Glenrock State Park - August

One place I cannot get enough of is Glenrock State Park, on the coast (obviously), a 15-20 minute drive from our house.

A Good Day for Rain in Sydney

Seems like it rains every time I go to Sydney. It was a good day for wet weather this trip though, considering that I spent 3 hours in a crowded 27th floor waiting room at the Indian Consulate. The long wait for visas was bracketed by 2 1/2 hour train rides from and to Newcastle. I did get enough time, however, for a quick walk around the Royal Botanic Gardens and a new perspective--for me--on the Opera House. The woman with the young boy in the picture below lives in Lancaster, PA.

Early Spring in the Hunter Valley

Meat

It's any excuse for a "sausage sizzle" in Australia. I found an old statistic (1989) that put Australia third on the list of top meat-eating countries, behind the U.S. and Hungary and just ahead of Canada. Still, there seems to be many more neighborhood butcher shops here than in America--and fruit and vegetable stands too, for that matter--which may reveal a greater interest in food quality. Butcher shops are more expensive, but there is definitely a difference in taste compared to supermarket-bought meat. Although I've only seen kangaroo in the supermarkets, so I guess it depends on what you like.

University of Newcastle

I start a second term of assistant teaching today at the main campus of the University of Newcastle--three sections of Introduction to Journalism. Last term it was International Media Studies. I'm "international" over here, after all.

A few months ago "uni" changed it's logo from the seahorse with the starry, question mark thought-bubble--actually, the Southern Cross star constellation, also featured on the Australian flag--to the stylized white-on-black horse head. I get the new one--those are waves lapping at the horse's neck and into its eye--but it looks too much like a sports team mascot. I really like the friendlier old one better. And "I Look Ahead" says a lot, I think.

By the way, "uni" is what locals call the school, and it's typical Australian shorthand for "university" in general.

Surprisingly, the University of Newcastle has about 20,000 students. Here's the school's website http://www.newcastle.edu.au/ and a link to its Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Newcastle,_Australia

The school is located smack dab in the middle of a suburb, on a large tract of land next to a wetland that was donated to the university in the 1960s, I believe it was. It's an unfortunate siting as far as transportation goes, especially for students who live on campus. There's no business district within convenient walking distance, for instance, and the train station is a 15-minute brisk hike from the building that I teach in (although a city bus stops nearby). Also, a couple of my American exchange students from last term told me that it was the first time they had to take a bus anywhere. Back home in small-town Iowa they always drive. Another American student shared an apartment in downtown Newcastle and got very tired of taking a bus back and forth, about 8 miles each way, I estimate.

Another unusual aspect of the campus is its deliberate "bush" character. There is a long walking path, featured in part in this photo, through a dense wooded area linking two main parts of campus. It's beautiful, if you don't have to be anyplace in a hurry and if you know where you're going. Most of the buildings look the same--1960s and 1970s bland beige and brown architecture--so navigating around campus, up one "bush walk" path and down another, can be disconcerting at first. And then there are the mosquitos, which make it nearly impossible to sit outdoors in warm weather, and a challenge sometimes to use the men's room.

Warning Signs

No worries, just some of the wildlife and potential natural disaster warning signs that we've encountered.

Some wag turned a speed bump sign into a dead cassowary on the road to Cape Tribulation, in the Daintree Rainforest in Far North Queensland.

Note the bottle of vinegar thoughtfully provided by local authorities for the treatment of jelly fish stings at Thornton Beach, again in the Daintree. Fortunately, it wasn't jelly fish season (although most of the year is), and anyway, the day was too cold and cloudy for a dip.

Again, no worries. These crocodile warning signs were posted at intervals along the beaches and in residential areas of Port Douglas. There were people sunbathing on the sand just on the other side of the bushes behind the sign pictured here. Note that the word "warning" is posted in English, German, and Japanese--probably the three biggest language groups with the financial wherewithal or hereditary incentive to travel all the way to the edge of northeast Australia.
These ice and wave warnings are posted at Fox Glacier on the central western coast of New Zealand's South Island. The place was a bit like Times Square, what with all the tourists trekking up and the down the glacier's ravine. But you can't actually walk on the glacier unless you pay to have a guide take you up the slope. Probably a good thing, for both the glacier and the health of overly enthusiastic visitors.

And of course, signs for kangaroos all over the place. This one is near the psychiatric hospital at Morisset, on Lake Maquarie, about 30 minutes south of Newcastle. It's our favorite place to feed wild kangaroos. Here, Sarah is making a pitch, at my behest, to get published in Pitt Magazine.

Daintree Rainforest

Great Barrier Reef

That's Low Isle, our Great Barrier Reef destination. It's on the inner reef, a one-hour fairly low-speed boat ride from Port Douglas. It's also where Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin last touched land after being speared by a stingray, according to this news report excerpt:

"Irwin was pulled aboard his research vessel, Croc One, for a 30-minute dash to Low Isle, where a Queensland Rescue Helicopter had been summoned, his Australia Zoo said in a statement.

The crew of the Croc One performed constant CPR during the voyage to Low Isle, but medical staff pronounced him dead about noon."

And by the way, according to Wikipedia:

"In the weeks following Irwin's death, at least ten stingrays were found dead and mutilated, with their tails cut off, on the beaches of Queensland, prompting speculation that they had been killed by fans of Irwin as an act of revenge. "

Steve Irwin recently lost out to Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and their baby in a fashion magazine contest to see who would appear on an Australia Post stamp.

Nicholas and Sarah snorkeled as soon as we got to the island while Peter and I stayed on shore, but we still saw lots of cool reef stuff from the beach, thanks to a very low tide. Later in the day, after a buffet lunch on the ship, we took a ride in a glass bottom boat. According to the guy driving the boat, there are about 400 types of coral on the reef, but only about 40 varieties that are really colorful. Also, many of the eye-popping magazine pictures of the reef are taken at night with bright flashes. So we felt better about what we did see, which was fantastic regardless.

Port Douglas, Far North Queensland (FNQ)

The first couple of shots were taken en route to Port Douglas from Cairns. (All we saw of Cairns was the airport.) We stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant across the road from Ellis Beach, then pulled over to take in the view from Rex Overlook.

In Port Douglas, we stayed at the Nimrod Resort Apartments, located a short, quiet couple of blocks from Four Mile Beach, at the far end, away from downtown Port Douglas. The town's main shopping street is at the base of the near, low hill in the background of the second shot. Resorts and golf course are strung along the beach but hidden, by law, by a strand of greenery and a prohibition on high rise development.








The distance from town afforded numerous invigorating bike rides along the beach, and the weather cooperated nicely--chilly in the mornings and evening, but fine during the day. In fact, it was the coldest it's been in those parts in many years--rare frosts inland--but it didn't bother us much and we never had to change out of our shorts. At a very crowded farmers' market our second day in town I jokingly asked one of the merchants where all the people had come from and he said, without hesitation, "Melbourne and New Zealand"--two places that get pretty cold in the winter. And he was right. Just about everyone that I talked with was from Melbourne or Victoria, the state that Melbourne is in, including a father and son that I played tennis with at our resort, and Sarah I had fun picking out the New Zealanders on our tours, based in part on their penchant for dark, heavy clothing.