To the Unfamiliar: 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.”