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

The Unexpected

January 16, 2002-Crusin'
(photos:Lady HJane Elliot,
Captain Toby,
Queenstown copper mine)

We started our day with the Gordon River Cruise on the catamaran Lady Jane Elliot. We’ve never been on a boat that had classes of passengers, but this one did. We went first class. That means we had run of the boat, sat on the top deck in the captain’s lounge, got a buffet lunch (we got to be first in line), gourmet cheese & crackers, gourmet cookies, & all we could drink (hard & soft). The boat holds about 125 passengers, 6 crew, & has 3 bathrooms. We also had our own purser just for our deck & our assigned reclining lounge chairs with tray tables. Life was good. I wish there was a way we could go first class in the air. The boat trip was a 65 mile long, 5-½ hour cruise up the river with two stops of an hour & a half hour each.

We left the harbor at a speed of 27 knots & headed for Hell’s Gate. It’s the entrance/exit to Macquairie Harbor that has claimed a number of ships. The weather was glorious & the seas were only 2.7 meters, so the swells were fun. The captain said that the boat could weather 30 meter seas if the wind was slow & the waves were well spaced. We carefully steered through the narrow channel avoiding the sinister sandbar. Other than being a shipping hazard, Hell’s Gate was named for being the entrance to notorious Sarah Island, a prison. We turned back to the harbor in order to access the mouth of the Gordon River. The water in the ocean was dark blue, but in the harbor it was brown. The reason was twofold. There’s a lot of tannin leeching into the river from the trees along its banks & there’s a 10-foot layer of fresh water that floats on top of the salt water.

The harbor is huge & is the perfect site for rainbow trout fish farms. The trout thrive in the combination salt/fresh water. They’re kept in round net enclosures & are fed fresh fish pellets. Some of the pens are 120 meters (about 360 ft.) in circumference & hold 80,000 fish. Their food has to be sprayed across the pen by a machine called a tucker chucker.

Aye Aye!

The captain of our boat walked away from his chair & the wheel to take a smoke. I asked him who was steering & he said that it was aimed at a rock in the distance & would be ok. I jokingly asked him if I could steer. Before I knew it, I was in his chair & he was giving me a quick lesson. The main object was to aim for that rock until he returned. He left me there on my own. I later heard that some of the passengers had the same visions I had. The Valdez oil spill came to mind, as did the Aeroflot flight that crashed when the pilot let his son fly the plane. What I didn’t know was that the captain had steering “joysticks” on the outside upper deck on either side of the boat in case I totally screwed up. At this point I was still going 27 knots. I don’t know how fast that is, but we were skimming along. As we neared the mouth of the river, the captain returned to the bridge, but didn’t take the controls. Instead, he slowed the boat to 7 knots & told me to go through the markers. I was now steering the boat into a World Heritage Area. The river water is so pure you can drink it. I made it well into the river & past a small fishing boat before he decided to let other passengers have a go. David got to drive too.

World Heritage Forest

We docked at the site of the rainforest. This wasn’t just another rainforest. It’s a cold temperate pre-historic forest. It’s so ancient it was there before the land mass that was Gondwana split into South America, Africa, India, Madagascar, Australia, New Zealand, & New Guinea. There are crayfish in that forest that only live on the land & were there with the dinosaurs. The forest was established before birds existed & operates totally independently of them now. They come as visitors, but don’t stay. There’s never been a forest fire there, & because it’s a slow growth forest, a fire would be devastating. The trees don’t reach maturity & start seeding until they are 150-200 years old. Many of the Huon pines that we saw were 2,000 years old. Because they grow so slowly & are so old, scientists can learn a lot about weather conditions from studying the rings. One of the pines was down but not out. The root system is so shallow that even when it falls over, if some of the roots are still in the soil, nutrients will go to sprouts at the tree’s top. They will continue growing & root into the soil to become their own forest. The fallen tree is cloning itself. The Huon pine is made into furniture, but is most noted for its buoyancy & ability to resist rotting when wet. It’s popular in shipbuilding.

Sarah

The water near the Sarah Island dock isn’t very deep so the catamaran had to add ballast. It simply sucked up some river water. As we docked, our prow was sitting noticeably lower than the stern. We disembarked & were met by Richard, our guide. He painted a picture of the evolution of a penal colony from one where the prisoners were so desperate to escape that they called the cemetery Holiday Island to a prison that was requested by the inmates. It was established in 1822 & was run by a sadistic man who upped the ante on punishment by combining three cats of nine tails to be used at one time. One year there were 70 prisoners & over 8,000 lashes administered. There were some aborigines who were interred there. They all died of sickness. The typical prisoner was a repeat offender & several were bush rangers (bandits). They were not a passive lot & several escapes & revolts occurred. It was an early version of labor negotiations & strikes. Most of the men would do almost anything to end the extreme conditions in which they lived. They were religious & believed that suicides went to hell. A solution was to commit a murder, repent, be hanged, & go to heaven.

How did it come to pass that men sought to serve on Sarah Island? A minister was sent there who believed in training rather than torturing. He started a school for the prisoners. At about the same time, a shipbuilder from Boston wanted to build experimental vessels & needed men whom he could train & who were not set in their ways. He knew he couldn’t build good ships with slave labor so he convinced the warden to increase their rations & offer incentives. A decrease in the need for punishment ensued. The evidence of the 96 ships that were built on the island is the 170-year old slipway made of Huon pine that’s still intact & visible under the water.

This penal colony failed as a deterrent to crime & the last prisoners were sent there in 1833. Port Arthur was opened to take its place. The last prisoners left Sarah Island in 1839. They finished building the last boat on the island, stole it, & sailed all the way to Chile. Why Chile? That country had just gained its independence, had a growing ship building industry, & opposed the British for still transporting prisoners & using slave labor. What a finale!

So, who was Sarah? She was Sarah Simmons, a prisoner in the Female Factory on another island in the river. She worked on what is now Sarah Island &, as it was told, provided a diversion for some of the men. As did many of the women from the Factory, Sarah supplemented her rations by trading knowledge of the layouts of the free settler’s homes she had worked in.

Pooped

We sadly left our lovely boat & started our trek back to Hobart. We were spending the night at the Hadley Hotel again & flying out the next morning. We thought the roads yesterday were bad, but this afternoon was worse. Bear in mind this is an “A” road. It’s considered a first rate highway in Tasmania. We both had stiff necks from the hairpin curves & got nauseous. We passed through the copper mining district of Queenstown with the deeply hued hills that told of the metal buried inside. We wound around an endless number of lakes including Lake St. Claire. It was certainly lovelier & more accessible than Dove Lake of yesterday. We twisted under the chalk white escarpments of limestone & prayed for the convoluted to-ing & fro-ing to end. In the middle of it all, as we rounded a 45-degree angle of a curve, we came upon a golf course. Why it was on that road & who would use it is a puzzle. That was followed by active train tracks that crossed the highway. Only the unexpected is to be expected here.

We got into Hobart by 7:30 PM & went to Mure’s in the harbor for fish & chips. It’s 11 PM now & you-know-who is sleeping after a hard day of driving. He’s a real trooper.

Toby

Covering Tassie

January 14, 2002- A Wander
(photos:Hanlon House,
Penguin crossing,
The Nut,
Strahan Harbor)

We started the day by “having a wander” through Woolmers, the first home that Thomas Archer built in 1819. It’s adjacent to Brickendon & part of the Archer Trust. It contains every item the Archers owned over the years. They were pack rats. They seemed to have every lawn mower ever used on the grounds. The house had been enlarged over the years & is a combination of a wooden farmhouse with an Italianate front. Typical of the times they held convict servants. The Archer family hailed from Hertfordshire, England. They started out with an 800-acre land grant in Van Diemons Land (now Tasmania)& built it to 35,000 acres. Now only the 200 acres remain in the trust.

We made the short drive into Launceston for lunch. My manicurist had friends who ran Kondetori Manfred, a café, in town. We stopped in to send regards to Claire & Manfred, ordered takeaway sandwiches, & went on to Cataract Gorge. The gorge is almost in town & has been turned into a delightful park. There’s the natural formation of the gorge as well as a deep basin lake. The parkland around the lake includes a public swimming pool, restaurant, snack bar, & changing facilities. We ate our lunch overlooking it all. David mustered all his courage & we took the chair lift to the top of the gorge. He was happy to learn that at 1000 ft. it is the longest single chair lift span in the world.

We drove up through the Tamar Valley along the Tamar River just to drive over Batman Bridge. Batman was a prominent settler family whose name appears on streets in Melbourne as well. It was worth the ride for the luscious cherries we bought from a farm stand at the end of the bridge.

Nuts

I’m now looking out over the Bass Strait that runs between Tasmania & the mainland. We’re staying at a B & B called Hanlon House in Stanley. It was built in 1904 as the parsonage to the tiny Catholic Church that still stands next door. It sits on a stunning original bluestone foundation & has 4-5 guest rooms. It’s at the foot of The Nut, a huge volcanic formation jutting into the sea. The Nut is smaller than but reminiscent of Ulhuru.

We were directed here indirectly. People in the congregation back on the Gold Coast, asked us to say hello to their friends at Orchill Lodge. We tried to phone them from the road, but were in a “no service” area for our mobile. We sailed past a sign for their inn & decided to stop by. We delivered the greetings & got their recommendation for a place in Stanley.

We’d gotten to Stanley at 6 PM & had plenty of time to explore the cemetery that dates from 1828 & is across the street from Hanlon House. One of the guests was also there & found several of her ancestors. Stanley has the distinction of having won the Australian National Tidy Town award. It’s based on tidiness as well as environmental responsibility. As the guests assembled back at the B & B, our hosts, Maxine & Graham, offered to either book us into local restaurants or to prepare dinner here. We all opted to eat here. There’s a family with three teen-aged girls & an 80-year-old grandma, another couple, & two women staying here. As we looked out of the dining room windows past the sea, they pointed out an old house sitting on a nearby promontory. As it turns out, they do evening ghost tours at that house. We all decided to go tonight. The tour starts at 9:30 PM. That leaves time for Graham to walk us down to the shore to visit with the fairy penguins. Their chicks have gotten their mature coats & are about ready to head for sea.
You will be happy to know that as we traveled the 4-lane super highways of Tasmania we still had to navigate roundabouts. I think they were set up to remind us we were in a foreign land. Also strange to us was the fact that service stations here are full service. It was a welcome surprise as the insect population was out in full force & someone else cleaned the windscreen.

January 15, 2002-Boo

The people at the B & B were so gracious. It was a delight to spend time with them & with the other guests. Dinner was delicious. We had spicy Thai chicken soup, David had lamb again, & I had fish…again. Breakfast included a cold buffet &/or a cooked meal made to order.

The tour of Highfield House, the haunted farm, had an extra bonus. Our guide, Lisa, had grown up across the street & had played on the property as a child. She & her family knew all the ghost stories & gossip surrounding its occupants. We were in a group of fourteen with two guides. The tour was done by lantern light. Since convict labor was used at the site from the time it was built in 1832, three of the guests were asked to wear convict shirts, carry the lanterns, & pretend to be convicts. I got to be Charlie, age 22. As we walked around to the different buildings, the convict stories unfolded. Charlie was quite a rascal. He was a shepherd who tried to make off with an aborigine woman. Several white settlers were killed or injured in the skirmish. The aborigines retaliated by running the sheep off a cliff. The whites ended the feud by herding the aborigines over the same cliff.

Lisa cautioned us to drive carefully as we left. The entire area was a penguin-nesting habitat. We played dodge-the-penguins as we passed a penguin crossing sign. Yes, we got a photo of it the next day. When we got to the B & B, there were penguins in the driveway. Maxine offered to take us all on a private walk through the rookery. She explained that Graham had spent years hauling boulders to the beach in order to entice more penguins to nest. He built 90 burrows. It worked. They were flourishing. This was a different experience than Philip Island. In Philip Island we saw the adults coming in from the sea & had to scurry around to find the chicks. Here, we saw mainly chicks who’d lost most of their fluff & who were decked out in their new sleek feathers. They were impatiently waiting outside their burrows squawking, & pacing. Maxine said they kept an eye on the chicks & if some seemed to be starving she & Graham fed them. They eat ½ kilo (a little more than 1 lb) of fish a day. That’s why the adults are so stuffed when they arrive on shore. That’s also why the gulls hang around & try to frighten the adults into regurgitating the baby’s food on the beach. We were so emotionally charged we didn’t think we’d sleep. We were wrong.

We set out this morning to crack The Nut & succeeded. David was thrilled to ride the chair lift to the top since the walking path was straight up. It turned out that Lisas day job was running the chair lift. It was nice to see a familiar face. We hiked the perimeter & were rewarded with breathtaking views of Bass Strait, Highfield Hill, the town, & our B & B. The binoculars made it even more spectacular. We could even see the family of six leave the B & B in their van & pull into the car park at The Nut. We did walk down & greeted them at the bottom as if they were old friends.

Mountains vs Sea

Our goal today was to see Cradle Mt. & Dove Lake in the Western center of the state. It was an arduous ride through mind numbing switchback roads shared with those ominous logging trucks. David was very grateful he had so much experience driving on the left. He wouldn’t want to have to learn under those conditions. For those of you who have traveled with me, you know about my larder. I tend to want to know that I won’t go hungry, so I scavenge food to carry in the car. This time I had grapes & old bread & jam. At 2 PM, when we were still wending our way past deforested hillsides & reforested groves of dwarf trees, it tasted good. As we neared the lake mountain, wildflowers appeared on roadside. That perked us up until we realized we had to traverse a 7.5 km (4.5 mile) gravel, one lane, winding, two-way road to get there. When we arrived, David was trashed from the tension of the drive. We looked at the site, got back into the car, & decided the mountain was more dramatic when seen from the distance & that the picture on the post card was prettier.

I think we prefer the sea. Tonight we’re staying in Strahan (pronounced Strawn). We got one of the two last rooms in town. It’s spa room overlooking the harbor. No, it was no bargain, but we did get a AAA discount of 10%.

We’re now on the West coast of Tasmania on the Southern Ocean. I guess they didn’t want to think up a new name. Here the shoreline has sand dunes as opposed to the rocky crags of the north. We stashed our bags in the room, got our tickets for the cruise on the Gordon River tomorrow, & sent you all email. On our way to the restaurant, a car passed & honked the horn. It was the two women from the B & B. Small island.

As I am writing this, David keeps calling me to look at the sunset. It keeps changing & I keep going back & forth. It’s worth it.

Toby

Stepping Out In Tasmania

January 13, 2002-Devils
(photos:David & emu who loved him,
Tasmanian Devils,
Pea in a Pod Cottage)

David is conducting a survey of beer in Tasmania. There’s a rivalry between Cascade Brewery in Hobart & John Boags in Launceston (pronounced Lawn-sess-ton). He will not commit when ordering, but I think his preference is Boags.

I experimented with writing to you as we were driving. It was a failure. Even the main highways are two lane affairs & the paving is less than smooth. There are twists & turns galore. We had a lot of fun going over Mt. Elephant. The speed limit was 15mph. At each bend there was a sign that said, “Large Vehicles Sound Horn.” We’re small but mighty so David joyfully blasted the horn at each curve.

Before I leave the subject of the prison at Port Arthur, there’s another story of an escape that I found humorous. Several prisoners stole the commandant’s boat & sailed it 800 miles to Sydney. They were captured in Sydney & returned to Port Arthur. The commandant had to pay 10 pounds to have his boat returned to him.

It was a very satisfying sign day. On the way to Ross, I was blessed with the opportunity to take a photo of a “shepp poo” sign. I assume they meant “sheep.” Ross was the town that had one of several Female Factories. Only the warden’s home is left of the large complex of dormitories & workshops. The women at this factory had a better than average diet that varied according to their work. Pregnant woman ate best of all. The infants were taken from their mothers when weaned & spent three years in the nursery at the factory. They were then transferred to an orphanage for eleven years after which time they were apprenticed. Prisoners who became pregnant had an additional three months added to their sentences for immoral behavior. Lesbian behavior was not uncommon. When discovered, they were given separate sleeping quarters. The town itself has stunning examples of Georgian stone architecture. The four corners of the main street in town symbolize the mindset of the day. There’s the church (salvation), the town hall (recreation), the inn (temptation), & the goal (damnation). We found a tearoom serving lunch & had delicious chicken vegetable soup & bread. Why did I expect a nice crusty roll? It’s typical here to be served buttered white bread & that’s what we got. We started a conversation with the couple near us & it was very informative. They’re native Tasmanians. He told us that Battery Point in Hobart & many forts dating from the late 1800’s were built to fend off the Russians. Of course, the fear was only in the minds of the Australians. Russia never made an attempt or gave it a thought. We asked him about the fields of mauve flowers we’d passed. He said those were legal opium poppies grown for export to the U.S. The discussion went from mauves to pink as he told us about the large diamond mining industry here. Western Australia mines 25% of the world’s gem quality pink & yellow diamonds. I’ve been looking at opals. Maybe I’ll change direction. When we told him we were from Ohio, he said he’d been there & really liked the Quad Cities. We didn’t correct him. It is confusing.

We left Ross & took a slight detour to see Lake Leake. It’s mentioned on all the tours. All I can say is that it’s blue & wet. The best thing about it is its name. We proceeded to a wildlife preserve & did a mitzvah (good deed). The facility rehabilitates wild birds & animals & returns them to the wild. It just changed hands & the new owners are really fixing it up. I thought I could hold a baby Tasmanian Devil, but they only had adults & don’t permit handling of any of the animals. It was worth the stop to see an emu fall in love with David & follow him around. Maybe it was only the bag of food David had, but it looked like true love to me. We also got to see the devils being fed kangaroo road kill. Need I say more?
Diemons

We decided to stop at Longford instead of going into the big city of Launceston. We chose to stay at the Brickendon Estate & Convict Farm. Our replica of a farm worker’s cottage is called Pea in a Pod Cottage. It is too cute. The raw wood exterior made us nervous, but the interior is cozy & furnished with antiques. We even have our own corrugated metal cistern. We were surprised to learn that the cottages are only four years old. Our porch is covered with flowering vines & our sitting room overlooks sprawling fields & mountains. This property has been in the Archer family since 1824. The book, The Archers of Von Diemons Land, is sitting in our room. Von Diemons Land is the original name for Tasmania. This is now a working farm as well as a model 1830’s farm open to the public. We walked the grounds with our escort, a calico cat, who sleeps on our porch. One area has the original village & buildings the convicts built. We petted some sheep, dodged some geese, & tried to coax some horses over for a nibble. There’s even trout fishing in the Macquairie River for those who are inclined. The main house was designed by the first of the Arthurs who was an architect. It’s surrounded by exquisite gardens & forested paths. What amazed me were the hydrangeas. They varied from white to every shade of pink, purple, & blue. Each bush was enormous as were the flowers.

The perfect end to the day was dinner at the Queens Arms Hotel. Wine & beer came to $A 4.05 total. That is about $U.S. 2. There’s a custom here I really like. I was unsure of which wine to order. They poured me a taste so I could decide. We had to select our meals from the specials listed on a blackboard, knock on the Dutch door to the kitchen, & place our order with the cook. I wanted the vegetables with my dinner instead of a salad & fries. I didn’t realize I was getting all of the vegetables of the day. I had a plate with an entire chicken breast, cabbage, cauliflower in a lovely corn sauce, green beans, roast potato, & broccoli for $U.S. 6. David had a very large T-bone for $U.S. 7.50.

Oh, I forgot the best part. Our cottage includes breakfast. There’s a hutch in the room that has canisters of cereal. The owner brought us bread & butter. There’s juice & milk in the mini refrigerator & we have tea & coffee fixings along with a toaster & microwave. This will set us back $A 90 ($U.S. 45).

Toby

Tassie

January 11-12, 2002-Hobart
(photos:Battery Point, Tasmania,
Port Arthur,
Tessellated pavement)

Thank you one & all who sent us good wishes & mazel tovs for us & for the expectant parents, Daniel and Vikki.

This is a reminder I have not forgotten the rules of punctuation. I’m trying to avoid using apostrophes. Some of you have said that when we send mail from Internet cafes, you get garbage where the apostrophes should be.

Here’s a hint from someone who gets these emails. He has looked up some of the sites I’ve told you about on the Web & says they’re really good.

We took off for Hobart, Tasmania on time. It was only an hour flight so we had the whole day to explore. Tasmania has an exotic sound to me. It’s still a place where some of the wilderness hasn’t been seen by whites. There are no aborigines left here, & all the snakes are guaranteed to be poisonous.

Hobart is a lovely town & much larger than I expected. There’s a harbor at its foot & it climbs gently up to Mt. Wellington. It’s said that at one time there were so many whales in the harbor it was hazardous to bring a ship into port. Picturesque will not do justice to the old section. I believe I used “yech” to describe the new area of town. Our hotel, the Hadley, is across the street from St. Davids Cathedral. David has always wanted a t-shirt that said, “Rabbi of Christchurch.” This runs a close second. The hotel dates from the 1800’s. The rooms are totally updated, but, like the Craig in Ballarat, the charm remains.

We found a street today called Arthur’s Circus. It’s just one roundabout with a treasure of original cottages that are still inhabited. We took a tour of the Tasmanian Museum & got a good foundation of the history. Unfortunately we also went to the Antarctic Museum. It was poorly done & we may have to see the one in New Zealand when we go. The good part was that there was a planetarium & we finally saw the Southern Cross. The bad thing was that we’d been looking at the wrong star group in the wrong part of the sky. The Cadbury Factory tours were fully booked, but we have seen a candy factory at home. This entire town smells like chocolate.

There has been no laundry drama to tell you about since the last two hotels had guest coin laundries. I feel fulfilled.

We went to services tonight at the oldest synagogue in continuous use in Australia. It was founded in 1843. Some of the founders were convicts & some free settlers. The governor wouldn’t grant land to the Jews for a synagogue. He said it would be used for an “un Christian” purpose. Judah Solomon donated part of his garden for the building. Ironically, his house has now been restored & is being used by the police department. Donations came from all over the world for the construction of the synagogue. We were happy to see that a Henry Horwitz was an original trustee. There are only 35 families who belong now. The building is shared with the orthodox community.

The bimah (pulpit) is in the middle of the sanctuary with the seating on three sides. The bimah faces the ark on the 4th side. The backless benches used by convicts are still there. Each seat in the pews has its own fold-down book rest. On one wall is displayed a bronze plaque with a prayer for the royal household of Queen Victoria. David had emailed the president of the congregation to say we’d be visiting & to ask about a tour of the building. She invited him to conduct services & give a sermon. He declined the former, but accepted the latter. Somewhere in cyberspace there was a misunderstanding. The service ended & there was no sermon, his or otherwise.

January 12, 2002-Crime Past and Present

We woke up extra early this morning so we could take in the Saturday market at Salamanaca Place. This is an amazing event & unlike any market we’ve seen before. It’s huge & has all the usual funky & over-priced open-air market items. But then it has things I’ve never seen elsewhere. There was a busker playing a harp. One stall sold lettuce, tomatoes, & used books. The most quirky & unique stand was the one selling items particular to menstruation. I won’t go into the details. We ate breakfast at the market & ended up ordering Irish Breakfast tea only because we didn’t know how to order the kind of coffee we wanted. After thinking about it, I think I wanted a short decaf black & David wanted a decaf flat white. I bought earrings made from broken china & stocked up on cheese, bread, kiwi fruit roll, & raspberries for a picnic lunch.
Just a reassuring note, even in Tasmania, no market is complete without socks for sale.

We hopped into our hideous hued mustard gold Corolla & started out for Port Arthur, the penal colony. The weather here is very changeable, but that added to the beauty of the drive. The light was constantly changing as the sun & clouds vied for position. I even added to my road sign collection. I now have a photo of a wombat crossing & a “chickee poo for sale” sign. We were delayed a bit as two sheep dogs skillfully maneuvered a flock across the road & into a pasture. I could have watched them forever. We also saw some of the many natural wonders of this place. The coastal views of Devil’s Kitchen, the Blowhole, & an arch were glorious, but paled in comparison to those we saw on the Great Ocean Road. The Tessellated Pavement, however, was fascinating. It’s a rocky area of beach that looks like carefully cut paving stones. Somehow, the action of the expansion of the earth’s crust & the freezing & thawing of the salt water has produced a tile-like appearance to the rocky shore. You would swear it was an old Roman road.

The penal colony at Port Arthur was established in 1830 as a hard labor & punishment prison for men. It’s located on the Tasmain Peninsula. The peninsula is joined to the mainland by a narrow neck of land easily guarded by men & dogs. If an escape was made by sea, the next port was Antarctica. Women were never interned there. They usually went to the Female Factories to work or were servants in the homes of free settlers. Many women were raped. Orphanages were established to care for the results of this abuse. Since children could be tried & sentenced at age seven, an isolated part of Port Arthur was set up for boys. It was the first time youth were separated from the adult prison population. In 1853, the last prisoner was transported. In 1877, the prison closed. In all, there were 13,000 prisoners who served there. Of that number, 2,000, died & 20 escaped.

The setting for the prison colony couldn’t have been more beautiful. It overlooks the sea & is surrounded by forests. The landscaping then & now was exquisite. It’s hard to imagine the awfulness that went on. There was no capital punishment, but there was the cat of nine-tails. The men were forced to harvest & haul timber, make bricks, & build ships while wearing chains weighing about 12-26 pounds. We held a sample of these. It must have been hell. One way to escape was to the Isle of the Dead. We ate our lunch on a harbor cruise to that island. There are 1760 people buried there. The free settlers have a section of their own. Some of the dead include a former postman, Australia’s first novelist, & a seven-year-old prisoner.

Another way to escape was to be creative. Although he failed, one man killed a kangaroo, donned its skin, & tried to hop across the narrow strip to the mainland. A guard saw what he thought would be dinner & pointed it out to his mate. The prisoner jumped up & shouted at them not to shoot. He was recaptured & given 100 lashes. Since no one could survive that punishment, the lashes were doled out 25 at a time until the sentence had been fulfilled.

As the system became more sophisticated & penal philosophy evolved, solitary confinement came into vogue. This was a 24/7 solitary. Even when the men attended chapel or were exercised 1 hour/day, they had to wear masks that only had tiny slits for their eyes & were forbidden to speak. The theory was that they needed to reflect & repent to save their souls. As prisoners aged & older prisoners were transported, there was a need for geriatric care. With the number of men who had end stage syphilis, there was a need for a lunatic asylum. The guide quipped that the town council now appropriately meets in what was the asylum.

When the prison closed, the free settlers who remained wanted to blot out the stigma of the past. They renamed the town, Carnarvon. Many of the original buildings & those built after 1877, were damaged in the bush fires of 1895 & 1897. For a while, a resort was established & tourists poured in. In later years, they realized they had a treasury of history they’d had tried to hide. Tourists come once again, but now they leave enriched with a sense of the harshness of the past.

Tragedy struck in April of 1996. As a result of this event, all automatic weapons are outlawed in Australia as well as handguns. Special circumstances are required for permits. A lone gunman opened fire with an automatic rifle & massacred 35 people at a café on the grounds. A memorial garden was established for those who died & for the many staff members who were injured trying to help. The assassin was captured the next day. He was very lucky. There’s still no capital punishment in the state of Tasmania. There’s also no cat of nine-tails.

Toby

Wild West

January 9, 2002-Under Down Under
(photos:Main St.-Ballarat,
Jewish grave-Bendigo,
Murray River in Echuca)

We made it all the way to Ballarat today. It was only an hour drive. It’s a former gold mining town & has a tourist attraction that replicates the mining experience & life in that era. The site of the original mine has long been closed over. As of today, the nearest anyone can guess is that the original mine is under the golden arches of the local McDonalds.
Fortunately, the weather turned perfect. It was in the low 70’s & sunny. We went directly to the tourist info center when we pulled into town & were able to book a room at a very old historic hotel in the city center. It has all the lovely fittings of the 1800’s including glossy curved banisters, stained glass, high ceilings, & elegant light fixtures. The rooms are plain but modernized. Since this is still school holiday, we were also lucky to get reservations at the sound & light show at Sovereign Hill, the tourist site. We had to take the 10:30pm show. The earlier one was fully booked.

We spent the day at Sovereign Hill & needed all the time we had. It’s an extremely well done attraction. We started out with a tour of the Chinese village & Chinese Temple. The Chinese were among the first to get gold fever. They were extremely industrious, saved their money, & prospered. The Europeans hated them. The Chinese also suffered less health problems since they grew their own vegetables & rice. The Europeans subsisted on mutton. The government set up a Chinese Protectorate with a representative of the crown, but eventually, the Europeans viciously attacked the Chinese community. It didn’t happen in Ballarat, but in a nearby mining town.

The mining down here was of two types. Panning in a river or stream is alluvial mining. Our guide demonstrated & ended up giving me the one gold fleck he found. Shaft mining is done through the opening of a vertical shaft that goes into the ground. It was expensive to purchase a license valid for three months & the area it was good for was only 8 ft. x 8 ft. Access down the shaft was by a rope attached to a bucket that was lowered by a windlass into the pit. It was really bleak. Accidents & cave-ins were common. Another danger was to the workers who separated the gold from the quartz rock. This was done with mercury. Need I say more? We walked into all the shops & even took a try at the bowling alley. The lanes were much longer than we have now & the alleys were only 18 inches wide with gutters about a foot each. The balls were wooden & heavy. There were no finger holes. I managed to land in the gutter right off, but David knocked over several pins. The pins were wood & had to be set up manually.

We went down into a simulated mine & they had a holographic & audio display showing the discovery of the second largest piece of gold in the world. It weighed in at about 145 or more pounds (69 kilos). It was shipped to England where it was melted down & made into sovereigns. The largest nugget in the world was also mined here. It weighed in at 72 kilos. We surfaced in time for the obligatory march of the redcoats down the main street. These redcoats wore yellow earplugs when they fired their muskets.

On our way to dinner at a Chinese restaurant (it was only appropriate), three young men (20-something) stopped us. One of them asked if we had 40 cents so that, ”I could call me Mum.” They had been drinking a lot & the bartender had, “nicked their keys.” Good on the bartender! One of them was holding a bottle in a paper bag. We figured that 40 cents would not contribute to their drunkenness so we gave them the money.
January 10, 2002-Blood and Plunder

The sound & light show at Sovereign Hill is called “Blood on the Southern Cross.” It’s like nothing we’d ever seen. It tells the story of the battle of the diggers (gold miners) vs. the British at a mining town called Eureka. The Australian gold rush started in 1851. The diggers resented the licensing requirements & the constant harassment by the government agents. The miners wanted to be able to buy the land outright. It was a matter of taxation without representation, the rule of British law vs. what the diggers thought to be justice, & Irish miners vs. the Anglican troops. What the diggers perceived to be a miscarriage of justice took place when a tavern owner who sympathized with the Crown murdered a miner & was not charged. The miners burned their licenses in protest & armed themselves. The military leader read a document to the diggers from the Crown that was called The Riot Act asking the miners to end the protest, but it was ignored. The Union Jack was lowered by the diggers & a flag bearing the symbol of the Southern Cross was raised. The troops attacked the camp on Dec. 3, 1854 & slaughtered almost 30 miners. Ultimately, justice did prevail & the diggers elected a representative to Parliament & we allowed to purchase their mines.

This story was told at the Sovereign Hill site we’d visited earlier. There was a brief orientation film then we stepped outside into the pitch black with the Southern Cross shining above us in the clear night sky. The narration of the mining story in general was accompanied with illumination of areas of action & sounds of voices & activities. Since no actors were used, we were asked to engage our imaginations. As the story progressed, we walked around the mining camp. At one point, the narrator asked us to board our coach to travel a mile to the actual site of an historic massacre. We turned around to see that trams had pulled up. They transported us through the mining town to the Eureka Hotel. We entered & were seated in an auditorium facing a blank wall. When the lights went out, the wall opened onto the full-scale scene of the Eureka mining camp. The narration & effects built to the climax & we boarded the tram to drive through the burning & ruined set. We were delivered to the main street of the Sovereign Hill site where an actor in historical garb summed up the event. The entire presentation was masterful.

Returning to our hotel went less smoothly. For security reasons, they locked the garage after dark. We had to call them from the car so that they could meet us by the garage entrance. We achieved that, but when we tried to get into the hotel, the door was locked & the person who had opened up the garage was gone. We did eventually get in, but it was dicey for a few minutes. We thought that we’d have to call the hotel again.

January 11, 2002-Victoria’s Northland

We always seem to need one more day when we travel. This time we have one more day. We miscalculated our time in the Melbourne area & found we had a bonus day. We used it to explore northern Victoria to see some of the best examples of Victorian architecture in the area. I find the bull nose rooflines of the metal roofs to be charming. It’s a frequently used feature on porches & overhangs & has a slight arching curve to it. The towns of Maldon & Bendigo are loaded with buildings that are part of the National Trust dating back to the gold mining days. At one time Bendigo had a decent enough Jewish population to support a synagogue. Myers of the Australian department store chain started out as a peddler to the diggers. The old synagogue has probably been gone for years, but there’s still a Jewish presence in the town. They’re in the old cemetery. The Jews & Chinese have sections segregated from the “whites” and next to each other. The oldest Jewish grave marker we found was from 1857 & the latest was from 1976. There’s evidence that the Cohn & Lazarus families are either living in the area or have recently replaced headstones & repaired their family gravesites.

We drove past the flat expanses of cattle & sheep stations until at one point I asked David if we were in Kansas. All I knew was that all of the poisonous snakes of Australia were out there. Occasionally we would pass a Neighborhood Watch sign. That was funny since there were no neighborhoods & nothing to watch. At one point it got so boring we turned on the radio & listened to a cricket match. We know nothing about the game so we amused ourselves by trying to figure out what the announcers were talking about. “Wicket maidens” particularly intrigued us. Cricket tests can go on for days. We had no idea if the game was in its 1st or 5th day. When they broke for tea, we turned it off.

I really wanted to see the mighty Murray River that played such a part in trade & transportation. We drove north to Echuca & made it in time for an hour-long ride on a side-wheeler paddleboat. The Murray is 1500 miles long. It begins in the Snowy Mountains & ends east of Adelaide where it empties into the Southern Ocean.

I have read a lot of Bryce Courtenay’s novels about Australia & now things were falling into place. In The Potato Factory, he wrote of the original settlers in the penal colonies of Tasmania who migrated to Melbourne & to the mining towns. Tomo & Hawk deals with whaling & New Zealand. Four Fires tells the tale of an Irish family in more recent times in the greater Melbourne area. It was interesting to see first hand all the places he talks about.

Lost Again-Why Not?

We had plenty of time to get back to Melbourne. Since we had an 8 AM flight the next morning, we were staying at .a motel near the airport. We wanted to drop our luggage at the motel & return the car to Hertz at the airport. The motel had a shuttle that could get us at the airport & take us back to the motel. The directions that the motel gave us were really bad. We were on & off highways & access roads for almost an hour. We decided to return our car first & then call the motel shuttle. It was 8:45PM when we arrived at the motel & they said we could eat in their restaurant only to find that it had closed. The receptionist said there was one pub a few blocks away that served until 9:30PM.The shuttle driver offered to take us there. He dropped us off, we walked into the pub, & the hostess told us they stopped serving at 9PM. She cheerily suggested a pizza parlor down the road. We hoofed it the two blocks & were happy to see it was still open. We’d planned to eat there, but it was too hot inside. We decided to order the pizza & carry it back up the hill to the motel. David was concerned that the pizza would get cold, but there was a solution to that problem. We ordered the pizza to be delivered to our room, started walking back, & it met us there. I have to say it was one of the worst pizzas I’ve ever eaten. It was totally & completely tasteless. The cheese didn’t even have flavor.

I will leave you with this thought for the day gleaned from the wall of a bathroom stall. “Keep Australia (or insert name of appropriate country) green. Have sex with a frog.”

Toby

Seaside

January 7, 2002-Fairy Penguins
(photos:Fairy Penguins,
Toby & 5 0f 12 Apostles)

After the sweltering sojourn in the old Jewish neighborhood, we made it back to the tour bus office in time for a 5 PM tour of Phillips Island last night. The island isn’t so great, but that’s where the fairy penguins can be seen coming ashore every night. The two hour ride took us past the foothills of the Dandenong Range & through pastureland.

Our driver gave a running commentary the whole time. Some of the information was interesting & some not. We now know how to tell the difference between sheep being raised for wool & those being raised for meat. The ones for wool are taller. They’ve been bred with longer legs so their wool will stay up out of the burrs & be easier & more economical to clean. The driver also gave us the interesting result of the government homebuyers incentive. First time buyers can get $A 7,000 with no strings attached towards the purchase of a home. If you’re building a new house, you get $A 14,000. This was supposed to fight a possible recession & help people get out of the rent cycle. What it has done is deplete the rental market so that many properties are vacant & landlords are unable to find anyone to fill them.

We were running early, so the driver took a detour to see the Nobbies, a rock formation also known as Seal Rock. Seals, unlike penguins, are unreliable. There was only one seal that night. Penguins come out of the ocean at sunset every night. They use the cover of darkness for safety. They’re the smallest of the penguins & are really a dark blue color rather than the usual black. Their dark coloration against the pale sand of the beach makes them very visible to predators.

We grabbed a bite at the café & headed to the beach to wait. There are stands for viewing the event & the beach is somewhat illuminated by the park rangers. I expected all the penguins to storm the beach at once ala the Normandy invasion. That’s not what happened at all. The beach was full of seagulls just hanging out. At first, we saw what we thought was a tiny piece of wood bobbing in the foam. Fortunately, we had our binoculars & were able to see that it was really a penguin. One lone bird was the advance scout for the night. He behaved in what we were to see was typical fashion for the penguins that followed. There was a great deal of vacillation back & forth. It was as if they’d never come ashore before & had to muster the courage to leave the safety of the sea. They mostly came in groups of 6-10. We realized how tiny they were when they were next to the seagulls. The penguins were about the same body length as the gulls, but fuller around. They wobbled their way across the sand & beat a path for their burrows.

Fairy Babies

This was breeding season, so we were able to see the chicks as well. Adult males & females commuted daily. They fished all day & returned to feed the young at night. There was a boardwalk stretching through their nesting area & we were able to follow their progress to the nests. The babies created a racket as their parents approached. A beak full of regurgitated seafood being inserted into their gullets silenced their insistent yowling. One of the birds needed to cross the driveway near the offices to get to what had been his family nest for generations. Rangers cleared tourists from the path at the appropriate time. We watched as the tiny penguin made his solo march between a phalanx of tennis shoes, hiking boots, & sandals on his programmed mission. To say that they totally charmed us would not do it justice. The experience was captivating, miraculous, & awe inspiring. The penguins have gone on relentlessly. Humans have come to respectfully share the experience with them. The penguins have graciously adapted to the audience & the humans have been enriched.

We got back to our hotel at 1 AM & had to be up early to get our rental car at 8:30 AM. We did some “mop up” touring of Melbourne today before taking off to the west. We saw the infamous nude painted circa 1851, Chloe, at the Young & Jackson Hotel. At St. Paul’s Anglican Cathedral, built during the gold rush of 1859, the abundance of decorative gold leaf in the mosaic placed it in history.

Great Road, Great Ride

Today our destination was the Great Ocean Road. It weaves its way along the southern coast with crags & cliffs falling into the sea on one side & grasslands alternating with mountain ranges & rainforests on the other. We were in Queenscliff in time for lunch at the hotel of the same name. It’s a grandly restored Victorian mansion with typical ironwork trim. The popularity of ironwork had a practical origin. Ships used iron as ballast. The trim was an effort not to have the iron go to waste. The restaurant has an excellent reputation & we couldn’t resist the pastrami sandwich with pureed beetroot, horseradish sauce, sauerkraut & lettuce on rye.

Bells Beach was on our list of places to see. It has world-class surf & surfers except for today. There was a stiff wind coming from the shore, so there were no waves to be seen. As the day wore on, we noticed more & more No Vacancy signs appearing. We decided to pull into an unassuming motel in Apollo Bay. We got one of the last two rooms. Luck was with us. It is a Spa room overlooking the ocean. We’re in heaven. It had been raining on & off all day, but the sun came out as we walked into the room. There’s a rainbow over the water & David just woke up from his nap. It sounds like dinnertime to me.

January 8, 2002-End To Beginning

David said there is nothing odd about Jews staying in a stable. Our particular stable doesn’t have a manger now, but maybe it did in 1860. We’re in Mortlake, home of the Australian Buskers Championship. Jane & Bruce are our hosts at the Shadwell Hotel & Stables Motel. Remember, here a hotel is a tavern/pub. We had tea at the hotel after we checked in. Remember, tea is dinner when it’s served after 6pm. It’s a fastidiously clean place built of native bluestone that’s actually dark gray. The motel units look old but were built five years ago. They’re adjacent to the stables. It’s the kind of place where locals congregate. We’d called ahead for reservations & were identifiable even before we opened our mouths. The bonus here is that Oscar & his people are regulars & I got to play with him. He’s a guide dog (yellow lab). His person took his harness off so he’d be off duty while I petted & he licked.

Now that you know how our day ended, I’ll take it from the top. Our rental car was losing air in a tyre (it is an Aussie car, so it has Aussie spelling). The couple that noticed it asked how long we’d be in Australia. We explained about David working & they asked what he did. This couple was Jewish & we now have their home phone #. We might just look them up when we go to Sydney. We went to a filling station to put air in the tyre. I didn’t realize that in seaside communities a full service station included an outdoor people shower.

The highway took a detour through Ottway National Park, a rainforest. When it emerged, the scenery was classically pastoral. The colors were shades of green & blue with black & white cows. No, it wasn’t only the sky that was blue, but also the hay bales that were covered in bright blue plastic.

We’d seen photos of this stretch of rugged coastline in Port Campbell National Park, but were unprepared for the actual spectacle. It’s known as the Badlands of the Southern Ocean. For a period of 2.5 million years, the sea & weather have eroded the sandstone cliffs. In many instances, such a huge amount of the cliff has dissolved that the remaining sandstone masses stand as lone sentinels in the sea. The most famous of these is the Twelve Apostles. They’re enormous pinnacles jutting out of the roaring surf. They were wearing away as we watched & will eventually tumble into the froth. The entire coast is known as a graveyard for ships & as we traveled west we passed Loch Ard Gorge & a cemetery where sailors were buried. The grandeur of the Gorge left us speechless. It is a mammoth curving arc of sandstone into which the sea has worn an arch. It sits on its own surrounded by violent turquoise waves that roar their assault & heave at the rock in an eternal battle. We pulled off at every overlook to gasp in awe. The blowhole, the Bay of Martyrs, & Bay of Islands seemed to be baby Apostle wannabes, but were wonderful in their own right. One of the formations is called London Bridge. Part of this London Bridge has fallen down. Sea=1-Bridge=0. I couldn’t resist singing the song.

Port Fairy, originally named Belfast, was our next stop. It’s a 19th century fishing village & thought to be the most picturesque in Victoria. It boasts 50 cottages designated as landmarks by the National Trust. We weren’t disappointed. We found a cyber café nestled among the old homes as well as Levinson’s Jewelers. We stopped in to scope out the Levinsons & learned they come from generations of jewelers from Poland by way of England. They arrived in Australia in 1859 for the gold rush. We played a bit of Jewish geography. My father is from Poland. We may be related. They say there’s not really a Jewish presence in this largely Irish area.

It was an easy drive to Mortlake. Tonight, we’ll be serenaded by galahs. They’re parrot-like gray birds with pink breasts. Tomorrow, they’ll awaken us, I’m sure.

Toby