Jan 2009

This image particularly hit home for me. Still seems like a dream, but it's a great dream indeed. Similar to the one Martin Luther King had a few decades ago I'm sure. So this is what pride for country feels like eh? Interesting feeling I think I like it. Trust me, we still got a long way to go on international relations. We are definitely going the right direction now though, finally. I'm sending my best along with millions of pats and ex-pats all across the world. I have really felt at home during these last few days through phone calls, emails, Facebook, and the occasional inspirational Obama YouTube video It has been great to hear from everybody on my bday and inauguration day, and I'm glad I could share a part of the moment with you! Much love from summer in the southern hemisphere... GOBAMA GO!! And heck yeah people we did it.

G'day from Down Under! How ya goin? I've got heaps of pictures and grand stories from Oz, so get your brekkie ready, read on and Bob's your uncle I reckon (in Aussiespeak). Four weeks in Australia leaves me reeling from the amazing people I meet and animals I encounter and landscapes and oceanscapes and sunsets, it is just a really rich experience and I want to come back...with a 4-Wheel-Drive.

I guess we start from the beginning when I meet my Indiana friends Will and LB in Cairns - northeast Australia. It's so great to see them again and we start our adventures right with snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef...the largest living thing in the world! I also try diving for the first time and it blows my mind. It's a totally different planet down there and the reef has some amazing creatures to play with and stay away from.

You try not to swim in the ocean as much as possible 'cause blue bottles (man o war jellyfish), sharks, crocodiles, sting rays, certain coral, and rip currents will all kill you. Instead there are some amazing rainforest fresh water creeks that dot the coast and we cool off in a few... here's an interesting shot of me vine-swinging near the entrance of a special rainforest river called Mossman Gorge.

Then we go up to the Daintree Rainforest in Cape Tribulation: the oldest rainforest...in the world! Fresh coconuts await us and we drink the coconut milk and eat coconut flesh and then have coconut bocci ball games!! Did you know that coconut milk is the most sterile natural substance...in the world?! Medics used it as plasma for their patients in WWII.

Another scuba diving trip puts me face to face with the first sea turtle I have ever seen, and we hang out. In the end it lets me put my hands on its shell and it takes me for a brief yet breathtaking ride through the sea at its own pace. I come out of the water with a smile that lasts for two days...telling everyone I meet about my experience, and continue to recout it to Will and Lb at least ten times bless their hearts.

After that we go to Broome on the West Coast and get rocked with rain and wind by Category 1 Cyclone Billy. We get stuck at the hostel but finally the storm clears. We check out the alligator park and beautiful Cable Beach then we rent a car and go south to Ningaloo Reef Park. The road is not one you want to break down on as there are roadhouses out of a Steven King movie every 300 kilometers or so, kangaroo corpses litter the shoulders, and we aren't rockin a 4x4- instead we elect to get the cheapest funniest little clown car available, a two door Hundai Zoombasomethingorother. So we go driving on the left hand side of the road, with a stick shift(on the right side) a tiny gas tank, and rubber donut wheels. But we persevere!!

Lucky us we find an amazing campground right next to the beach with the most vivid sunsets...in the world!!! (that's subjective of course) For the next few days we hike, snorkle, eat, and somehow survive the 40 degree Celcius days -that's over 100 in Fahrenheit of hot sticky heat. Evening thunderstorms of the wet season made for some crazy lightning shows and natures power really came down on us again when we drove back up north to Broome through torrential downpour and long flooded roads. Treacherous yes...but also the norm in Oz.

Back in Broome, we see the movie "AUSTRALIA" at an outdoor movie theater that is actually featured quite frequently in the movie itself. Geckos crawled across the outdoor screen and eight-foot bats swooped down every once in awhile. I thought the movie was equally entertaining and confusing, just like the continent itself.

The Aboriginal topic is very much explored in the movie Australia, but it's a really contentious issue here. Everybody starts talking real low and gets very tense. There are a lot of similarities in the experiences of the indigenous peoples here and on the American continent; except here western contact happened 150 years ago in some places. Rabbit-proof fence is about two girls who escape a boarding school where similarly to the states they took Aborignal children by force into an entirely different reality. The girls travel two thousand kilometers across desert to reach home, and it's just one of the staggering stories from over here. It's a really strange mixture of fear, hatred, guilt, pride, destruction, beauty, and misunderstanding between the European descendants and the native population of Australia - I mean these Aboriginals are ancient - 40,000 years old they estimate - maybe even 100,000: surviving through two ice ages yet struggling to survive contact with the western world. Easy to forget the history while enjoying the magnificence of Australia, but an issue that is constantly in your mind whether in the rainforest streams with Aboriginal names and spiritual significance, or the social centers where Aboriginals are relegated to second-class citizen status across the continent.

Check this website out and click on the Aboriginal history link if you have time: http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/

This is a good website that explains some Aboriginal Culture:
http://www.aboriginalculture.com.au/

I am able to meet some community organizers in the Mossman community, try and play the didjeridoo, view some amazing artwork, and hear some dreamtime stories, but I hope to work in a community one day here and experience life on the other side of the rabbit-proof fence. Here's some didjeridoo - http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=QSXjpWUDvO4&feature=channel
Ok fhew a beautiful, tough, but necessary part of the Australian experience.

Will and Lbo head back east, and I decide to keep the funny clown car and drive down to Perth. I meet Daniel, a great German Austrian guy, to join me in my ride and we split the costs of gas, food scuba equipment, and fun for the five day trip down to Perth.

A pink algae-filled lake somewhere on the coast...

On our way down we somehow find out where sea turtles are nesting and I spend two hours on a deserted beach in the middle of the night sitting and watching a mother turtle laying her eggs in the sand then returning to the half-moon lit sea as quietly as she came. It's a truly amazing experience when you're face to face with a million-year-old ritual that has been done at the same place at the same time for thousands and thousands of years. I have some video of it, but it's just not the same. I realized that all that blue planet stuff is really amazing but you lose the experience through the screen. You've got to go out there and have these encounters yourself! They are really powerful.

We reach Perth and go our separate ways. Perth is the most isolated capital city...in the world!!! But I am really only there as a stopping point on my way to the great southern old-growth forests on the southwest tip of Australia! Perth is ok but I stay in a crappy hostel that I can't wait to leave from and I meet a really amazing woman from Switzerland who can't wait to leave either! SO we get supplies and head down to the southern forests through vineyards and tree-lined roads that remind you of California Napa Valley or something. We climb these two-hundred foot trees with amazing views and do some great hiking adventures through the old-growth Karri forest in and around huge 500-year-old trees. There are these tree-top walks as well that swing with the wind two hundred feet off the ground...really spectacular.

After that we head up the west coast for some more great hikes and make it back just in time to turn in the funny clown car that Will, Lb, Janine, Daniel, and I all drove really hard up and down the western coast of Oz. We putted in with a hub cap missing, quarter tank of gas, dirt encrusted paint, with insects sprayed across the front fender, and a sandy interior, I didn't get all the deposit back, but we certainly got all the adventure and fun possible out of it and I'm very appreciative of that.

I fly back to Broome the next day, then to Perth, then to Brisbane where I am shown great hospitality by some family friends of my Uncle David... we drink some amazing wine and have great conversations and meals. Their warmth is a great book end on a long and eventful journey. Thank you Barry and Kaye!

I leave Australia bewildered, exhausted, amazed, thoroughly smiling, and wanting to come back... with a 4x4 of course. Thanks for reading and I hope this makes you want to travel! It's addicting and life-expanding for sure... let me know if you get the inclination, I would love to join you wherever you decide to go! Much love from the Land of Oz...