Ah, dear Readers, Forgive my long silence! I haven't had internet access for some time. Here's a brief summary of where I've been and will do my best to post some comments about the places I've visited. I'm in an internet cafe in Dunedin, New Zealand, however, and it's not easy writing in a cafe.
Jan. 30 - arrived Sydney, Australia, stayed in Hyde Park Inn, lovely hotel in downtown Sydney, facing Hyde Park, and right across the Museum railway station;
Feb. 2 - boarded Sapphire Princess, and headed toward Melbourne;
Feb. 4 - Toured Melbourne: the goal, park, Como Mansion;
Feb. 7 - Toured Hobart: After crossing the story Tasman Sea, we arrived Hobart, and spent the day touring the city, Wild Animal Park, the National Forest, a sheep farm;
Feb. 9 - Criused through the Fiordland of New Zealand
Feb. 10 - Currently in Dunedin, New Zealand
OK - there's so much that's happened, I don't know where to begin. I've given you some of my impressions of Sydney. Melbourne is the second largest city in Australia with around 4 million people. I hate to compare it with Sydney, especially because there is an existing rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne, but frankly, Melbourne is not as pretty as Sydney. It's a solid city however, with enormous parklands right in the middle of the city, and wide avenues. The city founders had insured that 30% of city land would be parkland, and so there is a marvelous stretch of greenery right in the middle of Melbourne. How I wish many city planners had thought of this idea! Fresh air, a place for people to walk around in, lovely flowers, shrubs, etc - very civilized. The Yarrow river in Melbourne is now pretty, although our guide had said that it had been polluted. She did mention that the Syneyers still sneer at its brownish color - not from pollution, but from the mud underneath.
Tasmania gave us the opportunity to final look at the strange animals of Australia: wambots, wallabies, kangaroos, koalas, Tasmanian devils, platypus, qualls. We visited a refuge and got to pet some of these animals. They are cute, even the devils that are scavengers. We saw the platypus at a distance, but since they are difficult to spot, we were thrilled to have caught sight of the brown-furred creature that skittered across the river. The marsupials are fascinating and I'm going to read up on them when I get back home. How did so many of them end up in Australia, while the rest of the world's animals evolved another way?
The Sapphire Princess is great, three years old apparently, great food and entertainment. We've had a lot of sea days and are able to rest and read and Lauren is very diligent about joining the morning and afternoon trivia games, also bridge with Mike Ross.
Australia and New Zealand are young countries with a lot of opportunities. As a whole people seem well-off - but let me quality this statement - we have only seen for the most part white Australia and New Zealand. We saw a few aborigines in Sydney. Sydney has a lot of non-white residents - South Asians, Chinese, some Filipinos. We haven't yet seen Maories in New Zealand, perhaps in Auckland. But the land itself has a lot of natural resources: sheep, cattle, agriculture, mining, etc. And there are only 20 million people in all of Australia. (I told Lauren I could voluteer around 20 million Filipinos to go to Australia and the Philippines would still have 60 million people!)
Stay tuned, dear Readers, stay tuned!
(top picture shows Aborigine playing the dijeredu;
other pictures show 2 Tasmanian Devils and a Koala)
No comments:
Post a Comment