Negley Park

I am still struck by newness and familiarity blending together.

First and foremost, Ann and I are spending much more time together than ever before. We really only lived in the same house, our house, for about two months before leaving together for Australia. So, this is a journey of exploration of each other, and of “us.”

And that is very fun. Our new house is small, but it is full of spaces to sit alone or together. We get great light from all directions, but especially looking at each other.

As we are on a corner (#38 Japan Street, at intersection of Japan and Koroit), all compass directions are walking options right at our doorstep. We have familiar walks already, with favorite homes, yards and gardens to greet us. Yet those walks are always guided by a hand holding tug one way or another to say “Ann, look at that,” or “Do you see that Andy?”

Yesterday it was the wallaby only three blocks up the hill, on the verge of the dunes over looking the ocean.

Today it was the variety of clouds waiting for us as we headed downtown to shop late afternoon.

Today offered up a great variety of new familiar activities. Ann left for campus about 8:00 am. I got to sleep in a little, as much as the melodic magpies would allow.

Once up and breakfast dishes washed, I did a load of laundry, in a machine that only holds less than half of what we (i.e. Americans) would consider a normal load. As it was yet another rare sunny day, for drying purposes I used the alien communication device antenna that was left behind by those here long ago. According to Ann, these early people visited North America too and left similar indicia of their presence there, but that is not something with which I am familiar.

The sense of hanging laundry came back though, slipping into my mind just as easily and unassumingly as Ann’s hand into mine on our walks. Don’t think I have hung a load of laundry on a line since boyhood days in Stone Harbor, New Jersey. The smell, pace, simplicity and completeness of the moment were there like always.

Next up was a walk to the Warrnambool Aquazone to join the community gym there, and it was an uphill walk at that. As the crest of the hill is reached, there is a great view back out over town and the ocean. But the compelling view for me is the water tower ahead at the very top of the rise, across from the great house occupying the vantage point. This is early boyhood days of another type, mid third grade when the move from Camp Hill to Lemoyne was the familiar newness at hand. When I moved to that house at the top of the hill, across the street was the neighboring water tower, a silent but constant friend and companion while playing on the grassy field around it.

The gym had the familiarity of any gym, except the locker rooms seemingly harking back to Junior High in the aforementioned Lemoyne. As a matter of safety and self-preservation, I had to ask if the weights for the lifting machines were in kilos or pounds. Pounds it was, which helped get started. The cardio machine (treadmill) was in kilometers per hour, and I had to enter my weight in kilos, so it was a bit slow going there at first. Burning 630 calories is the same in any language though.

Card carrying gym member!

Negley Park came to my mind a few days ago, a visitation I have had before, especially when traveling. Negley was the local park just a few blocks away down Indiana Avenue from the Lemoyne water tower. This is a very evocative place for me: Little League baseball, first friendships, learning about being alone, play, and much exploration. It was very familiar, and safe. It was new and uncharted. The woods at the backside of the park called out like the sirens enticing Jason and his Argonauts. Into those other wordly, somewhat off limits spaces I went, trekking into it like the Enterprise seeking out new worlds and life forms.

The Negley Park-ness feeling comes from that sense of entering something new, but finding familiarity. Both welcoming and foreboding, those woods became a refuge. What also came to mind is how small they really were, yet how lost you could get in them. Over all it is gaining a sixth sense of place, like when coming out of the woods on the other side, and over looking the Susquehanna River and Harrisburg.

That “aha moment” of just where I am.

The Birds

One of our favorite things to do on our walks is look at the flora and fauna - not just the exotic kind, like wallabies, but the little bushes and birds that are new to us. My favorite bird is still the little bright blue one from the beach.

A "superb fairy-wren" - honest, that's it's name.

One of the most common birds we see all over town is the magpie. Some of them are HUGE and we have been warned a few times that they can be very territorial and have been known to dive bomb a person. In an earlier post we shared a photo of two of our local magpies who were, as Father John used to say in Catholic School, "playing checkers." (Seriously, what kind of euphemism is that? Totally ruined the game for me.) There seem to be two large males that live in our yard. Here is one on our antennae, ruling the roost.

Here's a big-ass magpie that was sitting on the fence just about 3 feet (or, as they say here, a meter) as we watched men lawn bowling at Warrnambool Bowls. He was almost the size of a "chook" (a chicken).

I've seen some crows, but I'm pretty sure this one is a raven. I looked it up. (Just let me believe it.)

On our visit to the beach at Port Fairy we saw this shore bird. Google tells me it's a Pied Oystercatcher. Very cool beak.

When Andy was on his walk at Deakin, he saw a tree full of parrots! You have to look really closely, but you can see them here.

And on the dock in the Hopkins River, on the backside of Deakin, there were birds that look like blue herons.



Finally, we captured New Holland Honey Eaters making beautiful music, just down the street from our house. You can watch a short video here.

Local News

We were interviewed for the local paper yesterday. We're officially "news."

Corn Dogs Down Under

We ate at a cute little diner across from the old courthouse, called the Courthouse Kitchen. It was owned by a youngish couple who told us it recently opened. The man was working the counter and the woman, who he said was his partner Sophie, was in the kitchen. (Have I mentioned that the term partner is predominately used as a reference in both gay and straight relationships, even in our official bank literature.) All of the items on the chalkboard menu had law themes like “Free without bail” were sides of BBQ sauce and tomato sauce (ketchup, but pronounced the you-say-tomato way). We saw tator tots (“gems”) in the hot case and were drawn in. We asked lots of questions about what was on the menu, one of the things being a pluto pup. As he explained it, we realized it’s a corn dog! (Or for those of us from Yankton, a “kwiki” – though not technically a corn dog because the batter does not contain cornmeal and it’s not at all sweet.) So, of course, we had to eat there so I could experience a corn dog and tots in Australia. Every local we’ve mentioned this to, has sort of turned up their nose at this item, which is often called a “battered sav” and is usually sold only at fairs. With a name like that, I can’t blame them; it sounds first aid related. Wikipedia tells me that sav is short for “saveloy” which is a bright red sausage. I asked if they had yellow mustard (it said "Col. Mustard" on the menu – assuming that’s a nod to who dunnit in the library with a candlestick). The man said he had American mustard, and I said yes, thinking that would typically be what they called the yellow less-distinguished mustard that I like. Turns out the actual name on the label is “American mustard.” So for lunch I had a battered sav with American mustard and tomato sauce with a side of gems.

Meat pies and sausage rolls are pretty much ubiquitous wherever we go. There are lots of places that serve fish and chips, and with that, any number of other types of fried food. Some popular fried snacks are dim sims, which are fried chinese dumplings that contain ground pork, corn jacks which might be best described as a creamed corn taquito, and chiko rolls which are essentially a spring roll with filling that is cabbage and some sort of meat product. Beetroot is very common here. We just call them canned beets, but they are routinely served on hamburgers and I quite like them that way. Here’s one of our taster meals at the renowned Kermon’s Hamburgers in Warrnambool; you see a small chips, a dim sim, a chiko roll, and a hamburger with onions, beets, lettuce, and tomato sauce. (make sure you pronounce tomato correctly in your head)

Although you wouldn't know it from this post, we have also eaten quite a lot of non-fried food here as well. We've eaten a lot of curry - at a Javanese restaurant, our favorite all-day brekky place had one that was also really interesting and delicious, and we are signed up for Sri Lankan Curry Night next Monday at another favorite restaurant. 

On every menu I’ve seen, pancakes are served with ice cream. I have not taken that plunge yet. Pastries often come in the form of a “slice” which is usually bar shaped and frosted. I had a hedgehog slice the other day, which was similar to a brownie with biscuits (cookies) inside it. I see coconut on a lot of things, which makes me happy. I'm looking forward to having a lamington, which is a traditional Australian treat -  sponge cake, covered in chocolate frosting and rolled in coconut.  Yum! Coffee, as mentioned in a previous blog, is any espresso drink and they are all the same price. Therefore, a long black (americano), a flat white (café aulait), and a mocca (a mocha) are usually all the same price.

I'm sure there will be plenty more food posts to come. It is, after all, one of our favorite past times.

Logan's Walk

Wednesday, July 24, was a solo outing. Ann was on campus, and I was on my own.

But not alone.

As is often the case when in a new home and apart from the familiar one, thoughts of loved ones and loved places find root and new growth in the fertile soil of wandering about.

The magic of observing the new, brings to life the old.

“I wish Sarah could see that bird.”

“That surfer reminds me of Rob.”

“The boardwalk over the rushes is Corkscrew Swamp.”

“My mom would enjoy hearing about this…”

And on it goes, the more in the moment, the more stretched out the time.

The future creeps in too, in the form of “I can’t wait to tell Ann about all of today,” and thoughts of walks with her to come slip in to stride with me.

The travel along the ocean side foot and bike path was to the east that day. Dunes, grasses, and shrubs to the left, beach and ocean to the right, the Hopkins River with Logan’s Beach on the other side straight ahead.

The neatness and precision of the path is compelling. The color of the concrete, the framing of fencing, the brush and birds teasing for attention on both sides, the ocean drum beat, and the curve just ahead all demand attention and draw you in and onward.

The signage along the way is quite helpful….

Hopkins Bridge 1200 Meters.

Keep To The Path

Beware Of Snakes (making the preceding sign a bit superfluous)

Please Share, Keep to Left

Travel Slowly, Think Of Others

Just a bit past Granny’s Grave the path rises to meet a small field over looking the mouth of the Hopkins and the estuary feeding the ocean through it. This field is home to many rabbits, making it an extra special place.

Across the Hopkins River Bridge, I come to the Logan’s Beach information signs and toilet block, i.e. public bathrooms. I learn about the salt wedge - colder salt water that moves up stream against the current. It sneaks in along the river bottom, and being more dense it slips in and upstream under the fresh water going the other way.

There is a lot going on under the calm surface.

Next up the hill to bluff overlooking Logan’s Beach, and Logan’s Beach Lagoon, a winter (it is winter here) calving ground for the Southern Pacific Right Whale.

The signage tells me the name Right Whale comes from them being the right whale to hunt, as they were slow and they floated once killed. Sixty thousand plus in the hey day of whale oil and corset stays, down to three hundred or so when whaling stopped, and now up to about twelve hundred.

And then back across bridge, up hill to bunny land, and on to curve of Lady Bay back home. 

Can You Find Ann in the Picture?

Granny's Grave

We try to walk along the beach near our house at least every other day. There are really fantastic vistas along the Lady Bay beach. We regularly see surfers, cyclists, and dog walkers. We saw whales on our very first walk but none since then. 

The boardwalk is 5.7 kilometers from one end of the bay (the mouth of the Hopkins River) to the other (The Breakwater). We are told that you can walk the beach westward all the way up to Port Fairy, which would take most of a day. Andy has put it on his bucket list. 

We probably already have multiple pictures of the same view and most of them look like this. We access the boardwalk about mid-point of the bay.

The bay is famous for its shipwrecks back in the day, so there are different signs along the path describing different historical wrecks. 

The other day on our walk we encountered “Granny’s Grave” which is a spot we had heard mentioned before. It’s the gravesite, right along the beach walk, of the first white woman to die in Warrnambool when the settlement was only a year old. An intriguing site.

 

The inscription reads:

Granny's Grave

In Memory of Mrs. James Raddleston

The first white woman buried in Warrnambool

Died 1848

Erected by the town council in 1904

A Welcome Sign

Two initial observations of Melbourne were an apparent lack of visible folks without a home (“homeless”) on the streets, and secondly the wide spread use of motorized scooters to walk about town.

Melbourne is quite diverse culturally, or ethnically, or so it appeared. Although primarily “western” in outward visible style (i.e. culturally similar on outside to myself), it is a city of many colors. This is reflected in its restaurants, as well as in the flow of people on the streets, in shops, and behind desks.

Upon inquiry, I was assured that the homeless were there, but knew where not to go, and how to stay out of sight.  Three days in the downtown area, and coming/going from two train stations, offered up only five obvious to me “street people.” There is a state or territorial network of shelters and non-profit organizations whose mission is homeless and social relief efforts.  Do these organizations work, or is there a sit/lie scheme in place that puts an emperor’s new cloak of correctness on downtown Melbourne? 

Here in Warrnambool the woman at the town hall counter told me that earlier that day she had to send away a 76-year-old homeless man as there were no available shelter beds for him.

The local Brophy Center is a non-profit organization serving youth at risk, and the general community social and economic needs. (For those in Chico, imagine a cross of Youth for Change and the Community Action Agency).  One of the professors in the Education Department at Deakin University is on the Board, so I have an entry in to their meetings, operations, and service delivery.

The train ride from Melbourne to Warrnambool is what this post was to be about, or where to begin. It was very crowded. Even in the “reserved seat only “ car where we were, the aisles were full of standees.

Two “consumers” (in the Regional Center lexicon) were making their way down the aisle with some difficulty. A mom and teen aged son as it turned out, who ended up in the seats facing Ann and me. (Ann and I were facing backwards, as seats were pairs facing each other, so half of travelers always facing one way.)

The son had a “Companion Card” on a lanyard around his neck. I believe that let him travel for free, or reduced rate (concession fare) to help his mom. I saw so many of my former clients in her and in her sense of purpose from one task to the next, but with a task focus that only she and her son seemed to fully understand.

Mom would often get loud, and son would remind her to lower her voice. Any time there was a jostle or bump, mom would look concerned and say, “Excuse me,” and son would comfort her and say there was nothing for which she needed to excuse herself.

They were very loving with each other.

I helped them with luggage. They helped me with how the snack bar worked.

They gave Ann and me a nice introductory preview of Warrnambool to come. I sense that we will see them again during our stay here.

Many of the local businesses have the following sign posted on their door.

Some businesses also have one of these devices available for use.

At city hall, the interpretive sign below was on the counter, available to help as needed or wanted.

These are signs that inform me I am on track.

The Great Ocean Road

 We spent most of Sunday as guests for a drive along the scenic Great Ocean Road that essentially runs along the coast from Melbourne to just past Warrnambool. We covered just a short stretch of it. We were graced with great weather and saw some spectacular views of the limestone cliffs. The striations in the rock were breathtaking, worth painting when we get home.




This one on the right looked like a face looking out to the ocean. It mimicked us as we were mesmerized by the sounds and images of the waves breaking against the shore. Our hosts eventually had to pry us away, reminding us that this was the "taster" trip and we could come back another day.

The Twelve Apostles were actually only nine, and now eight as one has crumbled into the surf. There are signs of cracks and erosion on many of the remaining ones.  The light reflected differently every few minutes so we took loads of pictures. Along the way we stopped at various other overlooks to appreciate the natural wonders.

The Bay of Islands

The Grotto

London Bridge, that in fact, did fall down

Fortunately, we did not fall down.

One of the more spectacular shows was the waves crashing up against the cliffs. We watched one spot that was like a snowstorm, a fireworks display, and a symphony all wrapped up into one amazing show. For a small sample of it, but not nearly as cool as it was live, you can view a video we took on Youtube.

Belated Post on Melbourne Architecture

I hadn’t had a chance to write about the architecture in Melbourne but I had saved all the pictures I wanted to share. The city is a very cool combination of old and modern buildings, many times juxtaposed directly like in these pictures.

 

Maybe one of the more interesting modern buildings is the Eureka Tower, just completed in 2006. It’s one of the top three highest residential towers in the world. There’s an interesting backstory here: Eureka Tower

This was one of the more beautiful older buildings, Flinders Train Station. There were lots of people going in and out of there every time we walked by.

I was most intrigued by the Southern Cross Train Station where we boarded the train for Warrnambool last Saturday. While we were waiting on the platform to board our train, I took these pictures. These two buildings appear to be commercial buildings next to the train station.

But this one appeared to be some part of the train station because I saw staff enter it. Look at the cool windows. 

And I didn’t even get a good picture of the station itself, which is like the polar opposite of Flinder's Station. You can see some pictures of it here.

There were a lot of triangles and unusual angles in many of the modern building architecture. Federation Square is where the Melbourne Visitor’s Centre is. Also some pretty cool buildings there (click on the link to see some).

Chirps, Warbles, Tweets, and Gurgles

 I walked the Warrnambool campus this morning, Thursday, July 18 that is.

There was a light rain periodically gracing bright sunshine. (Our fifth rare sunny day in a row.)

Ann was attending a lecture, her first sort of official on-campus event.

There were very few other folks out and about. It felt like I had the grounds to myself, myself and the birds.

With each bush I passed by or tree I passed under there was one welcoming auditory explosion after another. I often could not see from whom these gifts were coming, but they were quite generous.

We had seen a small bright blue bird at the beach again yesterday, in the scrub and dunes along the beach path. It had bright iridescent blue patches. (Should be a photo in a prior post.) The beach side topography is quite reminiscent of Torrey Pines State Beach in southern California, when walking from the beach through the brush, back to one’s car and civilization. When seeing only sky and the windswept coastal vegetation, it is timeless, seemingly as it always was and will be. Interesting how such a changing evolving environment still has a sense of permanence. Yet how threatened and fragile all this is.

Path to beach dunes

The birds today were more numerous and varied than right at the beach. The campus is a bit inland but not much, certainly still a coastal milieu. Riparian environment to be exact, as it is along the Hopkins River, the river that meets the sea at Warrnambool’s easterly edge.

I walked the golf course along the river, with a view to other side of glistening green fields with a windbreak of trees marching with great precision up the hill from the river to crest and beyond.

I kept going in and out of the “I have been here before” syndrome. The Lawrenceville golf course (high school) morphing to walking the river along the backside of Merton College at Oxford (law school), to aforementioned Torrey Pines moment, to Bidwell Park (Chico) and its blending of the natural environment with the human. All this in the blink of an eye, an almost instantaneous teleportation. Once memory reaches a zone, it is off and running in a google search of its own creation.

Across the campus green, along the river

But always coming back to the “hear” and now of birds, the here and knowing of connections running deep, and being present and part of something as much exterior as interior.

It is walks like this that let me spread out and touch the earth as far as I can see, becoming one with it, all the while at the same time undergoing a subconscious exploration of familiar emotions and senses of prior embraces.

What a great way to recharge !

First Day on Campus

The “uni” is located on the outskirts of town, so my colleague Bernadette, and her husband Kristian who also works on campus, picked us up this morning to take us with them.  Australians tend to shorten and add a “ee” to lots of words. For example, breakfast is brekky and sunglasses are sunnies.

When we arrived, the first thing I did was look up in the eucalyptus trees for koalas. They have them there from time to time and I was hoping this was one of those times, but alas, not today.

We met some of the staff and faculty, I got some office time, but the highlight for me was attending Bernadette’s lecture. She had a 50-minute lecture and then the 73 students would be divided into two sections and have another 50-minute tutorial with another instructor named Ally. Ally is a local teacher on leave, who would be what we call a lecturer. Today was Ally’s first time teaching the tutorial, so she was a bit nervous. We sat together before Bernadette’s lecture and shared some small talk about what grades we’ve taught (which included some translation of vocabulary) and how practicing teachers make terrible students. It’s really universal I guess.

It was the first day of the semester so students were just assigned their first “professional placement,” which is 5 full days in a classroom during the fifth week of the semester. (For Chico State folks, this looks similar to our program’s prerequisite 45-hour requirement.) As I surveyed the room, I thought the students looked remarkably similar to Chico students, about half were young white women, about 1/3 of them were men (which Bernadette said was a bit higher than normal), and about a dozen of them appeared to be older students. I only saw one person who appeared to me to be a person of color.

Bernadette introduced the course “The Social Contexts of Education” which is the continuation of content they had in the first semester where they discussed their own identities as teachers. As part of her overview of how education is contextual, Bernadette showed a clip of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who was shot by the Taliban speak to the UN. It’s really powerful and moving and I had tears through the whole thing. Bernadette got choked up afterwards trying to speak about it – nice to know a kindred crier.

At the end of the lecture, I turned to Ally and said, “Well, everything she just said is basically the exact same thing I teach.” And Ally said something to the effect, “Well then, after you and she are done, we can expect that the world will be changed.”

The irony of that statement is that Bernadette’s last quote of her power point, on a slide labeled “Provocations,” was “Statistically speaking, the best advice we can give to a poor child, keen to get ahead through education, is to choose richer parents” (Connell, 1995, cited in Thomson, 2002).

The Wild Life (so far)

Little beach bird.

Right behind us, you can't see the Southern Right Whale we saw.

Ducks on the cliffs at Tower Hill (volcano remnant)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An emu that was getting too close for comfort

You can't see the joey, but it's in there!

Needs no title, except damn cute!