Australian Words and Phrases

Below are some common Australian words and phrases. I’ve noticed myself starting to use some of them. Much to my surprise I walked by a branch of ANZ bank and thought of it as “zed,” not “zee.” Most of the time, though, I continue to amuse people with my American speech.

Good on you = good for you; the correct response is “Thank you,” not, “On me? Where?”

She’ll be right = everything will be fine

Aussie = Australian, pronounced “Ozzie”

Tassie = Tasmania/Tasmanian

Oz = Australia

Sunnies = sunglasses

Chokkies = chocolates, esp. as in “hot chokky”

Bikkies = biscuits, which can refer to cookies, crackers, and dry pet food; what we would consider a biscuit is a scone

Tea = the drink, a snack, or the evening meal; the first time I was asked if I had ingredients for tea, I wondered how complicated it can be to make a cup of tea – until I realized this was tea as in dinner

Ta = thanks

Petrol = gasoline

Prezzies = presents

Pikkies = pictures

Uni = university

Lollies = lollipops and hard candies

Hoppies = any of the hopping marsupials

Cockies = cockatoos

Posties = postmen/women

Trolley = shopping cart

Rice Bubbles = Rice Krispies, which are made by Kellogg’s and everything

Blokey = masculine

Have a feed = eat

Note = bill, as in a $10 note

Full on = hardcore, completely

SMS = text message

EFTPOS = debit card

Off = spoiled, rotten (as in vegetables going off)

Reckon = think; Australians don’t do much thinking, as they prefer to reckon

There is also a trend to emphasize adjectives by following them with “as.” For instance, very cold is “cold as.” American food is “sweet as.”

Port Arthur Con't

Isle of the Dead is Port Arthur’s cemetery. It’s a very small island, divided so that convicts, lunatics, and paupers were laid to rest on the lower southern side while military and ‘respectable’ people were buried on the higher northern end. The island is reached by a short boat trip with commentary. My tour guide on the island said that the guides like giving the Isle of the Dead tour because they get a chance to talk about some of the individual people. I must say that I am usually a fanatical picture-taker. When travelling alone I’m prone to snapping the best self-portrait I can manage with historical or tourist sites in the background. I only took a couple pictures on the Isle of the Dead, however, and none with me. It didn’t seem right, somehow, to have a smiling picture of me in such a somber place. The tour was very informative and sensitive. We got to learn about several individuals, both convict and free. There was one convict who had been transported at 19 for stealing a silk coat that belonged to his father – and his father was the prosecutor! (The prosecutor as the term was used here was the wronged party pursuing legal action, not the lawyer.) We don’t know if this was a case of borrowing Dad’s clothes or something more serious, or if the father knew his son could end up on the other side of the world. However, when this man died at age 32 he had one of the nicer grave markers. (They don’t used the term “headstones” because they can’t be sure they are actually over the heads.) Few convicts had anything to mark their graves, which wasn’t even allowed until 1853. At the bottom of this marker, however, is chiseled “T. Pickering.” Thomas Pickering was a convict stonemason, and he’d been friends with the deceased man for eight years. He didn’t usually sign his work, either. It’s an interesting story of how friendships could be formed under the harsh conditions. I found it rather heartwarming to hear of this story, because Port Arthur was most often a place of broken men, broken hearts, and broken spirits.

Point Puer (Latin for “youth” or “boy”) juts out and nearly touches the Isle of the Dead. It’s a hugely significant site because it was the first juvenile detention center in the British Empire (and possibly the world, we were told). Many youths were getting into trouble and being transported; the age at which you were legally responsible for your actions was 7. Lieutenant Governor George Arthur decided that it might be a better idea to have a separate place for children, away from the hardened adult criminals. In 15 years some 3,000 boys were at Point Puer, most of them between the ages of 14 and 17 but some as young as 9. (Girls weren’t sent to Point Puer; the female convict system was distinct.) This was really forward-thinking for the time. So much so, in fact, that the British copied the idea at home and stopped transporting youth altogether. This made Point Puer unnecessary, so it closed in 1849. Also forward-thinking was Commandant Booth, the man in charge of Port Arthur when Point Puer opened. He insisted on giving the boys full rations. Generally at the time men would get one ration, women half a ration, and children even less. Anyone who has ever seen a teenage boy eat knows that this really doesn’t make any sense! Booth also allowed for a small bit of free time, albeit heavily regulated, in the morning and evening. In between, the boys worked hard.

However hard the work, the focus at Point Puer was on reform. Therefore the boys were taught basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. Although the effectiveness of this has been questioned, I suspect it varied based on each boy. They were also provided with religious instruction, which at that time was strictly Christian, and about half of the boys learned a trade under the supervision of a tradesman. Since Point Puer couldn’t accommodate teaching all the boys a trade, they all started out doing hard labor (clearing trees, tilling soil, etc.) and those who made a favorable impression with their attitude and actions were given the opportunity to learn a skilled trade. This would allow them to be productive citizens once they were free; ideally this would be a win-win situation for the colony and the boys. Trades taught included tailoring, stonecutting, carpentry, shoe-making, coopering, and nail-making.

Sadly, there is very little left at Point Puer. After its closure the buildings were demolished and useful material was brought across the harbor to the main settlement. We saw the wall, which is all that remains of the sawmill, and some foundations. Our guide helped bring it to life by tracing the experiences of three boys. Of particular note were a couple of curving stones left in the foundation of the trades area. They were carved by inexperienced boys but the work was very admirable.

A stunning example of the boys’ workmanship is Port Arthur’s church. It was built by convicts in the 1830s using stones and bricks. The stones were shaped by Point Puer boys. While fire ravaged the inside (consuming, among other things, pews that were also the work of Point Puer boys), the walls are in excellent condition. This is an imposing neo-Gothic church with a front that resembles a castle, a complex shape that bends in at the back before flaring out, and an enormous arched window in the back. Inside, the empty space produces a bit of an echo, magnifying the volume of spoken words. Since the church was built up a small hill, it has a lovely view out the thin arched windows. Inside the rather small but magnificent church was one of those places that feels special, when I become calm and somber, a bit awestruck and a great deal contemplative.

It was hard to tear myself away from the lovely church, but there was more to see. I had yet to look at the Separate Prison. Once there, I decided it was the most chilling part of Port Arthur. The Separate Prison was built to try a new prison reform idea: sensory deprivation. For twenty-three hours a day, men were locked in a tiny cell with only a small window above their heads. The thick walls prevented talking with their neighbors, and there was nothing to do. For one hour a day, they were allowed to walk around, but even this was done with their head covered except the eyes. At Port Arthur this was used for the prisoners that were continuous offenders and considered incorrigible.

This sounds horrific, and it was. The cells were very small and dark. It’s no wonder that so many men went insane. However, I understand that the prison reformers were trying to do a good thing. It was unpleasant to be whipped and work in chain gangs while on minimal food rations and in thin clothing, so the reformers sought what seemed to be a more humane alternative. The idea was that this time alone would give the men an opportunity to reflect on their sins and change their ways. Problematically, this had already failed in England before the Separate Prison at Port Arthur was completed, and therein lies the biggest problem to my mind.

It was easy to understand how men went insane, and after leaving the Separate Prison I took a few minutes to savor the fact that I am alive, and free. I stopped to watch the charming green rosellas flit around the lawn, chirping their bird songs. I admired a heron standing stoically in Settlement Creek, the stream that was crucial to Port Arthur. After all, a key way that we process information is to empathize with it. The Separate Prison left me needing a few moments to center myself in the present and achieve just a bit of detachment, a reminder that this horror was not my own to experience.

The Penitentiary was a less emotional building for me to visit. It’s enormous and dominates the cluster of buildings it sits in. (The church is on the other side, a short walk away.) Originally it was built as a flour mill. Here Linus Miller, one of the Americans I’m researching who was sent to Port Arthur for absconding (running away), had to “tread the wheel.” As there was not often enough water to run the mill, convicts would turn it by walking up steps endlessly. This was tiring, of course, but they had to be careful not to miss a step. The wheel would keep going, making missing a step very dangerous. Concentration was therefore also required, but the task was so tedious it’s only natural for minds to wander. Convicts hated treading the wheel. Fortunately for them, the mill experiment only lasted a few years. The soil around Port Arthur isn’t very good, and authorities were already bringing in the grain by ship; eventually it occurred to them that they might as well just bring the grain already ground into flour. Thereafter the mill was given an addition and turned into a place to house convicts. In the 1890s the Penitentiary burned in a bushfire and then slowly collapsed. Part of the front wall has been rebuilt, although you can’t really tell just looking at it. A staircase has been built inside, which gives visitors the chance to climb up and look at the huge building with its internal walls stretching out below them. The Penitentiary was a four-story building, and as odd as it may sound I suspect it may look even more impressive than if it was in pristine condition. There’s something about being able to look down from the staircase and see from one end to the other inside the building that is fascinating.

Six of the Americans I’m studying were sent to Port Arthur, all for absconding. From Linus Miller’s memoir we know that he and another American man left their work party to see if it would be possible to get passage away from Van Diemens’ Land for the entire work party. They hoped to find sympathetic American whalers who would smuggle them out. Alas, it wasn’t to be. However, not many convicts wrote memoirs and fewer still wrote memoirs of Port Arthur. Miller’s account is used by the Port Arthur administrators and is a valuable resource.

In the end, “fascinating” is a perfect word to describe Port Arthur.

Port Arthur

Before I can describe Port Arthur, I need to outline a bit of history. Industrialization in Great Britain resulted in increased crime for multiple reasons. As farms consolidated and less agricultural jobs were available, people crowded into growing cities looking for work. Even if they could find work the wages were very low. Some people resorted to stealing to eat; others turned to alcohol and opium to numb the misery of their lives. With jails jam-packed, the British transported criminals to their American colonies, relieving the pressure on jails while providing labor in America. Of course, that ended with the American Revolution, and the British had to look elsewhere. Meanwhile, industrialization picked up its pace and the jails were getting so full that convicts were kept in old unseaworthy ships in the River Thames.

Australia was strategically located in the Pacific relatively near Britain’s prized colonial possession, India, and there were high hopes for some Australian natural resources, so in 1788 the British founded Sydney as a prison colony. In 1803 Van Diemen’s Land (today known as Tasmania) was founded as a place to send convicts who reoffended.

Now we jump ahead in this whirlwind history to 1833, when a small timber station on a peninsula in southeastern Van Diemen’s Land came to the attention of the Lieutenant Governor, George Arthur. He needed a place to send convicts who continued to commit crimes. The last one, Macquarie Harbor on the west coast, had closed because it was too hard to get to and an unacceptable amount of ships were being lost. Also, convicts escaped too easily.

This small timber station had neither of those problems. If the weather was favorable, it was only an 8 to 10 hour journey from the capital, Hobart, by sea. The peninsula was almost completely surrounded by water; there was only a tiny strip of land to guard. Some convicts might try to escape by sea, but sharks frequented the area, providing a natural deterrent. (Also deterring sea escapes was the fact that in this time period, despite building an empire based on the strength of their navy, the British tended not to be very good swimmers. As one of the Port Arthur tour guides observed, “They spent so much time on the water but they were never in it.”)

Lieutenant Governor Arthur decided to name this new convict station Port Arthur, after himself. In addition to armed guards, a line of dogs was chained across Eaglehawk Neck, the only way out by land, and a few were put out on rafts in the water. Since Port Arthur was where male repeat offenders were sent, there wasn’t an emphasis on reform; the focus was squarely on punishment. The men were worked extremely hard. There were also heavy chains, whippings and solitary confinement on bread and water rations for further punishment.

First the men had to build barracks, then other buildings as needed. Industry was also important, as Port Arthur was ideally going to pay for itself. Timber was a large industry. The large trees around Port Arthur were chopped down by convicts, and then hauled on the shoulders of the men to be cut into useful timber. (Occasionally a tree-felling accident would kill one of the men.) What wasn’t used at Port Arthur was sent to Hobart where the government could use it. Convicts also cut the soft sandstone around Port Arthur and made bricks; these were used to make more sturdy buildings on the site.

With timber all around, a nice deep harbor, and free labor, it made sense to start a dockyard. This opened in 1834, repairing and building ships. While the work was hard – men often spent most of the day partially in the water – it was also considered a promotion because it gave the men a little more control over their lives and also a useful skill. The boats made at Port Arthur were considered as good as any made elsewhere. However, those other boat makers complained about the Port Arthur dockyard, as they found it hard to compete with a place where the workers didn’t have to be paid. As transportation began to decline there was less labor in any case, and the dockyard closed in 1848, although repairs were still made. Before closing, the convicts made 16 large ships and over 150 smaller open boats. You can still see the largest slip from which the ships were launched, although in my opinion it’s sullied by a strange twisting metal “artist’s interpretation of a ship.” That sculpture is my one quibble at Port Arthur; I am firmly against sticking post-modern artistic interpretations in the middle of genuine historic sites.

The last convicts were transported to Tasmania in 1853, and Port Arthur closed in 1877. It was parceled out and sold. Since Port Arthur had all sorts of unpleasant connotations, the inhabitants changed the town’s name to Carnarvon, after the then-current Secretary of State for the Colonies. The site was left to fall apart, although tours were soon operating, bringing curious tourists to see the infamous Port Arthur. Souvenirs were taken by many visitors, as one might expect. Recognizing the importance of the site, the government began buying it back in the 1920s, a process that took until 1949, and the name was changed back to Port Arthur.

Meanwhile, most of the buildings were no more than ruins. This appealed to late Victorians, who loved a good ruin but had few around them in Australia. A few of the structures, especially the military barracks, had been demolished and the bricks sold off. The decay was further aided by a series of fires. The first gutted the church; it started when local residents tried to burn some leaves and the fire got out of control. Then in 1895 and 1897 bushfires further ravaged most of the other buildings.

I spent the better part of two days at Port Arthur before doing research in their Resource Room on the few Americans who were sent there. It is truly an incredible place, and I think the Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority is to be commended for their excellent work in presenting a difficult and complex subject with sensitivity and without descending into playacting for tourists.

Port Arthur offers different tour packages which include various extras. I never considered anything but the Gold Experience ticket which included everything: an introductory walking tour, the audio tour (sadly, I didn’t get to finish it because my battery died and there were no more units left, but this was informative and, I thought, well-done), a tour of Isle of the Dead, a tour of Point Puer, plus vouchers for morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea. I was extremely glad I got that package.

To be continued…

Midwinter Solstice Party

Tonight is the longest night of the year, with a 4:43 pm sunset (according to Geoscience Australia) and in Hobart that means a party. It’s time for the Antarctic Midwinter Festival 2008. This stretches out over several days, but tonight was the Midwinter Solstice Party.

The evening started with the March of the Snow Petrels, a parade of people carrying large homemade lanterns in the shape of birds. There were standing, sitting, and flying birds as well as eggs, ranging in size from a foot long and six inches high to a foot long and three feet high. (The largest looked like penguins and not at all what came up when I typed “snow petrel” into Google image search. Snow petrels are pure white, pigeon-sized birds.) All of these were lit by candles placed inside, and the parade was led by a troop of musicians. Coming down the dark street, the line of softly glowing birds was enchanting.

Then the crowd, following the large bird-shaped lanterns, moved into Salamanca Square, where a Latin American music band began to play. I had a very Australian dinner from a bakery while there: chicken curry pie. Australians are very fond of their pies as meals. They come in all sorts of varieties, although the standard beef and vegetable pie is always popular. I have read, and been told, that the international influence in Australian cuisine has only been going on for about twenty years or so, but I think that the curried chicken pie is a good example of that. Today’s Australians do like their Asian dishes, or at least Asian-influenced dishes, but they still like a good pie, so someone decided to combine the two into curried chicken pie. I thought it was tasty.

After dinner I went back out and listened to the music for another twenty minutes or so, until it was time for the fire dancing. This was performed by two young women from Melbourne who were very good. Now, I don’t like too many lit candles all at once unless they’re safely tucked in bowls, and at one point these two were using large rings lit in five places as hula hoops! The crowd loved it, and it looked like the performers enjoyed themselves as well. I had a hard time seeing this, because there were a lot of people clustered around and, as usual, most of them were taller than I am. However, I thoroughly enjoyed what I did see.

From fire we went to ice, as the other event was an ice sculpture. It was a long process, but I watched it with interest because I’ve seen finished ice sculptures but I’ve never seen one being made. The artist wouldn’t tell us what it was until someone guessed, and it was over an hour before anyone did. He started with two large rectangles of ice fused together, then moved to a cylindrical shape with extra ice removed from the middle, which was then cut in half. It wasn’t until he started chipping certain sections of the halves away that someone said, “It’s an hourglass!” Indeed it was, as we saw when the two halves were fused back together, with some snow inside. (The snow was saved from when he shaved the ice, because there certainly wasn’t any on the ground!) It was interesting to watch the progress, and the finished product was admirable.

While watching the ice sculpture progress I amused myself by listening to everyone around me talk about how cold it was. “It’s freezing!” some of them would say. It was certainly not freezing; it was noticeable that the ice was getting softer as the sculptor chipped away at it. It couldn’t have been below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and when I asked someone what they thought it was, they said the equivalent to 45 degrees Fahrenheit! I had tucked my gloves and fleece earband into my purse because the advertisements said to “bundle up.” I didn’t need them. Being a Mainer born and raised, I thought it was pretty warm for winter. There are still some roses blooming, even!

Nevertheless, while I didn’t feel very Antarctic, I enjoyed the Midwinter Solstice Party. It was a fun way to spend a Saturday evening, and it was all free as well.

Plus, we start getting more daylight after this!

Blue Mountains

While in Sydney I took a day trip to the Blue Mountains. About 30 miles west of Sydney, this geological wonder is misnamed. It’s really more a complex series of gorges than a mountain range. Nonetheless it’s stunning, but I’ll get to that in due time.

It was 25 years before early settlers managed to cross the Blue Mountains; tourists today have a bewildering number of options. I selected OzTrek, a tour company highly recommended by one of my tour books. There were about 22 of us, plus the tour guide, and we headed west in a van.

We took a detour to drive through the 2000 Olympic grounds. There I learned that the Olympic Village, temporarily home to over 10,000 athletes plus their trainers, became another suburb of Sydney after the Games were over. Some 6,000 Australians moved in.

Then it was on to the Blue Mountains, and here is an excellent time to say how glad I was not to be driving! At one point our tour guide was navigating the van around steep hairpin curves, one after another. It was good to be in a passenger’s seat. However, on the other side of all these hairpin curves we found a mob of kangaroos. (While Australians use “mob” frequently for groups and it has no sinister mafia connotations, “mob” is also the technical term for a group of kangaroos.) These were Eastern Grey Kangaroos, and they were lounging in the sun without a care in the world. I’d not seen kangaroos yet, because there aren’t as many in Tasmania. They have such funny little hands (or paws, but they really look more like hands.) One of them had a bulge, our guide pointed out, so there was a joey in her pouch, but its head wasn’t out for us to see.

This was in a national park, so feeding the roos isn’t allowed. However, I suspect they get a lot of tourists gawking at them, and as long as we were 20-25 feet away they weren’t bothered by us in the least. Our guide said that campers and tourists benefit the kangaroos because “a dingo isn’t going to run through your legs to attack them.” So we watched and took pictures as they grazed and groomed themselves. The grass where they were was a prime example of “marsupial lawn.” You’d think somebody mowed it, but that’s the kangaroos, wallabies, and other “hoppies” keeping it down. They’re much cuter than traditional lawn mowers.

We drove a bit further and got out for our first walk. There were bushwalks with OzTrek, which I quite liked. It was a lovely day with clear blue sky; we couldn’t have asked for better weather. Suddenly the Blue Mountains were stretched out before me: undulating gorges, heavily treed, with sandstone edges gleaming in the morning sun. The blue haze got thicker the farther I looked out, slowly melting the sharpness into blue. This effect is from the evaporation of eucalyptus oil.

Since it was a long way down and the ledge path was narrow, I appreciated the nice solid metal railing. (Nevertheless, for multiple reasons, this wouldn’t be a good excursion for young children.) As our group was taking in the delightful view, another tour group came huffing and puffing up. They had climbed all the way down and walked back up. My group had just walked to a nice lookout, and it was clearly steep enough that I didn’t want to trudge all the way down and, worse, back up! I wasn’t at all jealous of the panting, exhausted other tourists. Breathing easily, a few of us in my group commented on how the trees rather looked like broccoli.

We then retraced our steps, piled back into the van, and headed to Katoomba. Katoomba is one of the major towns in the area, and we had a lunch break there. From Katoomba it was a short drive to Echo Point, where the famous Three Sisters rock formation is seen from an angle you’re likely to find in most of the pictures of them. I quite liked the Three Sisters but noticed a smaller, fourth rock; it looked like one of the sisters had a baby. The gorge system, with small mountains or random rock formations, continued for kilometers until it was consumed by the blue haze. I drank in the beauty.

At this point we had a few different options for a bushwalk. I chose the walk most of the group did, which was a good walk down the Furber Steps, and then got a ticket to ride the Scenic Railway back up. It was a delightful walk through a cool rainforest and we got to admire Wentworth Falls from several angles. Our guide told us about a spot where you can see a man’s face in a rock with water cascading down. He was of the opinion that it was the most realistic rock face anywhere. (I, personally, think that New Hampshire’s Old Man in the Mountain was, until it crumbled, more realistic, but I kept that to myself.) Being a cool rainforest, there was a lot of water – water flowing in streams, water in the humid air, water cascading in waterfalls and making muddy spots along the path. Where the first bushwalk had smelled slightly tangy, this one smelled damp and earthy.

Eventually, after some very steep stairs, we reached the Scenic Railway, which is the world’s steepest. Riding it was a fun, if short, experience. The seats weren’t very comfortable, but I think a lot of that was because I’m so short I couldn’t get on the neckrest properly. At one point we went through a tunnel, and of course were at an incredible angle, so this is clearly not for the unadventurous.

The Scenic Railway isn’t part of Blue Mountains National Park. This is important because it means they let you feed the birds. When we disembarked, there by the platform was a large hanging birdfeeder with several king parrots and a couple of blue rosellas. The attendant asked if we’d like the opportunity to feed the birds. I was about to unzip my purse, figuring that the birdseed would be at least fifty cents, when he pulled a dustbin of birdseed out and offered everyone a handful. Australians are big fans of inclusive prices, and I suppose since it was $10 for a one-way ticket they could afford the birdseed. Later, our guide expressed disapproval of feeding the birds, because the birds might live in the national park. I, personally, was delighted. Now, I took the attendant’s remark that they were wild birds with a grain of salt. They’re wild in the sense that they don’t live in cages, yes, but tame enough to know where the tourists will reliably be feeding them.

The rosellas didn’t like eating out of hands and preferred the bird feeder or seed spilled on the platform, but the king parrots would happily eat out of anyone’s hand. Some would perch on your hand, but I fed a female who didn’t stay on my hand long. Feeling sympathetic, I moved my hand close to the railing and she resumed her meal. Then a male came over, and I was treated to having two gorgeous parrots eating out of my hand at the same time. King parrots have green bodies with red heads; the males have much more red. The attendant informed me that when two will eat out of one person’s hand they are a mated pair. Otherwise, as some other parrots thoughtfully demonstrated, they were territorial.

I only tore myself away from the parrots because I was afraid of holding up the group (I didn’t.) We then headed to one more stop, a nice lookout. The sandstone looked warmer bathed in the fading afternoon light, and it highlighted a rock feature known as Boar’s Head. “You Europeans with your dragon stories will probably say it looks like a dragon,” noted our guide. I could see a boar, but it did look more reptilian. In the end I decided it looked most like a crocodile, which seemed fitting because Australia has plenty of the creatures.

On the way back we saw flocks of white cockatoos, which are active at dusk. In one yard I saw a single tree that must have had close to twenty! The darkness put an end to my bird watching. As I settled in for the ride back to Sydney, I marveled again at how blessed I am to be here and have the opportunity to see and do so many wonderful things.

Sydney

I recently returned from a wonderful six-night trip to Sydney. Before I enthuse about the vacation, however, I’m going to share a very important lesson I learned: hotel ratings are not the same in Australia as they are in the US! I used the internet to reserve a room in the Westend Sydney. When I arrived, I found a nightmare. There was no top sheet, just a less-than-squeaky-clean comforter; the pillowcases were so threadbare they were nearly nonexistent, soap and towels were missing altogether, and the curtain was broken so it didn’t cover the whole window. Therefore I had to walk around and the third hotel I tried had an available room. This was the Marque Sydney, where I was generally happy. Now, my original hotel had been rated three stars. My immediate thought was, ‘If this is three stars, one star must come with complimentary rats.’ I was later told by the woman who owns the house where I’m renting a room that three stars in Australia is risky. It never occurred to me that hotel rating systems might be different, and I fully expected an average but livable room as I would anticipate at home.

That aside, I truly enjoyed Sydney. Less than 48 hours before leaving Hobart for Sydney I impulsively bought a ticket to see the Australian Ballet at the Sydney Opera House, and I’m very glad I did. It was one of my better impulse purchases. Plus, the night that I wanted to go featured a Youth Under 27 discount, so I was able to get a good seat for the price of a mediocre seat. The performance was a Jerome Robbins tribute. I had never heard of Jerome Robbins, but it turns out he choreographed West Side Story. He also choreographed a number of ballet pieces, and the Australian Ballet was performing four of them.

It was a bit surreal to be inside the Sydney Opera House. This was the evening of my fifth day in Sydney, so I’d been gazing at the outside for some time. (And photographing it. I was not alone in noticing that there’s a strange phenomenon that draws cameras towards the Sydney Opera House like some kind of magnet. Almost anywhere with a good view of it has tourists with cameras out.) Being inside was another matter altogether. I’ve read that the acoustics aren’t nearly as impressive as the outside. This didn’t strike me as an issue in the ballet, although I must confess that even if it were I probably wouldn’t have noticed. While in the foyer before the show began I was offered a canapé by a neatly dressed waiter. That, for me, was one of the most surreal moments I’ve had in Australia. After all, I’m a small-town girl and have never lived anywhere but Maine until now. Then there I was, nibbling a canapé in the Sydney Opera House.

Each piece got better than the last in my opinion. The last, “The Concert,” was particularly amusing. A pianist came out, and slowly dancers came out as an audience. However, his music couldn’t hold their attention. Several whimsical scenes then happened. According to the program, “The Concert” sprung from the admission that, while attending a performance, audience members’ minds wander. Interestingly enough, I was so entertained by “The Concert” that my mind hardly wandered at all! It ended with the dancers flitting around with butterfly wings. Fed up, the pianist abandoned his music and chased the dancers with a giant butterfly net. It sounds absurd, but it was beautifully done and highly engrossing.

Another highlight of my trip was the Sydney Aquarium. I read nothing but good things in my tour books, and wasn’t disappointed. It’s divided into four sections: Freshwater Rivers, Saltwater Rivers, Southern Oceans, and Northern Oceans. After buying my ticket, I walked through the enormous metal shark mouth and entered, guidebook in hand. The very first exhibit was the platypus. A freshwater creature, it was far more adorable than I anticipated. (There may have been another, but only one was out.) It was about a foot long – smaller than the beaver-sized animal I’d imagined, and this one particularly liked its hollow log. The first I saw of the platypus was its beak inching out of the log. As I was quite captivated, I stayed for several minutes watching it. The first specimen sent back to Europe was assumed to be a hoax. I can’t say I blame those men who decided the platypus couldn’t possibly be a real animal, with its thick fur, large beak, flat tail, and big webbed feet. This doesn’t sound particularly cute, I’m aware. Nonetheless I thought the platypus was cute. It swam around, poking its beak around for food and going in and out of the hollow log.

I finally pulled myself away from the platypus and on to the rest of the aquarium. After looking at the rest of the Freshwater Rivers tanks, which included a very large Murray cod, it was on to the Saltwater Rivers. The star of this section is the “saltie” – the term Australians use for their saltwater crocodile. This happens to be one of few (two, if I remember correctly) crocodile species that will eat adult humans if given half a chance. A 3-D sign helpfully explained that you can tell crocodiles from alligators because both top and bottom teeth are visible, whereas only top teeth are visible if the creature is an alligator. I, however, prefer to keep my distance and a solid barrier between me and any large, toothed reptile. A sign posted on the upper level, where you can look down at the saltie, hammered the danger home. “DO NOT ENTER,” it read. “If the fall does not kill you, the crocodile will.” I didn’t linger.

For the sake of minds used to the northern hemisphere, remember that the Southern Oceans exhibit here is where the cold water creatures will be. The big draw here is the penguin exhibit. While several species of penguins visit Australia, one breeds here: the fairy penguin, aka little penguin. (In fact, much of their breeding ground is here in Tasmania. I may yet get to see them in the wild.) They’re quite small, perhaps nine or ten inches tall, and charming little birds. When I was looking none were in the water, but the sign informed me that the aquarium keeps a current in their water because they enjoy playing in it. Near the penguins, I meandered over to the Southern Oceans Touch Tank. The employee told us that if you put your finger between the spikes of one creature (I forget what species), the spikes slowly close around your finger. I tried this, and it’s a rather strange sensation.

The final section was the Northern Oceans, where there’s a large Great Barrier Reef tank. This had sharks, rays, at least one turtle, and all kinds of brightly colored fish. When I bought my ticket I paid $5 more for the Shark Explorer glass-bottomed boat ride. The thought crossed my mind that going on a boat over a tank full of sharks could be dangerous. However, I was operating on a “no regrets” motto and decided that if sharks were feasting on visitors the aquarium wouldn’t offer such a ride. Besides, if there was even a remote chance that the insurance company thought sharks might eat people, I was certain the Shark Explorer wouldn’t be allowed. So I zipped up the life jacket and went on, and I’m very glad I did. For about 8 minutes I was in a small 8-person aluminum boat with a glass (or, I suspect, plexiglass) bottom, pulled along a rope by an employee. The view was excellent, and even better when I was given a pinch of fish food to drop overboard. A couple dozen fish came up and put on quite a show. The Shark Explorer has been going on for four and a half months, and that’s how the fish are fed now. I also learned that the aquarium has a special government permit to take fish and shellfish out of Sydney Harbour, which happens on occasion, particularly if the sharks have gotten extra hungry. This, it seems, is the risk of keeping sharks in the same giant tank as fish. None of the sharks below me turned out to be man-eating varieties, which I was glad to hear. (There were no great whites, but those are apparently impossible to keep in captivity because, quite apart from that bothersome man-eating business, they like to dive over 20 yards deep.)

Out of the boat and back on land, so to speak, I found clownfish. It wasn’t hard, because there were little kids squealing, “Nemo! Nemo! NemoNemoNemo!” A large poster showed Nemo’s friends and asked if you could find them. Obviously, the Sydney Aquarium benefits from the interest sparked by “Finding Nemo.” The Great Barrier Reef tank was mesmerizing. Even the homely potato cod was impressive because it was enormous. That one didn’t do much; it just hung there in a little grotto. Sadly, I couldn’t stay in the aquarium forever because by that time, having spent over three hours when the tour guides said to allow two, I was quite hungry.

For the record, I passed on fish and chips in the café.

US Navy Visits Hobart

*I have italicized USS Tarawa as is proper with ships’ names, but the Mercury did not.

Yesterday in the grocery store the Mercury caught my eye. The Mercury is the local newspaper, which calls itself “The Voice of Tasmania.” In large print, the front page proclaimed, “Ship Splurge: Sailors to pump $6m into Tassie.” Curious, I read the first paragraph and learned that the sailors are American. I therefore bought the newspaper and took it home to read the story. Learning about American-Australian interactions is quite interesting and this visit has piqued my attention for that reason.

The USS Tarawa was to arrive Saturday morning with 3,000 sailors and Marines. According to the article, the length of stay will be at least through Monday but hasn’t been confirmed. Monday is International Nurses Day and crew members will visit the Royal Hobart Hospital to visit patients. Unfortunately, the Mercury didn’t explain what the crew of a US warship has to do with International Nurses Day. In any case, the crew will also attend a commemoration ceremony for the Battle of the Coral Sea, “the combined American and Australian naval and air engagement that effectively halted the Japanese southern advance towards Australia.” (Though we rarely hear about it at home, Australia was a major player in the Pacific Theater of WWII. This makes sense, really; Japan was looking for land and resources, two things Australia has in abundance. Northern Australia was bombed during the war.)

The figure of $6 million dollars comes from the US Government, as “the Consulate General of the United States in Perth said yesterday that visits by US Navy Expeditionary Strike Groups brought $2 million a day to local economies.” Because of this, more shops are expected to be open on Sunday. This should work out well, because Captain Brian Luther of the Tarawa said, “Hobart is an exotic city that Tarawa sailors and marines have been looking forward to coming to for months.” Further comments in the article discussed how businesses were encouraged to take advantage of American business.

This was all interesting, but the shock came when I flipped to page two to read the rest of the article. Next to it was an article that began, “Hobart’s sex worker population is likely to double during a visit from the USS Tarawa…”

On second thought, coming from the Navy town of Brunswick, I probably shouldn’t have been so shocked. However, I am generally content to live my sheltered academic life. (And yes, prostitution is legal and regulated in Australia. That I already knew, but the Prostitutes Tasmania spokeswoman’s quote would’ve made it clear anyway.) Apparently prostitutes come from other Australian states for the visits of US ships. I am far from thrilled that this is a major component of Hobart’s interaction with Americans.

There was also a more hopeful article of a couple who met when he came to Hobart in 1999. They got married, and last year, after he left the Navy, moved to Tasmania. It was a sweet story complete with a color photo of the couple with their three-year-old daughter. That, I thought, was more like it.

The Mercury has a section where apparently random people are asked their views on a topic. Yesterday’s question was “Do you enjoy US warship visits to Hobart?” The results were as follows: five people said yes, mostly citing the economic boost; one person didn’t care; another person was from the Gold Coast (on the mainland) but said if she lived here she would; and two people said no, one not caring much and one with the more worrisome “I know it’s good for business but personally I wouldn’t let them into our state. I can’t stand American sailors.” I will confess that after reading that I wondered if he thinks Australian sailors are saints. Being away from home makes me prone to bouts of patriotism.

I’ve been blessed with a splendid living situation here, renting a room in a house. The lovely woman who owns this house said, “My first thought [about the sailors] was, ‘How many babies are they going to leave behind?’” I promptly asked for permission to quote her in this blog post.

This is a totally different look at Americans, and by no stretch can it be considered entirely complimentary. Businesses, however, are happy. I’ve been told by friends that huge amounts of Budweiser are ordered for the occasion of US ship visits, and some young women deliberately dress shabbily so as not to attract unwanted attention (others, sadly, get excited and text message each other when the ship arrives in hopes of having a fling). Happily, other sailors engage in more wholesome pursuits such as bushwalking, and I imagine that restaurants do quite well also.

I wonder if any of the sailors try Vegemite…

The Sunday Tasmanian came out while this post was in the proofreading stage, and the headline declared in big bold letters, “Ahoy, big spenders.” There were also two small articles about the crew enjoying the city, one entitled “Taken By Our Picturesque Port.” Lest anyone think it’s just hometown pride, Hobart really is a beautiful city tucked between the River Derwent and Mount Wellington.