The shops at the Sydney airport are still selling t-shirts from the Olympics.
Much like during my initial few days in Auckland, I'm experiencing a sort of exotic deja vu here in Sydney. The architecture and underlying culture are vaguely familiar, but there are all these strange things that just leave me shaking my head. Like the giant yellow-tufted white parroty things that appeared on our balcony one morning. Or the giant bats that soar with an exceptionally quiet sense of fashion past our window. Or that goofy looking Opera House.
Actually, I really like Sydney. It's got everything one needs in a major metropolis, and is blessed with a great subway system. Yesterday Kate and I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art and took in a fantastic photography exhibit. I was astounded and humbled the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and especially Hiroshi Sugimoto. There's a certain bohemian feel to the place -- similar to San Francisco, I think -- and I could spend a lot of time just exploring the city.
Travelling can sometimes be very hard work. You tend not to think of it as work, but the mental processes and stress can be just the same as what I experienced back at my old job. Today, for example, Kate and I were presented with a pressing deadline to figure out What The Hell We Were Doing. We had originally planned to stay here in Sydney for about a week, and stay for the grand opening of the Mardi Gras festivities before heading north along the coast and then over to Darwin. But the big Mardi Gras celebration is the parade on March 9th, so we decided to change our plans, and leave Sydney a bit earlier before coming back for the parade. So we spent this morning changing plane tickets, and buying plane tickets, and shopping for rental cars, and basically doing a whole bunch of intense research and making some gutsy decisions. We've purchased our visas for Vietnam. We're not going to Darwin, Australia. We ARE going to Indonesia. We're renting a campervan instead of a car, and we're still debating whether we're going to turn left (towards Melbourne) or right (towards Cairns) when we drive out of the rental lot on Sunday. All this heavy thinking, combined with lots of walking around, and then a few hours in the internet cafe, have left us feeling pretty exhausted. We're going to sleep well tonight, I think, and that's a good thing because we're planning to climb the famous harbour bridge tomorrow afternoon.
Imagine you wanted to organize a tour of one of the world's most famous landmarks. You've got a huge market of tourists to pull from and a can't-fail business plan. Then, imagine that the world's most paranoid lawyers got involved.
To climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge, we had to do the following:
The tour was way overpriced and just a little boring. The view from the top is great, sure, but that same view can be had for just US$3 from the Harbour Bridge museum. The best view on the tour is from below the deck, looking through the massive network of trusses that support the bottom of the bridge. Unfortunately, no cameras were allowed.
We went to Bondi Beach on Sunday, as is required of any dutiful visitor to Sydney. It was incredibly busy, with wall-to-wall oiled bodies. I walked to the end of the beach and on the way back followed two aboriginal teenage boys for a while. Their skin was a deep, deep black -- among the blackest I'd seen -- but the soles of their feet were white. The people they walked among were of much fairer skin, of course, and I noticed that the skin of everyone (except for these two boys) was the same colour as the sand. I could imagine those two aboriginal boys walking alone on this beach, on land they might conceivably own, while sand-coloured ghosts of a different future danced on the beach around them.
We picked up our van early on Sunday morning, February 4. It is a converted Toyota minivan with a stove, fridge, sink, and bed/table in the back. It drives like it's built out of jello, but it'll do for a month.
I awoke this morning in a foul mood. I shouldn't have, really, given the previous day's anticipation. We had our fancy van and 24 unallocated days to explore the east coast. The open road awaited.
But one can't always be happy when one is travelling. Sometimes you're sick of the muggy heat. Sometimes you're tired of always wearing the same clothes. Sometimes you long for just one night in a real bed. And sometimes you're just plain grumpy.
I imagine the last was the most significant, and I spent most of today in a bit of a funk. We drove north from our previous night's campsite -- a little wide spot on a seldom-used road -- and began to drive through a succession of small towns. We were ostensibly on the scenic route, but the parade of McDonalds and strip malls left a lot to be desired. We stopped to pick up supplies, and were assaulted by the muggy heat -- first as we were getting out of the van, and then again as we left the air-conditioned mall. We made another stop at a visitor center to see what the region had to offer, raiding the racks of brochures for later casual perusal, but as we walked out I had a dismal feeling about the road ahead. I asked Kate: "Do you ever get the feeling there's just nothing to do?"
The air cooled in the afternoon, and now, in the late evening, the wind is howling. We're parked on a short cliff outside central Newcastle, overlooking the ocean. We've got the same view as the guests of the Holiday Inn behind us (and we're also using the Holiday Inn bathrooms) but our view is free. I just hope parking here overnight is legal.
The view from the cliff is nice. Streetlights illuminate the white foam of the waves against the inky sea. The waves race to shore like clouds being blown about on a ravaged dark planet. Further out, anchored cargo ships burn bright lights, glowing like distant cities.
The famous (or at least, well-promoted to tourists) wine-making region of the Hunter Valley lay to the west, so we spent a day on a wine tour. Our day alternated between cool, airconditioned wine tasting rooms and the incredibly humid and rainy outdoors. The hunter valley is famous for its semillon and shiraz wines, and so we tried several of those in addition to a few others. In all, we visited four wineries and I came away from the day with an only slightly more educated palette. I'm certainly well-versed in the crisp lime notes of the semillon grape, but beyond that I'm still hopelessly lost.
We spent a night in Port Macquarie, in a "holiday park" (or "caravan park" -- basically, a campground or trailer park) where we could recharge the van's batteries. They hadn't been charged to begin with, and our slow driving pace meant they never really got full of juice, and the end result that our fridge wasn't that cold and our food was going bad.
Speaking of Macquarie, there are tons of places named Macquarie in Australia: Port Macquarie, Lake Macquarie, Macquarie Point, Mrs. Macquarie's Walk.... one day, I need to figure out who this Macquarie person was. There also seems to be a Nobby's Beach at every town we've stopped, and we haven't figured that one out yet either.
Byron Bay is a hippie-and-surfer town on the east coast of Australia, and Kate and I are settling in. It's a great place to waste away your day, at varying levels of activity. Today is a low-activity-level day for both of us.
We're sitting on the grass above Main Beach, catching some sun. Kate is reading a book about V.S. Naipaul's travels through Islamic countries. I'm just chilling.
The bay stretches out to the north in front of us. The sky is a milky blue at the horizon, tattered by distant white clouds. Below the sky is the bluish green sea, flat today but excited by the wind into a sparkling mass of highlights and shadows. In front of the sea is the the beach, obscured in that direction by the short grassy plateau upon which we sit. The grass is intermittently littered with sunbathers in varying levels of undress, and then there is path leading to the beach, and then more grass, and then Kate.
To my right I can see the beach itself, where a long line of roasting sunbathers stretches around the bay. The water there is full of swimmers, all clumped together in short lines parallel to the shore where the best breaks might be. Because the surf is so small today, the majority of the swimmers are just body surfing -- the surfers and boogers are staying home.
To my left, on a wide platform under the shade of a huge norfolk pine, are some hippies and a few crazy old men. They hang out there every day, and idly strum guitars and talk and mostly do a whole lot of nothing. One young woman was slowly attempting some knitting, and a few of the more ambitious are making dijeridoos. At the moment someone out of sight is yelling angrily. Earlier today, a woman spent the better part of an hour arhythmically banging two sticks together.
It seems to be a curious physiological fact that the male hippies are (in general, of course) skinny while the female hippies are rather more plump. This could be explained by the fact that the men spend their time exercising in the ocean while the women spend their time lying topless on the beach, but I doubt we'll ever know the real reason. In any event, Kate and I can both attest to the fact that playing in the waves is hard exercise.
We bought some used boogie boards about a week ago, and have been diving into the waves wherever we stopped at the end of the day's driving. The ensuing jumping and diving and ducking and kicking and paddling, and the general struggling against currents that are conspiring to drag us to place other than where we are, have all been great exercise -- or at least, that's what my aching muscles are telling me.
All this ocean activity culminated in surfing school a few days ago. Yes, after four and a half months of travelling, I was finally going to live my dream.
* * *
Rob, a body-building bloke from Barbados, picked us up at the caravan park and drove us to the beach. We stretched, took a few dry runs at standing up on the boards, then headed for the water. The surf was relatively light but there was a strong current threatening to sweep us away. The current wasn't dangerous, since "away" just meant further down the beach, but it was an exhausting nuisance.
The rest of the four-hour lesson went more or less like this: we would struggle through the waves and current to where Rob was standing, and then lie on our boards, and wait for a wave. Rob would give us a push, and we'd try to stand. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. On my second attempt I actually did stand and rode that wave for all it was worth -- not much, really, but enough to officially give me my first ride. Alas, I didn't get too many more rides that day, and three hours of paddling left my arms dead and limp. I was generally disatisfied with the lesson; I didn't feel that I progressed very far as a surfer. But it was a start, and one day, after my arms have healed, hopefully soon, I'll try again.
* * *
Back on the grass, a quintet of surfer frat boys has sat down in front of Kate and I, spoiling our view of the water with their broad reddish-brown backs. Each of them is carrying a kebab. Within ten seconds of sitting they are surrounded by anxious seagulls.
Kebabs are by far the most common fast food here in Australia (and in New Zealand, too). Don't think of shish kebabs (the meat-on-a-stick thing) -- think of gyros (the meat-and-veggies-in-a-pita thing). They are by far my favourite food here: cheap, delicious, filling, and (I suspect/hope) nutritious. Kebab takeaways abound, although in bigger cities they occasionally devolve into kebab-and-anything-you-can-think-of-that-could-possibly-be-deep-fried takeaways. Kate and I have eaten more kebabs than anything else except for homemade sandwiches. When we're extra hungry: kebabs. When we're not very hungry: kebabs. When in doubt: kebabs. When we're tired of kebabs: more kebabs!
The kebab gang has moved on, giving back our view of the grass and sea. About twenty meters away one of the hippies has strewn about some papers on the grass, and weighed them down with rocks. A sign says, "Nothing to sell", and "Please read". Written on the pieces of paper are new-age platitudes such as "You are fabulous" or "We are God". Some are humorous: "the waft from my armpits? AROMA-DIVINE". Others are more direct: "Follow nature! 82% of birds are promiscuous".
The hippie influence pervades the town of Byron Bay. It's not just the heavy backpacker influence (which is unarguably "alternative" in nature); this town and the surrounding countryside has been a new-agey haven ever since the local factories went bankrupt in the mid-twentieth century and commune founders began buying up the cheap land. There are dozens of alternative healing centers in this area. They offer everything from your standard massage to flotation chambers to obscure "energy healing" treatments. After our exhausting morning of surfing, Kate and I felt we could use a little pampering and relaxation.
* * *
Our treatments were done at Osho's House. We choose a one-hour "float" followed by a one-hour massage -- the package was an absolute steal at just US$25 each. I did the float first, while Kate was being massaged, and then we switched.
The "float" happens inside a big plastic tank with a sliding door. The tank is filled with about 25 centimeters of warm water, and then massive quantities of epsom salts are added so that a human body will float easily in the water. You lie down, in the water, the door to the tank is closed, and you, in theory, float off into a higher plane of existence.
In practice, I floated down to a fiery hell of pain. You see, I'd developed a rash on my legs from walking around in a wet swimsuit for several days, and the salt water was none-too-kind to the rash. I spent the first 30 minutes tense, waiting for the burning on my thighs to subside, and feeling claustrophobic inside the tank. The position of my body was uncomfortable in the water, and I worried about the ventilation inside the enclosed space, and so I opened the door. I almost got out of the water, but decided to give it a bit more time. Eventually the pain subsided, and I grew more comfortable, and I closed the door again, sealing myself into a floating world of darkness. Occasionally I would squirm in the water, to get the blood flowing in my legs (I'm a sufferer of restless legs syndrome), but mostly I just lay there, and did nothing, and before I knew it my hour was up. I didn't reach any new states of conciousness, and I wouldn't say even say I came out all that relaxed, but I thought it was an interesting meditative prelude to a nice sensual massage.
The massage itself was quite good. I felt that it was more caring or thoughtful than usual, which was nice. I came out of the room after an hour feeling relaxed and happy -- a nice change after a few tense, grumpy days on the road.
* * *
Back on the grassy plateau, I think I'm getting a sunburn. The sun has shifted while I've been writing and the minimal shade from the leafless tree we're sitting under has moved on. I've been pretty good at avoiding burns so far, and I've developed a nice tan as well. But I was out in the water this morning for several hours, and my nose took the brunt of the sun's rays. I also got a sunburn on my scalp while I was taking the surfing lessons. I've spent the past few days oiling my hair with sunscreen.
In front of me, near the grassy cliff's edge, a woman in a yellow bikini stands up. She carefully adjusts her minimal fabric to provide maximum coverage (although I'm not sure why she bothers) and then wanders, barefoot, up the path towards town. Anyone wearing closed-toe shoes in Byron Bay is either just arriving, just leaving, or horribly overdressed. Bikinis are de rigeur on the streets of Byron Bay.
* * *
My right arm is aching. It's not just from the surfing, though: on Sunday Kate and I spent the morning swinging about on a giant swing. We were doing trapeze school, and it was great. Unfortunately, my muscle-mass to overall-mass ratio leaves a little to be desired and it was quite a strain on my arms to swing down from the platform. But the class was a lot of fun.
It started with a quick lesson on a short little bar. Grasp it in your hands, turn upside down, and hook your knees over the bar. Hang there. Then thread your feet back under the bar, and stand up. I did that once, and then they sent me up the ladder.
As I learned in New Zealand at Rock 'n Ropes, I'm not so good at climbing ladders. That's when I feel the most exposed, and it's when my mind puts up the most objections to whatever stupid thing I'm thinking of attempting. But once on the platform I was even less sure. The instructors had a rather laissez-faire attitude, and I wasn't really clear exactly what I was supposed to do way up there on the flying trapeze.
I was clipped into my safety lines and grasped the trapeze bar in my right hand. My left hand held onto a platform support. The bar was surprisingly heavy, threatening to pull me off the platform, but the instructor held me back. I inched to the edge, and the instructor called out "Steve with the knee hang!". Now what was I supposed to do? It turns out that was decided for me: she said "hep" and planted a firm uplifting knee between my legs, sending me off the platform. I grabbed the bar with my other hand, and swung downwards, grunting at the strain. At the far end of the arc I swung my legs up and made an attempt to get my knees onto the bar, but my legs wouldn't go through. I tried again the second time around, and got them through one at a time. I hung there by my knees, swinging away, and then returned to my arm-dangling position. Finally, I let go and was lowered to the net.
The above scenario was repeated several times. I needed to get my knees onto the bar on the first swing, but I just couldn't do it -- I wasn't flexible enough. Finally, the instructor suggested I put my hands on the inside of the bar, and swing my legs around from the outside. This worked, but then my knees ended up on my hands and I couldn't let go. I tried this a few more times before I managed to nail that trick. I could now officially do The Knee Hang.
My arms were sore, and my hands were burning, but we weren't done. Next was The Knee Hang Catch, which was the whole reason we were doing The Knee Hang in the first place. I again climbed the ladder, feeling rather shaky about the whole thing. At the top I climbed onto the platform, and grabbed the bar, and the instructor planted her knee firmly between my legs in preparation for the push/lift/no-chickening-out throw off the platform. Another instructor was on a shorter swing in the distance, hanging upside down. He called "ready!", then "hep!", and then that knee (which was actually strangely comforting) threw me off the platform. I grabbed the bar with my left hand, and swung downwards, grunting all the way. At the far end of the arc I lifted my knees, and hanging upside down, swung back towards the platform. My legs swung around the outside of the bar and I hooked my knees over, and as I reached the other end of the arc I let go. I was now hanging upside down by knees, and I had one more swing to go. I plummeted back earthwards (not grunting this time). At the top of the far end of the arc I arched my back and reached out, and lo and behold, there was someone there to greet me! He grasped my arms, and I think I did the same (although I'm really not sure), and I let go of my legs, and I swung on to his side of the trapeze. I'd done The Knee Hang Catch!
That was my first step into the world of the trapeze. From there, it is just a few more small steps until I am doing triple flips without a net. If they could just use elevators instead of ladders, I'd be ready to run away with the circus right now.
* * *
It's really hot on the grass. The temperature was cooler a few days ago, I think. Of course, this is nothing like what it's going to be like in Southeast Asia, but already the sun is nearly unbearable. I'm sweating profusely. I try to drink lots of water, of course, but in this heat it's hard to keep up. It doesn't help that we're drinking tap water. It's strange that in places where the water is undrinkable (Mexico, for example), you drink more because the water is bottled and so it tastes better. Here, where bottled water is a hard-to-justify luxury, you're stuck with slightly less savoury tap water.
To my right, behind the beach, is the Byron Bay Surf Club. It's a throwback to the days before topless sunbathers and crystal healers. Inside is housed the memories of Australian surfing culture -- surfing trophies, monuments to old lifeguards and brave deeds, black and white photos of skinny boys in striped club speedos and swim caps. The Byron Bay Surf Club made a rather surreal home for Kate's and my most recent escapade: massage school.
* * *
We arrived early on Monday morning and were greeted by the instructors: Peter and Lesa. Peter is a chiseled and tan fifty-year-old, but looks much younger. Lesa, his girlfriend, is much younger. Both are rather intense and sensual people -- rather prototypical massage practitioners, in my opinion.
The course lasted the entire day, beginning with breakfast and through a great lunch and a few tea breaks. Kate and I alternated being massage giver and massage receiver. Each time I was the massage giver I worked up a huge sweat -- my whole body dripped (sometimes onto Kate, unfortunately) from the effort and the heat. Each time I was massage receiver I chilled out.
The class was very informative. We learned all the basic strokes and techniques needed to give a full-body swedish massage, but the best part for me was gaining an appreciation for just how good a professional massage can be. I came to understand how very important rhythm is to a good massage. I learned how placement of your feet, and maintaining balance and posture, help to make the massage less strenuous for the giver. The next time I receive a massage, I'll enjoy it more for having taken the class.
* * *
The full heat of the day is just beginning to abate and Kate and I have had enough of the sun. It's time to head for the shade -- to check our email, post some information to our websites, maybe read for a while -- and then, I'm quite sure, we're going to have some kebabs.