Australia & Dreamtime

We saw the movie, Australia, a 2:55 hour epic-style movie that focuses on the period 1939 til the outbreak of World War II. The first part had some attempts at being comic, which was flat, but fortunately the movie picked up and was engaging all the way to the end.

The movie got me thinking about Aboriginal Dreamtime. We were in Australia earlier this year and I'd read Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan who went on a walkabout with the Aborigines, and she talked about Dreamtime. In Sydney we also saw an exhibit of Aborignal art with many references to Dreamtime.

Initially I thought Dreamtime had something to do with a separate reality, one that runs parallel to the actual reality; this is not correct. After a bit of research I think I finally got it. The Aborigines believe in spirits or Ancestor Beings. These being were supposed to have surfaced from beneath the earth and they took on the forms of humans, animals, rocks, plants, etc. The journey of these Ancestral Beings who created the natural world is called Dreaming or Dreamtime.

I am sure it is more complicated than that, but at least my mind has caught the gist of this fascinating term.

I still have to understand what the walkabout is. It seems to be a rite of passage, a spiritual journey, but I haven't found details about this. The walkabout book I read by Morgan was fantastic, talking about caves with thousand-year old pictographs depicting the history of the world. I recall that an Aborigine we met in Sydney said Morgan's book is offensive. Likewise the book is not treated seriously by scholars. I wish I could find a good book on the walkabout.

ANIMALS OF AUSTRALIA

Grandpa, Grandma, Where Did You Go?


Grandpa and Grandma went far away, to the opposite side of the Earth, to a country called Australia.

There we saw many animals.

We saw sheep get shorn.


We saw sheepdogs that herded sheep.

We saw Tasmanian devils whose ears turned red when they got angry.

We saw a skink that looked like a little snake.


We saw Koalas with soft gray fur.
We saw kangaroos.

We saw patty melons in the wild; they look like kangaroos.


It was a good thing we did not see sharks!

STILL MORE RE AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND

A Faux Pas in Australia

Sometime during the long flight from Manila to Hong Kong to Sydney, the flight attendant handed out Australia's immigration form. Groggy, I filled it out and when it came to the part about: Do you have fruit, vegetables, meat, etc. I decided to do what I usually do when I enter the United States. I generally check off "No" but I mention to the US Immigration Officer that I do have packaged cookies or candies. I know that the US is watching out primarily for fresh fruit and unprocessed meats; and the packaged and processed foods do not interest them. So, half asleep, I checked off "No" to the Australia form, with the intention of mentioning that I did have some food. I must confess dear Readers that when I travel I always bring some snack food; I like having "emergency" food during the flight and when I've just arrived a place.

When I arrived Sydney I noticed that the immigration officers were x-raying all suitcases and handchecking a large number of them. I quickly located an officer and made my confession and the person told me to tell the person up ahead, which I did. It turned out to be a serious matter and they took away my beef jerky and I was warned to fill out the form accurately next time, otherwise I'd get fined $200. I reminded the officer that I did tell them about it, that I'm used to the US where they just wave me off when I do my verbal declaration. No, problem, they let me off, but I did learn my lesson.


My friend Rose told me they are indeed very strict because their sheep and beef industries could be easily ruined by the entry of diseases such as Mad Cow and Hoof and Mouth Disease.

I understood this of course because sheep and cows were everywhere in Australia, and in fact their steaks are something wonderful (Argentina and New Zealand have comparably great steaks.)

Rose warned me that New Zealand is even more strict about the matter than Australia. And indeed New Zealand was! At every port stop, there were immigration officers making sure the passengers didn't bring any food, even non-bottled water off the ship. Some Princess passengers were caught with some food and were fined $200!

I emptied out my purse and checked the pockets of my coat, and did all right for the port stops, but just as Lauren and I were about to see the Immigration Officer in Auckland, I discovered some peanuts in my computer case! I almost panicked. My husband said, "Get rid of it!" and walked on ahead leaving me holding a bag of peanuts in my hand. There was no garbage can around. The people behind me said, "Eat them quickly!"

There was no time to do a thing except walk up to the Immigration Officer, who was of Indian background, and before she said a thing, I blurted out, "I found peanuts in my computer bag." The truth. It's the best recourse.

She glanced at it, and handed it back to me. "I don't want your peanuts."

On leaving, I told her that the whole thing made me nervous because I like to carry food with me, and they're squirreled away in my purses, pockets. She said, "I make you nervous?" She was young and nice; she was not mean about this whole matter at all. I said, "No, it's your country that makes me nervous. It's very strict."


Of course after seeing New Zealand, I understood why they would be anal about this whole matter. There are sheep, cows, fruit of all kinds (grapes, kiwi, apples, and more), lumber, etc, etc. - all important sources of income for this country.

Pictures show: Hops for beer, sheep being sheared, kiwi, and logs

Addendum:


(In New Zealand some parks had chickens running around scot free and which seemed to be there to keep the place clean. Imagine, no one had turned them into Fried Chicken!)

NEW ZEALAND & THE MAORI PEOPLE

Our cruise ship (Sapphire Princess) visited Tauranga on Feb. 12, but when we disembarked, we proceeded to Rotorua to a Maori Village which included geysers, and hot springs. We saw Maori traditional homes, food storage houses, meeting house, etc. This was very interesting to me. I had such limited knowledge of the Maori people; the little I knew I picked up from movies like The Whalerider (great movie, by the way). In my ignorance, I even mixed them up with the Aborigines of Australia - since in my ignorance, I couldn't keep Australia and New Zealand apart - they were these English-speaking countries somewhere down South. So there I was, not knowing what to expect.

Well, finally I got it straight in my head that the Maori are of Polynesian stock, that they had 7 ancestors who came by long boat from Hawiiki, a place in Polynesia that no longer exists. (In my ignorance, I thought the Maori ancestors had come from Hawaii - no, Hawiiki is another place, although the Hawaiians and Maori are related.).

The Maori settled in what is now New Zealand, and apparently they were warlike people who built fortresses and war canoes/boats (85 feet long). Their traditional war dance and chant, the Haka, is a rousing dance that involves making the eyes big and thrusting the tongue out. New Zealand's rugby team, the All Blacks, perform the Haka before their games. The Haka is fascinating and you can view various versions in You Tube. Here's one done by the All Blacks - visit(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2HyZPuvD-A).

Here's the English version of the Haka chant:
Ka mate, ka mate

It is death, it is death
It is life, it is life
This is the hairy man
Who caused the sun to shine again for me
Up the ladder, up the ladder
Up to the top
The sun shines.



We saw more Maori artifacts at the Auckland War Memorial Musuem. There is a fantastic 85 feet war boat (for 100 warriors) in there - original, from the 1800s. The musuem has an authentic meeting house, totems, and many other artifacts.

We saw a couple of Maori dance and chant performances. They are generally hefty as a people - not necessarily fat, but big-boned. Some of them are quite beautiful, men included. Their persona is that of fierce people, unlike the softer Hawaiian people.

But they have been subjugated by the English people of New Zealand. The Treaty of Waitangi was legalized theft of their land by the English. This was what happened. The English who brokered the treaty prepared two versions of the Treaty - one in English, and one in Maori. And ... you guessed it: The two versions were different! Here's a record of Maori-onwed land in New Zealand, from the site Network Waitangi Otautahi (http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Port/2470/maori/treaty_violations.html):

- 1840, the Maori owned 66,400,000 acres of land;
- 1852, the Maori owned 34,000,000 acres;
- 1860, they owned 21,400,000 acres;
- 1891, they owned 11,079,486 acres;
- 1911, they owned 7,136,205;
- 1920, 4,787,686 acres;
- 1939, 4,028,903 acres;
- 1975, Maori owned land is 3,000,000 acres.

They are still fighting in court, but you get the drift.

All for now,
Cecilia

(Lauren and Cecilia where the Waitangi Treaty was signed)
Above picture shows sunset in Ragland, famous for its surfing beaches;
Next pictures shows Maori dancer doing the Haka)

VISITING "DOWN UNDER" - Australia, New Zealand

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)

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Our friend, Doug Noble, who has visited 100 countries, once said that one of his favorite places is Sydney. I will admit that I had low expectations of Australia. I knew the history of the place, how it had been populated by English convicts in the late 1700s. And I was quite fascinated by a documentary (after a book of the same title), The Floating Brothel, about the women who were sent to Australia in the late 1700s - petty thieves, prostitutes, etc. and how along the way, they had turned the ship they were on, into a floating brothel. When they arrived Australia, a number of them got off the ship carrying babies in their arms. What was most fascinating was that many of these women went on to be respectable citizens, and in fact were ancestors to numerous Aussies.

Why I did not expect much from Australia was that I thought it'd be pretty much like any other English-occupied place. There's a sameness to them, really, the architecture, the culture. I have arrived at the conclusion that the English were/are master colonizers - they occupy a place and bring in their women so that families can settle the place. This happened in the U.S., South Africa, even remote Falklands. So I figured Australia would be something like England or Canada, with Churches of Christ and orderly streets, and pubs, and cars going down the "wrong side" of the road.

Well, Sydney has surprised me, and I'm quite crazy about it. I can't rattle off my reasons for liking the place, because a lot of it has to do with the feeling of the place. First, it is a city, but unlike New York, or London, or Paris, it isn't crowded nor frenetic. It's a relatively calm city, and yet the high-rises are there. Traffic isn't awful, and where we are - Hyde Park Inn on Elizabeth Street - we can walk to Darling Harbour, St. Mary's Cathedral, even all the way to Circle Quay. The city is clean, orderly, and yet people, probably mostly tourists like me, look laid back. There are quite a lot of immigrants: South Asians, Koreans, Filipinos, Europeans whose accents I couldn't place, probably Greeks. So, the place has a vibrancy and energy that's interesting and not boring.

The gardens are lovely, streets clean, standard of living clearly high, and - here's the quirky part - there are bats that come swooping down the city at dusk. They roost in the botanical gardens, and when the sun is down, fly all over the city. From our balcony, looking at the tops of the trees of the park in front, and the tall buildings across the way, one could imagine the place is Gotham City - it's a trip!


Yesterday, my classmate Rose Cuisia Franco, who has lived in Australia for 14 years, picked me up and we went to an antique shop. Then we went to the Rocks, an area developed by convicts, and which in the 1800s was the main drag in Sydney. It's been gentrified and now there are shops and restaurants, and it has an excellent view of the famous Sydney Opera House, and the bridge.


Today, the group of us (Lauren, Mike and Linda Ross) took the ferry to Manly Island, had lunch in the square fronting the ferry terminal, and listened to the Police band, which was quite good. They played mostly swing music, but also had some modern ones. Walked around the island, and got back on the ferry, did another round of the Rocks (my companions hadn't seen it yesterday), and hopped on the metro for a five minute trip back to our hotel.

Later that evening it rained and we watched it while eating pizza and drinking lovely Shiraz Aussie wine. We also watched the bats.

I'm quite charmed by Sydney.
This is Vegemite, that Australians love; they spread it on toast, on top of butter; it tastes like Brewer's yeast with soy sauce.


Top picture shows l-r: Rose Franco, Mike and Linda Ross, and Lauren

All for now,
Cecilia Brainard

tags: travel, tourism, Australia, Sydney, Vegemite, Cecilia Brainard