Livin' in a land down under

(Can't you hear? Can't you hear the thunder?)

My first week (and a half) in Australia has been characterized by the following:

Beaches
Burns
Birds
The Mitchell Library's Liberal Policies (Pens!!!!!)
Miranda Westfield Mall where All The Things are
The alarming rate at which my bank account is leaking money.

My little bedroom and private balcony...before I wrecked it.  

On my walk to the train station

This is my new Airbnb home for the next two months (or so) in Cronulla Beach.  Cronulla (kruh-NULL-ah not kruh-NOOL-ah, as I had it in my head) is a bigger, but less glamorous, beach than Bondi, about an hour by train from Sydney's CBD (Central Business District...Australia's version of "downtown").  It's a bright little suburb with a weird mix of leafyness and early 70s architecture.  Basically, I live at the top of a very large hill that dumps into the train station.  It serves my purposes well enough, and has the added benefit of being a 15 minute walk from the beach.

I live with a 65 to 75 year old man, a semi-retired hairdresser with three adult daughters and nine beloved grandchildren who tend to be in and out of the apartment.  He's a bit hard of hearing, so sometimes our communication is somewhat muddled, but he's a very nice guy.  He's gone out of his way to make me feel welcome. Living in an airbnb place is always a bit awkward at first.  I have my own room and balcony, with use of the bathrooms, laundry, and kitchen. I should have asked a few more questions before shelling out the money that I did, especially in regards to the non-existent air-conditioning (there is an AC, but it is a dormant window unit in the main room, which does e little good), but all in all I'm pretty satisfied.  I couldn't have found anything much cheaper.  Cost of living in Sydney is INSANE. More on this later.

I have explored three beaches now: Bondi, Manly, and Cronulla.
My first day at Bondi was quite eye-opening.  I went on a "moderately good" surfing day, which meant I was bashed around by waves the like of which I have never before encountered in all my body-surfing days in the Atlantic. Maybe 10 feet tall.  It was exhilarating and a little terrifying. I hung out around seasoned looking parents who were coaching their children on how to approach each wave.  You have to go under them when they are breaking or else you'll be tumbled around washing-machine style.  It felt quite dangerous.  I'll definitely not be caught swimming anywhere except "between the flags" (the portion patrolled by the surf guard).

There are all sorts of things that should discourage getting in the water:
1) Bull sharks
2) Bluebottles AKA Portuguese Man-O-Wars
3) Various other "Stingers"
4) Giant Waves and Rip Currents

But, then there's this crystal clear water at the perfect temperature, 71 degrees (bracing, but not frigid).  It calls to you.

The guy I live with goes for a swim every morning and has never been eaten by a bull shark, but I'm not quite to that point yet.  I still have a healthy fear of sea critters.  

I have, however, already acquired the kind of tan (read BURN) that takes me a whole summer back home.  The sun is punishing here.  You can get a sunburn in the shade on a cloudy day.  I've already been through a large tube of sunscreen and still manage to get one really painful burn and a couple of minor ones.  I'm hoping that in a few weeks I'll be less sensitive.  

The avian life here is something else.  My dad (the family bird watcher) would just die.  So many interesting looking birds, but even more interesting SOUNDING bird.  I think I will need a whole post on this.  There are birds that sound like crying babies, bleating lambs, howling monkeys, moaning children, etc.  There is never a silent moment.  

And the parrots!!! I got a picture of these little guys....

But even more amazing was the giant white cockatoo that was just hanging out at the train station bold as brass. I haven't seen birds like these except in sad cages or on TV.  I may become a fan of birds.

The Mitchell Library AKA The State Library of New South Wales, where I'm doing most of my work here, is far superior to its British counterpart.  It's got just enough Old World to be charming, and enough New World to be very relaxed and easy to use....so far.

A view from the outside.  

And the surrounding area (Macquarie St.)

 Best of all:  PENS!  They treat you like an adult and allow you to write with pens! I feel like this changes the whole outlook of the place.  As seen below, there is still considerable academic angst, but shoes, evidently, are not required.  This is something you won't see in The British Library or the Bodley.

Here are some requisite views of the harbor seen from the various ferries I've been on, "free" with my public transport pass.  

Harbor Bridge (with the blinking eye from the NYE festivities).

Lovely salt spray that used to ruin Joseph Banks's botanical samples. 

The biggest boat I've ever seen.  Makes me want to try a cruise.  

I was a little obsessed with it....

A little. 

My favorite ferry fair: Frozen yogurt (healthy) in Red Velvet and Cheesecake flavors (unhealthy), with sprinkles for festivities.  

 And finally, a picture of Australia's very pretty money.  Note the little window through which the photographer can be seen.

 

I knew that Sydney's Cost of Living was 30-40% higher than London, but I didn't really believe it until I paid $35 for a small pizza and a 2 liter diet coke my first night in town. Groceries are out of this world.  A 1kg tub of yogurt is $6.  A half gallon of non-organic milk is $4-5.  A box of granola is $7.  A can of diet coke and a slice of banana bread at the Mitchell Library: $6.50

There are actually Australian dollars, but the exchange rate only take off about 8% of that price at the moment.

Unfortunately, I have also found the one-stop location to spend these prodigious amounts of money:  The Miranda Westfield Mall, which contains every chain store in Australia.  Mainly, I've just been to those beacons of familiarity, Aldi and Target, and this nice little "cheap" (relative) store called The Reject Shop, but should I desire anything else, this is where to get it.

Happy spending!

The Long Haul

And she’s back!  While I hope to at some point chronicle my last six weeks in England (and my bonus road trip to California), I’m back in the saddle again and am going to try and stay relatively current.  Current as in: I’m in Australia! 

Granted, I haven’t actually seen much of Australia except for the airport, a very clean train, and the immediate vicinity of my motel (that’s motel, not hotel) in Campbelltown, NSW.  I have already acquired a slight sunburn, despite having put on sunscreen.  I don’t exactly know why the sun is stronger here (scientifically speaking), but it is. 

Because of some very poorly thought-out travel plans, I arrived in Sydney on New Years Eve (Australia’s biggest, wildest holiday).  All hotels in the city and most of the suburbs jack up their prices to 3 or 4 times their normal ridiculousness.  I couldn’t find anything under $250 or $300 per night.  NOTHING.  All reputable-looking airbnb places were booked already.   So I looked at the train map, to find the outer suburbs that were directly linked to the airport train lines, and ended up at The Colonial Motor Inn in Campbellstown/Macarthur, which reminds me of one of those sort of sketchy 60s-era one-story motels outside Myrtle Beach, for a mere $130 a night.  There is a vaguely interesting historical story about this motel (which is a converted 19th century barn and stables), but I'm too tired to care about it.  

After a 42 hour travel day, with a total of about 2.5 hours of sleep involved, I would have slept on straw pallet in a snake-infested outhouse and probably not have been too unhappy.  When my head finally hit the pillow last “night” at 2:30pm, I slept for 15 hours straight. 

I thought I had been very clever (and I actually even paid more money) in booking a flight with only one stopover.  No, sir.  Do not do that.  The next time my Afraid of Flying Self tries to win an argument with my Reasonable Self, I will remind it what a horrible idea it is to sit sleepless in a cramped chair for 15 and 12 hours respectively.  In an effort to lower my number of take-offs and landings (“WHICH IS WHEN MOST PEOPLE DIE!!!!!!” says Afraid of Flying Self), I basically undid 6 weeks (and many many dollars) of physical therapy on my back, not to mention the normal tedium and restlessness of long haul flights.  This was not helped by the fact that the entire upper deck of my planes were filled with rich assholes with their *@#&$% charts and graphs and frequent flyer miles in FULLY RECLINING MINI-SUITES.  I could hear their smug snores.

I don’t sleep on planes.  1) If I fall asleep then the plane might crash because I am not able to guide us to safety by the force of my will. 2) I just can’t sleep on a plane.  I’ve tried ALL THE DRUGS.  Things that would normally knock me out cold for days were I in a prone position, just make me tired and irritable in an upright position.  I drank nearly a whole bottle of Children’s Benadryl and tried to find serenity.  I might have lost consciousness for about 2 or 3 hours if you add up all the times I was nearly asleep and some of the times when I was having strange out-of-body experiences.

I thought that first flight from Atlanta to Seoul would never end.  Never.  Ever.  I obviously don’t understand the 3D aspect of world geography, but we went to Seoul via the North Pole. Seriously.  In the footsteps of my ancestors, we crossed the Bering Strait into Siberia.  My Afraid of Flying Self informed me that this was to avoid an emergency water landing. My Reasonable Self was just trying to sleep. 

They also tried to kill me with warm orange juice and Korean Food.  I don’t know much about Korean cuisine.  I had some decent beef/noodle soup once at the Café Corea in Hyde Park, and I used to eat those seaweed strips when I was a nanny for a half-Korean baby, but that’s basically the extent of my Korean food experiences.  I was in the very backseat of the plane, so I got served last, and both the times they fed us, they had run out of everything but the traditional Korean option. “Well, I guess I’ll have the traditional Korean option,” says I.  I was slightly worried when they brought me a “How to Eat” pamphlet, and I didn’t really read it.  In a bowl, there was a dollop of cold, tasteless ground beef, some bean sprouts, something that looked vaguely fungal (mushroom?) and something that I hope was eggplant, and some pickled something.  No more than a teaspoon of each.  There was a tube of red chili paste (by far the tastiest thing on the menu).  Then there was some luke warm rice, and to the side a cup of seaweed soup.  This seaweed soup, I could have gone out and prepared myself by getting a bit of kelp and a cup of ocean water, and mixing it in a container that had just had some dead fish in it.  Seriously, it tasted like a wharf. 

The second meal, they ran out of everything except the low sodium chicken meal.  Let me tell, you I had my hopes up, only to have them dashed when I was brought a container of rice and pulverized, tasteless, boiled chicken.  This is the sort of thing that you give your dog after it has been throwing up for a few days.   Fail, Korean Air, Fail. 

Bad food was the least of my worries when on my second flight from Seoul to Sydney, where our plane very nearly crashed into the rainforests of Papau New Guinea.  I hate turbulence.  I feel like the wings are going to snap off at which point we will plummet to our deaths.  Or we are going to be flipped over and have to do an emergency landing while hanging upside down.  Or we are going to be sucked into a vortex and spat back out to then plummet to our deaths.  My strategy in dealing with turbulence is to grip my seat until my fingers turn purple, tighten my seatbelt until my legs turn blue, recite Bible verses and prayers from my childhood, and sometimes the Pledge of Allegiance and the French poems I had to memorize once upon a time, interspersed with whimpered, involuntary obscenities.  And most of the people beside me are looking bemused or….ASLEEP. Don't they know that we are about to plummet to our deaths? Even when the captain tells the flight attendants to strap in, I seem to be the only one quietly freaking out.  For nearly an hour, we were hurtled around with only brief breaks.  I was just praying, perhaps irrationally, that we make it to Papau New Guinea (at the time, we were in the middle of nowhere, east of the Philippines) until I realized that Papau New Guinea is mostly mountainous rainforest, which is a bad place to attempt an emergency landing (with my mind, of course). 

So, needless to say, I was giddy (and totally crippled) by the time we landed in Sydney—a happy, hot, bright place.