ANZAC day, an alien and a sunrise

I’m still in Lennox enjoying the beach life. Monday was ANZAC day, a holiday commemorating the sacrifices made by Australian and New Zealand forces during the battle of Gallipoli in the first world war. Aussies and Kiwis celebrate this occasion by playing a gambling game called “two-up” which is illegal 264 days a year.

I joined the chaos out behind the Lennox Head Pub. The action resembled the floor of the New York Stock Exchange with bets flying every which way often between strangers on opposite sides of the ring. And this was the population 7,000 small-town version; I can’t imagine what kind of havoc was going on elsewhere Down Under. I knew Australians had a soft spot for gambling, but it was essentially just legalized, glorified coin flipping. Anyway, I was loving it just as much as everyone else, for the spectacle at least, despite losing three straight coin flips and 15 bucks.

My mate, “Brett,” who has been graciously putting me up along with another wayward American ex-pat, took us both out fishing. Now I’m not really much of an angler, but I felt like a bass master pulling in bream after small bream much to the chagrin of my less fortunate companions. “Brett” ended up getting the catch of the day:

That’s right he landed an alien. Actually it turns out to be the Australian version of a catfish (g’day mate indeed). It’s venomous, like most things in this country, so getting it off the hook was a bit of an adventure.

I had a good chance to explore the beaches in the area which are diverse and spectacular. The surf is supposedly some of the best on the east coast and I gave that another crack with mixed results and some spectacular wipeouts. One thing I discovered about surfing is that it requires a lot of paddling, and like skiing, when done for the first time in a long time (or ever), surfing works muscles that are scarcely used for any other task. So I’ve had to take a bit of a break from the ocean until I can lift my arms again.

To pass the time I went ahead and rented a car and took off for some of the world heritage listed national parks that protect remnant stands of rainforest and contain, as goes without saying, a multitude of birds. I visited a couple cool waterfalls in Nightcap National Park

and the region’s fresh water supply: Rocky Creek Dam.

That night I drove up to the trailhead of Mt. Warning, a rocky peak that exists as a remnant of an ancient volcano. Its height (roughly 3,800 feet) and proximity to Cape Byron, the easternmost point on the Australian mainland, mean that outside of summer it catches the first rays of the rising sun. So after a ‘nap’ I woke up around 4 am to begin my trek to the summit. I had forgotten to bring a flashlight, so I hiked by cell phone light. By the time my battery died the sky was starting to lighten and the thick rainforest canopy had given way to scrubbier, less-dense vegetation. I know it sounds quite an ordeal, but

It was well worth it for this sight alone. Yesterday I was the first person on the Australian continent to see the sun. I was in no particular hurry to run back down and spread the news to the rest of the country that the sun indeed would be up again as expected; the views from the top survey 360 degrees revealing a vast caldera.

Tens of millions of years ago the area was above a hot spot that formed a massive shield volcano of basalt covering nearly 7,000 square kilometers. In an area of high precipitation the easily weathered basalt washed away over the ensuing 20 million years leaving the plug (Mt. Warning) and a caldera rim of more durable rock surrounding the lone spire.

After hiking back down the mountain, this time in daylight, I drove out to the Border Ranges National Park. Part of the park forms the western edge of the caldera and I got to gaze back on my vantage point from the early hours of the morning.

It had been a great day. I had been first to watch the sunrise, seen loads of interesting wildlife and plant-life and even dipped across the border into Queensland. So when I got back to Lennox and heard that Brett was out playing poker with his friends I cancelled plans for foodshowersleep to join in. Of course my luck was surreal.

1st hand: full house
2nd hand: straight on the flop
3rd hand: A K that became two pair on the flop
4th hand: I called an all-in bet from somebody with pocket kings, but caught an ace to win
5th hand: flush on the flop

My rush ended there, but I had all the chips at the end of the night.

One week left in Australia, who knows why I’m taking the time to blog!

Beachworld: the north coast

A couple of low pressure systems off the coast have made conditions pretty wet and windy over the past few days. In fact rain has been a bit of a theme here since my folks arrived and it hasn’t ended with their departure. I had promised them a country of sunshine and arid red soil, yet no matter where we went each day yielded at least some precipitation.

It began in Sydney where they heralded not only heavy rain but a couple major power outages as well that took out most of the metropolis’s inner suburbs for a few hours at a time. This was something that local shop owners through clenched teeth assured us had never happened before. Our arrival Victoria brought much needed rain to the drought-stricken and charred region, which was great for the locals, but did make the views along the Great Ocean Road a bit hazy and damp at times. Yes we did spend a few days in the rainforest where, as the name implies, rain is expected, but even there rain had been scarce for four weeks prior. Everybody thanked us heartily for bringing the downpours that refilled everyone’s water tanks.

I’ve been hopping from beach town to beach town along New South Wales’ northern coast where cold rain and wind can be a bit of a downer for everyone. Not only does it make for bad surf conditions, but it also makes the grass grow meaning people have to spend time mowing when they could be out on the water. Luckily yesterday morning we all caught a sunny break and got to go out to a beach in Yamba. It was supposed to be the most sheltered of all the beaches in the area from the hard southern gale, nevertheless the surf was all a froth with waves as tall as houses and currents and rips going in every direction.

As far as waves go, I’ve never encountered anything in the same ballpark on the east coast of the US. Luckily there weren’t enough surf boards to go around so I got to get tossed around on a body board. Surfing looked like a bit of a Sisyphean task for a beginner. A pod of 15 dolphins swirled about with us in the waves sending hearty fish leaping skyward and hoping to sprout wings.

The Yamba YHA must be the best backpacker accommodation in the country if not the world. While most will nickel and dime you at every opportunity and try to sign you up on expensive third party tours and excursions, the managers take out a free busload of guests to wherever the best surf around is and provide boards and tips all for free. It only opened last October, so the building and all its appliances and equipment are brand new. Most importantly the owners opened it because they’re friendly and excited to show budget travelers a hidden beach gem of the north coast. One of the managers, Shane, does offer a “ten buck tour” that takes guests around to all the local beaches, to a few fresh water pools for some cliff jumping and finally to the wharf to hand feed pelicans and “piranhas.”

I’ve moved just a smidge up the coast to Lennox Head to see some friends, but I’m a bit torn about what to do next. I could take a bus up to Brisbane to see a new city, maybe rent a car there to take further up the coast or inland into the hinterlands and explore a new world heritage area. But I’m tempted to just stick around here where I can surf every day (weather permitting) and get by rather cheaply.

Enter the geriatrics

So my parents turned up along with a couple of friends of theirs for a three week tour around the country lead loosely by myself. Needless to say this marked a severe change in my Oz lifestyle. No more hitchhiking or staying in hostels. No more staying awake past 8 pm (unless to play scrabble). The general activity pace slowed down to glacial. Every departure from a room or arrival at a destination required a triple cross-checking of an essentials list to make sure that in the process of opening and shutting a hotel room or car trunk no wallets, keys, passports, sunglasses, dentures or party members had vanished or hid themselves in someone’s pocket.

Just getting out of the car could sometimes take hours. It was a bit like watching a pot of water boil and I never stuck around to watch it all unfold. It always began with a hearty round of congratulations to the driver for successfully avoiding having an accident despite many close calls, then a reapplication of various sun screens and ointments, followed by a group scavenger hunt for items ranging from car keys just removed from the ignition to the tube of sunscreen that had just been recapped. By the time I had returned from my perusal of the tourist stop’s notable features: a five kilometer bush walk, a few placards to commit to memory, or a Great Barrier Reef dive, somebody would have remembered that the keys were still in the ignition after all. I would then put on an official sounding tour guide tone and formally announce the highlights of the area, usually in the form of a list of bird species, and we would all pile back into and carry on to the next landmark.

I could carry on for the rest of this post about the holiday behavior of the geriatrics, but I’d like to avoid too deeply offending any of my sexagenarian readership. Also the scenery is a bit more photogenic. The upshot of them being along was my food and accommodation budget increased by 1600 percent. This meant luxury goods, such as fruits and vegetables were incorporated into my diet and I got to sleep in a private room for the first time in months. In fact every place we ended up staying was immensely fantastic in one way or another: a guest house at the foot of Australia’s second highest lighthouse, Australia’s oldest single-family owned hotel, a bed and breakfast in the Daintree rainforest to name some of the more noteworthy spots.

A lot of the places we visited were places I had already seen and commented on, such as the Great Ocean Road, Sydney and the Hunter Valley, so I will gloss over those. I did get to enter the Opera House not just to use the toilet, but to actually see a Stravinsky ballet, which was pretty awesome.

Definitely the highlight for me was getting up to Queensland to see the Daintree rainforest and getting to dive on the Great Barrier Reef. Nowhere else in the world is it possible to walk from one UNESCO world heritage area directly into another. I got to see a wild, flightless, endangered bird called a Cassowary right up close.(no I didn't take this picture, but the bird I saw looked just like it and was just as close)

Cassowaries can grow up to six feet tall and have been known to disembowel unsuspecting would-be birdwatchers with their powerful legs and talons earning their species the distinction of being the most dangerous in world among the avian order.

My parents are unique in that they are among a small minority of people willing to go out bird-watching with me. With a winning combination of their car rental abilities and my eye-sight, hearing and intense study of field guides, we added nearly 90 species to my Australian list in just three weeks. My dad even forked over 100 Aussie dollars (a price haggled down from 130) at a Chinatown market in Sydney for a pair of brand-less, high-powered binoculars so he could see some of the honeyeaters and parrots himself.

It ended up being a pretty spectacular three weeks that ended more quickly than any of us could have imagined despite the fact that it was the longest vacation my parents (or any Americans for that matter) have taken in more than forty years. Somehow I convinced them to drop me off on the side of the road in Kempsey so I could hitchhike further north and continue my adventures, while they had to go back south to Sydney to catch 36 hours worth of flights home where three weeks of piled up work, mail and newspapers awaited them. It was an arrangement that did not seem in the least bit fair.

I offered to take my dad’s place and fly home for him so he could be a backpacker for a bit. I reasoned that since our first and last names are the same we could swap plane tickets without anybody catching on. But he pointed out that his patients would probably notice a difference in appearance and somebody would probably sue me for malpractice, which I don't think is covered under my travel insurance.

Anyway I’m making my way north to Byron Bay and then onward to cover a section of personally unexplored coastline reaching southern Queensland before I have to fly home myself.

Tassie

Wow. Tasmania is one awesome place. I had hoped to put up some pictures midweek, but I’ve been pretty far from electricity let alone the internet. But before I get ahead of myself, we’ll start in Hobart.

Tasmania is a battlefield for logging interests and environmental warriors. A swarm of protesters marched from the capital city’s park to the police station to chant and wave signs and, of all things, arrest themselves.

It was a show of solidarity among the greenies whose leadership had been singled out and arrested two months prior at a rally attended by hundreds. Thirty dissenters successfully entered the station and turned themselves in for illegally trespassing on Forestry Tasmania property.

From the protest I went straight out to the front lines of the conflict at the Upper Florentine Valley where a dozen or so eco-sentinels were stationed at a blockade. To prevent Forestry Tasmania from simply arresting everyone and bulldozing away their camps and obstacles, the activists rigged cables up to everything, connecting all structures, gravel impediments to tree-sits manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so that any sort of

intervention would be an effective act of murder.

The escalation of more elaborate methods by the Loraxes for self sacrifice for the sake of the forests is evidence for the duration of the conflict. They have people sleeping in cars blocking the logging track with their arms manacled to cement blocks embedded into the earth beneath, so that to move the vehicles without dismembering anyone, loggers must first disassemble the autos piece by piece.

And to prevent forestry from bringing in cherry-pickers to pull the “possums,” as the tree-sitters are called, from their 50-meter perches, the greenies dug some sort of tunnel under the road in which somebody resides full-time that is primed to collapse causing a gruesome death by squishing should any of Forestry’s fleet of heavy machinery venture across the road above.

Anyway, I was mighty impressed with all their courage and determination, but I’m not allowed to post any photos of the warriors online to protect their identity. For similar reasons they all go by groovy superhero pseudonyms like “skunk,” “quoll,” or “bones.” If you want to cheer them on or join the fight check out their website: www.stillwildstillthreatened.com

I continued my whirlwind eco-tour by cruising up the road to Lake Pedder, an artificial body created by the

construction of several massive dams that generate loads of hydroelectric power for the state.

Then straight after drove through the Franklin River National Park, a reserve created in a successful battle to prevent the damming of the river that was slated to meet a similar fate. The saving of the Franklin River was the first campaign of the Wilderness Society led in part by Senator Bob Brown who went on to found the Australian Green Party.

It was pretty cloudy that day. You could even see the clouds forming down below from this elevation. No rain though, which was lucky given the area receives 2 to 3 meters of it per year.

I also got to see some of the biggest trees in the world in the Styx Valley. Without the efforts of TWS they would be nothing but lumber and paper pulp.

I followed a map I got from TWS campaign center in Hobart, but it apparently landed me in some sort of active logging zone off limits to the public. A Forestry Tasmania official promptly escorted me back to the highway. I took some pictures of some of the awful clear-felled, still-smoldering remains of what used to be old growth rainforest, but none of them came out that well as I was snapping them furtively over my shoulder out the window while doing 90 km/hr down a winding gravel road.

I made it out to the west coast and combed the beach for an afternoon. On the way two towns: 1) Strahan, Tassie’s “tourist mecca” contained nobody under the age of 65. 2) Queenstown, the busted remains of a mining town surrounded by a desolate moonscape wrought such by acid rain and heavy metal contamination.

On my way back southeast to Hobart I woke up to this:

…and then on the Bruny Island, just 40 minutes drive and a short ferry ride from Hobart, but essentially the end of the earth.

I ran into a bit of a kindred spirit in a bloke from Queensland named “Pat.” No he wasn’t into birds, but he was into a bit of plants and trees, and was, like me, sleeping in his car, traveling alone and keen to explore the island’s natural wonders while spending as little money as possible.

We complemented each other well with, me pointing out and identifying anything with feathers, while he kept encouraging me to try different edible plants and berries.

We parted ways today in Hobart when he took off for the Tasmanian Peninsula, while I’ve got to fly back to the mainland. I have to say I’m a bit jealous. A week is far too short to spend on this island. It looks so small on maps, but I hardly had a chance to see half of half of it.

I’ve learned though that with traveling that no matter how long you plan to stay in a good place, it’s never long enough.

This is probably my longest post, yet it could have easily been quite a bit longer. Ironically my parents are en route to Sydney at the moment, so nobody will probably read it anyway. Ha!

To be honest, not a whole lot worth mentioning has occurred over the past 10 days. So you might as well go back to watching the NCAA tournament…just kidding! I successfully turned 24, returned to Australia, and then flew down to Tasmania to check out some of those big trees and animals I’ve been working so hard to protect. Not many photos to show for all that, so it will be a quick entry anyway.



I ended up spending my birthday in Wellington with a couple of my friends I met while working at a resort back in the US: ‘Carl’ who I introduced a few posts back and a fellow American who requested an especially elaborate pseudonym that I cannot recall, so we’ll just call him ‘Grievous Vasquez.’

Here we are with several of ‘Carl’s’ mates carrying what sums to a shocking number of beverages through New Zealand’s capital city.

I managed to score a free ticket to Wellington’s massive waterfront music festival called Homegrown. You may not quite be able to recognize them (or be able to have ever heard of them before) but in the background there is no other than New Zealand’s premier drum and bass act, State of Mind.

I know how mighty impressed and jealous you are.


The days since haven’t really inspired my photographic muse. You all know what an airplane looks like and I’ve already spent better than 3 months in Sydney. I will say that Emirates is the best airline I’ve ever flown, just eclipsing my experience with KLM.

Also I woke up at 3 am the other day to catch the first round of the NCAA tournament with an American friend and basketball fan with whom I went to high school and who happens to be studying abroad at UNSW. For some reason ESPN stopped covering the action after 5 hours in favor of showing reruns of world’s strongest man, which means I missed seeing Duke. Anyway, my bracket is now busted with Wake’s pathetic first round loss.

I just arrived in Hobart a few hours ago so no Tassie pics yet, but stay tuned… I’m going to some Wilderness Society protest tomorrow morning and will hopefully meet some nature-lovers keen to explore a bit of the bush with me.

too many scenic vistas

Wow. I’ve been so busy riding my thumb around the south island I haven’t gotten around to posting any pictures or stories in quite awhile. I left off just before Queenstown:

Gorgeous place and though it is a bit overrun by tourists, it has the only disc golf course I have encountered thus far in the country. I would have happily stuck around to play it, but with my tight schedule I had to get a move on. In fact that has been a bit of a theme for the south island—so many places that make me want to stick around for a week or two, but with only a month in the country it just isn’t possible to take things that slow. So I woke up at the crack the next morning to catch a tour bus to one of the most splendid sights on the planet, Milford Sound.

It’s really tough to capture the shear scale of the place. With cliffs jutting vertically up from the fiord 1,500 meters and capped by the occasional glacier, it sure is magnificent. It is also one of the wettest places on earth and I lucked out with the weather. It gets so much rainfall, 10 to 20 meters of fresh water rides atop the salty ocean water below, which creates a very unusual marine ecosystem.

Next stop on the whirlwind Thumbelina express: Stewart Island. But not before a stop off in my town.

Funny I must have founded it prehumously.

But on to Stewart Island...it is a pretty unique place. It rains there an average of 15 times per day and stops raining just as frequently.

These flightless birds called Wekas roam the island and don’t have any fear of people.

This one really wanted to eat whatever was in my bag and stuck his/her head entirely inside it. Another tried to jump in my lap as I was trying to make myself a peanut butter sandwich!

More fascinating than the bird life is that of the locals. I happened to be present for the live band Saturday night.

That’s right. A guitar, a one-string broom-handle bass, a washboard and a tambourine—the classical Stewart Island quartet. After they completed their repertoire of about 5 songs (for most of which the complete lyrics eluded them) they just went back to the top and repeated their set. Of course the gumboot clad fishermen scarcely seemed to notice and seldom managed a sip of Speights without spilling an equivalent portion on the carpet.

Back across to the mainland and planet Earth, I hitched to Dunedin, sister city of Edinburgh, Scotland, and New Zealand’s biggest college town. I rented a car so I could go see Otago Point and some of the Catlans National Park.

Unfortunately I forgot to recharge my camera the night before so this is the only shot I got of the beautiful scenery.

Don’t try to hitchhike in a hailstorm. It just isn’t worth it. Catch a bus. After about 5 hours of hiding out in cafés and of short rides with very friendly farmers going to the next town, I actually got picked up by a commercial bus. The driver charged me $20, but it was still a $10 discount off what I would have paid if I had done the smart thing: checked the weather and booked online.

This morning I signed up for a car relocation at one of the rental places, which is basically a $19 one-day rental. Of course it limited me to a straight shot form Christchurch to Picton, but allowed me to explore Kaikoura by car in between.

Yes another incredibly scenic place. I know you’re getting as bored of dramatic sea-scapes and mountains as I am. One of the big draws of Kaikoura is its close proximity to an extremely deep ocean canyon that attracts a vast array of rare sea birds, whales and dolphins. Unfortunately the water was far too rough to go out on a boat, so I explored the rocky coast and gazed at thousands of sea-birds too far away for me to identify.

There were loads of fur seals crashed out of the rocks everywhere. They always look like they're hungover from a huge night out.

I was going to try to go to farewell spit tomorrow, but I think it’s a bit too far for the time I have left, so I’ll probably just catch the ferry back to Wellington tomorrow. That will get me back to Hawkes Bay well in time for my 24^th. Friday the 13^th...yikes!

Why pay for bus tickets?

So hitchhiking in New Zealand is a really easy and cheap way to get around so far. It did take four separate rides to get to Murchison for the kayak festival. A local logger, an ex-pat hippie, a New Zealand Air pilot and a fellow American traveler made up my relay team.

At "Bullerfest" they set up a massive 25-foot ramp out of plywood and scaffolding, lubed it up with cooking oil and dish soap, aimed it at the Buller River and sent off a slew of crazy fools in kayaks for a big air competition. It’s only a matter of time before it becomes an official X-games event. Heck they’ve already got a pair of color commentators and sent a drunk and naked local off the ramp who had never before kayaked.

Anyway, I met this really nice guy there who gave me a life down to Franz Josef. I found out he’s a glacier trek guide and not only did he let me stay at his flat, but he also hooked me up with a free full-day glacier tour.

I was pretty impressed with our leader, this Swiss girl who basically carved the group a set of stairs up, down and around the crevasses with a pick axe. Here’s me with her axe at the high point of our hike.

That night I went out on a Kiwi tour and after an hour of waiting in silence in the woods, a cheeky little snuffling wingless specimen, one out of the last 300 of its kind left in the world, probed the nostrils on the end of its bill into the ground 3 feet in front of me before hustling off into the bush.

No pictures allowed unfortunately.

The next morning I caught a ride down the gorgeous west coast with the ocean on one side and the Southern Alps on the other.

Those tiny dots down on the beach at Knight’s Point are fur seals. Unfortunately they weren't the rare Fjordland Crested Penguins that sometimes come ashore this time of year to molt.

It wouldn’t be a post without a bird pic.

This one’s an alpine parrot called a Kea. They supposedly have the intelligence of a 3-year-old and are known for stealing food from backpacks, dropping cameras off cliffs and peeling rubber seals from car windshields. Fortunately this one just came to check out our glacier hiking group.

I’m in Wanaka in the moment which is maybe a bit like Switzerland, not that I’ve really spent much time there. I like the feel of the place and am tempted to stick around a bit, but got to keep moving since I’ve got lots left to see and less than two weeks to fit it all in. The next target is Milford Sound, where cameras run out of film and poets run out of words.

Here’s me and my most recent ride, an Aussie surveyor on holiday from Abu Dabi, where we stopped along the Haast pass on the way to Wanaka. Hope the next one is this friendly!

Birds and Boats

A quick review: I’m into birds. Unfortunately most of New Zealand’s terrestrial birds were flightless or otherwise hopelessly ill-adapted to predators. The vast majority went extinct when people brought over dogs, rats, stoats and the like 1,000 or so years ago. A few exceptions exist on smaller islands and drastic efforts have been put forth to try to save some of the more critically endangered species (see ‘ejaculation helmet’ from the last entry).

Here’s a cute little parrot called a Kakarito. I found loads of them on Matiu/Somes Island a small island in Wellington sound.

I took a break from exploring and birding to shoot down some enemy aircrafts from the one the island’s four never-used anti-air turret bunkers form WWII.

This isn’t just a fantastic example of my photography skills, it’s also a Saddlebird, a species that hasn’t bred on the mainland for centuries until it was recently reintroduced into a ‘mainland island,’ basically a large reserve surrounded by a massive ‘vermin fence’ and packed with special feeders and everything these fragile unafraid rarities could possibly need to survive and reproduce.

Take this guy, a New Zealand Robin. He will practically jump underneath your boots as you’re walking hopefully you’ll startle up some insects for him to munch on. Now as say a feral cat this throws the entire stalking strategy out the window. To eat one of the these guys all you would need to do is turn over a few leaves and shake a few tree branches, that is if you can find one!

I saw loads of pelagic birds on the ferry between the north and south islands, but I didn’t take any pictures (they would have just looked like clouds and ocean) so who cares!

The Marlborough Sound at the northeastern tip of the South Island is quite gorgeous. And nearly as soon as I got off one ferry, I got on another out to the Queen Charlotte Track to hike (or “tramp” as they call it here) through some amazing lush vegetation with some fantastic views of the sound.

My Camera doesn’t really do much justice to the gorgeous placid turquoise water or the 20 foot tall tree ferns, but I found an old oil drum that made a decent ledge so I could include myself in a picture. Look how excited I am. Go 10 second timer!

After a night camping out in the bush it was on to Nelson where I spent last night. As soon as I get this post up, I’ll stick my thumb out to try and hitch a ride to this whitewater kayaking festival in Murchison.