The Flora and Fauna of Australia, Part II: Melbourne and Surrounds

Hey, everyone--

Sorry for the long silence, but I managed to catch the dreaded Sydney flu and was laid up for a week. So, not much to report from these past few days (other than Australian Idol has started its fifth season). But I do have some catching up to do posting pics from past weeks, so here are some from my trip to Melbourne three weeks ago. I was there for the AMSA (Australian Marine Sciences Association) conference.

Apparently it's common knowledge here in Sydney that Melbourne has terrible weather in the winters. And it was mostly cold and rainy but the weekend wasn't bad and in Melbourne they were a lot more pragmatic about the weather: "If you don't like it, wait 5 minutes." Which turned out to be true. Most days we cycled through about 3 season's worth of weather.

The conference was held at the University of Melbourne, and our group stayed on campus, at Trinity College. A really picturesque setting, aside from the modern yellow block of a building we stayed in. My favorite thing on campus were the drainpipes on a building close to Trinity-- they were former Prof's heads!

(OK, not the actual heads of former profs-- I think tenure probably protects you from that kind of treatment-- but you get what I mean).


Melbourne itself is a really neat town, with a very different flavor from Sydney. Definitely European, and near the university was a strip full of really good Italian restaurants-- I was a happy camper breakfast, lunch and dinner. My last day I made sure to stop at Brunetti's, a really famous pastry place. I had to get the combination plate and try a little bit of everything.
On the last night of the conference we had dinner at the Melbourne aquarium, which was great! Lots of neat stuff, including jellyfish, which are always one of my favorite things to see.
But I was a little disappointed that we didn't get any seafood for dinner. ;)

I was also lucky enough to snag an invitation from one of the students at Melbourne to go wine tasting on Saturday after the conference was over. The Yarra Valley is just about an hour outside of Melbourne, really picturesque (not too different from Northern California) and well known for Pinot Noir, though their Pinot tends toward the lighter, European style. Before heading for the wine country, we fueled up with a big farmer's breakfast at the Collingwood Children's Farm, an urban farm, petting zoo and organic garden market all rolled into one, only minutes away from the University.

Then it was off into the rolling hills of the Yarra Valley, where we managed to hit a healthy handful of wineries, including Chandon (famous for its sparkling wines, but really a place to stop for the scenery more than the wine-- like Ferrari Carrano in Sonoma), The Step, an urban winery where they make Innocent Bystander wines, young and funky, and De Bortoli, a more traditional winery where I picked up a bottle of port described as "sticky pudding in a glass." All in all a really satisfying week!

The Flora and Fauna of Australia, Part I: Sydney

Sorry about the long silence, everyone. Had a pretty uneventful week in Sydney followed by a week in Melbourne for a conference where I was -- gasp! -- without internet access. So let's play a little show and tell catch-up and I can show off my photos of some of Australia's favorite critters...

During my first week back in Sydney after orientation, I met up with some friends at the Sydney Aquarium, which is a pretty nice aquarium with one of those exhibits that's all the rage in aquaria these days-- the overhead tunnel that lets the fish etc swim right over you as you walk through. Given Australia's amazing marine diversity-- particularly when it comes to sharks-- this was pretty spectacular.

Now if you were that fish, wouldn't you be worried? Unfortunately, this was one of the few days I forgot to charge my camera batteries before heading out, so I don't have pictures of the shark feeding. Have to say, though, these guys are all pretty well fed. They were eating with a sort of bored indifference. Or maybe it was because they were only allowed to eat pre-killed squid, and not the tasty wriggly morsels sharing the tank with them.

The next day a couple of us headed out to Manly Beach (great name for an Australian beach, don't you think?-- exactly what it sounds like; the western peoples that named the beach found the Aboriginals they encountered there to be "manly", hence the name). Despite the blustery weather (which turned to steady rain by the end of the day), the surfers were out in full force, battling the massive waves crashing against the sandstone cliffs so characteristic of Sydney's coastline. We watched them in awe and concern for a while, then set out off on a lovely, if sometimes mildly impenetrable, hiking track that led us to some incredible views of the coastline. With very un-American access to precipitous cliff edges-- not a handrail culture, this.

I'm definitely going to have to make a collection of my favorite signs from this trip. For sure the "No Furbees" and the "Falling Hiker" will be at the top of the list.

Of course, the next natural stopping point in our tour of Sydney's wildlife is the Zoo! Taronga Zoo, which has the cutest platypus logo (which I, of course, failed to photograph). From the CBD (Central Business District = Downtown, for those that aren't up on the lingo yet), it's accessed by ferry, which provides some stunning views of the harbor skyline.

For those of you who have been jonesing for some opera house pictures, here are a couple. We're finally having more sunshine this week, so I may get out there again to get some closer shots.

These are really the pictures that make me think, when I go back to them: "gee, I'm really here."

The news came out last week that the Opera House has made it onto the list of World Heritage Sites. Definitely a deserved honor-- it's just as incredible as it looks in the photos.

I haven't yet been to see anything in the opera house, but there are several theatres inside showing anything from opera to traditional plays to experimental theatre and comedy. Which is great, because it also means there are shows available for every budget. That might be what I treat myself to this weekend.

Okay, back to the animals at Taronga Zoo. We'll start with one of my favorites-- I think this one looks like a platypus that has lost its tail and is in the middle of being badly electrocuted. Any guesses? Yes! It's an akidna! Yay akidnas! Aren't they the best?

And of course, when talking about cute stodgy animals, one can't leave out the koala. And I even have an action shot! Extremely rare, as these guys spend about 22 hours out of the day sleeping.

Can someone say "Aww?"

Really they're glorified sloths, but very cute ones. Though I don't think they're known for their friendly nature; there are only a few parks here where you can get really up close and personal. There's a place up in the blue mountains where you can handle most of the animals. Hopefully I'll get a chance to go up there for a day or two and check that out.

Now here we have some of Australia's more esoteric creatures:

This is one that might be more at home in certain parts of the US...

And here are some invasive species you may be familiar with....

And if you think it's only tourists that get enthusiastic about the local beasties, you've got another think coming! Just look at the national team names here: the Socceroos, the Wallabies-- which reminds me, the Wallabies just beat South Africa in the Tri-Nations Rugby Cup last week. The first half was an exciting game, with South Africa starting out ahead and then Australia rallying to score, but once the Wallabies were in the lead nothing much happened in the second part of the game.

And finally, before I leave you for now, a new arrival to Sydney's fauna-- Fiona's new puppy! This is Leilani (Lani for short, or as I prefer, Squirt). She's a Mini Foxie (sp?) puppy, cute as a button but with a penchant for nibbling on toes. She's just getting settled into life in Balmain but has been generally a very good dog, and sleeps quietly most of the night. I would suggest wearing thick socks should you come to visit, though.

Perthistence Pays

Maybe as a preamble here I should apologize for all the bad puns. I can't, however, guarantee that I won't continue to populate my blog posts with them.



But now on to the exciting stuff-- I did it! I'm now officially licensed to kick butt and take names. Or work offshore. Sort of the same thing really.
This involved flying all the way across the Australian continent from Sydney to Perth, in Western Australia. Notice the "Economy Class" label in the gate sign here? In Australia business class and economy class actually get on board through different doors and different corridors. Kind of reminds me of the way English pubs will often have two entrances for upper class and lower class sides. Kind of suprising. As far as I've been able to see in my limited (but growing) experience with Australian air travel, it doesn't really speed up the process at all.





I've been in Fremantle, a coastal town just down the Swan River from Perth, the capital of Western Australia, for 2+ days now. I haven't really had a chance to do any sightseeing, as I've been pretty busy over the past two days. However, I'm staying at a really nice resort on the swan river with a really comfortable room, nice views, and two pools and a spa. (Pools seem to be as ubiquitous as driveways here).

I've just finished my TBOSIET training-- Tropical Basic Offshore Safety Induction and Emergency Training. Maybe I should rename this my acronym post. TBOSIET consists of four parts-- General Offshore Safety Training, Fire Fighting, Sea Survival Skills and the pinnacle: HUET, or Helicopter Underwater Escape Training.


In a nutshell, I spent two days escaping from smoke filled buildings, putting out various types of fires, jumping off three meter platforms into water, getting into life rafts, being winched from the water onto a platform, and getting strapped into a helicopter simulator which then sinks and turns upside down, and from which you have to escape by either opening a door or removing a window and making your way to the surface.

It was a bit harrowing, as I don't swim, but in the end the two days were really fun and something I never would have had the opportunity to do if I hadn't come to Australia to volunteer on the SEA SERPENT program through the University of Sydney.

All in all I'm more resolved than ever to learn to swim this winter/summer, and I feel much more confident about how to conduct myself in case of an emergency.

I'm also really looking forward to the opportunity to go offshore in a few weeks, which is the motivation behind my doing the TBOSIET course in the first place-- you are not allowed to go offshore in Australia without this certification.

(And see, Jess, I got some pictures of me in these last posts just so you'd believe I'm really in Australia).

OK, long wet day and now I'm going to relax in front of the TV.

First Footie

Saturday night, second week in Sydney, I got together with the other EAPSI folks working in Sydney (Laura, Nik, and Larisa, left to right) to witness our very first live footie game. It was an Australian Rules Footbal Game (Aussie Rules is typically referred to as "footie" here, though I've also seen this term used, confusingly, to describe league and union rugby games). The Sydney Swans were playing Collingwood, a team based near Melbourne.






The game took place in Telstra Stadium in Sydney's Olympic Park, the impressive complex of sports venues that were built for the Sydney games back in 2000. It was a very nice stadium, partially enclosed with large screems showing closeup game action (lucky for us, as we were up in the nosebleed seats).

Unlucky for us, it was an abysmal game-- Sydney was favored to win as it was the older and more experienced team, whereas the Collies, though young and fast, had a lot of injured players.




Well, Sydney couldn't hold on to the ball for poop (excuse the editorial censoring) and the score was A LOT to NOT MUCH withing the first quarter. We left before the end, but I captured the third quarter score.

Yes, that's right. 13 to 47. You can see why we left early. But Sydney did make most of its points towards the end of the game, something they're apparently known for.










Still, good game or not this really gave me a taste for watching sports in Australia-- a fun, well-attended game in a clean and well-equipped stadium, and the crowd was enthusiastic but affable, with people barracking for the swans (don't say "rooting" here, it doesn't mean what you think it means) sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Collie supporters.

I'm really looking forward to catching a few more live games while I'm out here-- rugby league, rugby union, aussie rules football, netball, soccer, cricket.... there will be plenty to keep me entertained.

Capital City Capers

For most of the other 19 American students sharing this Aussie winter experience with me, the adventure began with our orientation in Canberra, Australia's capital city. I had arrived a couple of days earlier to settle in my new quarters in Sydney, but from Wednesday through Saturday, June 13-17th, I joined my fellow Yanks (more on this later) for an orientation and a chance to get to know one another a little before we all headed out to our host institutions throughout (part of) Australia. We all met up in the domestic terminal of the Sydney airport to catch our little puddle jumper to Canberra. Qantas has some really nifty looking planes (though we didn't get to fly in one):



Much like Washington DC, Canberra is located in a nebulous non-state: ACT, or Australian Capital Territory. The story goes that Melbourne and Sydney couldn't agree on which state should get to have the capital city in it and they had to settle on creating some neutral ground on which to place it. And as it turns out that neutral ground is quite picturesque and, in the winter, dreadfully cold (this is Australian cold, mind you, which means that it nears, but never quite reaches, freezing. Given the humidity here, however, it can feel pretty unbearable).

Canberra was actually designed by an American from Illinois-- Walter Burley Griffin, who won a design competition to plan out the capital city. He was a former draughtsman of Frank Lloyd Wright. Looking around, the whole city struck me as awfully Olmsted-ian.

We were kept pretty busy during our four-day orientation, with visits to Parliament, the National Museum, the Botanic Gardens, and some program-specific visits that split us up among the biology, medicine, engineering and computer science groups.

Here we are at Parliament, up on the (green) roof looking out over a spectacular view of Canberra. Would have been even nicer if we weren't freezing.
We had a pretty entertaining tour guide who turned out to be a chemistry graduate student over at Australian National University (ANU), though I don't think his parallels between the Australian and American governments were always on the mark ("Our Queen is sort of like your president...")

The Parliament building is very beautiful-- I have to hand it to Australia for knowing how to make modern buildings that are actually aesthetically pleasing. I've noticed a lot of striking glass architecture in both Sydney and Canberra. In the Parliament building, there was an interesting juxtaposition of marble, glass and more traditional (native) hardwoods.

Australians also appear to be pretty heavily into symbolism. The tall marble columns in the main hall above are meant to represent the tall forests western man found when arriving in Australia (I think-- I wasn't paying as good attention during the tour as I should have been).

We even got to sit in during a questions session at Parliament, where we got to hear the Opposition confront the Liberal Party on improper use of a government property for fundraising. Here the Liberals are what we think of as Conservatives and the Labor Party are like our Democrats. Both parties are fairly centrist, as far as I understand it. The leader of the opposition party, Rudd, is looking to beat our John Howard, the leader of the Liberal Party, in the next election and become Prime Minister. It's a bit different here-- everyone votes for a party rather than a candidate, and then whoever is leader of the party (which I think is decided internally) gets to be Prime Minister.

Just as striking as the Parliament building, but in an entirely different way, is the Australian National Museum. Once again this is a modern building, but a very colorful one:

This is a view from the internal courtyard. The museum is essentially laid out in a big curve. Across the shiny outer wall panels running along the top of the wall are a series of meter-high dimples that actually spell out common Australian idioms in Braille. Unfortunately I don't have a good shot of that here (and you'd need a blind giant, as someone in our group put it, to decipher it anyway).

Aside from the pretty buildings, we also got to see our fair share of pretty nature-- in the Botanic Gardens and in the local surrounds. We endured a chilly rainy walk in the Gardens to see some typical native Australian plants. The two pictures below with the "corncob" flowers are both Banksias. This class of plants is very common here and I see them everywhere, even in the city, and they come in all shapes and sizes from ground creepers to tall trees.
When the flowers are done blooming the plants form hard dark seed pods (kind of like pinecones) that local birds pelt at you as you walk beneath the tree canopy (at least there's a particular street on the way to Uni where the birds seem to have it in for me).

There are also a number of plants that are cactus-like but are not catci. Here is one pretty plant adorned with nasty needles:So that's the Flora. But I'll bet you've all been waiting to hear about the Fauna. Lucky for me, I got to go on the Biology tour with a few other students, and we got more or less up close and quite personal with some fine Australian critters. We went to ANU's School of Botany and Zoology to learn about their programs studying and tracking wallabies, koalas and kangaroos with Professor Bill Foley, a vertebrate zoologist. No koalas there, I'm afraid, but we got to see the radio collars they track them with. We also had a great lecture from the "Wallaby Woman"-- I can't find her anywhere on the site and unfortunately I don't remember her name, but I seem to remember she is a visiting scholar at ANU this term.
So, guess what's in the burlap sack? What's that? A diminutive kangaroo, you say? Well, you're absolutely right! It's a wallaby! With a baby! In the pouch!
Unfortunately I didn't get a good shot, so you'll just have to take my word for it. This picture was taken in a little steel shed that opens into the wallaby enclosure. Around the outside, separated by an electric fence, was the resident herd of grey kangaroos (second largest in Australia, the largest one being the red kangaroo, but the only one of those I've seen so far has been roadkill. In that sense they fill the same niche as deer do in the States).

I have to say that was pretty awesome. And they're very surreal when they're moving, I guess because we don't have experience with anything that moves quite the same way at home. Their bounding is very fluid and they're fast. Apparently their hopping gait is also very energetically favorable. Increasing their speed when hopping actually doesn't increase their energy expenditure at all (there's a cool plot somewhere, let me see if I can dig it up).

And what do you do when you have to catch one of these critters for research purposes? Simply dart them with a tranq?
Of course not! The only real way to tag a roo is with a crossbow. Oohh, yeah.
From large crossbows to tiny vehicles-- the ANU department of zoology has it all.

Aren't little vehicles sweet? And speaking of sweet, after this marsupial mayhem we got to head into the much warmer zoology building where we met Lucy-- a native Australian python (Mom, you may want to skip this part).



Isn't she cute? She was an unusual (to me) black and cream color, and very friendly (although I guess most constrictors are, by nature).

That was it for ANU zoology. Really the highlight of the trip for me. The people who went on the medical science tour got some really nice shirts but I don't care (she says petulantly). I got to hold a snake. And we saw a baby wallaby. In the pouch.

And after all that sciency goodness, all (18?) of us got to have Friday evening off, and we cut loose in the streets of Canberra. Well, in the pub, anyway. Where a DJ was present to get us moving with some classic hits from the 80s.
Needless to say, a good time was had by all. We all made it to our host cities just fine the next day (I think) and are now being valuable members of society as we contribute to the scientific Greater Good.

Now after all that raucousness, I'll leave you with some pleasantly soporific scenes from our stay in Canberra-- the ubiquitous rainbow (we had a number over the week, but I like the way this one is framed but the curve of "dome", on of the main Australian Academy of Sciences buildings), and a pretty sunset outlining Telstra Tower in the distance (they're the Australian version of Comcast). Good night, all.