the U.S. An example of that is that there will be three major events in the Brisbane area at one time. Bill Clinton is coming, the Queen of England will be here, & Sexpo 2002 will take place. One commentator noted that, ” … Clinton & the royal family set cultural milestones with their sexual peccadilloes…” The new event at Sexpo that has raised eyebrows is “shadow sex.’ It’s borrowed from Amsterdam’s sex scene & involves voyeurism & exhibitionism. Couples have sex behind an opaque curtain & the audience gets to watch.

Sydney is gearing up for the Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras. This is a three-week event culminating in a parade. The parade started as a protest march in the mid-80’s & has evolved into the single biggest event in Sydney. Mardi Gras brings in more money than any other happening in that happenin’ place. It’s gotten to the point where hired curators run the three-week long events. There’s still grassroots involvement, but these experts co-ordinate the dance parties (including one for 13-17 year olds), fashion shows, workshops (from DJ master classes to writing workshops), forums on sexuality, health, & gender politics. There’s a Boxing Club where anyone can rant & rave about love, life, & art. There’s a film festival, live performances, visual arts programs, & the requisite Sydney Gay & Lesbian Choir.

We’re really regretting that David agreed to stay through Pesach. We thought the congregational Seder was on the first night. It’s on the second. We haven't done two nights of Pesach in 35 years. We're really annoyed. The only good thing is that there’s a new member in town. He’s catering the Seder at temple. At a meeting to discuss the Seder, someone asked if he was gay. David said that his favorite daughter was gay & our cantor here said that two of her favorite nephews were gay. End of discussion. That brings the total of the families that are out to us to five. The new member’s partner will be in town soon.

There was a proposal made to us to come back, but it wasn't something we even considered for a second. They wanted us to take a year off & then sign on for three years. They’d send us back to the U.S. for a month each year. That sounded really inadequate even if we accepted. What don’t they get about the meaning of retirement? There are times when, family considerations aside, we would love to stay, but there’s never a time when David wants to keep being in the active rabbinate. That’s why he retired. There’s also a feeling of isolation here. We love travel, but it’s a huge first step to get anywhere. When we leave Sydney for India, it will be a nine-hour flight just to get to Hong Kong. I'm not sure how good certain parts of medical care are & I think that dental is really behind the U.S. Education is inferior & the Jewish communities here are sicker than ours.

David might have to keep really busy when we get home. He’s taken up window washing here. It’s the second time he noticed that the balcony sliders were spotted & undertook the job of cleaning them. He now knows how hard it is to do a streak free job. He was whinging about not having a squeegee or proper window washing solution. No, I don’t have vinegar in the house.

February 6, 2002-Turmoil

They’re rioting in Woomera, there’s strife in Aurukun, there’s flooding in Sydney, & the rainforests need rain. If it weren’t already a song, I’d write it. Woomera is the detention center where some people have been locked up for over three years without a decision. Aurukun is a tiny town of mainly aborigines where out of 250 children enrolled in school only 10 students attend regularly. Where Sydney didn’t burn, it’s now flooding & sliding downhill as a result of torrential downpours. The rainforests in Queensland are in such need of rain, and the animals may loose so much habitat that koalas, an already endangered species, may disappear. Did I mention the cyclone in Broome, Western Australia?

We watched the new episode of West Wing last night. It was a bit disconcerting. I know that the repartee is clever, fast, & lively, but we had more trouble than usual understanding it. Can our ears be that un-attuned to American? I did notice we’ve become unaccustomed to seeing multi-racial casts on TV. Here, there’s no way a black aboriginal man or woman would be cast as the head of the department of defense.

Our travel agent in Akron emailed us what looks like a great itinerary for the remainder of our adventure. We’re tentatively booked to leave Sydney on March 12, & arrive in Cleveland on May 10. The emails should get more interesting during that time.

Toby

Home and Away

February 2, 2002-Vocabulary Lesson

Now we know what we’ll save in a fire. The fire alarm went off in the building yesterday afternoon. We called reception to verify that it wasn’t just a test & prepared to evacuate. We grabbed the computer & back-up disks. It turned out to be a false alarm, but it did cause us to think about what we should really take. I read somewhere that you should keep what you would want to save in a fire all in one place so that it’s ready to go. David said we should have grabbed our passports. We have copies at home (Akron), so that didn’t seem important to me. I thought the photo albums of our trip would be missed, but they’re very bulky. We’ve almost filled four albums of 300 photos each. I have all the negatives & they’re now sitting right next to the computer bag.

When we went to Byron Bay with our rabbi friend from home & his wife and ate lunch at a seaside café. We had to go to the bar to order hard & soft drinks & our friend volunteered. He thought he spoke the language of this foreign land but came back carrying our drinks & laughing. He’d ordered three colas & a bitter lemon. Bitter lemon is bottled carbonated lemonade. The bartender asked him, “ Do you wanta try?” He answered that he’d tried a bitter lemon before & liked it. The bartender’s response was, “ Do you want a “try” to carry it all?” Our friend answered in the affirmative & presented our four drinks on a tray.

The temple bulletin came today. The writer of one of the articles can offer no excuse for his “typo.” He’s a native Aussie. His father, a pillar of the Jewish community in Brisbane & on the Gold Coast, had died & the son wrote & delivered a moving eulogy at the funeral. Unfortunately, in typing the heading, he wrote “Eurology for ....”

Now for your regular irregular vocabulary lesson from OZ. There’s another word for hoon. If you recall, a hoon is a young man who shows off while driving. They drive too fast, squeal their tires, & generally are a nuisance. Wanker is another word for that. When I raised my eyebrows, Syd Bruce cautioned that it might not be suitable for use in the U.S. Another term, “piss up,” means a drunken party. If you want to use it in a sentence, you’d say, “He’s so dumb he couldn’t throw a piss up in a brewery.”

February 4, 2002-Reminders of Home

Last night we had dinner at the home of the American family whose boat has been in dry dock for months. They rented out their house in California, bought a catamaran, & were sailing around the world for the last two years. They have two children ages 10 & 13. Both parents have advanced degrees in engineering & mathematics & were home schooling the kids. The girl will celebrate her bat mitzvah here the end of March. They hit a storm between New Zealand & Fiji & developed a crack in a crossbeam. They hired people to sail the boat to Australia for repair, but another storm did more damage & forced it back to Fiji. They had the boat freighted to the Gold Coast & have been here since September. The boat will be ready in June. One of the guests last night brought Chocolate Trivial Pursuit. I’d never seen it, but it’s played with chocolate “doobies.” That’s what we call the triangular pieces you put into the wheel when you answer a question correctly. It was such fun! But the rules were disappointing. You could only eat one of your pieces at the end of the game.

We’re watching the Super Bowl Game broadcast live. It’s Monday at 1 PM & the Patriots just scored the winning field goal. Even in Australia, I couldn’t escape it. The paper here carried a brief explanation of the rules. I guess Alex, our granddaughter, will be happy. She had money on New England. It was broadcast without commercials here, so when there was a commercial break, there was commentary. The odd thing about it was that the sportscasters were Australian. They did a good job, but we aren’t attuned to hearing Aussie accents discussing American football.

Speaking of Alex, the date was set for her bat mitzvah. It will be Saturday morning on June 5, 2004. Temple Israel sets bar/bat mitzvah dates two-three years in advance. It’s a custom that started many years ago. It wasn’t because there were so many to schedule. The parents wanted the advance dates so they could be sure to be able to book the DJ’s they wanted. One thing David hated when he was there was knowing what he would be doing on a certain date three years hence.

David is reading a book on cricket. It’s really for referees & a lot of it is too advanced for him. One thing he did understand is that there are specific rules for the ref to book tea time & lunch & set it up with the caterer.

More friends from Akron are coming. They're now in Melbourne. We’re eagerly awaiting their arrival on Feb. 10.

Toby

Shows & Tales

January 29, 2002-Historic Glimpse

Last night we had dinner at the home of congregants tonight. They’re not married & he’s in his 80’s. They’ve been together five years. Although I don’t think she’s Jewish, they met at temple. She’s probably in her late 70’s & is the widow of a British Airlines employee. She lived in England until immigrating to New Zealand. When she applied for citizenship in New Zealand, it was granted because she’s an expert antique furniture caner & bullrusher, skills that were much needed there. She’s the stereotypical Brit. You never know when she’s cracking wise or when she’s serious & you could cut her accent with a knife. She’s traveled extensively & prides herself on still staying at hostels. Her hair is pure white & she wears it pulled straight back. There’s no evidence she wears any makeup. What you see is what you get. Her one flirtation with flamboyance was when she wore a sari she’d gotten in India. Dinner was Indian pilaf & stew that was utterly bland.

He was born in England & went to the U.S. at age fifteen to finish his education. His parents stayed behind. When he was eighteen, he received a letter from the U.S. immigration service telling him he had seventy-two hours to leave the country. His Visa was being revoked. He wanted to stay long enough to complete his first semester at U of Pennsylvania, so he sought help at the British consulate. They told him they would be delighted to pay his passage back to England & would be happy to launch his military career in His Majesty’s Army. It was the start of WWII. As he was walking the streets & trying to figure out what to do, he came upon a U.S. Army recruiting office. He went in, enlisted, and then negotiated an immediate 30-day leave so he could finish the term. The rest of his education was courtesy of the U.S. military & took place over a 28-year army career. He was a mechanical & civil engineer & worked for the cities of Denver & Phoenix after separation from the army until he retired. His parents came to Australia in 1957, & were among the founders of the Surfer’s Paradise community. He didn’t come to Australia to live until the 70’s. His parents were instrumental in starting the orthodox congregation & then the progressive one. It was quite an informative evening. David asked one question at the beginning of the evening & the past unfolded over the course of the next 4-½ hours.

We’re wondering how our emotions will play out as we leave. Will there be tears or rejoicing? I think it will be a mixture of both. I’m starting to think of things that need to be packed early in March & sent home. It takes twelve weeks to get from here to U.S. Yesterday we made a momentous decision. We opened our last box of Kleenex & decided not to buy a back-up box. We're too close to the end of our stay. In an emergency we can always run down to our larder, the IGA in our building.

January 30, 2002-Visitors

We collected a rabbi friend from Cleveland and his wife at the Brisbane airport yesterday. We considered it our trial run for when other friends come in. They checked into our apartment/hotel & we “whinged” about how they had a better view than we did. They’re on the 8th floor & can see the ocean. We had some wine & cheese & went out for Indian food. She's going to perform her one-woman show at temple tonight so needs some prep time. Since it’s raining now, we’ll wait for the afternoon to explore. The tourist places where you feed roos & koalas are out. While they were in Cairns, they had “breakfast with the birds.” There’s a place there that has a first rate buffet breakfast & you can play with the animals at the same time. Sounded appetizing.

We drove up to O’Reily’s Plateau & did the treetop walk through the rainforest. Luck was with us. We saw a full-grown kangaroo in the wild on our way home. We also passed a sign that said “slasher ahead.” We were a little nervous that they had warnings of demented murderers on their highways, but we soon saw that it only referred to a highway maintenance machine that cut tall grass at the side of the road.

January 31, 2002-More Danger

The rabbi's wife started her day by having a manicure at the salon I go to. Then they needed to change money so we went to Pacific Fair Shopping Mall across the street. They thought it was unique. We then drove to Byron Bay & they were mesmerized by the green, aqua, & navy hues of the seas & the crashing surf as the shoreline changed from sandy beaches to rocky crags. Tonight we’ll walk to the Thai restaurant to meet the Bruces for dinner. This time we’ll walk on the beach so they can at least say they were in the ocean at the infamous Gold Coast beach. After dinner we’ll take them into Surfer’s Paradise to see the honky tonk that goes on there. They leave tomorrow morning.

Her performance of Chaya’s Love Song was very well received last night. There was quite a crowd of about 80-100 people most of whom were moved to tears by the presentation. She was the director of the Jewish Center Theater in Cleveland for a number of years & performs around the country for Jewish organizations. As we were driving in the car, I was telling her about David’s cousin who, with her partner, wrote a book called The Rescuers. It’s about Christians who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Our friend actually knows them & has been trying to reach them. She wants to use some of their material in her work & needs their permission. As it turns out, they’re now living in Santa Fe, New Mexico where her son lives. We were delighted to give her their address & phone number.

Now come the King Tides. After dealing with poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders, deadly inhabitants of seashells, lethal jellyfish, & fire ants, Australians have to face the yearly attack of the ocean as the winter tides rise during the cyclone season. The ocean is noticeably rougher & many beaches are closed. The water level has risen in the canals & the high water indicators & flood area warnings take on more meaning. The seas are churning & it’s more beautiful than ever.

Toby

Australia Day

January 26, 2002-New Stuff
(photo:Australia Day celebration)

Today is Australia Day. In 1788, Arthur Phillip sailed 11 ships of the First Fleet from England to Sydney to establish a colony in New South Wales. He managed to transport 1,000 reluctant travelers (both prisoners & free) 15,000 miles to an unknown land. In preparing his sermon last night, David wanted to understand Australia Day & tried to find an American comparable. Columbus Day seemed to fit. Both holidays celebrate white Europeans “discovering” lands that had long been inhabited by indigenous people. Here as in America, the indigenous people & their sympathizers stage peaceful events reminding everyone of their rights as original inhabitants. Both holidays are given short shrift in their respective countries. Here, Australia Day isn’t marked by parades, fireworks, or political speeches. There are scattered rodeos, sheep shearing contests, & one local fair.

I’ve told you that in grade 12, students take exams used for college admissions. The import of the results is enormous. It not only decides on the fate of their undergraduate education, but also impacts on their career choices. They not only apply for college entry, but also apply to a particular school in that college & particular career training. In other words, they declare a major upon application to college. For example, if a student wants to be a doctor or lawyer, they must apply as such during year twelve. If they’re accepted, the doctor has a 5-year training program to become a GP with an additional year or two to become an MD. Lawyers complete their courses of training in three years of undergraduate education. So, Gasp!, a 21 year old can be a lawyer. I know that there’s additional education & further degrees, but a lawyer is a lawyer. The same rules hold for business, IT, teaching. The course work is so confined to that particular career choice, it’s hard to change tracks.

We finally made it to a popular local haunt last night. After services we went to the Ashmore Road Steak & Seafood Restaurant. It’s a huge building that sits up on a hill. The parking lot is always crowded & everyone raves about it. When we found out that it was owned by a Greek family, we were determined to get there. True to form, the portions are huge & prices are reasonable. The restaurant itself is a conglomeration of tasteful décor punctuated by startling tackiness. The room we sat in has three glass walls overlooking lush tropical plants that successfully screened the parking lot. The carpeting was attractive, clean, & newer. The tablecloths were sparkling white, the lighting was subdued, & brazenly artificial potted plants hung from the rafters. Dangling from the plants above each table was a table number. The system was a variation on typical Aussie counter restaurants. In a counter restaurant, you order at the counter, are given a table number to display at your table, & the food is served to you at that table. It’s sort of like Ponderosa or Sizzler. At this particular place, there was a large order sheet on the table that also served as the menu. You marked which items you wanted & noted your table number at the top. A server collected the order form, tore off the bottom strip, & noted your table number on that strip. That became the check that you later took to the cashier for payment. The customer ordered & paid for drinks directly from the bar. David had a Porterhouse steak. I haven’t even seen that on a menu for years. It was succulent & well flavored. I think we brought more than half of it home. I had grilled barramundi & took half of that home as well. All dinners came with great garlic bread, side salad, & fries. I think the steak came to $US13. Now I know why it’s so popular.

January 27, 2002-New Food

We did go to the town council sponsored Australia Day celebration at one of the parks yesterday. They had a big turn out & the weather was glorious. We spent most of the time at the rodeo. They have a sensible approach to bull & bronc riding. The juniors wore substantial helmets & thick, padded leather vests. Aside from some bulls that decided to lie down on the job & wouldn’t leave the chute & a horse that wouldn’t stop grazing, things were pretty exciting. It was the job of one of the clowns to hose down the dust in the ring from time to time. Being a clown, he also hosed down the very grateful crowd.

The foods were varied & ranged from Aussie Tucker to Asian, Indian, Bosnian, Afghani, Greek, French, & German. The Aussie foods were pies (meat, of course), pasties, salad rolls (lettuce, tomato, beetroot, cheese, & a meat on a buttered hamburger bun), waffles (they claim them too), hot dogs, & burgers with the lot (bacon, eggs, avocado, beetroot). There were displays of wool spinning, sheep shearing, wagon wheel making, & other outback skills. They had tug of war contests, foot races, & egg tosses. There were three stages with entertainment ranging from bush poetry to traditional Aussie tunes. There was a camel caravan on which you could ride & a draft horse drawn wagon as well. Remember that the Afghans used camels to trade along the Australian desert. There were bands playing old rock & roll & a Maori cultural group who performed traditional dances & songs. The Maoris are indigenous to New Zealand, but these people had immigrated to Queensland. They boasted that they were the only people in the Southern Hemisphere who were undefeated by the British. It’s true to this day. They were decked out in their war regalia & tattoos & were pretty ominous looking. I imagine the Brits weren’t too happy to find they were up against Maoris in New Zealand after having dealt with the more docile Australian aborigines.

January 29, 2002-New Ideas

Sunday night we had dinner at a congregant’s home. They are always a delight. His brother, Jack, was visiting from London. Jack is a psychotherapist who works for the government. He made an interesting observation. He said that countries seem to favor admitting political or ideological refugees rather than economic refugees. With economic refugees, you have a population who just want to work hard, become successful, & create a better life for themselves & their children. Political & ideological refugees were troublemakers in their place of origin & seem to keep getting into trouble in their adopted country. He may have skewed experience since patients he comes into contact with are the ones who are constantly confronting the legal system.

Toby

Homeside

January 21, 2002-Pregnancy
(photos: Sheep herding,
Sheep sheering)

We spoke to our granddaughter Alex today & got the latest on life in Akron. It’s a prolific place. She bought a hamster with her own money & set it up where it would be "safe" from the cats. She thinks it’s pregnant. She named it Hannah the Hamster Horowitz, but Daniel thinks that Macabee, the cat, has named it "Lunch." The son of friends once did a funeral in Indiana for a Henrietta Hamster. I do believe that David obtained the Jewish grave marker from the funeral home. They decided the original owner determined the religion of the hamster. She was a teacher who happened to be Jewish. The hamster was given to one of her students at the end of the school year & subsequently died. At her school, Alex is a primary caretaker of the school's hairless rat. She told everyone that it was getting bigger every day & she thought that it was pregnant. They thought she just had babies on her mind. The rat now has 14 ratlettes. At least Alex was wrong about Vikki's pregnancy. The ultra sound revealed there’s only one baby. Alex predicted twins.

January 22, 2002-Safety

I knew that you wanted to stay abreast, as it were, of the developments in the sex industry in Australia, so I’ll include the following article. The headline was, “Prostitutes to get on top of safety issues.” It seems there are dangers of “repetitive strain injury…The guidelines, believed to be a world first, also advise brothel operators to reduce accidents by avoiding dim lights and fixing loose bed frames. Wrist injuries are apparently common….as are back injuries caused by poor quality beds.” The safety booklet is “Getting On Top of Health and Safety.”

January 24, 2002-Scouting

We just got an email from someone in Akron who told us that Hannah the Hamster bit Vikki the day after they got it. If Hannah isn’t careful, Macabee, the cat might get his wish.

We spoke to Wendy & her partner yesterday. They’re putting a major effort into rehabbing a duplex. Her partner is a carpenter by trade, but seems to be able to do a lot more. Wendy has been in charge of assembling kitchen cabinets & painting. They do this after work & on weekends. It keeps them off the streets.

We’ve added an Aussie word to our vocabulary. A spruiker (sprew’-ker) is someone who stands outside a business & promotes or hawks its wares. We’ve seen them here using a microphone & giving their spiel. They pronounce it “sprew’-kah.”

We went to the Woolshed today. We wanted to check it out for friends who are coming next week & for other friends who will be here the week after. Its main draw is a sheep-shearing exhibition & sheep herding show. They also have the requisite koalas & kangaroos. It was amazing to see how passive the sheep was while it was being shorn. It was almost as if it enjoyed the process. There was no fighting or squirming. The shearer held the sheep’s shoulder & foreleg between his own legs to immobilize the animal. The coat came off mostly in one piece. All they do in Australia is grow the sheep, shear them, bale the wool, & ship it out of the country for processing. The have no wools mills here. They used three dogs for the herding. One was a longhaired border collie. It was originally a breed from Scotland. Australia adapted it by breeding a shorthaired version to suit the climate. They then bred dingoes with shorthairs & got the kelpie. They use all three varieties now.

Although the facility was not as nice as others we’ve seen, we decided to stay for lunch. We heard a couple at the next table speaking “American.” They were from Cincinnati and had just ended a 14-day cruise of New Zealand & Australia. They were staying on in Australia for two more weeks. We exchanged travel tips & had a good time hearing about what they’d already seen.

Toby

Day To Day

January 17, 2002-Bye Bye Tasmania

“Yehs, Mmmmm.” Those are the sounds you’re likely to hear when a group of Australians are acknowledging something that’s been said or agreeing with it. I noticed it more among Tasmanians. It takes on a cow-like quality. If you can imagine Borden’s Elsie the cow lowing her ascent, you will have the sound. It becomes a bit unnerving after awhile & I found it hard not to get the giggles, or worse, join in & try to imitate them.

As we lifted off from Tasmania, we left knowing that we’d done them a great service. Millions of bugs died on the windshield of our rental car so that we could see Tasmania. We’d driven a bit over 1,000 miles in six days. We thought our departure would be a repeat of our flight to Melbourne. The departure screen listed a flight delay due to “investigating an oil spill.” There it was on the TV monitor for all the passengers to see. I’d never known an airline to do that. But, that wasn’t our flight. We ran into a snag at security when I’d forgotten to pack my fingernail scissors in the suitcase. I refused to relinquish them since they were mine since I was a baby. Sentiment aside, we had to convert one of our carry on bags to checked luggage so the scissors could ride in the belly of the plane.

The flights went well, but we learned a bit more than we needed to know from a flight attendant about Qantas cost cutting. They’re no longer printing an in flight magazine, so the one at our seats is now a collector’s item. I dutifully collected it & refrained from doing the crossword puzzle. We were told that the “barf bags” were going to be the only thing left to read. They can now serve the original purpose or can double as mail –in order envelopes for film developing. Talk about multi-tasking. At the top of the bag it says, “This photo bag can also be used for Motion Sickness. Please take this bag with you and pass it on to family or friends if you are unable to use.” We almost rolled out of our seatbelts with laughter.

“Stroke of Good Luck With Sex.” That was the title of an article in the newspaper today. The article was unremarkable & talked about how middle-aged men should have sex several times a week to help avoid strokes. Then I got to the part that said, “ And they don’t need to worry about heart attacks from any extra bonking either.” I love the way they don’t mince words here.
January 18, 2002-Innovations

An interesting thing happened this morning. A woman who had chosen Judaism & who’d gone through the conversion ceremony three weeks ago had her bat mitzvah today. She read from the Torah. Hebrew reading is a requirement for conversion in Australia. She prepared the passage easily & well. She was thrilled to do so & is willing to be one of the lay people who read Torah when there’s no rabbi. She asked a woman who is studying for conversion to sing a song at the oneg (reception) that followed. No one knew this, but the woman sings professionally, reads Hebrew, & has a repertoire of Israeli & liturgical numbers at her fingertips. Both of the women are in their 40’s & will be able to help the aging (70’s) laity who now conduct the service. It’s amazing to think that both are Jews by choice & women.

The battery in the ancient Mitsubishi died. The car wouldn’t start after services this morning. David called the RACQ (Royal Auto Club of Queensland). He expected them to start the car & then he’d go to K-Mart for a battery. Well, it seems that the RACQ carries car batteries with them & installs them. It may have cost a bit more, but it’s a nice service.

We’re almost at the 2/3 mark. We have 2 ½ months to go in Oz & then we'll take a month of travel coming home. We’ll probably start shipping things back in March. We were told it takes twelve weeks from Australia to the U.S. Of course, we were told it takes 4-6 weeks from the U.S. to Australia. That turned out to be eoght weeks. I wonder if we’ll have more to send back than we shipped? We haven’t been buying much of anything here & have used up a lot of the things we shipped.

January 20, 2002-Nice Treat

I didn’t realize that even state schools here aren’t really totally free. Many of them require uniforms & the students have to buy their books. The cost can reach as high as $A 3000 in extras for public high school. You can’t figure it would be half in U.S. dollars, because the people here are living on Australian dollars & incomes. Their salaries are comparable to ours only in Aussie dollars. So, $3,000 is $3,000. It’s hard to get aid for school fees. There are no non-sectarian private schools, so Jewish kids going to private schools outside of Melbourne & Sydney go to church schools.

We had a nice surprise today. David was conducting his adult education this morning when a member of the congregation came in & asked me if we’d like to go out on their boat after class. They had come to Temple by boat. It was docked at a nearby marina. Of course, we accepted. There are more canals here than in Venice & the ones here don’t stink. We headed down the Nerang River for Marina Mirage at the Spit for lunch. The Nerang is a salt-water river &, yes, there are sharks in it. We cruised past homes that were what dreams are made of & quite modest places. We even passed a campground & a waterside mobile home park. We took a walk through the Sheraton & Versace Palace Hotel lobbies to gawk. The Versace was very gaudy. It had faux columns, faux marble, & a faux beach at the pool. The Sheraton was like walking into a dream fantasy. It was bright, airy & simply furnished. Straight ahead was a three-story floor to ceiling glass wall looking out onto a huge blindingly blue swimming pool. The view continued & led the eye out to the ocean beyond. It looked as if the waves were rolling into the pool. The sea & pool seemed to be of one piece & seductively drew the viewer into the depths.

David is watching a cricket match on TV now. The poor guy is desperate. He really thinks he will never get to see one in person. Since he doesn’t have a clue about how the game works, I suggested getting a library book so he could watch the TV & look up the terminology. I guess he could also look it up online.

Toby