G’day Mates and welcome to Sydney,

Today we took up residence in the capital of Australia, Sydney, – okay, only for 9 days, but we found the grocery store and bought supplies, found the central train and bus station and bought passes (good for buses, trains, subways, and ferries), bought wine and settled in – no worries.

 

We quickly became adept at navigating the massive and complex public transportation system which is a good thing because Sydney is about the size of Chicago and, like Chicago, it sprawls over miles and miles some densely populated sections and other suburban or rural areas, and there is lots and lots to see.

It is definitely a large thriving modern city but there is an old English feel to much of the architecture. I loved the eclectic mix as we walked around the city.

We stayed at the Central Railway Hotel which was conveniently close to the Central Station,

But the hub of activity – the happenin place – is Circular Quay (pronounced Key). This is the heart of Sydney and is a fun and exciting place to be.  The area includes downtown Sydney, the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Harbor, (where our cruise ship docked four weeks earlier) and of course the Sydney Harbor Bridge – a busy, busy place.  Each day started with a jaunt to Central Station, a quick train ride to Circular Quay and then off to the adventure of the day (All roads/tracks/ferries lead to Central Quay).

In case you didn’t get the message, Tom and I both think that Sydney’s Circular Quay is awesome! And we had some amazing adventures here.

Let me tell you about some of our very cool escapades in the Quay:

On Wednesday Tom and I had tickets to a concert at the Sydney Opera House (another bucket list check). We headed to the Quay for an early dinner in one of the dozens of restaurants overlooking the harbor. After dinner we made our way through the throngs of people waiting in line to see Jack Johnson who was performing that night in the outdoor venue of the Opera House plaza. We also encountered many families who were attending a performance of Cinderella at one of the indoor venues.  We were headed for the main concert hall. All-in-all The Sydney Opera House can simultaneously host up to six events at the same time.  We attended a concert – “Variations of an English Theme” which was lovely. Okay, I have to admit, I snuck out during intermission to listen to Jack Johnson. I was able to see and hear him from the outdoor balcony – way cool!!! The evening was very memorable and we came away knowing that the Sydney Opera House is one of the icons that helps make Sydney a world class city.

Our Thursday adventure was a huge one on our bucket list. As Tom says, “We got high – literally!!!!!! Wait for it, okay; TOM AND I CLIMBED THE SYDNEY HARBOR BRIDGE!!! I’m not talking about walking from one side of the bridge to the other. We’d already done that several times and while the walk was great, it’s not really an adventure. I’m talking about the climb to the top of the arch which was beyond awesome! We headed down to the Quay early so we would be there on time and ended up being over an hour early – eager? We walked around downtown for a bit and then headed into the Bridge Climb Museum which was a very interesting about the building of the bridge.

Watching a video of the guys walking around on narrow beams with no safety measures during the building of the bridge didn’t do anything to settle my nerves…

Anyway, we went out to check in early and were told that we could join an earlier climb group – “starting now” – Yikes! There ended up being only six in our group which was great because there are usually 14. We got a lot more personal attention from Maria, our great guide.

Moving right along, we all signed the form releasing the Bridge Climb Company from any responsibility due to untimely death or bodily injury that might occur on the climb and another swearing that we were of sound mind (?). Next we each took a Breathalyzer test – no, I’m not making this up – “You don’t pass, you don’t go.” Luckily Tom and I both passed as did the others. We were then issued the lovely gray and blue suits that you see in the picture. They are to help you blend in with the bridge so that you don’t distract the drivers, honest. Next came the radio, headset, pouches containing jackets in case it got cold or rainy and a ball cap which we got to keep. After donning our gray apparel, we headed for the practice area where we each received a harness with a safety line that hooked us to a cable and slid with us as we moved. We practiced climbing up and down ladders in all our paraphernalia and repeated the mantra, “at least 3 points of contact at all times!” Finally we were ready to go. Maria cheerfully said, “No worries”, but I had serious doubts about that. How high is this climb? (To be exact, it is 159ft wide, spans 3,734ft, 435ft above sea level at the top of the arch – I think I’m going to be sick…)

Despite the heart palpitations, sweaty palms, and trembly knees, I stepped in line with the others, and we headed up. We started in the museum and then moved out a small door and onto the catwalk (see the diagram).

As we walked past the piling, Maria told us that legend says that rubbing the solid granite rock would calm you and give you strength. We all chuckled but every one of us rubbed that granite as we passed. The first ladder took us from a catwalk beneath the bridge to the roadway between the sixth and seventh traffic lanes of the bridge with cars whizzing by on either side – eeaow!

On up we climbed until we reached the bottom left side of the upper arch. After emerging through the opening onto the arch itself, we posed for pictures – let me reiterate “On the Upper Arch!!!” Holy Cow!

 

 While pictures were being taken, we stood staring down at Sydney whirring below, wow. Pictures done we started the climb to the summit of the arch. Then more pictures and time just to soak-in the amazing panorama below.

We then took the walkway across the top and headed down the other side, back through the opening, down the ladder this time between the two railroad tracks with trains rumbling by at top speeds, to the catwalk and back to reality. Wow! How cool was that!!!? The whole adventure took about three hours but seemed like minutes, yet, the memories will last forever.

I’m writing this post because we are in Australia, and the story of Port Arthur is an essential slice of Australia’s history.

As you may know, Australia was settled by the English in 1830 as a penal colony. London at that time was in an economic depression. War with France had left them with huge debts, unemployment was extremely high, the hungry and homeless crowded the streets and petty crime was out of control. The ever growing prison population was being contained in the hulls of old ships but these too were overcrowded. Transportation – a term used for shipping prisoners off to other places – had been in practice for years.  America and the West Indies were two of the top choices, or had been until the pesky colonists won their independence and shut the prison door to America.

Australia became the next choice and Sydney was the home of the first settlement. Port Arthur, located in the extreme southeastern corner of Tasmania, was established to punish convicts who had committed additional crimes while under sentence in Australia.  It was a massive, 30 acre complex that at its peak housed over 1800 hardened criminals. Penal theory, at that time, was that evil could be ground out of criminals (“grinding rouges into honest men”) by a four pronged approach, education, hard work, religion and harsh discipline.  England wanted the prisons to be self-sufficient so everyone was taught a trade.  Hard work consisted of felling trees, pulling plows, sawing logs, making bricks, building etc.  Religion consisted of being preached a message of fire and brimstone twice every Sunday.  Discipline could consist of chain gangs, double chains for increased punishment, solitary confinement for months at a time but was most often the cat-o-nine tails and was meted out for anything from making eye contact with a gaoler (jailer), to stealing food, to assault.

Tom and I found the place fascinating and ended up spending a day and a half taking the tours, reading the plaques and roaming the grounds.  The grounds, as you can see, were beautiful and belie the darkness that was Port Arthur in the 1830s.

As we have found in all of Australia’s national parks and museums, Port Arthur is well signed and signs and guides do a wonderful job of setting the stage and telling the story. With our entry tickets, Tom and I each received a playing card (6 of spades & 4 of clubs). In the museum we each matched our cards to a display of plaques and the plaque that matched our card told us who we were – our convict name and what crime we had committed.

As we wound our way through the museum, we found out more details about our fates as convicts. The records kept at that time were meticulously detailed and our convicts had been actual people. (Click on the pictures to read the story.)

It was a great, though a bit unsettling, way of immersing ourselves in the wretched atmosphere that was Port Arthur.

After the museum we spent the rest of the afternoon following the map around the beautiful grounds, reading the plaques, listening to the audio story on our headsets, and imagining what it might have been like at the time.

The next day we returned and continued our walking tour,

and after lunch we took the ferry to two small islands in the harbor of Port Arthur.

The first stop was a tour of the Isle of the Dead. As the name suggests, this was the cemetery for those who died at Port Arthur – both convicts and civilians. The surprising thing about this is that, given the times and the nature of the facility, so few people died. The fact is that life expectancy was quite a bit better for those who were transported to Port Arthur than it would have been if they had remained in London. Records show that convicts who completed their sentences and were freed almost never chose to return to England. It is also said that some convicts in London purposely committed crimes in hopes of being to be transported to Australia – pretty interesting.

The next stop was even more interesting. It was to Point Puer also known as Boys’ Island. It was set up as a boys’ prison in 1834, to separate the boys in order to keep them from being brutalized by the men. Some of the boys incarcerated here were as young as 9 years old – how sad is that?

The theory for reform was the same for the boys as it was for the men – discipline, education, hard work and religion. Work hours were long and hard and discipline severe, but these boys were taught a trade – stone cutting, carpentry, shoe making, ship building… which they were expected to do despite the weather which, in Tasmania, could be harsh. Again, life was hard, but in London, for the poor (75% of the population), the infant mortality rate was 50%. For those babies who survived, another 50% of them died before the age of 12. In short the death rate for children born in poverty in London, at that time, was a staggering 67%. For the boys incarcerated at Point Puer, the mortality rate was 3%, and the 97% who survived were taught a trade so that they could continue to survive. So, dark as Port Arthur’s past might have been, it seems there was a silver lining for some.

Transportation ended in 1853 and the prison at Port Arthur closed in 1877.  A brush fire destroyed many of the buildings and a reporter, at the time, wrote “What was Port Arthur is doomed to rot and decay…”. Instead, curiosity seekers began coming to have a look and enterprising entrepreneurs saw the potential and turned it into a very successful tourist attraction – very smart.

So this is the story of Port Arthur – a part of the inauspicious beginnings of a new and, what is now, a thriving nation – Australia.

Today it was off to the Tasmanian Devil Preserve where we got to see wallabies in the bush, watch the feeding of real live Tasmanian devils and quolls, and to actually feed kangaroos and pademelons – very touristy but lots of fun.

If you are like Tom and me you might be thinking, “I’ve heard of kangaroos, wallabies, and even Tasmanian devils but what the heck are quolls and pademelons?” Well, let me tell you. Both are marsupials (the group of mammals commonly thought of as pouched mammals). Like kangaroos and wallabies, they give birth to their young and then the tiny newborn makes its way to the mother’s pouch where it lives snuggly and warm until it is big enough to be on its own. Possums are an example of marsupials in the US.

We also learned that a joey (baby kangaroo) stays in the pouch for anywhere from 7 to 9 months. While that little one is in the pouch, she can give birth to a second who also crawls into the pouch. Luckily the mother has two nipples so both can nurse. Okay, this is the amazing part, while she has two in the pouch, mama kangaroo can become impregnated again but she can hold off giving birth to #3 for two or more months until the oldest joey leaves the pouch. The mama kangaroo is like a baby making machine. It’s no wonder the kangaroo populations are growing so large.

We arrived just in time to catch the end of one of the Tasmanian devil feedings – pretty interesting. There are 2 stories about why they call them devils. One is that when settlers first landed, they would here the loud Tasmanian devils calls in the night and thought that they must be devils. The other is due to their feeding habits. Tasmanian devils (also marsupials by the way) are voracious, carnivorous animals and they eat every part of their prey, and I mean every last bit – bones, fur, nails, innards… you got the picture. Well, you probably don’t want the picture but you get the idea.

Then it was off to hike to the stream where along the way we got to see a red-necked wallaby in the woods, very cute. They are smaller and have pointier faces than the kangaroos.

From there we headed back to the kangaroo compound for the morning feeding of the roos. This was very fun and we participated energetically as you can see from the pictures.

The pademelon is a smaller cousin of the kangaroo. Their fur is dark, thick and soft and they are very shy. I was lucky that the one let me feed him.

A bird show was next and we got to see cockatoos and best of all a tawny frogmouth. The show was amusing and entertaining and I got to learn about the tawny frogmouth. They are a distant relative of the owl and as you can see they have great camouflage for hiding in trees. They call them frogmouths because they have huge mouths for swallowing their prey.

Next was the quoll feeding. They are so cute and so fast. For this feeding, the keeper played a game of hide-and- seek. He hid chunks of meat (quolls are also carnivorous marsupials) around the pen and the two little guys had a great time racing around to find their dinner – very fun to watch.

The last stop, another Tasmanian devil feeding – this was a different pair (brothers). Tom and I got there about 15 minutes early and had them all to ourselves. They were so funny and fascinating to watch. Along with being ravenous eaters, they are extremely competitive. They fight over everything – food, partners, territory, you name it and they squabble over it. In the video they look like they’re yawning, but actually it’s a kind of posturing – baring their teeth to show how tough they are – so male but in honesty the females do it too.

When the keeper came, he brought a chunk of raw meat and tossed it in. As per their normal routine, one grabbed it and took off with the other in hot pursuit. They chased around like this growling and snarling for about 10 minutes then the possessor of the feast went into their hut. His brother joined him and took hold of the other side of the meat and they played tug-o-war until the chunk split in half and both ate and grumbled happily. What a production!

All of the animals were interesting and entertaining, but the devils were the best.

 

But wait, there’s more! It was a long drive to the Tasmanian Devil Preserve and Port Arthur, and I got bored, so I took some pictures of some of the entertaining road signs along the way. I thought I’d share.

 

The next day was cold and rainy so we chose an indoor activity – Mona. Other than saying that it is an art gallery, I’m not sure how to describe this place. The terms avant-garde, unconventional, eccentric, edgy are pretty tame. Maybe over-the-edge is closer.

Anyway, Mona is privately funded directed/controlled by a man named David Walsh. His words probably provide the best insight to his world and Mona.

 

How does art fit into life? It is a behaviour, a practice, that congeals humanity like the fat in a fry-pan; it clarifies and distills, evaporates the excess, until we can see (just for a moment) into the base of ourselves. And perhaps — let us phrase it as a question. Is human-ness nothing but a set of such behaviours?

The answer, we hope and aim, will remain elusive; there will be no lessons learnt or taught, only contagious inquiry into the messy machinery of human nature.

Okay, moving right along, we arrived at Mona and as we pulled into the parking lot Tom pointed out the designated parking spaces in the picture and said, “That says it all.” Pretty funny, but I think Tom is correct in assuming that David Walsh has a major and strange ego.

We were directed to the entrance where we paid the entrance fee and received headsets and mp3 players that allowed us to read artists names and captions about each exhibit and to register (love it/hate it) our response to each display. These devices also allowed you to program in your email address to get an electronic copy of your individual tour and your responses – very modern and high tech.

The gallery is built into the side of a hill so for the most part is underground.  The carved sandstone provides much of the wall and some of the ceiling throughout the building and it was beautiful – form and function.

 We took the stairs (a circular staircase that wound around a cylindrical elevator (again, beautiful form and function) down four stories to the recommended beginning of the exhibit.

We spent the next four hours wandering through a dimly lit, very Alice in Wonderlandesque world of “art”. Some of it was beautiful, much of it very disturbing (I chose not to add those to my photo gallery), a fair share intriguing, a great deal of it was just plain bazar. That’s my summation and I’m sticking to it.

The Crossing Guard was my favorite display.

I will, however, say that my favorite part of Mona is the architecture both building and the grounds. Where much of the art was frenetic and disturbing, there is a quiet grace in the building itself and in its surroundings.

The sidewalks, palisades, sculptures, sloping lawns, vineyards, and gazebos as well as the panoramic views of Hobart across the river all combined to create a tranquil counterpoint to the gallery’s displays.

All-in-all, it was an interesting way to spend a cold, rainy Tasmanian day.