Australia Day

Two hundred and twenty one years ago today, Captain Phillip led a boat of English criminals to the shores of Australia  to start a new (penal) colony for the British Empire.   Since then,  that initial group of several hundred  has grown into a nation of 20 million Australians… and this year, we are two of them.

It’s interesting that Australians celebrate their “national day” as the day their land was colonized by England – not the day they achieved their independence from England (like we do in the US).  Nor is it the day Australia was discovered by Europeans (most attribute that feat to Captain Cook in 1770).  I think this is an interesting difference between the US and Australia.  We celebrate our “national day” – Independence Day – as the year we defeated our mother country in war and declared our independence, our freedom.  It was  a pivotal and victorious event in our history, and has defined our  view of ourselves as a nation ever since.  Australia, on the other hand, never really experienced such a  defining moment.  Their independence has been a slow and somewhat nebulous evolution over the last 100 odd years.  It wasn’t until the Australia Act of 1986 that Britain finally lost its ability to form laws for Australia, and Australia still celebrates the Queen’s birthday as a national holiday.

I can’t claim to draw too many conclusions from this simple difference, but it’s interesting to consider on this national holiday.

It should be noted that aboriginals (like our own native people on  Thanksgiving or Columbus day),  view this day quite differently, and often refer to it as “Invasion Day”.  Good point.

Anyway, we celebrated Australia Day weekend with a good movie (Milk), relaxing pancake breakfasts at home, and finally an enjoyable picnic with friends on the harbor.  It was a great weekend.

While i’m at it, below are a few quick updates to our list of favorite and least favorite differences of living in Australia:

The Good

• Cinemas: Assigned seating, and many have a bar where you can purchase beer and wine, good chocolate, and bring it to your seat with you!
• Cheap airline tickets.  We bought tickets in January to fly round trip to Byron Bay (a beach town up the east coast) for $49 each way per person, including taxes.
• Vegemite
• Asian food: Thai and Indian is everywhere here, and the quality is generally very high.
• Turkish bread

The Bad

• Bike commuting: No doubts about it, Sydney is the least bike friendly city I have ever lived in.  No bike lanes, minimal shoulders, bad traffic, and drivers not used to bikes.
• Peanut butter: No such thing as peanut butter without sugar or vegetable oils as far as we can tell.  Ironically, we found incredible all natural peanut butter in New Zealand made from Australian peanuts!  Go figure.
• Sprawl: It takes the better part of an hour to escape the spawl of the city.
• Cost of public transit: The network of trains and buses is reasonably comprehensive, but the cost is just silly.  $3.20 for a single bus ticket is robbery

Blue Mountains

The Blue Mountains National Park is a two hour train ride west of Sydney and offers an easy weekend getaway for the wary Sydneysider (as we are called).   Kristin and I ventured there this weekend for some much needed respite from our urban environment, namely fresh air and open space.

Before we go any further and you develop imagery of grandeur in your head suggested by a name like the Blue Mountains, let me set one thing straight: the blue mountains are neither mountains nor are they blue.  If I was an explorer back in the day and I discovered this swath of land, i probably would have named it ‘The Green Hills with Some Cliffs’.  But that’s why I ended up as an engineer instead of a storyteller.  Anyway…

On Friday afternoon Kristin and I hopped on a train and headed west for our weekend getaway.  After about an hour of tunneling through Sydney urban sprawl, the countryside started to open up and we soon reached Katoomba, the region’s primary urban center and our home for the weekend.

Monet: My Impression

There are times in life when you feel obligated to “better yourself” through exposure to cultural or artistic mediums. Yesterday I ventured to the Art Gallery of NSW for Monet & The Impressionists with the intention to satisfy that obligation, and came out pleasantly surprised at the authentic satisfaction with the whole experience.

I took advantage of a free guided tour of the the exhibit, and I believe that made all the difference. The no nonsense tour guide was key. She led the way, showed us the goods, banged us over the head with some interesting notes, and some of the artists’ intentions, and then let us be. Plus she pronounced the French words in that perfect way so that she commanded respect, but not so over-the-top that you wanted to give her a cute smile and remind her that she was, in fact, an Australian. Despite the obligatory tour behavior… hushed shuffling, some craning of necks,  and silent jockeying for the best vantage point, I found it the perfect way to get my cultural fix.

Fun tidbits from the exhibit…

It was not the subject, or landscape the artists were attempting to capture, but the sensation, hence they were given the name “impressionists.”

Japanese art, mostly woodblock prints, had a great influence on Monet’s style.

One reason why I still prefer running

Sharks Rampage in Australia

A surfboard with a shark bite in Binalong Bay, off the Tasmanian coast in Australia’s far south, on Jan. 12 (Tasmania Police / Reuters)

Running will never be as sexy or as cool as surfing.  Ever.   I often wish I was blessed with incredible surfing abilities as I admire surfers gracefully riding the waves out in the break.  But at least this will never happen to me in my running shoes.  (unless i get bit by one of the ten deadliest snakes in the world that also happen to live in this country)

Read the story

Christmas in New Zealand

Our first vacation called for a trip abroad. One may ask why not use our 14 days to explore the vast expanses of Australia, our new homeland, and that would be a valid point. But as we experienced (Kristin’s first time, Galen’s return), the South Island of New Zealand affords a breadth of dramatic and varied landscape in a relatively compact space that make for a ideal 2 week roadtrip experience.

New Zealand’s South Island is known by Maori as Te Wai Pounamu translation- “Water of Greenstone” and we surely found water to be one of the defining features of our trip; 9 out of our 12 nights we backed our campervan up water (mountain lake, river, or ocean). Not a bad way to end and start a day on the road.

Our campervan, complete with double size bed and kitchenette (2 burner stove, microwave, sink, refrig)  provided us the means to sleep, cook and relax in some of the most beautiful places in the country at our own pace.  No bus or train schedules to negotiate, hostels or hotels to hunt down each night, or (god forbid) tents to set up.  We simply drove until we found a nice place to make dinner and watch the sunset, and sleep.  This concept known as “freedom camping” is one of the defining characteristics of road tripping in New Zealand and is one of the many factors making it such a pleasurable travel experience.  Unlike in the U.S., freedom camping is a widely accepted practice in New Zealand, and is actually encouraged as a measure to reduce car accidents associated with sleepy drivers.

The pictures capture our trip… for a more detailed version, you can click below and read our notes on the highlights. (We admit this is a extra long post, so bare with us as we use this post to act as a general documentation system.)