The Greatest Journey -- The Last Steps

Having covered such a large expanse of Australia, it was welcome pleasure not to have a long drive ahead. Canberra to Sydney is only less than 3 hours and there isn't much to see along the way, although a few points of interest there are. This was Isabella's last full day in Australia as she flew out to New Zealand to begin a magnificent bicycle tour. This would also be our last couchsurf experience and we would be staying with a young German man named Julien Mueller in his apartment in Sydney.

On the way out of Canberra, we stopped at the Weerewa Lookout over Lake George. Lake George is a very ephemeral lake that fills and drains depending on the climate. In drought, it is empty but in the recent past there has been enough water to reach the highway. With the recent rains, Lake George's southern end was filled with water and ACTEWAGL, Canberra's water and electricity provider, had built some large wind turbines on the far shore. There's still water in it today, probably more than in January and I hope that I get to see it full one day.

From Lake George we drove to Goulburn, Australia's oldest inland town, or so it claims. The thing Goulburn is noted for is the Big Merino, a large merino ram constructed out of concrete. In keeping with our tradition of stopping at large things, Isabella and I got out and took a photo of it.

From there it was on to Sydney and although we got a little lost along the way, we eventually found our host's home, a small thing on a side street but very pleasant. It turned out that our host sang in a band called Julien Mueller and the Full House and they would be singing at Darling Harbour that evening. They specialize in sort of Frank Sinatra-type songs. Deciding that it would be worth a look, Isabella, myself and another couchsurfer went down to Darling Harbour to check it out.

Darling Harbour is quite an active place. There you find the Powerhouse Museum, the Sydney Aquarium, the Maritime Museum, an Imax theater and a sizeable shopping center. We arrived in the evening and there were many people there. The big attraction, though, was the buskers who plied their craft wherever you walked; some were better than others. Eventually Julien and his band got going and I must say they were very good. I was impressed with the quality of the musicians and Julien's voice. Quite a crowd gathered in the sort of amphitheater created by the semicircular steps. By the end of the show, several people had bought the band's CD, including Isabella, and I think it was not out of pity but out of genuine admiration.

By the time we got back to Julien's it was quite late and Isabella had a plane to catch in the morning. We were all too tired for any sort of farewell ceremony so we just sort of lay down and nodded off to sleep. I was sad that the adventure was over but glad that I'd had an opportunity to travel the country with someone and to see some unusual and not often visited places.

I drove Isabella to the airport in the morning and bid her fair winds on her upcoming adventure. Isabella had decided to take a 2.5 month bicycle tour around New Zealand so she was off to Auckland. As she flew off, I was on my way back to Canberra. Returning the vehicle I calculated that I had driven exactly 10 700 kilometers in the month or so Isabella and I had been around Australia, an average of over 400 kilometers a day. Taking into account that I drove the Canberra-Sydney route twice alone, I think we covered roughly 10 200 kilometers together, not a bad sum.

Although Isabella and I had finished this adventure, there was still one more to come.

The Greatest Journey -- Parliaments

Having been somewhat disappointed with the National Zoo and Aquarium, I decided to take Isabella to some of Canberra's more famous institutions. Canberra, as the capital of Australia, of course is the home of the Australian Parliament. The current structure was opened in 1988 as part of the bicentenary celebrations and because the old Parliament House was, by that point, unsuitable for a variety of reasons, mostly to do with size.

So, that morning, we drove to New Parliament House and had a look around. It's a very interesting building with a sort of unmistakable architecture. Because the drought had broken and there was now plenty of water to go around, the water feature in front of New Parliament House was filled with water, which was a nice touch. Inside, there are many portraits of former Prime Ministers, Speakers of the House, Presidents of the Senate and Governor-Generals. There were exhibits on the Magna Carta and the evolution of Canberra as the national capital. We saw the House of Representatives and the Senate chambers before heading to the roof for a magnificent view of Canberra.

Old Parliament House is not far away, in fact, just a short walk, and so we made our way there next. This was Australia's first Parliament House, completed in 1927 in the art deco style, and it was never intended to be permanent but the Great Depression and World War 2 prevented the construction of something more permanent. When it was opened 300 people worked inside and by the time it closed, 61 years later, that number had skyrocketed to 3 000. There had been some additions over the years but it was clearly not up to the task anymore and that's why New Parliament House was built. Old Parliament House is now the Australian Museum of Democracy and it has many excellent exhibits about the evolution of democracy around the world, moments in Australian history and it preserves the layout as it was in 1988.

I happened upon this museum when my cousin Laura was visiting me. I had suggested it for no real reason other than I had never been inside before. We went and I was impressed from the start. The admission was only $1.00 for students or $2.00 if you had to pay full price and I found the exhibits enthralling. Laura and I both had a great time.

Well, Isabella and I started our wanderings and we passed by the main foyer and some other rooms. We then had a private tour of Old Parliament House and went to the old House of Representatives and Senate. We were shown models of how Old Parliament House looked upon its completion and what alterations were made until it closed in 1988. We were then taken around to the Prime Minister's Office and the Speaker's Office.

We also had a chance to participate in a little interactive exercise called Cabinet-in-Confidence a sort of play where visitors re-enact a political debate from the past. The group is given the topic, ours was the Vietnamese Boat People, and are then asked to debate the issue assuming they had been in government at the time. I thought it was interesting, although not terribly exciting. From there, we went up to the press gallery and media rooms and finally the interactive democracy exhibits.

I had a good time but Isabella found herself out of her element, unfortunately. For some reason I had assumed that she was into all this type of political stuff but apparently she wasn't. Apologizing as profusely as I could, I told Isabella that I'd make it up to her somehow and decided the best way would be dinner.

Courgette is a very nice restaurant in Canberra, if a little out of the way and hard to find. I phoned and hoped against hope that they could accommodate the 2 of us that evening and luckily, they could. So, Isabella and I both got well-dressed and made our way to the restaurant. It was quite lovely and we sat down to an excellent meal prepared, no doubt, by some expert chefs. I can't recall exactly what we had, although I do remember I had some delicious duck. It was a little expensive but well worth the expense and I could tell Isabella forgave my misstep with the choice of venues to visit. I was worried that Isabella would be left with unfavourable memories of Canberra but I think this dinner was a high point.

This was the penultimate night of the trip as the next day we were off to Sydney and Isabella was flying off to New Zealand the day after. We had nearly circled Australia, covering over 10 000 kilometers in the process, and now our month-long adventure was drawing to a close.

The Greatest Journey -- Lions and Tigers and Bears

Having arrived in Canberra, I was quite anxious to show Isabella what the city had to offer. There is no shortage of cultural institutions and things to see, but I proposed that we go to see something I hadn't yet, the National Zoo and Aquarium.

The NZA is kind of out of the way and sits just past the Scrivener Dam which gives Canberra its Lake Burley Griffin. I'd been told that it was something that should be visited and as I hadn't been inside yet, Isabella agreed to accompany me. I was kind of looking forward to it as something new and exciting. The entrance fee is a hefty $30/person so we were already expecting quite a bit.

We first decided to visit the aquarium portion of the NZA and found it to be quite small. It had some interesting exhibits like the wonderfully colourful Sea Apple and the large fish tank but it wasn't all that impressive. There was also a section dedicated to Australian reptiles but that also wasn't particularly interesting.

Having decided that the aquarium was a bit of a bust, we decided to walk around the rest of the NZA. The first enclosure was that of the grizzly bears but Isabella had already had her fair share of adventures with wild ones in Alberta. Further on there were the Sun Bears, bears from southeast Asia with a sort of halo of fur on their chests and extremely long tongues. One thing that was impressive was the small pride of white lions the NZA had. I'm sure they would have been even more impressive if they'd been awake.

The zoo portion is divided into zones, each corresponding to a type of animal, like mammal or perhaps by geography. In one section there were red pandas, another had playful meerkats while another was the haunt of primates. Further on was the African sections that had zebras, giraffes and springboks. There was even a section for Australian marsupials like the Tasmanian Devil, a cute sleeping wombat and koalas. Across from them were 2 enclosures, one for cougars and the other for cheetahs. There was even a play area for little Fairy Penguins.

Perhaps most impressive, though, was the tiger enclosure. There was a demonstration happening to some school kids or something and the zookeeper managed to coax a large Bengal Tiger out of its den with some meat. You can't help but be impressed by that animal and it's almost a shame to keep in caged but due to poaching in the wild, this may be the least of all evils.

By about mid-afternoon, Isabella and I had seen everything and we decided to head up Mt. Ainslie for a good view of Canberra. We both agreed that while the NZA had potential, it didn't really live up to its admission price; it's alright but not great. In my opinion, this is something you should see if you've never seen it before and after going to the other, less expensive, options in Canberra.

The summit of Mt. Ainslie offers excellent views of Canberra and was supposedly used by local aboriginals as a sort of scouting platform. The top now has a radio beacon and a landscaped lookout and you can see virtually every Canberran landmark from there. And on a sunny day in January, there aren't many better places to be in Canberra. I think the views from the top somewhat compensated for the shortcomings of the NZA and as we only had 1 more day in Canberra, I was hoping to take Isabella to one of my recently-found favourite spots in the city.

The Greatest Journey -- Outlaws

Getting out of Melbourne is no easy task. It requires a degree of intrepidity and vehicular legerdemain to avoid finding oneself in the path of a tram. Even with fairly decent maps, it is reasonably difficult to judge when your turn is coming up and, especially in roundabouts, which way you're to turn. The whole looks much easier on a map but when confronted with it in real life, Melbourne traffic proves exceedingly tricky.

I have always thought that Melburnians are the least accomplished drivers in Australia. Although I'm told that the Victorian Police are among the most stringent at enforcing the traffic laws, it seems routine that Melburnians speed and drive as if no laws applied. It is only by good fortune that you negotiate the traffic unscathed. Howsoever hard it may have been, after some harrowing driving through the city, Isabella and I made it to the Hume Highway, the principal route between Melbourne and Sydney.

The Hume is a very interesting highway as highways go as it passes through some fairly scenic terrain and fairly colourful places. To be honest, though, there really isn't all that much between Melbourne and the Victoria-NSW border. The drive was set to be about 6 hours, excluding stops, but we anticipated making Canberra well before nightfall. To pass the time, we turned on the radio but it seemed that every channel was either Christian-based or 30 years behind the times in terms of music. I guess rural Australia hasn't caught up with the rest of the world. It was mildly entertaining though, knowing that some parts of a First World country could be so underdeveloped.

The first place of note we stopped was the town of Glenrowan, just off the main highway. It would be just another small town but for the fact that Australia's most famous outlaw, the bushranger Ned Kelly, and his gang were captured there. In 1880, after terrorizing or fighting for northern Victoria depending on who tells the story, Ned Kelly and the 3 other members of his gang found themselves in Glenrowan. Knowing that the Victorian Police were hot on their trails and coming to Glenrowan by rail, the gang took apart the tracks with a mind to derail the train, thereby killing their pursuers. They then took several hostages and holed everyone up in a local hotel. One of the hostages managed to escape and warned the train of the state of the tracks. The train stopped and the police proceeded unharmed. They set up attack positions near the hotel when Kelly and his gang walked out wearing armour made from steel plows; this has gone down in Australian history as an iconic moment. After a shootout that lasted several hours, the police set fire to the hotel to smoke out the gang. In the interim, Ned Kelly's 3 gang members were killed by gunfire. Eventually Ned himself emerged but was wounded by gunfire. Captured, he stood trial in Melbourne, was convicted and finally hanged. His last ordswere reported to be, "Such is life."

The life of Ned Kelly has made him sort of a folk hero in Australian history. Even today his motives and impact on the Australian psyche are debated. His detractors claim that he was nothing more than a murdering bandit who got what he deserved while his supporters proudly proclaim that he was unjustly vilified, fought for the poor against the government and serves as a symbol of defiance of authority. I think that part of the reason he is still supported is because his adversary was the Victorian Police. Even though they've cleaned up their act in the last few years, the Victorian Police was at one point the focus of major anti-corruption probes, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s. There were massive scandals involving officers taking bribes and doing favours for drug dealers. Combine this with an already heightened mistrust of the police in general and I think it is easy to see why Ned Kelly is so liked in some quarters. People's everyday experience was that it was the cops who were the villains while preaching that they protected the community; the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Glenrowan makes the most of this notoriety by milking the Ned Kelly legend for all that it is worth. There is a large Ned Kelly statue right on the road into town just off the Hume. There are signs showing where the hotel used to stand and a walk you can do. The small railway station still exists. Everywhere there are wooden posts disguised as either Ned Kelly's gang, police officers or members of the public. The police and gang posts are placed as the participants would have been during the shootout. It's very historically interesting but a little bit gaudy. Isabella and I didn't stay long and after a short stroll around we headed back onto the Hume.

The next important settlements are the twin towns of Wodonga and Albury, collectively called Albury-Wodonga. Their fame lies in the fact that they sit exactly opposite each other on the Murray River which forms the border between Victoria and NSW. Wodonga is in Victoria while Albury, the larger of the 2, is in NSW. I think we stopped for lunch there but there wasn't really any point in stopping there for any longer so we were back on the road in short order.

Just past Albury, the terrain began to take on a familiar feel. The green hills of Victoria now gave way to the yellow, more barren hills of the NSW highlands. This was the terrain of Canberra, though we were still a ways from it.

Along the Hume, we briefly stopped at a town called Holbrook which, very strangely, had a submarine in the middle of town. Apparently Holbrook was named after a famous Australian admiral who happened to be a submariner. In the vein they had the HMAS Otway dismantled and rebuilt, at least the shell, in a park. It seemed like such a strange and surreal thing. You never know what you're going to see in rural Australia.

Continuing on, Isabella and I drove through Gundagai, a small town known for having a sculpture of a dog on a tucker (food) box. Not too far from there, we reached the Barton Highway and from there turned towards Canberra. I should point out that Canberra does not sit on the main highway, the Hume, even though it is the capital. No matter which way you come from, be it Sydney or Melbourne, you have to get off the main highway and take another highway. I think it goes to show the mentality Australians have towards Canberra.

We arrived in Canberra early in the evening and because there wasn't much traffic, I finally conceded to let Isabella drive for a bit. I was a little concerned because it was the opposite to what she is used to in Canada but she handled herself very well. Isabella drove for a short while before deciding that I should take the wheel again. We were quite happy to be in Canberra and I was very anxious to show Isabella the city that I call home.

The Greatest Journey -- Australia Day

Australia's national holiday is Australia Day, held on January 26th. It commemorates that day the First Fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour and established the first permanent European settlement in Australia, January 26th, 1788. Much like Canada Day, Australia Day is meant to be a patriotic celebration of the country.

Australia Day, though, is different things to different people. To some it is indeed a celebration of what it means to be Australian. For others, particularly indigenous Australians, it is symbolic of a new culture that devastated the old; many go so far as to call it Invasion Day. To others, it's just another day off and an excuse, as if Australians needed any, to gather with friends around familiar quarters and drink beer.

Our host had promised us a somewhat unique Australia Day experience. In all the time I've been in Australia my Australia Days have been pretty low key. Unlike Ottawa which has buskers, extravagant shows and acrobatic flying, Canberra doesn't seem to put on much of a show. The fireworks are reasonably good, not only because they explode fairly low overhead, but beyond that there really isn't much done. In Melbourne, I was fairly certain that there would be something going on. Our host, though, gave us a more or less traditional Australia Day which entailed cooked sausages, beer and sitting on the beach with a myriad others doing the same. And you know what, I had a great time.

After buying and preparing our sausages, our host said, with a mix or sarcasm and irony, that we would do something decidedly un-Australian and that was honour aboriginal Australians. In a park not too far from his apartment there is a tall tree call the Aboriginal tree. It is quite old and is believed to have been used by local aboriginals to make canoes. It isn't much to look at but it's historical significance makes it worth a short trip.

From the park, we walked to the St. Kilda beachfront and sat on the grass. There were many other people there lounging about, playing cricket and engaging in another Australian tradition, listening to the Triple-J Hottest 100. Triple-J is a radio station that plays mostly non-commercial genres and every year on Australia Day they count off the top 100 songs of the previous year as voted by the listeners. People sort of make a point to listen to them all to hear what song made it to #1. I'm sorry to say that the Barons of Tang didn't make the list.

As we sat on the grass, we enjoyed some sausages and company as some of our host's friends had turned up. We had picked up some beer in a local store earlier and I was so surprised to see that Foster's was actually sold; I was so surprised I took a photo. Although Foster's is one of the world's best selling beers and is perhaps the beer most people associate with Australia, it is virtually impossible to find in Australia. No self respecting Australian would drink Foster's and the general consensus is that it is the equivalent of swill. Other beers were on hand and I think Isabella tried her first Victoria Bitter, or VB.

One think I noticed which was a bit unusual was the lack of non-Caucasian persons in the crowd. While Melbourne is one of the most multicultural cities in Australia, not many of the non-European ethnicities seemed to be represented. I thought it strange but I'm told that's the norm.

After a good long spell at the beachfront, we all took a walk and continued the party at the St. Kilda Botanical Gardens. There were a few more people there with their friends playing around and just generally having a good time. I witnessed some young lads getting a ball out of a palm tree using a metal pole. The whole Australia Day was fairly lively, but not hectic, although I suspect in the city it might have been so. With the sun setting we eventually reached #1 on the Hottest 100, which happened to be Julia and Angus Stone's Big Jet Plane.

An Australia Day with friends and no injuries is always a good one. This was Isabella and my last day in Melbourne. Tomorrow we were heading to my town, Canberra and the excitement therein. Turning in for the night, I remember thinking how pleasing it was that we only had 1 more long driving day ahead.