G'day Family, Friends, and Search Engine Bots
Today's installment finds us making our way down along the eastern coastline of Australia by plane, train, automobile, bus, bike, and foot. Thanks to some amazing friends The Journey was proven once again to be The Reward, we stayed far from the beaten tourist path, and our hearts were kept light.
Our first stop was in Sydney (which incidentally is a looooong way from Cairns which meant that we skipped over a massive amount of coastline including Brisbane, the Gold Coast, etc.) where we spent one splendid afternoon smelling the roses in the Botanic Gardens, paying homage to the iconic opera house, walking across Sydney Harbor Bridge, and making fun of place names like Woolloomooloo (where we were staying). We also managed to catch a bus out to
Watson's Bay for a spectacular fish and chips dinner on the beach with Sydney's skyline silhouetted by the sunset (how's that for alliteration?). Sydney was short and sweet; fun times, but just a minor stop on the way to a much bigger attraction: Ross and Margaret! Acquaintances from our epic Tazara train ride back in Tanzania, and now welcoming us to Australia like old friends to their home in Bulli.
Meeting them at the station after a scenic train ride along the South Coast was a bit like coming home, and they rolled out the red carpet for us with a massive homemade lamb roast feast that couldn't have tasted better. Bulli was just the beginning of our time with Ross and Margaret. After racing up hundreds of steps through rainforest undergrowth to the top of the local lookout Sublime Point, going surfing off their point, visiting the local Aboriginal tent embassy, and spending quality time with the local veterinarian looking at canine chest x-rays (their adorable dog Bailey of 12 years was not doing well), it was time to hit the road.
The next few days were a crash-course in best of New South Wales costal culture, flora, fauna, Aboriginal history and art, holiday parks, vocabulary, and seafood diet. Our first day found us joined by Jane (a daughter who has inherited Ross' healthy fearlessness) and scaling
Pigeon House Mountain where we picnicked atop the rocky crown of the mountain that inspired the name derived by
Captain Cook on his voyage in 1770. There, we ate leftover lamb amidst a glorious 360 degree view of solid white marine-layer haze. It was an unfortunate weather condition for such a singular peak, but the hike through the gum tree forest (technical definition of forests aside) alone was well worth the trip. That evening we camped out on the banks of a creek in the Yadboro State Forest where we swam, cooked dinner over the campfire, and and enjoyed digging into Margaret's massive homemade fruitcake which would accompany us for the entire road trip.
A notable but unplanned event was actually triggered by a very sad phone call Ross received as we were just wrapping up getting lost on some trails around Guerrilla Bay. Jane had called to say that Bailey was not doing well at all and needed to be put to sleep, so while cooling off in the waters of Guerrilla Bay, the decision was made to leave Carol and I at a friend's cabin up in the foothills above Moruya for the night while our friends could go home to be together as a family. Needless to say, we had a great time hanging out together in the woods where we found wild kangaroo, pulled
yabbies from their traps in the small reservoir, ran/cycled down to Moruya in the morning for breakfast, and caught up on the Winter Olympics.
Once reunited with our friends the next day, we followed the tourist route along the coast while keeping our eyeballs peeled for any wombats or wallaby (we didn't end up spotting any wombats, but we did see several wallaby that were "taking naps" along the side of the road, and also a few live ones as well).
Each day brought new beaches in which to swim and body-surf and small towns to explore as we moved southward, each with its own slightly unique feel. We took turns riding the two bikes along some of the shorter sections between stops, and Ross and I just narrowly missed being caught in an outright downpour while cycling into
Mallacoota. Aside from this particular confrontation with Mother Nature, the weather held to an ideal blue sky with scattered clouds for our entire expedition.
On two occasions Ross cooked up feasts of freshly caught local fish for us, and we spent one morning collecting dozens and dozens of the renowned local oysters from a small estuary as the tide receded. Neither Carol or I had any previous experience with raw oysters, and even though we ate less than our fair share we enjoyed the process of collecting and removing them from their shells. An infinitesimally less adventuresome food were the "
Kanga Bangas" that we grilled one evening, which were rather enjoyable despite the fresh memory of all the adorable wild kangaroos that we seen hopping about the forests.
In the midst of so much rest and relaxation, we did attempt to cultivate our minds once by studying the informative artwork outside the Killer Whale Museum in Eden. According to legend, local killer whales would regularly help corral other whales into the bay to be slaughtered by fishermen until the last of them ("Old Tom") died away in 1930. Apparently Old Tom's teeth were almost worn away from dragging other whales to their deaths by the harpoon cables once they had been speared. This beautiful story was captured in a series of colorful mosaics that made us wonder other things about Eden.
After one more unforgettable day at the beach, a life-guard nightmare's swim across the fastest tidal current that I've ever seen, Carol's first
Op-Shop experience, and a celebratory meal at the local dumpling restaurant Lucy's, we parted ways with Ross and Margaret and boarded a bus back to Genoa (a fantastically tiny town whose population must fluctuate enormously with the number of motorhomes parked in the campground across the river, and home to the endearingly quaint "Hotel Motel"), where we caught another bus to Bairnsdale and a train which took us the remaining distance to Melbourne where we were greeted at Southern Cross Station by none other than Ed and Lisa!!!
This post concludes with a massive "Thank You!" to Ross and Margaret for showing us such a fantastic time in their corner of the world. As Ross rightly put it, after having been on our own for so many days, we were "ready to have someone else make decisions for a change", and we enjoyed every minute of it.
Many Blessings,
Joe
Our wonderful hosts in Melbourne, Victoria, had enlisted the assistance of Felix (their trusty neighborhood Flexicar) to drive us to some truly astounding locations. Our first drive took us South down to the Great Ocean Road (which was great, and there was an ocean too) where we picnicked on the beach and then trekked through the gum trees above the clear blue waters of the Tasman Sea. On our way back down the trail, Lisa spotted a wild Koala (which is not actually a bear) who actually summoned enough energy to wake up and look at us, which we greatly appreciated after learning that Koala are known to sleep up to 22 hours a day.
The next day we headed to the lesser-known Werribee Gorge State Park which turned out to be a very rewarding choice. The trail was challenging and dropped us steeply into the gorge where we skirted a very picturesque Werribee River and then climbed back onto the opposite side of the valley from which we could see all the way back to downtown Melbourne. It was a glorious hike, and we only got ourselves lost once or twice which gave us the impression of really being 'in the bush'. Dinner that night was a very unique dining experience at Lentil as Anything, a not-for-profit drop-in restaurant run by volunteers at a local convent that provides gourmet meals in a cafeteria-style environment. Diners are asked only to donate "what they feel their meal and experience is worth" and "according to their own financial ability". The food was exceptional, and we ate until stuffed (a stipulation of the management also enforced by the signage on the walls).
Most important of all, we got to spend time with our friends, and catch up on a lot of time spent living on opposite sides of the world. After several years of closely knit friendships and shared not-to-be-believed experiences in Cambridge (a world apart), we have all discovered the challenges of establishing new lives and 'growing up' in a world that can often take life too seriously, and at other times fall short of offering the deep sense of fulfillment that we crave. Conversations about space-time and quantum mechanics, singing and clapping along to the Happy song in the car, and confronting together the deep challenges of relationship in this present life were all ways of reestablishing a bond of friendship across continents. If we hadn't left so early in the morning, there would have been tears in our eyes as we said goodbye and hopped in a cab for the airport and our final destination...
