On The Move Again

March 9, 2002-Departure
(photos:Our motto,
Quokka & me)

We’ll be on our way to Perth this evening. Perth is in the state of Western Australia. W.A., as it’s called, takes up 1/3 of all the area of the Australian continent. We leave at 8 PM & arrive in Perth at about 10:30PM. There’s a time difference, but I’m not sure what it is. I’ve heard that the flight takes anywhere from 4-7 hours.

This is a tidbit from the paper this morning. Australia has the highest youth suicide rate in the world. There’s a high rate among aborigine youth, but that doesn’t account for the extraordinarily high rates in the cities among the youth of European extraction. No reasons were given. So much for the happy go lucky Aussie image. Maybe a combination of the macho culture & the cultural endorsement of bouts of heavy drinking are clues. Perhaps the less blond & non-blue-eyed feel inferior. What if a young surf-worshipping Aussie just doesn’t look the knockout in a bikini?

March 10, 2002-Arrival

The flight from Brisbane to Perth is 5 ½ hours. It’s the same as flying from New York to Los Angeles. There was a scene at the departure gate that was reminiscent of when we left home. A young woman was being seen off by what I assume was an extended family including several young children. They hugged, kissed, & clung to each other until the last minute. They reluctantly tore away from their embraces as the sobbing woman made her way to the plane. David & I turned to each other & cried along with them. I’ll never forget that wrenching feeling of helplessness & acquiescence of the inevitable. Although we’ve had a once in a lifetime experience, it will remain just that. We will not be gone for nine months again.

Although the flight was uneventful, as it should have been, David did notice a serious breach in security that he’ll report to Qantas as soon as he has a chance to email them. During the flight, one of the flight attendants opened the cockpit door, stood there for some time, & chatted with the crew. Scary.

We saw a promotional video about the making of the movie The Rabbit Proof Fence. I don’t know if it’s big in the U.S., but it’s huge here. It’s about the time in Australia’s history when white Australians forcibly took aboriginal children away from their parents in a misguided attempt to integrate them into white society. The children are called the stolen generation. This is a story about how three young girls escaped their white homes & made their way back to their clans. They did this by following a fence that stretched across the desert to keep the plague of European introduced rabbits away from the outback stations (ranches). The video followed the director while he auditioned, selected, & worked with three amateur aboriginal actors. The scene where they’re literally torn from the arms of their mother I found to be emotionally wrenching. When they showed the reaction of the cast, crew, & director after the shoot, I also dissolved into tears. The young stars were inconsolable. This part of their history became so real for them that they had to be held, rocked, & comforted until they could recover their composure & go on.

We arrived in Perth on time & our car was ready & waiting for us. The only caution we got from the rental agent was that the insurance didn’t cover the car if we drove it between towns at night due to the high number of car/kangaroo encounters of which there were no victors. Locals don’t drive in remote areas at night. That reminds me that in our 5-½ hours of flying across the 3,000 miles of Australia we saw no lights on the ground. That’s 3,000 miles of absolute darkness. It was as if we were flying over the sea, but this one was of rock & sand.

We stayed at Miss Maudes Swedish Hotel. We booked it online at www.wotif.com.au. It’s a boutique hotel built in 1911. It has a European atmosphere & a great buffet breakfast. We didn’t tour Perth today, but headed for Fremantle & Rottnest Island. Fremantle is now a trendy tourist destination & a suburb 12 miles south of Perth. The British settled it in 1829 when it was just a salt marsh. They quickly moved to Perth, but Fremantle remained the main port of Western Australia & was a U.S. submarine base in WWII. It’s a town full of the vitality of the many young people who crowd the streets set against the background of its well-preserved Victorian buildings.

We had our first glimpse of the Indian Ocean from the ferry to Rottnest Island. It’s actually the remnant coastline & thousands of years ago totally submerged. The island was first found in the early 1600’s when ships from the Dutch East India Company foundered on its reefs. It has come a long way from being the bane of the shipping fleets to the eco-reserve it is today. Tourism is limited, development has ended, & no commercial fishing is permitted within 800 meters of the shore. With hugely fierce winds from the southeast, it is rated as the 3rd windiest place on earth after Chicago & Wellington, New Zealand. It’s a haven for scuba & snorkeling & boasts a marked snorkeling trail with plaques imbedded in the sand to narrate the underwater sights. There’s nothing between its westernmost shore & Mauritius off the coast of S. Africa.

Along with referring to Fremantle as Freo & Rottnest as Rotto, our guide on the two-hour bus tour told us there were no “bities” in the water. He meant jellyfish, not sharks. He said there has never been a death caused by a shark, but that several people a year die in bicycle accidents. Cars are severely limited on the island, but folks seem to find ways to kill themselves in falls anyway.

There’s an old WWII gun emplacement, a lighthouse, & supremely private bays & coves, but those features pale in comparison to the main draw of the place. It’s the home of the quokka. It’s the only place on earth where this cat sized rat-tailed wallaby like marsupial is found. They were marooned on the island when it was separated from the mainland & all of its predators were left behind. Since no pets are allowed on Rottnest, quokkas enjoy complete security. One of their favorite foods is the Moreton Bay fig. They eat them after they’ve fallen to the ground & ferment. Then these little brown fuzzy creatures lie on their backs & make a god-awful sound. They’re the namesakes of the island. Rottnest means rat nest in Dutch. They’re fearless. I had one drinking water out of my hand.

No Australian story would be complete without the prison angle. In this case, Rottnest was used to house aborigine prisoners. I asked the guide if they were criminals. He said that most were in for minor offenses, but they were used as cheap labor. The party line was that they were incarcerated “for their own good” & to bring them into the white culture. They were free to roam the island at will, so why did so many try to escape?

Toby