Little sheep out of the big city

Sheep, sheep, sheep, and then some sheep. Fifteen minutes out of town, and I saw more sheep than I’ve seen in Christchurch. I can easily believe that there are at least twenty times as many, if not more, sheep than there are people in New Zealand. I have heard that there are 2 million people, and about 40 million sheep.

As we began our South Island tour, I was struck with how green this country is and how little of it is developed. Also, the kiwis are insane drivers.

We stopped at Possum Lodge Farm to see how sheep are sheared and I think to give us a “farm” experience. Many of my co-travelers are from small towns in northern Wisconsin, and Stevens Point isn’t exactly big-city, so I don’t think we were quite as impressed as we were supposed to be. But these people were really kind and showed us their sheep, their red deer, their pigs, and their cows, and even gave us a sheep herding demo with their dogs. Afterwards, they invited us into their home for tea and biscuits and we awkwardly discussed weather in Wisconsin and heating costs. Mostly the professor talked about heating.

I hadn’t realized how tightly wound I had become in Sydney, and am glad to be in a less urban environment.

Christchurch

At last! We made it to Christchurch! For two days we set up shop at the Christchurch YMCA. We went from having our own room at Dunmore-Lang to all six of the girls sharing a living space. It was more like a really great sleep-over than any actual crowded inconvenience.

It was a lovely, cool, refreshing change from the furnace of Sydney. I learned quickly, however, that the weather in New Zealand can change very rapidly and there is a saying that one can experience all four seasons in one day. I’m most certainly not complaining though.

Waitangi Day is the Kiwi equivalent of Australia Day and Independence Day, though it isn’t about sticking it to the Brits nor is it about sticking it to the colonized, it’s about a treaty between colonial kiwis and the Maori and it DIDN’T screw the Maori! It was officially celebrated the day that we left town on our South Island tour, but every evening the town had events going on in a big gorgeous English-style park, kind of similar to Riverfront Rendezvous. Our first night, we stumbled on a three man play presenting “The History of Cinema: Abridged” I wonder if there is a bit of a trend in the theater of this part of the world. There were a couple of sly American history references about republicans and their (stereotypical) feelings toward minorities as well as a tasteful and artistic Sarah Palin impression.

On the second day, we wandered toward the University to poke around. I enjoyed a butter chicken curry for breakfast from a restaurant on campus (where else could I get curry at 9:30?) and fear (in the most delicious way) that this may become a habit. We also wandered to a grocery store to shop for our hostel stays and generally poked around town. I’m looking forward to living there.

On the eve of Waitangi Day, there was an even called Classical and Sparks or Sparks in the Park. This was the most spectacular display of pageantry and national pride that I have ever seen. Thousands and thousands of people showed up and, after a traditional Maori performance group gave an introductory ceremony, the Christchurch Symphony opened with a very inspiring piece while images of the All Blacks doing impressive rugby maneuvers were interspersed with images of the crowd and the symphony were displayed on the television monitors (we were too far away to see more than specks on the stage). Next, there was a jousting tournament. Men in full medieval attire rode on horses at each other and tried to take each other out all while the symphony played fitting music. The evening wore on with a troupe performing show tunes not only from standard Andrew Lloyd-Weber but from Mamma Mia (which most of the audience sang and danced to) and even Rocky Horror Picture Show—complete with drag queens. My love for drag queens is right up there with my love for mountains and national parks. The finale came when the symphony reappeared and played the William Tell Overture during a fireworks display. Highly impressive.

I look forward to spending some time in this city, and I’ve seen one Dae Woo so far.

A Farewell to Aus

Some final notes on Australia that I haven’t really been ale to fit elsewhere:

I saw 12 dae woos in all.

Very few places were air conditioned which led to lots of open doors and windows, and, except for the few hell-like sweltering nights, was really nice. Not even the museums or the aquarium had a/c. Based on the number of open windows I saw on apartment buildings, I would say that they didn’t have a/c either.

I saw five mammals in total; the four roos and one rabbit in the wild.

I saw no roadkill.

From what I understand there’s more to Australia than Sydney. This claim, I feel, warrants much further and extensive investigation—perhaps to a magical place called Perth? Ularu? Hobarth? Obviously the only solution is to return.

The Year of the Ox

I may have neglected to mention Ian and Terry—two guys we met on the hike to Manly. They are highly interested in Aborignal rock carving and are associatated with a tour company—Tribal Warrior Tours—that takes folk out to various carvings in the Sydney area. Though they were obviously trying to recruit us for one of their tours, they told us where a lesser known carving of a whale was, 1 of 7 around Sydney apparently. We decided that this would be our Sunday hike. As a side note, they were familiar with and highly interested in the mounds at Devil’ Lake.

The hike took us around to the rest of the harbor that we handt yet walked around. The whale was exactly where we were told it would be and was was pretty cool. Traditionally, these carvings would be re-done every so often, but since the carvings are now protected by the government, they’re starting to wear away. On the way to meet up with the rest of the crew, we walked across the harbor bridge. We had planned to climb it (with a company) but realized that it would be ridiculously expensive.

Upon arriving in downtown Sydney, we found out that there was going to be a GIGANTIC parade to celebrate the Chinese New Year—it put a bit of a damper on picnic plans, but if one cannot picnic, one might as well enjoy an evening parade, right? We stoppedby Woolworth’s (where I got my pomegranate and gingerbeer) and claimed a spot on the route.

I take a secret joy in pageantry, and celebrating the onset of the Year of the O did not disappoint me. Load of dragon dancers, flashing lights, and elegantly lit paper sculptures filled the evening along with a number of highschool marching bands from China. What more could I ask for?

Fireworks, you say? Well, I was in luck. After the parade we made a mad dash to Darling Harbor and sat and enjoyed a spectacular fireworks display over the water. Happy year of the Ox everyone!

Museums

Australia museum was a really fantastic natural history museum with exhibits on dinosaurs, Aboriginals, Wildlife photography, and, my personal favorite, ice age era megafauna—including time spent on giant wombats, glyptodons, and thylacienes.

Though, unfortunately, I was not at all in the mindset to be in a museum—I was far too wound up—I really enjoyed the wildlife photography exhibit and decided that I could be competitive in the 11-14 year old category. The most striking photo, and I believe the overall winner of the contest, was of a SCUBA diver standing and a Right Whale had come up face to face with him. The composition isn’t anything special, but I am impressed that such armament happened and was captured. There was also a photo of a Black Gibbon’s (or something like that) head on top of a fire—almost like a funeral pyre—however the caption said something having to do with bush meat trade and the illegal exotic animal trade, shocking because of its gruesomeness.

http://www.austmus.gov.au/visiting/whatson/display.cfm?event_id=322

The Museum of Sydney defines to me what a modern museum should be—sleek, highly interpretive and self-directed, a harmonious bled of old and new, and designed to tell many stories. The museum was designed to show Sydney’s history and FINALLY served as what the last two lectures were meant to be. There were many interactive high tech gadgets including an ENORMOUS touch screen with maps and paintings of Sydney throughout time. The museum itself was built on the site of the first governor’s house in the colony with the original floor plans bricked into the street. Above the museum was a modern office. A really neat exhibit involved video dialogues between different people who would have been found in the colony—indentured servants, Aboriginals, convicts, freemen, etc. Another was an indigenous person’s video project involving three screens showing a variety of natural images as well as candid people shots, in an attempt to describe what it means to be aboriginal and the connection to the land. My favorite artistic work though was a wall containing everything from chinchilla fur to whiskey that was imported into Australia in the early-ish settler days. The lighting and arrangement of this work was such that the colors and textures popped out and the best way I can describe them is as visually pleasing.

My favorite exhibit though was on Australian pets, from the attempts to domesticate kangaroos and dingos all the way through furbies, gigapets, and whatever the kids play with these days. My favorite aspect of this exhibit though was—surprise!—the photography. One artist took pictures of Sydney area folk with their pets. Urban free range-ish chickens, by the way, I guess are the current trend. But the photos were shot through a filter or edited to really make the bright colors pop. One photo in particular showed a slender dark-haired pale woman with her two Neapolitan mastiffs (the big’uns—think Fang from the Harry Potter movies). The blue of the dogs stuck out very vividly against the darker feel of the rest of the photo and complimented the electric magenta lipstick that the woman was wearing. Color me impressed!

Australian History and Aboriginal Culture

I was really looking forward to these lectures and was sorely disappointed when they actually happened. Though I have really enjoyed Greg Pemberton’s lecture style, he tried to get into the theory of history as well as the how’s and why’s rather than the who's and what’s—or as he put it, “One damn thing after another.” These lectures took about four hours each, and I had a really hard time listening.

The Australia Day as an Independence Day that I described a while ago is a lie, and I am much less pleased with the actual meaning of it—it celebrates the day when Captain Cook discovered Australia in the same way that Columbus discovered America. So it’s less of a stick it to Great Britain more of a stick it to the Aboriginals. The Columbus parallel was talked into the ground, along with the concept of “discovery” as ownership.

US independence had a lot to do with the founding of Australia, in that once we were no longer owned by the crown, Great Britain could no longer send convicts our way, so they started investigating Cpt. Cook’s report and pretty much said “Hey! Let’s use this!” and so it was.
1770-Cook’s report was filed away as there was no immediate wealth to be taken1776-US Independence1781-Parliamentary committee investigates where else to put convicts
1787-Decision on Aussie convicts settlement (at Sydney).

Movies that were recommended were “The Plowman’s Lunch” and “The History Boys.” Also, discussed were the ideas that monuments are in place to tell a national biography. As well as two ways of knowing the old way which was through the church and was pretty into acquiescence and the new way--through science--which demands activism and participation. Also, it would seem that throughout my post-secondary education, Cod keep coming up as a main theme of history, and let me again (if I haven’t already) recommend Cod: A History of the fish that changed the world by Mark Kurlansky. It is such an apt title.

This brings us to the Aboriginal lecture—which again took forever though wasn’t quite as excruciating. As I may have mentioned before, it comes back down to “it’s the same all over” and parallels the US settler/indigenous person situation.

Fun facts include that in the National War Museum there is no (or now very little) mention of any of the many Aboriginal men who have fought for ANZAC and other forces. They were not considered British subjects until 1921 and couldn’t vote in all states until 1941; though women got the vote in 1906 (Kiwi women enjoyed the vote since 1893—all three of them). The original Australian constitution called for Aboriginals to not be counted in any census until 1971. Like the US and Canada, there were generations of children were swept away to boarding schools, given anglicized names, and pretty well stripped of culture. Australia, like Canada has since apologized for this.

Some interesting acts in the indigenous rights movement include one leader flying to England and planting the Aboriginal flag and claiming England. Another is a tent embassy near all of the other embassies in Canberra that has been their for 37 years to assure reasonable representation. There is an idea for having a few seats in parliament set aside for aboriginal people, but it hasn’t gone so well. In New Zealand though, there are seats set aside for Maori, though percent wise there are more Maori in New Zealand than there are Aboriginal people in Australia. (Something like 12% versus 2% of the population). I would be interested to see how that idea would go over in the United States.

There was also discussion that history is absolutely bound up in politics, or, as my mother (jokingly) says, “Written by the winners and taught by the losers.” Also discussed were that global attitudes, as well as money, drive a lot of progressive policy. For example, discrimination against Asian peoples only became passé after Asia was seen as a market for Australian goods. Oh! Side note! Australia is the biggest supplier of coal to China. Take a minute and think about how big that is and the consequences (and benefits) that rest therein. It’s a big deal. Really though, Pemberton boiled it all down to, “It’s all about real estate” and that’s all I have to say about that.

On my impressions of the Australian People

...or Stereotypes Down Under


Though the interractions I've had with Australians have been relatively few, there are a number of generalizations that I feel reasonably qualified to make about Australians--at least Australians from New South Wales. Namely, like our stereotype in the Mid-West they are friendly and helpful. People on the bus and clerks at stores have noticed my accent and asked which part of Canada I'm from, when finding out that I'm from the northern middle of the US, they don't seem too disappointed. One especially helpful piece of advice that I recieved from a like-aged bloke on the bus was that in order to beat the heat, my best bet is to freeze my underwear at night. I am taking this into consideration.

Almost immediately after finding out that I'm from the states, the next reaction seems to be, "Oh! Isn't Obama wonderful? Did you watch the inaugeration? We all did here!" I've said before that if Obama does nothing else, he has given the American people hope again, and I feel I must amend this now to the people of the world. It would seem that he has a global following and I wonder how this will play out. I am excited to see what happens.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Sydney is that I hear languages other than english being spoken far more often than I hear english--in my dorm hall, in the busses, on the streets and throughout the places we've been visiting. It's wonderful and, frankly, makes me feel really cultured. There is definitely a high population folks from Asia here, and I've heard it refered to as an "Asian Invasion" which I don't think sounds too kind. Co-travelers have also made the observation that, "They have Asian people like we have African-Americans!" Which, historically makes sense. While I'm talking about ethnicity, I have seen more lebanese restaurants here than I have ever seen in the US--granted, Stevens Point isn't exaclty known for having a high Lebanese population.

One night, a small group of the crew met up with one of the RA's who was excited to talk to us and answer our questions. Something that I've found to be really unfortunate is to realize is that those trashy reality TV shows that I hold so dear are what the world ends up seeing of the United States. I think that is highly unfair for this to be the basis of opinions, but it's not like we're spitting out anything classier at the moment. Though because I don't use another nations' television to form my opinion about a nation--what if I thought every British town was like Royston Vasey? or filled with people like Hyacinth and Onslo? It would be ridiculous--I can't imagine that this is how everyone sees us. She also came of as quite boisterous and as the kind of girl who was very comfortable starting conflict, so that may have something to do with it.

I've also met a woman from Wara wara--an aboriginal community whose members come to the college every so often for some sort of certification. She has been more helpful than any of the lectures in discussing Aboriginal issues and what it means to be of that culture. As I mentioned before, it's the same all over. Issues like alcoholism, teen pregnancy, obesity, apathy, alienation from any culture, etc. that I see/hear about among american indigenous peoples run rampant amongst these people as well. Neither government seems to have come up with a solution, though the Australian government has apologized.

So, to sum it all up I suppose, the people here are nice and interesting.