It's Dusty, Cough Cough

Yesterday Canberra was hit with a dust storm. Persistent high winds from the west brought clouds of red dust in from hundreds of miles away. It was not very pleasant. I was walking to a meeting mid-afternoon when the winds were probably around 40 mph/65 kph, and the dust was in my eyes and teeth.

Not the worst I've seen - one we had in Mongolia was way worse. But still not pleasant.

Click here if you want to see a slide show of some photos from the dust storm.

Happy St Patrick's Day

A happy St Patrick's Day to all out there. And remember, if you have never seen Mick Jagger's performance as Ned Kelly in the movie of the same name, you are indeed blessed...

A Busy Couple of Weeks

With our Northern Hemisphere visitor, we were busy. A couple of things...

Uluru is a BIG red rock. We spent a couple of days in the Red Center, around Uluru (Ayers Rock). The country out there was less barren than I'd expected - lots of hardy plants growing out of that red red soil. Uluru is quite a thing to see, this big bare rock rising out of the ground, and apparently extending for miles UNDER the earth, like a big dry hot iceberg. We were lucky with our timing, it was "only" around 95F/34C - mild for February.

Sydney has lots of interesting things going for it - Opera Houses, parks, big bridges, shops, etc. But one night there in the central business district we found something that completely surprised me. A MONGOLIAN restaurant.

Not just a Mongolian restaurant - that would be business suicide. But on Pitt Street in the heart of downtown Sydney is a placed that I'd walked past a hundred times called A La Turko. I thought it was just another Turkish restaurant. But when we went in and looked at the menu, I saw a Mongolian section - khuurshuur (essentially meat pies), byyts (dumplings filled with beef), banshai tsai (tea with dumplings) on the menu, along with the Turkish and European (spaghetti, schnitzel, salads, etc) items. Naturally, the owner is a Mongol. And he has a cool map of the Mongol conquests on his wall, a sign in Mongolian on the back door to a work area telling outsiders not to enter, some Mongolian instruments and decorations around the place. So I had the khuurshuur - five big tasty beef pies for $10. Amtai baisan (tasty)! I bet usually the only people who order the Mongolian dishes are expat Mongols...

Obama - the View from Australia

The inauguration of Barack Obama as President has gotten a lot of attention in Australia. He has been front-page news all week in all major Australian newspapers, long TV news coverage of his various pre-inaugural events (speeches, train rides, paint jobs). And Australian TV showed the inauguration (oath, speech, parts of the parade, highlights from inaugural balls, etc) live, at 4AM local time, and again rebroadcast much of it, including the speech, during the day for interested viewers.

Why? I see four reasons. First, Australians are generally interested in the US. I'm struck at how much many Australians know about American politics. And they paid a LOT of attention to the whole election season, beginning with McCain, Romney, Huckabee etc on the GOP side and Obama, Clinton, Edwards, and the rest for the Democrats.

Second, Australians (like many around the world, it seems) are captivated by the idea that a black person has been elected President of the United States. I have to tell you, over the past year I had many Australians (including one political scientist who told me he had been predicting American elections since the 1960s and had only been wrong once) tell me confidently that the Democrats would never nominate a black man, and (after he was officially selected), how the US would never elect a black man. I nodded politely, and occasionally tried to explain (as an American) how I did not agree.

I think Obama's election resonates here in part because of the whole very poor situation of Australia's indigenous people. And Obama, very popular with Australians of all political persuasions, is even MORE popular with Australia's Aborigines. I was at a public event where Obama's inaugural address was being played (on tape; I only wake up at 4AM for World Cup soccer games!), and was talking with one Aborigine, who was gathering paper copies of Obama's address to take back to her friends and family in "the desert", because she said he was a role model for them, too. By the way, in "the desert" there is no internet access, so hardcopies, ignored by the rest of us who just planned to download them, were valuable for her.

A third reason for the attention is recognition that there are a lot of big problems around right now, starting with the global financial crisis which is beginning to hit Australia (despite the fact that it's banks are sound and have essentially no subprime market), and Australians are anxious to see what the new Administration does.

Oh, and the fourth and final reason for the excitement about Obama is that, to put it bluntly, the outgoing President is extremely unpopular here.

Australian Anti-Shark Device

Australians are big swimmers, and there are sharks out there. So every Australian has an anti-shark device, or two.

Fists.

You think I'm joking? Steven Foggarty, out surfing near Sydney, felt a shark bite his leg. It wouldn't let go, so Foggarty punched it right on the schnozz.

And then it let go, and Foggarty got back ashore and off to the hospital to get his leg taken care of.

The Last Guest

I must admit to being amused at the ruckus over the fact that President-Elect Barack Obama can't stay at Blair House prior to moving into the White House because at President Bush's invitation, former Aussie Prime Minister John Howard and his wife Janette are staying there on January 15 so Howard can receive the Medal of Honor.

It's a bit of a tempest in a teapot I'd say. Though some commentators here wonder why Howard simply doesn't make the offer to leave, which the Obamas would probably politely decline. Maybe it's because Howard still remembers how back in early 2007, he said that terrorists would be cheering for Obama to win?

A Fun Fact

The local newspaper earlier this week had a very cool picture of a tornado in rural New South Wales, near Canberra. It didn't hurt anybody or do any damage.

But what surprised me was that the article said that New South Wales gets about 100 tornadoes every year. Admittedly, it's a BIG state - 20% bigger in area than Texas. But I didn't think anywhere had that many tornadoes outside the United States.

Yes, We Have No Turkey. Would You Like a 'Roo?

Aussies don't do Thanksgiving. And given the price of turkey here, I don't blame them. VERY expensive. Plus, the Pilgrims never made it quite this far anyway.

So with our Thanksgiving day, we did something different. Instead of gorging on the bird and searching in vain for an (American) football game on television, we went out to Namadgi National Park, about 30 miles south of Canberra, and looked at some very cool old Aboriginal rock paintings.

And we looked at kangaroos. Lots of kangaroos. Easily over a hundred kangaroos, in ones and twos, and some in big clumps.

They stare at you with their beady little eyes as you walk past, ears perked and rotating to keep on you even if they look away for a minute. The joeys (it's spring, and the babies are big) also look out of the pouch at you, except one that we saw standing outside the pouch, with its head IN the pouch!

Occasionally, they make a weird cough/growl noise at you. You can get kind of close - we were within five feet of one 'roo and joey, mostly because she was behind a bush as we rounded the curve in the trail.

But you know, those big male kangaroos look tough, with big nasty claws. So we kept a distance. And when one male took a step towards us, we started off down the trail again just in case he got antsy.

They may be cute and vegetarian and all - but they're still way bigger than me.

Save Our Sheep!

Glancing at the weather forecast for Canberra at Weatherzone, I noticed this little warning:

NSW/ACT - Sat 21:58 EDT
Sheep Graziers Advice for the ACT. Cold, wet and windy weather is expected, possibly leading to sheep losses in exposed areas.

That's a reminder that even if you are in the capital of Australia, there's still a lot of sheep out there!

More Dangers from Australian Wildlife

The Australian magpie is an interesting bird: Australian Magpies are common and conspicuous birds, found wherever there is a combination of trees and adjacent open areas, including parks and playing fields. They are absent only from the densest forests and arid deserts. Groups of up to 24 birds live year round in territories that are actively defended by all members of the group. The group depends on this territory for all their feeding, roosting and nesting requirements.

And yes, they DO actively defend their nests. During nesting season (now), it is common to be "swooped" by these birds. Usually you hear a "clack-clack" noise and a whoosh as the bird flies perilously close to your head. If you're lucky. If you're UNLUCKY, it will actually hit you and peck you. Especially if you're on a bike, they REALLY seem to dislike cyclists.

Anyway, it's not just a nuisance, it's a threat. Witness what happened to this old lady in Newcastle.

An 84-year-old NSW woman has lost her lower left leg after suffering a rare soft-tissue infection caused by a magpie peck to her ankle.

Ouch. I told you it was dangerous here.

Happy Family and Community Day?

One of the nice things about being overseas is getting Australian holidays. Australia, being a federal country like the US, also has state and territory holidays. And I'm enjoying one of those today, here in the Australian Capital Territory.

Family and Community Day.

How BLAND can you get, right? As far as I can tell, this is mostly celebrated by piling the family into the car and joining the community at Batman's Bay or Eden or Ulladulla or some other beach town.

Oh, and the fact that F&CD happens to coincide exactly with the Melbourne Cup - Australia's top horse race of the year, watched by some absurd percentage of the population - which is the occasion for a state holiday in Victoria? Purely a coincidence, I'm sure.

So Happy Family & Community Day! Go tell a family member or a community member that you are happy for them, too!

Halloween?

Over the previous two October 31s I haven't been in Canberra - been on travel somewhere, last year it was Broken Hill. So this was the first Halloween in Canberra.

And we actually had trick or treaters. Lots.

Now, I wasn't prepared for this - we had no candy because we weren't expecting anything. We hadn't even seen anything in the papers about trick or treat, the way you do in the US saying what night and time it will be.

So we cowered with the shutters drawn, so the kids couldn't see us not giving them candy.

BUT - I had to take out the trash (to keep the cats out of it...), so I went out the back gate, right as a batch of kids came up to ring the bell. Busted!

I told them, "Sorry I don't have any candy, I didn't know Australians did trick or treat."

So a little boy (maybe 7) dressed as a devil came up and gave me a handful of candy.

I said, "You don't have to do that!" but his big sister (maybe 10) said "That's okay, Mum says we have enough candy to sink a battleship."

So I took it. Nice kid, and nice parents. And a first for me: trick or treaters coming to my house and giving me candy!

The Running of the Sheep

Every spring the charming little town of Boorowa (in New South Wales about 80 miles from Canberra) has an annual Irish Woolfest, to celebrate the winter harvest of wool. They have all the fun things - good food, crafts, bagpipes and dancers, beer, sausage sizzles.

And they have the Running of the Sheep, Boorowa's answer to Pamplona's Running of the Bulls.

All played strictly for laughs, of course. The annnouncer went on and on about how one person injured last year was still in the hospital. I suspect that is a slight exaggeration.

But it was still pretty fun and funny. They fenced off the main street in Boorowa, brought in 150 sheep, and had a couple of herding dogs herd them down the street. It wasn't exactly blindingly quick - the sheep prefer to huddle, all trying to get to the middle away from those annoying dogs. Then one sets off and the rest follow. All very fun!

Killer 'Roos

Everybody thinks we've got it easy in Australia. And everybody thinks kangaroos are big cute things like Skippy.

Wrong. Australia is full of dangerous wildlife, various hyper-poisonous beasties. And even kangaroos can be dangerous. One recently attacked an old lady on her ranch in central New South Wales.

Hey, those things are well over 6 feet tall and adults weigh over 200 pounds. And they have big, strong claws that can disembowel a person in short order.

The lady, Rosemary Neal, was saved when her dog charged the irritable kangaroo, who hopped away.

Crikey.

Another Difference Between the US and Australia

This morning we went to Manuka to meet some friends for coffee and pastries. Manuka was even more packed than usual on a Sunday morning because a bunch of football fans were in town from Sydney - the Sydney Swans (Aussie rules football) play a couple of "home" games a year in Canberra at Manuka Oval, and today is one of those games.

So we're strolling down the crowded sidewalks, weaving our way thru the coffee-swilling fans and chatting, and I say "oh and there's the Prime Minister."

Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia, chatting with some guy in front of the bookshop in Manuka. There were a couple of guys nearby with earphones and that was it. Nothing between me and Rudd at all - I passed within three feet of him.

Needless to say, you couldn't stroll by the President in quite such a casual way without passing thru a metal detector at a minimum...

Rural Stuff

We went on Sunday to the small town of Yass, about 45 minutes north of Canberra, for the annual Yass Show. Think small-time county fair in rural America. It was pretty cool. First, we watched the cattle being judged. It wasn't a big show, so like in 2nd grade, every cow got a ribbon. There was more competition in the sheep category, this part of Australia having more sheep than cattle.

We watched a sheep-herding competition. Like the movie Babe, they release sheep into a pen and the dog has to round them up, run them thru a pen where the dog's owner can squirt some stuff into the sheeps' mouths, then into another pen where the sheep would (in real life) be loaded into a truck. It was a blast to watch. The best dog to my untrained eyes was a German shepherd mix. He was coolly efficient. He only barked once, and I never saw him nip at the sheep - he had the on-the-field presence of Dan Marino.

In another part of the showgrounds were dozens of ancient tractors and other mechanical devices, part of the vintage tractor pull and engine rally. Some of those machines dated to the 1920s. Unlike much of the show, this was purely a hobby for the guys entering. We saw one contraption that was steam-powered with a boiler like a 1920s train. While checking out a mechanical thresher and another device chugging away we caught a whiff of the smoke from coal and wood - a small reminder of what western cities were like as recently as the 1950s when London still had killer fogs.

Like American county fairs, there were competitions for flowers, plants, food - and funnily, a competition for vegetable art! The winner was a turtle made out of melons and other veggie bits. Never seen THAT before - an idea for the Arlington County fair organizers...

After the show, we went to a pub in Yass for lunch. The other times we'd been there, they tried to steer us to the "fancy" bistro in the back, not believing a bunch of fancy foreigners would want to eat pub food. This time, maybe they recognized us because we bellied up to the bar to order our Resch's beer and fish and chips without being directed to the posh room...

Road Trip!

We recently took an eight-day road trip, Canberra to Byron Bay (northern New South Wales coast) to Brisbane to Yandina (Queensland), then back via Toowoomba, Warwick, Tamworth, and Cowra. 3020 kilometers/1830 miles, mostly on highways that to American eyes look like country roads.

Byron Bay

We were at the easternmost tip of Australia. Trivia point - the only north-facing beaches in NSW, apparently important if you are a surfer. It's a funky, vaguely new agey kind of beach town, with lots of young backpackers and aging hippies. Unlike Queensland's Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast, not all built up with highrise condos on the beach.

Brisbane

Cool city. Lovely riverside, which you can very nicely watch by taking the city ferry up and down the river for $5, rather than pay $50 to a tourboat operator. We saw the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art - the reason we chose this time to go up to Queensland. Lots of soup cans and Marilyn Monroes, if you are in to that type of thing.

We also saw Anzac Square, where an eternal flame burns, originally to commemorate Queensland's World War One dead, now covering all conflicts. The Shrine under the flame was open on the day we were there, full of plaques remembering different military units and where they had fought and died, mostly WW1 and WW2 but also Vietnam, South Africa, Malaysia, and elsewhere. Very moving and sad - though truth be told, I'm pretty much moved to near tears by any war memorial.

The Bigs

We saw several of the Big Things that Australians have built to attract tourists.

The Big Banana in Coffs Harbour was a disappointment - it was on the side of a building and didn't seem that big.

The Big Pineapple in Yandina was cool. First, it was really big - 3 stories tall, and you can go inside and see cheesy promotional displays by Gold Circle, a big Australian fruit and fruit juice producer. But there is other fun stuff to do there, like pet koalas and take train rides thru fragrant fields of pineapple. We even learned trivia - specifically, that the pineapple is essentially a man-made fruit that didn't exist in nature. Like corn.

The Big Apple near Stanthorpe was neat, mostly because it had a nice cafeteria/store selling local products, like alcoholic apple cider.

The Big Golden Guitar in Tamworth. Tamworth is the country music capital of Australia. But another town (Narrandera, NSW) already had a Big Guitar, so Tamworth a few years back put up the Big GOLDEN Guitar. Yes, it is big and golden. Oh well. Still, a pretty town.

(There is also a Big Merino sheep in Goulburn near Canberra, but we didn't see it on this trip. And a Big Prawn, I forget where.)

Warwick

Warwick is Australia's "Rose and Rodeo" capital. But the 2007 rodeo was largely cancelled because of equine influenza - horse flu. We saw all sorts of signs throughout our road trip describing the various zones we were in (amber, red, etc); you have to get permission to move horses around throughout much of eastern Australia, until they get rid of this outbreak.

Anyway, we saw the Rodeo Heritage Center in Warwick, which was a bit disappointing - a few little exhibits and mostly a list of the winners of various events going back to the beginning of formal rodeo tournaments in 1945.

But the Warwick visitors center had a really interesting display of photos from Australia's Antarctic scientific research base.

Cowra

The last major stop was the town of Cowra, a couple of hours north of Canberra. This is interesting - not just a pretty country town, Cowra was the sight of the largest land-battle in Australia in World War 2. There was a POW camp there that hosted Japanese and Italian POWs and Indonesian political prisoners (the Dutch claimed these nationalists were working with the Japanese; the Australians soon released them).

One night in August 1944, having heard that some of them would be shipped off to another camp, the Japanese decided to break out - or die trying, more to the point. Armed with baseball bats, kitchen utensils, and the like, they tried busting out in the middle of the night, after setting their sleeping huts on fire.

Two young Australian soldiers got to the machine gun first and mowed down dozens of Japanese before they themselves were overwhelmed and killed. A couple of hundred Japanese actually made it over the fence, but they were all caught or killed over the next few days by Australian troops. In the end, 231 Japanese and 4 Australians were killed in a sad little battle.

Cowra has embraced this history to become a peace center - kind of like Coventry, England. They have a beautiful Japanese garden designed by a renowned Japanese garden designer. They have a memorial at the site of the POW camp, which still has the foundations of a few camp buildings. And the only Japanese war cemetery is there, in the corner of Cowra's main cemetery, housing the remains of all Japanese who died in Australia during the war (civilian and military), including a few pilots shot down over Darwin, and the 231 who died in the break-out. A somber event, nicely commemorated by Cowra.

Sorry

It was an interesting week in Canberra. The new Parliament met for the first time since the elections. And Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as promised, made "Sorry" the first order of business.

"Sorry" to the tens of thousands of aboriginals who as children were snatched away from their families to be raised in special schools and orphanages, a policy that lasted into the early 1960s.

The whole question of whether or not to apologize for this was a political football. But I thought Rudd did a good job, apologizing for the pain and dislocation it caused but without demonizing people who often thought (wrongly) that they were doing this for the good of the children. It was a moving day in Canberra and around the country; Rudd's speech was screened on the lawns of Parliament here in Canberra and in public venues all over Australia, drawing very large crowds to watch. I was touched particularly by the reaction of many older Aboriginals.

Aboriginal Australians on average live in deep, deep poverty, possibly even worse than some of the poorest Indian reservations in the US. One statistic I think really drives it home - life expectancy for Aboriginal Australians is 17 years less than for other Aussies.

So "sorry" doesn't end their problems. But it is a good step.