Come join me on a Bushland Meander

Ah, the wacky and wonderful world of Australia, it’s like waking up in a Willy Wonka land of opposites. October is spring, kangaroos replace deer, birds sound like R2-D2, friends are mates, and cars drive on the other side of the road. I spent two weeks in Australia, most of it in the capital Canberra (pronounced Canburra as Aussies will happily correct you) and two weekends in Sydney.

My Australian experience fittingly began in Sydney with the Opera House and Harbor Bridge. If you walk through the Royal Botanic Gardens to Macquerie’s Point, one of the truly iconic sights in the world slips inconspicuously into view as you round the bend. Sunshine brightly glints off the tiled sails of the opera house, which seems to float on the edge of Sydney Harbor. Like a frame in the background are the arching iron braces of the Harbor Bridge, spotted with ant-sized people doing the bridge climb.

After wandering around the opera house for a while, we continued across Sydney Harbor the Museum of Modern Art, a challenge for the jet lagged senses. Stuffed internal organs, anyone?

Did I mention that after traveling 24 hours, we crossed the international dateline and then arrived in Australia around 6:00 a.m? I call it the “jet lag challenge” to stay awake until a reasonable bedtime. Our conversation by the end of the night had devolved to checking our watches and commenting, “Only two more hours until eight,” and so on at decreasing intervals. Howevever, the view below is not the worst way to stay awake. 

The next day after a glorious night of sleep – and let me tell you, a bed never feels better than it does after staying awake/attempting to “sleep” in an economy seat for 38 hours – we did the Bondi to Coogee walk. If you start googling “things to do in Sydney” (which let’s face it, is always how I begin planning trips), this walk shows very high on most lists and for good reason. It’s a four mile walk along a cliffed coastline, from beach to beach. In the heat of the summer, apparently Bondi Beach is the place to see and be seen. For us, it was a crisply pleasant spring day with plenty of room for ourselves.

Our first workday in Canberra, our handler took me and my colleagues on an “Australian Safari” through a local park, which yielded multiple kangaroo sightings, as well as a handful of what to me are exotic birds – giant white cockatoos, small green parrots, magpies, all making completely foreign noises. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about birdcalls, but when they’re this different, you notice. The magpies sound like they’re being run through auto-tuners (or like R2D2), and the cockatoos sound like a shrieking drug addicts. The cockatoos, of course, vigorously vocalized outside my hotel window in the early mornings. Who needs an alarm clock when you can have cockatoos? The kangaroos just chill under groves of trees or wait patiently on the side of the road for cars to pass. They’re as ubiquitous as deer are in the US, even requiring occasional culling to reduce their numbers. But come on, how much cooler are kangaroos than deer?

Probably the coolest part of my Australian odyssey was renting a car and driving to the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. Renting a car may not be particularly exciting in the US, but let me assure you that it is an adventure when the steering wheel is on the right and you’re expected to drive on the left of the road. It took me about five attempts to stop turning on the windshield wipers when I turned. The fact that we were given a bright lime bug of vehicle just made it that much better.

Tidbinbilla gave us a little flavor of the Australian bushland as we meandered through its scruffy landscape along the whimsically named “Koala Loop” and “Peppermint Trail.” (I know these things wouldn’t faze Aussies) but there were koalas in the trees and kangaroos in the fields! I guess I understand now why zoos in Europe have the “North American Raccoon.” 

 This is a tree full of koalas.

This is a kangaroo I nearly walked straight into, munching grass behind a large rock. Hello, baby roo.

 This is a field of kangaroos. A field of kangaroos. Wacky and wonderful, huh?

From the Land of Kiwis

When I close my eyes, my memories of New Zealand explode in color and endless expanses of mountain scapes and glacial lakes. We spent four magnificent days on the South Island, in and around Queenstown, mouths watering over the delicious food and vistas alike.

We decided to hike on our first full day to the summit of Ben Lomond, a mountain overlooking the city. Somehow it failed to occur to me that hiking a mountain is well, still climbing a mountain even if no special equipment is required to do so. It was a difficult, long hike, and while exhausted and battered by the end, I’ve never spent seven straight hours in such sublime wonder. From the moment we cleared the tree line and could see the spectacular teal of the glacial lake filled valley on one side and the snow dusted mountain range on the other, the panoramic, stunning views didn’t stop. We climbed from a sparse pine forest through deep rust and daffodil colored tussock, to the rocky, snow-covered crest. Accompanying us the entire hike was breathtaking beauty and serenity, surrounded by near complete silence broken only by the occasional gust of wind. At the very top, the landscape changed drastically once again, battering us with knee deep snow and wind so cold my iPhone shut itself off. We spent only a few minutes at the inhospitable summit, but the combination of achievement, view, and thin oxygen was euphoric.

We ate some fantastic meals in Queenstown. I’ve never seen a place so “green”, as in devoted to conservation and sustainable practices in everyday life. Driving around the country, the sheep, little lambs, cows, and deer are lounging on or happily munching away at idyllic expanses of green. Many will eventually end up on a plate, but they sure have a good life beforehand, unlike the CAFO (Concentrated Animal Factory Operation)’s in the US. All the fish served in restaurants is caught in or off the coast of New Zealand with rigorously enforced sustainable fishing practices, and nearly everything is produced in country and delicious – dairy, vegetables, wine, you name it. New Zealand is said to produce some of the best white wines in the world, and I was not disappointed. In my generous sampling, I found depth and complexity that is usually unique to reds.

I also loved the people… They really call themselves Kiwis, as in, “We realized it was important to preserve the land for future generations of Kiwis, and visitors as well.” Thirty percent of the land in New Zealand is national parks or reserves, meaning no development is allowed. I’m happy I had the privilege of seeing these funny little flightless, nocturnal birds at a special kiwi breeding house. They basically look like large kiwi fruits with long beaks, two long legs and no wings. They’re adorable and New Zealand is the only place in the world they’re found.

I saw my first fjord, incorrectly named Milford Sound since it was created by glaciers not running water. The awe-inspiring drive through Fjordland National Park was worth the journey by itself. We passed the mountain where Sir Edmund Hillary (Kiwi) spent several months conditioning himself for his Everest attempt, and also saw a Kea – the world’s only alpine parrot. The clever, impish, dusky green parrot is coveted by illegal animal traffickers, but one has never been successfully smuggled out of the country because Keas die shortly after they’re caged. Poetic in a heart breaking way, isn’t it? The boat ride out through the misty, magical fjord was filled with lazy seals, snow covered mountain peaks, and ephemeral waterfalls created by fresh rainfall. One of the permanent waterfalls is three times the height of Niagra Falls and yet somehow manages to look tiny, dwarfed by the mountains around it.

On the long drive out, our drive and guide told of New Zealand’s struggle with introduced, non-native invasive species. Some worked out well like the trout that’s now a popular game fish, and others less so, such as the rabbits that were introduced by early European settlers and quickly reproduced out of control to become a scourge of farmland, eating crops to dust. As a solution, stouts and ferrets were introduced to kill the rabbits, which then went on to decimate the native bird species of New Zealand, many of which, like the Kiwi, lost their flight evolving on a predator-less island. So going back to the Kiwi house, there’s now a large, shared effort among the government, communities, and even corporations to breed kiwis in captivity. The young are kept safe until they grow big enough to fight off the ferrets and stoats, then released into the wild. The efforts have had a lot of success but it seems like the problem might forever require a high level of vigilance and action. The ironic part is after all that, the rabbits are still a problem 

too.

And finally, I left New Zealand stocked with as much wool as I could wear, socks, scarfs, hats, gloves… So warm and soft, I’m a convert. Ryan said I’m turning into a sheep. Also it’s worth noting that pretty much everywhere we went felt like it could have been a setting from Lord of the Rings. I’m geekily obsessed with a restaurant we found call “The Cow,” down the only back alley in Queenstown, which I swear if it wasn’t actually the set of a hobbit tavern scene, it most definitely inspired one.