The Bailey Expedition -Australia

Australia

Please check out:
Quinn's Australia Page
Griffin's Page

On April 28th we bid farewell to our beloved Chrishchurch and headed northwest to Sydney. A funny thing happened over the Tasman Sea; we turned left instead of right and ended up in Melbourne. It seems that a certain curtain of fog had socked in the airfield and so mid-flight we were diverted. Imagine next, working our way through international customs in the catacombs of the airport and being witness to a power outage and voltage spike. All the security folk jumped, but we took it calmly. Unfortunately the computers throughout the terminal were not as flexible and they held an impromptu crash-in for about 3 hours. While passengers kept arriving at the terminal for their flights, no flights left, no bags were checked, no tickets scanned. The terminal was transformed into a throbbing sea of humanity.

After finally arriving in Sydney half a day late, we checked into our downtown hotel and strolled into town. Walking through Chinatown and the Darling Harbor areas we made our way to the wharf. During our reconnaissance through this very busy and cosmopolitan city we were able to draw up plans for how we would spend our next 3 days. The first day we headed for a boat trip through the Harbor, past the Opera house and out to Toronga Park Zoo. This was a very good place to see some of Australia's native animals within Sydney. It also allowed us to take a short hike in a bush area in the harbor and listen to some native kookaburra in a Eucalyptus grove. The sunset over Sydney Harbor was worth the day's trip.(more Photos)

Our first stop the second day was the Art Gallery of New South Wales for a special Aboriginal art exhibit. It had closed 3 days earlier. We did get a chance to see part of their permanent collection and the kids saw a performance of aboriginal dance in the museum. The curator suggested we go to the Australian museum a half a kilometer away and so off we trudged

This museum held an excellent exhibit on aboriginal history, art and their civil rights struggle. While the art and stories were truly engaging, the insight we gained was how closely the struggle of the aboriginal people paralleled the struggle for racial equality in the US. Demonstrations, marches, even adopting the anthem of "We Shall Overcome". The aboriginal people are still in the midst of this struggle and the differences between the recognition and reempowerment of the Maori in New Zealand is in great contrast to the continued problems in Australia. There were also close parallels with the treatment of Aboriginal Americans in the manner in which they were pushed into alcoholism and crime. Sadly, subjugation of the world's aboriginal populations seems to take a universal form.

Our last day in town we tried something very different for us and a bit risky. We took a tour. Yes that's right, boarded a bus with others for a structured and guided tour. Yikes! We wanted to get outside of Sydney and the Blue Mountains were about an hour's drive away. This area is a world heritage site and known for its gorgeous canyons and rainforest. We also had to endure a mercifully short stop at an animal park to pet koalas and throw boomerangs. It looked like poor weather so only 4 other people went, a doctor and his wife from Singapore (yes she was known only as his wife: kind of like Mrs. Howell on Gilligan's Island noted Griffin.), and two blokes from England.

The weather was beautiful. The blue mountains were our main interest and the tour was worth it. A two hour hike through the bush, views down steep canyons, waterfalls, and a ride on the world's steepest railroad (52degrees), and a tramway down and back to the rainforest floor. While on the hike Mark was able to find chunks of ochre that he will use for aboriginal art projects, Griffin was the rhythm section of a digoridoo duo, Quinn took great photos of the area and painted himself in this ochre, and Pamela delighted in the chance to observe wildly colored parrots in the rainforest. It turned out to be a very fun day for everyone that was capped of by a final ferry ride through the harbour and under the harbour bridge.

While we did not get to spend anything approaching a reasonable amount of time in Australia, we did come to appreciate its culture and its natural environment in a variety of new ways. We did not get to the reef, nor to the rainforest in the north or the outback to the west. This country is the size of the US and it will take a very major return expedition to fully explore all that it has to offer. As we left Sydney and flew to Singapore on our way to Bali, we passed over the outback and some of the photos from the air as well as others of our short stay can be found by going to the photo page (which due to time constraints is not annotated).