Life in the Ring of Fire Part 47: Australia

This week's Tautu language word is “ejke.” It's simplest translation is just “no.” It can also be used, however, to mean “there isn't” or “there isn't any.” For example you can say “mle ejke” to mean “There isn't any kava” or “we're out of kava.”

OK, so, Australia, cool place. And I mean that literally, it was quite cold, especially at night. The house we were staying at in the Blue Mountains didn't have any central heating, only a fireplace. The fireplace, of course, was in the living room, so that tended to stay reasonably warm, but the rest of the house was generally frigid at night. There were electric blankets on all the beds, so sleeping wasn't a problem but, say, getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night had to be a speedy exercise involving the minimum amount of time out of bed possible. No settling in on the pot with a newspaper in this place. When we'd arrived the previous night I'd piled wood on the fire in preparation for having it burn through the night, but I'd forgotten to close the air intake (the air intake limits the amount of oxygen allowed to the fire. If it's almost closed, there's a minimum of oxygen, meaning a cooler, longer-burning fire. If it's open, it makes a hot, quick-burning fire), so the fire had burned itself out by morning. Fortunately, I live in Vanuatu, so getting a new fire going wasn't as big a problem as it would have been a few months ago. It still required a good bit of time tramping around in the freezing collecting kindling though. As a mentioned last issue, though, it was kind of nice for the default temperature to be cold instead of hot, as there are a number of strategies one can undertake to combat the cold (get a fire going, put on a coat, crawl under a blanket, etc), whereas for the heat you just have to take it. It also cuts down significantly on the lethargy.

Well, fair warning, but I'm going to be waxing in and out of philosophic musings during this entry to talk about the thoughts I was having about briefly returning to a western lifestyle after a year away from it. Before I start though, I want to get something straight: I'm not trying to badmouth my native culture and lifestyle. I'm not about to abandon western civilization in favor of the quasi-wilderness of Vanuatu. I loved Australia, I was happy to be there. I also love the US. In fact, the US is still my favorite country that I've been to. I also love Vanuatu. Vanuatu has very little in common with places like the US and Australia. I think this is cool. I admire my adopted Vanuatu culture and lifestyle and I am fully in favor of preserving it against too much western influence, not because I think Vanuatu's culture is necessarily better, but simply because it's different. Similarly, I wouldn't want the US or Europe or Australia to adopt the Vanuatu way of life. It makes me happy to know that two (and maybe more) so drastically different, yet still functional, lifestyles can exist together. That way, when you get tired of one you can go experience a different one for a while and then, when you get tired of the new one, you can go back. OK, first things first: plumbing. I remember recently having had a discussion with McKenzie and Laura about indoor plumbing, specifically hot showers and indoor toilets. All three of us have adjusted to using cold bucket showers and outhouses, and it wasn't at all difficult to do, both of these things work pretty well in Vanuatu and we were wondering why we'd found the idea of them so terrible in the States. What we'd forgotten, however, was that in Vanuatu it's not FREAKING FREEZING. I gotta say, I was not about to fill up a bucket with cold water and go outside to wash myself in the Blue Mountains of Australia. Nor would I have been particularly amenable to the idea of going outside in the cold to use the bathroom. So yeah, indoor plumbing and hot showers, check. Good thinking. Another thing that struck me, and I don't know if this is something that's happened in the States too since I've been gone or if it's just Australia, but it was weird how trendy being global warming conscious has become. Actually, environmental consciousness in general seemed to be heightened, but the change in thinking about global warming was particularly drastic. All the businesses along the little main street of the small town we were staying in (previously, I would have used the word “village” to describe the town we were in, but these days village has an entirely new meaning for me) had these signs up advertising how they were a carbon-neutral business (meaning, I believe, that they had opted into some plan with their power company to pay extra in order to support alternative energy). This seemed odd to me for two reasons. Firstly, it was weird to see something that I'd really only heard talked about in academia plastered all over the place. Secondly, it had become strange for me to see the environment talked about as something that's fragile and would break if handled improperly. In Vanuatu nature seems big, powerful, and intimidating, not something you worry about accidentally breaking. It'd be like if someone described a tank as fragile. Of course, I didn't see anyone living in a hut in Australia, so I guess it's easy to see where the difference in perspective comes from.

Anyway, first order of business after getting the fire going Monday morning was exploring the town and perhaps finding some breakfast. One of my goals for being in Australia was consuming as much bacon as humanly possible. Why bacon? You may ask. Well, because it's amazingly delicious, that's why. We chose a restaurant for breakfast and wandered in to discover that heat had somehow gone out of fashion in Australia. Just like the house, the restaurant wasn't heated either. Neither was the grocery store, or the butcher shop, or the bakery, or the pharmacy. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I had fried eggs on sourdough bread (you know what's almost as awesome as bacon? Sourdough bread. I'd forgotten about it. It's amazing. If you're in a position to do so, I suggest you go eat some immediately) with a side of bacon. Fortunately, we seemed to have stumbled into a town that knew its bacon. Instead of the pathetic dry, thin, skinny slices I was expecting, I was presented with three glorious strips of dripping, beefy bacon, each piece almost too long for my plate. The trend of delicious bacon continued when we went to the butcher's after breakfast and I feasted my eyes on the heavenly selection of meats, none of which appeared to have animal hair still attached to them. Like I said, the bacon was especially extraordinary, nice thick, meaty slices with just the right fat to pork ratio. The lamb looked awesome too. Lamb was another one of those things I'd forgotten about. Apparently Australia is a big lamb producer because the lamb was one of the least expensive meats available. We purchased a lot of lamb, bacon, and chicken. I'd been craving a nice juicy piece of chicken for several months previously. And yes, I know, why should I miss chicken? As I've said on numerous occasions, Vanuatu is absolutely crawling with chickens, surely eating chicken is a common occurrence. OK, well, allow me to clarify: I'd been craving a nice piece of factory raised, hormone pumped, specially bred, not-viable-in-the-wild chicken. Yes, I know, it's a cruel practice. I know chickens are cooped up practically on top of each other and not allowed to move. I know they're fed hormones to make them grow larger breasts. I know they're so impractically huge they can't even mate naturally. But, let me ask you this: have you ever eaten a wild chicken? They're awful. Each bone has approximately three molecules of meat on it, and it has the consistency of tanned leather. It's like eating a belt. A bony belt. You have to boil it for at least an hour to make it even begin to approach edible. Personally, I'll take the mass produced stuff any day. As an added bonus at the butcher's, some Australian meat grower's group had come up with promotional posters that were all over the butcher shop with slogans like: “Red Meat. If it had any more nutrients, you'd need a prescription.” or “Red Meat, satisfy your 2 million year old craving.”

After the butcher we went to the bakery to get more sourdough bread as well as some pastries and croissants. After that it was the deli for ham, pastrami, and cheese. The pastrami was particularly good. There's this cut of pastrami at the grocery store in Vila that I salivate over every time I go in, but I've never been able to justify buying it. And, my God, I just want to pause for a second to fill you guys in on how painful it is for me to be writing this, after the fact, while sitting in my house in Tautu. Want to know what I had for lunch today? Sweet potatoes. I'll probably have more sweet potatoes for dinner or, if I'm lucky, Duncan will have cooked up some rice with canned tuna and cabbage. So, to all of my readers residing in reasonably developed countries, I want you to do me favor. Think of your favorite meal. Got it? OK, now go eat it. Maybe there's a restaurant nearby that makes it well, that's cool, go hit that up. Maybe you have to go to the grocery store and buy the ingredients and make it yourself. That's cool too. How unbelievably sweet is it that you can just go out and procure basically any food item on the planet whenever you want to? Like, you could eat a totally different meal made with totally different ingredients every day for, like, a month and every one would be delicious. In fact, for those particularly dedicated readers of mine, do this: take a weekend and just go to town with your meals. Make every breakfast, lunch, and dinner something good. No skipped meals. No Ramen noodles. No grabbing a piece of bread on your way out to tie you over. No leftovers. Make every meal something you really love. That's six awesome meals in a row. Oh, and no repeats either. Then write me an email and tell me about it. Sweet. I'll stop my food sermon. But, you know what, that's the thing I miss the very most here in Vanuatu: food. Not running water, not hot showers, not the internet, not air conditioning, not cars, not dishwashers or TV. Food. Weird, huh? But there you go. Onwards.

Now, the Blue Mountains are, of course, mountains. So there were some good views and hikes to be had in the area surrounding our house. Unfortunately, it was unseasonably cold, and we didn't really have adequate clothing to go to some of the really sweet places. We tried to go to a place called echo point, which had a great view of a gorgeous canyon between the mountains, but it also had crosswinds coming in at approximately 30 million miles per hour, so we could only go out to enjoy the view for about a minute at a time before scurrying back inside the gift shop. Also, my dad had come down with a cold on the plane from Vanuatu, so he wasn't really up for hiking all that much. My mom, brother, and I did go on one hike down to a waterfall, which was pretty cool but, overall, our outdoors activities were somewhat limited. Still, that was fine with me. I enjoyed the mountainous backdrop, the blustery small town we were in, and the winding roads built onto the sides of cliffs. More than anything, it was a change of scenery. My favorite activity in the Blue Mountains turned out being sitting in front of the fire with a glass of wine (OK, I'll expand the things I miss most while in Vanuatu to include drinks), a pastrami, bacon, ham, and cheese sandwich on toasted sourdough, and watching a movie. Try it sometime.

On Wednesday we headed back into Sydney to get some city time in. On the way, however, we stopped at a sort of zoo to observe the Australian macro-fauna. We saw kangaroos, wombats, koalas, Tasmanian devils, dingos, and emus. I think the most surprising were the wombats. I don't really know what I was picturing a wombat would look like, but it didn't. It was sort of a like a giant fur-ball with little stumpy legs. I can't do it justice in writing, look up a picture on Google images if you're interested.

If you haven't been to Sydney, you should check it out. It is gorgeous. It's a harbor city and has three or four harbors strung out along its length. They're all very nice. The wharves and waterways are surprisingly clean, given the size of the city and the amount of traffic it gets. Despite the fact that its so built up, it still has some lovely views of the ocean. They did a good job of planning their constructions such that they add to the natural beauty of the place as opposed to taking away from it. What sucks about Sydney is driving in it. My dad and I had a fun adventure trying to return the rental car where we were thwarted by many a one-way street and No Right Turn sign (they drive on the left in Australia). The first night we were there we went to a Mexican restaurant which my mom had read about on the internet. It was very good and, at least temporarily, satisfied my deep and long-running craving for Mexican food. I got nachos (man, I would honestly kill for a plate of nachos right now), chicken mole (sort of a spicy chocolate peanut sauce) and (yes!) an excellent margarita. We saw the famous opera house which, I'm sorry to say, looks a lot bigger and more impressive in the photos. A lot whiter too. It always looks like it's just been bleached or something in the pictures, but really it's kind of a light tan color. The grounds were very nice though. At the Royal Botanical Gardens we say flying fox, which was kind of funny for me to see them kept and cared for so, because they're like an infestation in Vanuatu – sort of like having cockroaches at the zoo, but it was good for my parents because they hadn't gotten a chance to see one up close during the day while in Tautu. A big highlight for me was the Sydney Fish Market, which is basically just a big warehouse with a bunch of fish vendors in it. You can buy cooked fish, fish to cook, and sushi. We feasted on a giant platter of various kinds of fried seafood. It was glorious. And yeah, I'm not really going to go into all the various attractions there are in Sydney. This isn't really supposed to be a travel guide. I'm going to talk about what I liked about Sydney, which are things I think your typical tourist aren't all that interested in.

My favorite thing about Sydney was the bigness of it. It was wonderful to be lost in a city: unnoticed and unimportant. No one said “hi” to me as I walked by. It was awesome. I loved the people, the bustle of the place. Everyone seemed so purposeful. I liked being able to walk around all day and not run into a single person I knew. I liked being able to see something, a store, a restaurant, a statue, and then not be able to find it again. The city changed. You could walk down the same street six times and each time it would be different. The people and the cars on it were different, of course, but it wasn't just that. There was so much on a street you couldn't take it all in on one pass, or even on six passes. Every time you walked by you noticed something different, a funny sign, an item in a shop window, a crack in the sidewalk. You might think that, after a year in the bush, I'd find things like traffic or large buildings intimidating, but this wasn't really the case. I guess it makes sense. After 21 years of living in cities, one year out in the middle of nowhere isn't going to make cities stop feeling like home. The movie theaters were another favorite of mine. I saw a total of five movies at the theater while I was in Sydney. I loved the huge screens, the overpowered speakers, the previews, the high-backed, padded chairs.

Here's what struck me as strange about Sydney. First, the advertisements. There are advertisements everywhere. Billboards, buildings, cars, buses, mailboxes, bus stops, people (and I don't mean people wearing clothes that have brand names written on them, they have those in Vanuatu, I mean people holding signs or handing out fliers), there are even advertisements on other advertisements. Now, what was striking about all the ads was how colorful and vibrant everything was. There was SO MUCH eye candy. It was like walking around a carnival. Or Vegas. I'd kind of tended to think of cities as kind of bland and drab and natural scenes as bright and colorful, but I guess sometimes the opposite is true (sure, there are some natural scenes that really excel at looking spectacular. The Grand Canyon, for example, but there's a lot of nature that's just sort of a mix of dull green and brown). Compared to Sydney, the Vanuatu scenery seems kind of plain. Second, no one likes walking. This observation is probably a little overdone, but it's so true. I had people giving me instructions on how to take a bus to places less than a fifteen minute walk away. I guess it's not really fair, I have to walk 45 minutes to buy flour, so walking is necessary for me. Maybe if I regularly had another choice I wouldn't walk that much either. I don't know. Thirdly, people are so apologetic about making you wait. Like, an item takes a couple extra scans to register at the grocery store, “Sorry sir.” Or there's two people in front of you to buy movie tickets, “We apologize for the wait.” Dude, I usually have to wait an hour to buy a stamp, it's cool. Finally, there were the escalators. What is the deal with escalators? Moving stairs? Really? Stationary stairs actually work quite well, and you can make them more than two people lengths wide. And elevators, sure, if you've got more than three or four flours in your building then yeah, do it up. But escalators? I don't get it. It kind of wants to be stairs and it kind of wants to be an elevator, but instead it's this weird in-between thing that serves neither purpose well. If you're only going up a couple floors, stairs make more sense, and if you're going up a lot of floors, elevators make more sense. It's kind of like the spork: it tries to be two things at once and ends up being a poor version of each.

Right, well, I know this entry has been a little scattered, so sorry about that. I also realize I went off on, like, a page and a half tangent about how awesome food is, sorry about that too. Next week's will take me back to Vanuatu, so no worries (Oh, one last thing. Australians have no right to claim the phrase “no worries” as their slogan. They worry WAY too much. That phrase is much more at home in Vanuatu).