The Norfolk Pine

These trees, originally from Norfolk Island in the southwest Pacific, are everywhere in both Auckland and Sydney. From the middle distance they look distinctive and a bit freaky:


Up close, you can tell that what look like huge, upward-pointing needles are actually branches that themselves contain hundreds of small needles:


From a distance, they stand out like sentinels:


They must have looked somewhat like that to Captain Cook, when he discovered Norfolk Island and excitedly reported to London that he had found a much-needed source of masts for ships. Alas, those huge straight trunks turned out to be as weak as carrots and the trees thus had no economic value.

Later, they were exported around the region for landscaping, but you can't plant them in the eastern United States, as they'll snap under a wintertime load of snow and ice.

The Long White Cloud ... Wrapping It Up

I've gone on long enough about this trip, so I'm going to leave you with just one final image from each country.

New Zealand's Maori name was Aotearoa, meaning "Land of the Long White Cloud." And it really is:


And from Australia, yes, I know it's trite, but I love it so:


Thanks for reading. I don't know when or where our next trip will be, but you can read all about it here!

Australia: Tasting Notes

The best meals of our trip were in Melbourne, hands down. If you're ever there, check out Seamstress, a cutting-edge Asian-fusion place on the edge of Chinatown, and Flower Drum, which proves that high-end traditional Chinese dining really does exist, at least outside America.

We didn't eat as well in Sydney, but that had more to do with having so much else to do that we often found ourselves either on a tight schedule or choosing restaurants based on proximity rather than ratings. I'm quite sure we can do better next time.

Even Australian sommeliers tended to recommend New Zealand wines, and it's true that Australian wines are, from our limited sampling, more variable. Aromatic whites (Riesling, Pinot Gris) were generally a good bet. We had a stunning aged Shiraz (vintage 1997) for only A$10 a glass at Flower Drum, and while I'm sure more like that exist, they're hard to find.

The only rule of thumb I can offer is that the best wines we had (both red and white) tended to come from Victoria state. However, I'm not sure how readily available Victoria wines are in the United States. Victoria, the southernmost mainland state, has a coolish climate by Australian standards (I like cool-climate wines) but a relatively small wine industry.

Unlike Kiwis, Aussies tended more toward beer than wine in their bars. Toohey's and Boag's were two brands we liked.

Oddly enough, we didn't see Foster's for sale even once in any bar we visited.

Big Ugly Fat ...

We didn't get to ride on the Airbus 380, but I did get a chance to look one in the face, both at LAX and at Sydney.

The 747, which we did ride, looks stately and a bit dignified.

While the 380 may be a perfectly nice airplane inside, up close from the outside, man, it just looks obese.

The Great War (updated)

World War I was a defining experience for both New Zealand and Australia, and memorials abound -- most of them, understandably but unfortunately, oversized and tasteless. Here's the "Bridge of Remembrance" in Christchurch:


This bridge and archway were erected to commemorate World War I specifically, and after World War II broke out they had to tack on a small extra plaque commemorating it, which you'll see to the lower right:


Melbourne's memorial is even more unappealing:


Sydney has a similar one as well, and (UPDATED 3/15) here is a picture:

The Harbour Party

The parade was good; the aftermath was bad; the Harbour Party, the next day, was sensational.

It is, in all important ways, the Pier Dance done right.

Like the Pier Dance, it starts in the late afternoon. But unlike the Pier Dance, you get there by walking through the botanical gardens, with thousands of bats circling overhead:


The space for the dance is at least as large as Pier 54, but much better equipped: there are food tents selling delicious lamb burgers, easily accessible bars (though, mystifyingly, there were only two beers on sale: an Australian brand, Hahn's, for A$5, and an imported, premium beer for A$7: Budweiser -- the American kind, not the Czech kind).

There's a picnic area for socializing, and plenty of room to dance. There is a station where you can refill your water bottle for free (imagine that!):


I found out later that this is mandated by law at Australian dance parties. (Again, imagine that!)

The crowd is as friendly as can be. You can pretty much walk up to anyone, smile and start a conversation.

But the best part is the setting: yes, it's that million-dollar view of Sydney:



Not a bad way to wind up a weekend.

Mardi Gras: the aftermath

As much as I liked the Mardi Gras parade, I've got to also report on the aftermath, which wasn't pretty. The streets along the parade route turned into a sea of broken bottles and broken costumes:


Many people who had brought along milk crates to stand on for a better view simply abandoned them in the street:


And the police, faced with a sea of yobs drunk and loutish to an almost British degree, reacted in kind. Twice on the way from the parade to the hotel, we encountered lines of mounted officers forming up, seemingly prepared to charge and clear the streets by force. It was all a bit scary and we left as soon as we could.

The next day, Sunday, a sign went up at the entrance to the neighborhood:


A bit too late, if you ask me.

Mardi Gras: the parade

The Mardi Gras parade is, in many respects, better than New York's pride parade. It's shorter (clocking in at just under three hours) and better paced, with few long gaps between contingents.

It's less political as well, with very few elected officials marching and a relatively small number of groups representing narrow-based identity politics. Instead, you have many more groups that are basically krewes just out to have a good time in fabulous costumes:



The political messages that are there tend toward the sly and humorous, rather than the in-your-face attitude of many American Pride marchers. Here, the parade organizers have chosen to pair the Australian Federal Police (in the blue shirts to the left) with the medical-marijuana advocates (carrying an inflatable joint, to the right):


But perhaps the most thrilling moment of the parade, to the Americans in attendance, was one that was matter-of-fact to the locals: when the openly gay soldiers, sailors and aviators from Australia's armed forces marched by:



They ask, and they tell, and the world hasn't collapsed.

Mardi Gras: the prelude

Sydney Mardi Gras is really, basically, Sydney Gay Pride. With a parade followed by several rounds of parties, in concept it's much like Pride in any American city (though, as you'll see, the details differ in some important respects).

Preparations for the parade engulf much of the downtown area for hours before it starts. We stumbled upon this disco-ball-clad group coming out of the headquarters of one of the major banks, at least a mile from the actual parade route:


As we discovered when they marched by a few hours later, this was the bank's official delegation to the parade, of which it was a major sponsor.

Closer to the start of the route, you see streets blocked off ...



... as people in costume become the majority ...


The gay flag flies from balconies ...


... and over City Hall ...



As the sun set, we headed for our seats in the "Glamstand," a grandstand viewing area that sells tickets and gives the money to charity ...


... and we arrived just as the Dykes on Bikes were kicking off the parade:


To be continued ...

A Better Beach

Later on the same day, we checked out another of Sydney's beaches, called Manly Beach. I liked this one much better.

For one thing, it's bigger:


Like Bondi, it also has secluded coves to hike to if you don't fancy a crowd scene:



While it's not actually any further from the city than Bondi (it's about as far north of the harbor entrance as Bondi is south), it feels more remote. The public-transportation route there from downtown is a beautiful 40-minute ferry ride. And while Bondi feels almost as urban as Santa Monica or Venice Beach, the Manly area feels more resort-y, more like Miami Beach, with a pedestrian walkway lined with surfwear stores and fish-and-chips shops:


We didn't actually get to go swimming -- the water temperature, according to a posted sign, was 73 degrees (similar to the Atlantic Ocean at Fire Island in midsummer) and the air was cooler than that. So I look forward to doing a proper beach trip next time I'm in Sydney.

But it will be at Manly, not Bondi.

We'll Surf Like They Do in the U.S.A.

For a city that's famous for its beaches, Sydney doesn't actually have a lot of them. Most of the coastline is low cliffs:


The only beaches are in low-lying areas between the headlands, and most of them are pretty compressed. This, in its entirety, is the famous Bondi Beach (and by the way, it's pronounced bon-dye, not bon-dee):



We were there on a cool, rainy Tuesday, so there weren't many people around, but you can see why Bondi has a reputation for being crowded: it just isn't very big, especially given that it's one of the most accessible beaches to Sydney proper (it's about a 25-minute bus ride from downtown).

The famous Bondi Beach lifeguards were huddling inside for warmth, so I'm sorry to say I couldn't get any hot swimsuit shots:



But there were quite a few surfers around:


A beautiful trail leads south from Bondi along the cliffs to the next beach, called Bronte Beach. If you're ever in Sydney this is a great walk. It only takes about 15 minutes and then at Bronte (which is smaller even than Bondi) there are a couple of restaurants and another bus line taking you back to the city.


More on Sydney's beaches in the next posting.

Sydney in Stone

Like every other city we visited on this trip, Sydney has its own peculiar architecture.

Downtown there is (as in Melbourne) a mix of modern skyscrapers and Victorian rockpiles:


Literally Victorian, in this case, as this closeup shows. (There are statues of her all over the city; Sydney appears to worship her even more than London.)


But Sydney was founded several decades earlier and shows it. These two buildings, facing each other at the entrance to Hyde Park, date from about 1819 and are among the oldest in the city:




They're not exactly architecturally distinguished, but they were lucky to be architected at all: Sydney was a penal colony at the time, so everyone there was either a convict or a soldier. When they decided they needed some public buildings, they had to search among the convicts for someone who had been an architect. Fortunately for them and posterity, they found one.

But perhaps the most typical architecture of Sydney, at least in the areas where we went, were these rowhouses with ornamental balconies. I don't know how old they are or what they are like inside, but they're everywhere, particularly in the gay neighborhood around Oxford St.

At the Zoo

We didn't get a chance to get out into the countryside of Australia, so we had to settle for seeing the local wildlife at the (excellent) Sydney zoo. (However, we did see certain interesting specimens of the species homo sapiens in the wild, which I'll discuss in an upcoming post.)

We saw all but one of the famous animals of Australia, including koalas ...


... echidnas (spiny anteaters, which are mammals but lay eggs) ...


... and kangaroos :


We also saw a wombat, but since it's a nocturnal animal we weren't allowed to take a picture inside its house (it isn't very photogenic anyway; it's a shapeless grey animal about the size of a raccoon).

Only the duck-billed platypus refused to show its face; it, too, is nocturnal but lives outdoors and apparently hides in the shadows during the day.

But the best animal sighting actually happened at the refreshment stand. Australia does not, apparently, have any pigeons, so their role in the ecosystem is taken (at least at the zoo, but this was not in a caged area) by colorful lorikeets:



We didn't see lorikeets anywhere else in Sydney, but we did see other interesting birds, including a sort of heron that was very common in Hyde Park. And then there was the most common flying creature of Sydney, which came out every night around dusk:


More on them later as well.

The Harbour Bridge

Okay, okay, so I had to post the classic postcard view of the thing. It was, after all, the first real view we got.

But I thought I'd also include some other shots from perspectives you don't normally see -- bearing in mind that you actually can't see the bridge from large parts of the city, because the view is blocked by skyscrapers to the south and hills to the east and west.

Still, here we go:


That last view, of course, was from the bridge.

I took a picture of what the bridge actually looks like from the walkway, but trust me, it's so ugly you don't want to see it. (It's a big strong bridge, though, with eight lanes of car traffic, two railroad tracks and two walkways.)