Aloha all,
if you receive this e-mail, you are either not on Facebook or you have expressed some interest about reading my travel updates. Either way, consider yourself part of our “intellectual friends” and as such, I hope you are not scared by the length of this text.
Usually, I write my travelogs weekly, because I realize that otherwise they get way too long for most people to read. However, our three week trip to Australia was so full of experiences (and I also worked a little every day) that I did not get to write anything while we were still down under. That’s why this update will be so long that I suggest you only read it if you either have never been to Australia or if you have been to Australia yourself. In those two cases, I hope you might find something interesting in this writing, if you don’t fall into one of these two categories, feel free to ignore it. Of course, that would mean that you never hear about our new favorite city in the world, about our new favorite sport, why we love Australian history and how I met the Australian prime minister.
The main reason that we had not visited Australia earlier is that poisonous spiders and snakes are not amongst Sandra’s favorite animals. Surprisingly, we did not see any dangerous critters at all, even though Australia is known for having all these deadly animals. Granted, my knowledge of Australia before this trip was pretty much based on the Crocodile Dundee movie, a few visits to the Outback Steakhouse and reading half of the Bill Bryson book “In a Sunburned country”. In that book, he mentions deadly seashells, birds with razor claws and rays that give out 220 Volt shocks. Our friend Barb had also told us of being scolded after complaining of a rash: “You touched a plant???” like it’s obvious that nobody with a will to live would ever touch a green leaf. Bryson also points out that Australians always insist that the stories about dangerous animals in Australia are completely exaggerated, but without irony continue to tell you a story about a neighbor who lost an arm to a crocodile or a friend who found a deadly spider in his mailbox. So we were not quite sure what to expect. I hope you will continue to read, even though I can tell you, pretty much all animals we saw were very cute and fuzzy or very colorful birds and we never got as much as a mosquito bite. And we even touched the plants!
Not everybody is so lucky: Last night I was catching up on the news we had missed while we were gone. By ‘catching up on the news’ of course I mean that I watched clips from the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He was telling the story of this poor Australian guy who got bitten by a poisonous snake while sitting on a portable toilet at a construction site in Sydney. The scary part: He got bitten where it hurts the most. So nothing that Sandra would have to worry about. The funny part (not for him, but apparently for the crew at the hospital): This was the second time this year that this has happened to him…
Our tour got off to a good start: I always get a kick out of the fact that we can walk to our little neighborhood airport in West Maui, even more so when embarking on foot for a trip to Australia. Then the pilot on the Mokulele island hopper to Honolulu took us on such a scenic flight so close to the sea cliffs of Moloka’i that Sandra felt compelled to tip the pilot. When’s the last time you felt like tipping a pilot? Early the next morning we flew from Honolulu to Sydney on Jetair, the budget airline from Qantas. The flight was only $570 for a round trip of over 10,000 miles! Then again, if you want to check a couple of bags, reserve a nice seat, watch a movie, get a meal and a blanket and buy the insurance, you could almost spend that much again on optional extras. Surprisingly for such a cheap flight, we flew in a brand shiny new Boeing Dreamliner, which is something we wanted to do before they were even in service, ever since we saw it being built on the factory tour at Boeing in Washington.
We spent three days in Sydney, which quickly became my new favorite city in the world! Sydney seems to have it all: All the amenities of a big city, but still very walkable, a great mix of historic and modern buildings, lots of gardens and parks, restaurants of any kind, theater and even a pretty nice little opera house. As customary, we wen to the next observation deck to get an overview of the city as soon as we arrived. This one was the revolving ‘O Bar’ at the Australian Square. Besides great views they had some of the best mushrooms I ever tasted. We also got an Australian sim card, an adapter and the handy Opal card for Sydney’s public transportation, which includes some very scenic ferry rides.
After getting a physical overview, it was time to get a historical overview. For that we went to the Sydney History Museum. Here we learnt that our hotel with the weird name “The Tank Stream” was actually at the very spot where the first Europeans settled. They chose that spot because of a stream that later got a tank (hence the name) and then got paved over completely so that we would have a place to stay. We would have never known just from staying at the hotel. We were quickly captivated by the unique history of Australia from a convict colony to a modern, cosmopolitan country. Luckily, we bought a museums pass here even though we had no idea how much advantage of it we would take. For example, we took a wonderful day trip on the public ferry to Parramatta the next day, where we visited the historic Elisabeth Farm and took a lovely walk along the river front to the Old Government House.
I think I figured it out, why we enjoy American, and now Australian, history so much, even though neither Sandra nor I were ever really interested in history growing up in Germany. European history is way too complicated. You could study it for a long time and still be confused about who did what, when, where and why. American history is a already a lot more compact and therefore much more interesting to us. You feel you have a chance to at least get a rough idea what was going on at some point.
Now apply this line of thinking to Australian history: If you conveniently ignore the 60,000 years of Aborigine history and just start with the white people coming here you basically only need two dates to get a frame of reference for any building you see or any historical event or person you hear about: 1788; when the British arrived on the ‘First Fleet’ on eleven ships with over 1,300 people, about half of them convicts, to set up a colony and alleviate the overcrowded prions back home. And 1900; when the independent territories and colonies decided to form one republic called Australia. Neat and easy, isn’t it? It’s a dream for lazy history nerds like us. Australian history is not unlike American history, but even shorter and minus the wars over the control of the continent and the revolution to become independent. No tea was harmed in the making of this country.
Another reason why I love Sydney: There are Australians all over this place. I like Australia, but I have come to LOVE Australians. They are so easy going, friendly and helpful that it became a tradition, that after meeting and talking to an Australian, Sandra and I would turn to each other and say ’Such lovely people here!’. I wonder how Australians feel when they go to Europe. Are they wondering why so many people are either rude or at least seem to ignore other people? I actually asked some Australians that very question, but of course they were too nice to answer it.
Don’t get me wrong, I think most Europeans are very nice. Specially to people they know well. But I just love the ease with which Americans (and Australians even more so) talk to and interact with strangers. In Germany, I often still feel that the first thought if a stranger dares to talk to you is ”What does he want from me?”. Maybe Australians are so open because they found out that pretty much everybody you meet in Australia is very nice: In three weeks in Australia, we did not meet a single idiot, actually not even an unpleasant person.
After three days in Sydney, we rented a car and drove on the wrong side of the road to the Blue Mountain National Park. Luckily, everybody else was driving on the wrong side of the road, too. As I was getting in the car, I remembered how in New Zealand we would continually start the windshield wipers when we wanted to use the turn signal. But even with that thought in mind, I managed to turn on the wipers on each of the first three turns.
Based on a suggestion from a lovely couple we had met at a museum, our first stop outside of Sydney was at the Norman Lindsay House. I had never heard of the guy, which is surprising, considering how much he has accomplished in his 90 years on this planet. There are people who are more productive and there are people who are less productive. And then there is Norman Lindsay: He was a very prolific Australian artist. He created hundreds of paintings, anything from portraits to nudes to landscapes. He also did probably thousands of sketches, countless sculptures and wrote a dozen novels. He also wrote and illustrated two children’s books, including the very cute Australian Classic “The Magic Pudding”. He did all this while holding a ‘regular job’ for a total of 50 years as an editorial cartoonist with a newspaper. He also built additions to his house and gardens and designed his own furniture. By now, I am sure you are wondering what he did in all his spare time. That’s when he built scale model of ships, dozens of them and each one looked like they would take a normal person about two years to build. Just to mix it up a little bit, he was also an accomplished boxer. Wow!
The Blue Mountains appear actually somewhat blue. I think their bigger mistake is calling it a national park. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very pretty and we enjoyed our few little hikes we did there. But if you come expecting anything like an American national park, you will probably be disappointed. It’s very pretty, but too be honest, I thought the scenery wasn’t as spectacular as any of the national parks in the American West. I guess living in Hawaii has spoiled us even further.
‘National Park’ also seems to mean something else in Australia than in America. There are towns inside of the parks, new homes are being built inside park boundaries and in the case of the Blue Mountains, they even put in two gondolas and the steepest train in the world (the cable-driven Scenic Railway with an incline of 52 degrees!). Not that there is anything wrong with that. Of course we rode all of the rides, most of them twice. But let’s just say: I am glad that nobody is allowed to build their home on the rim of the Grand Canyon and that there is no gondola over Bryce Canyon.
On our way to Canberra, we saw our first kangaroos. Sadly, roughly the first twenty of them in form of road kill. It must have been a particularly dangerous highway and they probably leave the dead animals on the side of the road as a warning to other drivers. Later, we got to see plenty of kangaroos grazing and hopping and being alive. We also learnt the lesson not to trust Google maps in the Australian hinterland. It sent us on a ridiculous detour, which turned out to be one of our favorite drives. We had not even realized we were not on the intended road anymore until a flagman stopped us where they had to alternate traffic due to a landslide. We got talking to the flagman for about 10 minutes while waiting. Such lovely people. He pointed out that this was not really en route to Canberra, but we might as well keep going, especially since the road was about to get very scenic and go through an actual cave. I dod not quite know what to expect, but our road actually did go through an impressive cave, even with some stalactites.
Canberra is the very well designed, yet a bit sterile capital of Australia. They had to built a new city since neither Sydney, nor Melbourne would have ever agreed to let the other one become the capital of the newly formed Australian republic. Canberra feels a bit fake, but not in a bad way. 1908 it was decided to move the capital to this site roughly in the middle between Sydney and Melbourne to a place with little more than sheep pastures. 5 years later, the foundation stone was laid. Over the next few decades, many official buildings and government institutions were brought to the new capital. Yet, by 1947 there were still only 15,000 people living there. Today, there are close to 400,000 people in Canberra. It might not take much longer for it to look and feel like a real city.
As the capitol, Canberra has plenty of the kind of things we like to visit: Lots of museums, an observation tower and all kinds of official buildings like the Old and the New Parliament House. Yes, the city is only a hundred years old and they already have on “Old Parliament House”. I think the town hall in my home town in Germany is older than any building white men ever built in all of Australia, but I have never heard it referred to as the “Old Town Hall”.
We spent most of our first day in Canberra at the excellent National Museum of Australia. In case you were wondering why it takes so long to visit a museum about a country with only about 200 years of history: They also had a special exhibition from the British Museum “The History of the World in 100 Objects”. The seemingly random objects, together with great descriptions and an audio tour, managed to give a pretty good summary of the entire history of the human race. That can take the better half of a morning. Objects included, for example, a clay tablet from Iraq on which a story strikingly similar to Noah and his Ark was written down, some 700 years before the bible was written. Or the chronometer that Charles Darwin used when he sailed on the HMS Beagle to the Galapagos Islands, triggering his theory of evolution. Surprisingly, one of the 100 selected objects was a counterfeit football shirt. This did not make any sense to me until I read the explanation: It was a jersey of the British club Chelsea, which is Russian owned. The sponsor on the shirt is the Korean company Samsung. It’s the shirt of a player from the Ivory Coast, who grew up in France. This fake shirt was made in Indonesia, sold in Peru and now displayed in Australia. Can you think of a better object representing globalization?
We also took a tour through the New Parliament House. The tour itself was very interesting already and gave us some first insights into Australian politics. Guess what? Not every politician is a saint down there either. One of my favorite things of the whole trip was the infamous “Question Time” I got to attend in the House of Representatives. This is a British/Australian tradition in which the opposition gets to ask the government any question they want in front of a packed house and rolling TV cameras. What a difference to the session we attended in the Senate for a short while in the morning, where one person was speaking, only a handful of others were present and nobody seemed to be listening. Question Time is a circus in comparison. If you have ever seen the House of Commons in London in action, you get the idea. Otherwise think of the Trump/Clinton debate taking place for an hour every single day that the House is in session. Very entertaining, but I am not sure how much is actually achieved by it. But it might be a good way to keep the government responsible for their actions since it is the actual prime minister and all the secretaries of each department who have to answer any question the opposition wants to ask. They covered everything from gay marriage to terrorism. What a hoot!
Leaving Canberra and heading further south to the coast, our next stop was Philipp Island, which is famous for it’s “Penguin Parade”. Every night hundreds if not thousands of penguins come ashore, waddle across the beach and march to their burrows in the dunes. It’s quite the spectacle and also attracts about 2,000 humans every night, which is surprisingly well managed. We splurged and booked the Ultimate Penguin Adventure. No, we did not get to play frisbee with the penguins, but instead of watching the penguins from the bleachers with a huge crowd, we got a personal guided tour with just 8 guests to the other, more remote side of the island. At first I thought our tour guide was not the most scientific naturalist. He kept referring to the animals as ‘the little penguins’ which sounded cute, but not very professional. Then when asked what that black bird was that someone had seen, he answered that it’s a Blackbird, which turns out to be the actual name of the bird and I also found out that the specific species of penguin on Philipp Island is actually called “Little Penguin”. That is pretty descriptive since they are only about a foot tall.
We found our spot to sit on the beach and BOOM! like clockwork, right after sunset, the penguins started to show up. We thought the extra money for the Ultimate Adventure was already worth it just to get the warm clothing and the night vision goggles. So instead of freezing in the dark, we actually were pretty comfortable and enjoyed our new superpower enabling us to watch the penguins even when it got pitch dark. Our guide counted 184 penguins on ‘our’ beach, apparently a record for the month. Then again, that could be like the whale watching crews on Maui, who claim regularly that this particular trip is the best one in a long time.
We also got to see our first Koalas on Philipp Island, first in a preserve, later we also saw them in the wild. They are a little hard to spot, but very very cute. The good thing about Koalas is that once you find one, he’s not running away, they sit very still for a long time for you to take as many pictures as you want. The bad thing about koalas is that they sit very still for a very long time. Not many action shots.
The day we got to Melbourne included our least and our most favorite activities of this entire trip. I had gotten a little used to driving on the left. I don’t mind big city traffic, how hard can it be, we weren’t even in an RV. I think I’d rather drive an RV in Manhattan than trying to get to a downtown hotel in Melbourne during rush hour again. Australians must be hard working people, we thought by 5pm on Friday, it shouldn’t be too bad. Well, it was. I swear that every turn we wanted to make was not allowed. Either it was a one way street, construction, coned off or in one case (at around 5:05pm) no left turn after 5pm. Even legal turns can be a challenge in Melbourne. Since they have a lot of trams on most roads in the downtown area, they have these so-called “Melbourne Hook Turns”, where you are only allowed to turn right (which is equivalent with our left turn) from the far left lane. Somehow this is supposed to make it easier to avoid hitting the tram, pedestrians or other cars. It’s so confusing that it has its own wiki page with a 4 step explanation, just to make one turn. At some point, when we hoped to be fairly close to our hotel, we just gave up and drove into the next parking garage, regardless of how far we would have to walk or how much we would have to pay. It turned out to be pretty close and not too expensive.
As soon as we got rid of our car, we loved Melbourne. As usual, we first looked for the tallest building with an observation deck, which in this case is the Eureka Tower. At almost 1,000 feet above the city, we got a very nice view all the way around. We noticed the lights coming on at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds across the river. We asked around and quickly found that it was the semi final of ‘Footy’, as they call the Australian rules football here. People up at Eureka tower and various online sources did not agree whether the game was sold out or not. We decided to walk over and find out. The first person we asked how to get there not only escorted us to the stadium, but also gave as a synopsis of the rules and the history of the game along the way. Such nice people. And that even though I had called his team the Bullfrogs instead of the Bulldogs. What can I say, the same day in the morning, we had attended a Bullfrog concert on Philipp Island.
Turns out “only” 88,000 people wanted to see the game and the arena holds 90,000. So we were lucky enough to get tickets. It’s called a semi final, but as we found out, it’s actually the quarter final of the league since you still have to win the ‘preliminary final’ afterwards before you get to the actual final. When I discussed how illogical this is with an Australian footy fan and he explained that it has historical reasons, we determined that it makes just as much sense as the American electoral system. Footy is fast paced and surprisingly entertaining. I encourage you to watch a game when you can. There is more action and more scoring than in American football and it has more continuous play than soccer. They also don’t pretend to be hurt all the time like soccer players do and they don’t argue with the refs much. I was already entertained just watching the throw ins by the referees, which seems to be a whole different competition by itself. Of course it helped that the Bulldogs (who were also the underdogs) came back from over 30 points behind to win 107-84 against their Melbourne arch rival, who had won the league the past three years in a row. Go Bulldogs!!!
Melbourne is another fascinating city. They actually have the oldest building in all of Australia. The Cook Cottage, in which Captain Cook spent some time, was built in 1755. Now in case you paid attention earlier, you know that white people did not settle and did not build anything in Australia until 1788. Specially with the Captain Cook connection to Hawaii, we had to investigate what that was all about. Turns out that an Australian business man bought this cottage in the 1930s and had it moved, brick by brick, from England to Australia. If Australia ever leaves the Commonwealth, they might have to pack it up again. The purchase agreement clearly states that this historic building has to stay ‘in the Empire’…
Melbourne also has a very good Immigration Museum. Just like on Ellis Island, I had to remind myself, that we are immigrants, too. Our experience was so much easier than the typical immigration story told in this museum or on Ellis Island. Most of them risked everything for a fresh start. For us it was more something fun to do for a couple of years after college. We just wanted to live abroad for a while to gain more experience and a new perspective. We only wanted to stay for a year or maybe two. We always had the option to move back if we want wanted to. Well, it’s 20 years later and that has not happened yet. My favorite part of the museum were the simulated immigration interviews where you could pick applicants, hear their answers and decide whether you’d let them in or not. Then they tell you whether current or former Australian law would have allowed them in. Unfortunately, it does not look good for workers in the tourism industry, over 45 years old and without an Australian sponsor.
Next, we drove along the ‘Great Ocean Road’, a very scenic drive along the coast east of Melbourne. In Torquay we visited the ‘World Surfing Museum’ and wondered why Hawaii, as the birthplace of surfing does not have a similar museum. Part of the Great Ocean Road was closed due to the flooding they had a week earlier after very heavy rain. We still got to see most of the highlights - and mostly in sunny conditions. We had cool, but otherwise very good weather even in the rain forest on the magical “Maits Rest” Trail. Think Hana coast, but with more moss, more mushrooms, more eucalyptus and more fern, which happen to be some of our favorite plants.
A very scenic and very interesting stop was the ‘Otway Lighthouse’. Considered the most important lighthouse in Australia since it made the passage of the early shipping route from Europe a lot safer. Apparently, making it through the roughly 60 mile wide Bass Strait between the Australian mainland and Tasmania was like ‘threading a needle’ to the sailing ships of the days. That’s why this area is know as the ‘Shipwreck Coast’ with an estimated 638 wrecks. We showed up late for the ranger talk at the lighthouse, but not only did he wait even though nobody showed up for the talk on time, we got a personal 20-min talk that lasted over an hour! Such lovely people, even though this one happened to be a British historian who had retired to Australia from Wales.
Amongst other things, we learnt that the first telegraph connection from Australia to the rest of the world was completed in 1872, cutting the time it took to communicate with the ’home office’ in London by about 98%. The other number that really impressed me was that the mortality rate of the early crossings from Europe to Australia was about 2%. I can not even say whether I was impressed by how low or by how high that ist. Knowing about the many shipwrecks and the terrible sanitary conditions on board you might have guessed it was even higher. But 2% still means a lot of people died along the way. Just imagined every time you take a flight in a jumbo jet with 400 people, an average of 8 people would be carried off dead by the time you land. That could take the fun out of a trip even for us, as much as we enjoy traveling.
The most scenic part of the Great Ocean Road is the area around the so-called Twelve Apostels. We knew they were rock formations, not actual apostles, we found out that there are also not twelve of them. Erosion has taken its toll, but might create a few new ones soon. It’s kind of like the ’Seven Sacred Pools’ on Maui, which are not seven and not scared. Close by is the hidden little “Tower Hill Preserve”, where we had some of our best wildlife sightings, including emus, wallabies and the cute koala you see on the picture below. Luckily Sandra spotted him, I would have walked right past him, even though he was at eye level three feet next to the trail.
Until we arrived at the ’Grampians National Park’, we had seen almost as many kangaroos dead as alive. This quickly changed. They were all over the place here. There was a ‘mob’ of kangaroos grazing on the local cricket grounds. Yes, that is the technical term for lots of kangaroos together. I bet they never have to mow that lawn. These kangaroos are wild, but surprisingly tame and they don’t shy away from their lawn mowing duties just because a few tourist walk around taking pictures. When a baby kangaroo is peeking out of mama’s pouch, it definitely competes with the koalas for the cutest animal in the world.
The most interesting stop on our drive back to Sydney was in Glenrowan. Their one and only claim to fame is that Ned Kelly was captured here and they milk that for what it’s worth. Now if you don’t know who Ned Kelly is, don’t make the mistake to admit that to an Australian 5th grader as I did. When I told an Australian family that a few hours ago we had no idea who Ned Kelly was, their young son looked at me in disbelief and asked “But isn’t that like the best and biggest story ever?” He gave me a look like I had just told him that I had never heard of Santa Claus. Except that this was even bigger since Ned Kelly was real! He is the Australian folk hero. The most famous outlaw and bushranger ever. They like to compare him to Robin Hood. He took from the rich, but he only gave to himself and his family. So I’d say it’s rather an Australian version of Butch Cassidy than Robin Hood. The story of him is exploited at various museums and exhibitions in this otherwise sleepy town.
The most famous attraction is called “Ned Kelly’s Last Stand” and tells his story through a series of animated indoor and outdoor theaters. Think Disney, but not as good. In fact, while seeing it and thinking “This is weirdly entertaining.”, I remembered reading about this very attraction in Bill Bryson’s book. He said that he found it to be so bad that it was actually good. Bill Bryson even considered seeing it again, despite it being overpriced, simply because it was so bad. He ended up not seeing it again for fear it might make some sense the second time around, thus ruining the experience.
On the way into Sydney, we drove through the somewhat disappointing ‘Royal National Park’. We had a view of the Botany Bay, where the first settlers initially landed following Captain Cooks directions, but did not actually go there. There are reasons why the first settlers quickly moved their camp to where Sydney now stands, mostly the lack of water. We were told this historically important area is now mostly an industrial port with lots of containers and oil tanks. That’s why we did not actually go to Botany Bay, it probably would have been bad, but not bad enough to be good, like Ned Kelly’s Last Stand.
Back in Sydney, we enjoyed our new favorite city some more. We took another ferry ride, this time to Manly Beach. We also saw a Cirque de Soleil show and a Symphony with a choir of 400 singers at the concert hall in the Sydney Opera House. The choir sounded amazing. I am sure the soloists and the musicians were world class, too. But if it had been up to us, we would have made the choir sing the entire time, the rest seemed somewhat lame in comparison. We also found three more dramatic viewpoints. Under the Harbor Bridge on the other side looking back to downtown, on one of the Pylons of the Bridge and 880 feet up on the Sydney Tower. We skipped the Bridge Climb. I’m sure it’s fun, but it costs 15 times as much as the Pylon Lookout and can’t possibly be 15 times better.
We also took more advantage of our museums pass and visited the ‘Elisabeth Bay House’, the ‘finest house in the colony’ at the time and in a way you could argue still today. However, I am not too envious of the man who built it. His own son kicked him out of his own house when he was unable to repay his debts. For a balanced perspective, we also visited “Susannah’s Place”. This is a very modest dwelling in Sydney’s original neighborhood “The Rocks”. One of the few surviving houses from the 1800’s. Even more impressing than the 170 year history of the building, I thought was the fact that people still lived in these houses until 1990. Now, you are not allowed to even touch the walls. For good reason, some of them looked like they could come down pretty easily. Next, we saw the ‘Hyde Park Barracks’, where we got a captivating guided tour in a addition to the very well done audio tour. On the first floor of the Barracks is a great exhibition about the convict history. Did you know that the British also sent about 50,000 convicts to their North American colonies? That obviously came to a stop in 1776, which is probably the reason why they started sending them here in 1788. The second floor shows the various uses of the building throughout its 200 year history. On the third floor were replicas of the actual accommodations for the convicts. The advantage of the hammocks all being replicas: Visitors are welcome to hang out in them, listen to the audio guide, take a nap or imagine life as a convict being sent to the other end of the world.
The next museum on our pass was “The Mint”, Sydney’s oldest remaining building and the first place where they produced money in Australia. This could have been a disappointment, since the museum had closed and it’s now mostly an administrative building. However, we happen to run into the tour guide from ‘The Barracks’ the day before. He recognized us and continued to give us a personal impromptu tour through the building, the offices and the courtyard. This is actually a good example just HOW nice Australians are: After taking time out of his work day, giving us a free private tour, he actually said this: “I am so glad I ran into you!”. As if he did not realize that obviously, WE were the lucky ones, having run into him. And he actually seemed to mean what he said. Such lovely people.
Another surprising highlight came on our very last night. Having had a great Himalayan dinner two nights before, we were looking for another exotic place for dinner, something we don’t get on Maui. But when we got tired and happen to walk by the noodle shop we had been to the very first night we arrived there weeks earlier, we opted for this safe option. We really liked it before and a warm soup sounded great. Little did we know until we sat down that since we had been there the last time, ownership had changed and it had a completely new menu. We ended up ordering the “Chef’s Fish Special”, since it was half off as a grand opening promotion. No idea what it would be, since the rest of the description was in Chinese (I think). Well, we got our exotic dinner after all. They brought a huge cast iron bowl with a seemingly endless about of the most flavorful fish. The server did not speak enough English to tell us what kind of fish it was, but it reminded me of what we call butter fish. We did not ask about the unknown spices of which there were plenty. It was the best fish I remember eating ever and we could not even finish it.
The ridiculous long line at the check in counter for the flight home, the fact that we are too spoiled to be blown away by the scenery in the Australian national parks and the beer, which was decent, but not spectacular, were the only aspects about this trip that were not totally amazing. Other than that: Sydney is my new favorite city, Australians are my new favorite people, Footy is my new favorite spectator sport and if if we were to ever get kicked out of America, we know where we will try to move. However, I’d feel terrible to tell our family, since Australia is one of the very few places on this planet that is even further away from Germany than we already are.
But for now, we are not going anywhere, mostly thanks to the airport crew in Honolulu. After three weeks of being amazed how friendly everybody was in Australia, I have to admit I was a little concerned how we would deal without the Australian friendliness. Now picture this: It’s 5:30 early in the morning, we sleepwalk off the plane at the airport in Honolulu after a 9 hour flight and we are greeted not just by one or two but three enthusiastic greetings of “ALOHA” by the airport crew working the gangway ramp and in the terminal. What a nice welcome, even if we always wish to travel longer, it’s good to come home to Hawaii! Then we had our hanai family pick us up, got to hang with our Tuesday night ohana and I got to play and party with my golf and ultimate frisbee buddies already. What lovely people!
And that’s the news from Lake Australia, where all the history is interesting, where all the animals are good looking and everybody is much nicer than average.
Aloha,
Chris & Sandra
