The Great Ocean Road

That first trip to Australia, I took a day tour along part of the Great Ocean Road, getting as far as the small town of Lorne. If that’s as far as you can go, I think it’s still worthwhile, as the entire coast is splendid. However, even on that first visit, I found myself wishing that I’d be able to return to take that road farther. On my second trip to Australia, I made that wish come true—though I approached from the opposite end.

I rented a car in Adelaide and, after making my way through the lovely Grampian Mountains, I headed down to the coast at Port Fairy, a charming fishing town where I found a handsome little bed and breakfast to spend the night. Next day, I headed east along the Great Ocean Road. This stretch of oceanfront property is often called the Shipwreck Coast, and my first stop was at the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village in Warrnambool, where, amidst wonderful old buildings, rusting anchors, and lighthouses, I learned about the coast’s history and perused many of the items salvaged from some of the hundreds of ships sunk nearby.

On the road again, I began to see the splendid, sea-carved cliffs, rock formations, and stunning sea views that had actually lured me to this coast. A brisk wind kept the weather changing throughout the day, and made everything seem even more dramatic, with varied cloudscapes and often white-capped waves. I parked the car often, to get out and explore, scrambling down to the water’s edge whenever there were stairs or a designated place to climb, walking along cliff edges when there was no way down. I was captivated by the parade of remarkable formations: the Bay of Islands, the Grotto, Lock Ard Gorge, London Arch, the Blow Hole, and, most famously, the Twelve Apostles, all carved by wind and waves. The coast itself is wildly sculpted, and it is easy to imagine some of today’s coastal walks being transformed in time to new arches and standing stones.

The photo below shows two of the group of stone towers known as the Twelve Apostles, which are within the protective borders of the Port Campbell National Park.

Edit Ruthlessly

If you listened to the podcast of The Writing Show where I talked about nonfiction writing, you’ll know that one of my Five Rules is to edit ruthlessly. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may also remember that in the May 2, 2007 post I mentioned that the hardest editing for me to do is getting rid of really “nice little stories” that have nothing to do with what I’m writing. I fall in love with moments or vignettes or images that derail the tale, but as much as I hate to get rid of them, I know they must go.

HOWEVER, one of the happy things bout this blog is getting to resurrect some of those axed passages—because I really did love the moments they reflect, even though they didn’t belong in the book. One day in Melbourne, while riding back to Sue’s place on the tram (streetcar), one such little vignette unfolded, and while I still have no doubt it had to come out, I’m pleased that I can share the excised passage with you now.

On the tram there was the most adorable little boy—adorable not so much because of his appearance, but more because of his behavior. He was dressed in blue corduroy pants and a light blue shirt that was too big, but had the cuffs rolled up enough so the sleeves were the right length. In one hand he had his schoolbooks, in the other he clenched a $2 note to pay his tram fare. He could barely see over the conductor’s ticket table, so all you saw was tousled blond hair and blue eyes fringed with long, blond lashes.

He said, “Excuse me,” twice to the conductor, who was busy trying to close up his books and change maker because his shift ended at the next stop. Because he was ignoring the little boy, I finally said, “Why don’t you just sit down—it doesn’t look like the man wants your money.” At this, the conductor looked up at me and blinked, looked down at the little boy (about 7 or 8 years old, I’d guess), then grinned and said, “Yeah, go ahead. You can sit down.” The little boy looked at me as if I’d performed magic, and came and sat next to me.

He had a great quality of gentleness about him, and a smile that spread across his face like sunlight. At the next stop, a woman got on the tram with a baby in a stroller. The little boy watched the baby with the most beautiful and loving curiosity, looking up at me now and again to make certain I was sharing in this unspeakable delight. I was sorry when my stop was reached and I had to leave him behind. I wish I could let his mother know how wonderful I thought her son was.

Queen Victoria Market

I have both written and spoken, here and elsewhere, about dining in Australia, so if you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that I think that Australia is a splendid destination for those who like to eat.

In Melbourne, one of the most wonderful manifestations of the excellence of the food options in Oz is the Queen Victoria Market. Founded in 1878, the venerable market covers more than 16 acres—and even that isn’t always enough, so they close down one of the bordering streets on Sundays, to create a café area, so people can linger at the vibrant market.

Much of the market is open-air, with only a roof overhead, but there are also enclosed halls for items that need a bit more care, such as fish and meat. The market is divided into several “precincts,” so you can target your shopping, if you don’t want to browse the entire place. You can visit the Deli Hall, Elizabeth Street Shops, F shed laneway, Market Place Food Court, Fruit and Vegetable precinct, the Meat Hall, Organics, General Merchandise, Victoria Street Shops, and the Wine Market.

The building that houses the Meat Hall (or, more properly, the Meat, Fish, and Rabbit Hall) actually predates the market as a whole, having been built in 1868. It houses butchers, fishmongers, and fresh poultry traders. The Deli Hall was a “late” addition, built in 1927. The offerings in this hall reflect Melbourne’s immigrant history, so head here to shop for delicacies from around the globe. The Wine Market is a weekend outlet for smaller wineries that might not otherwise have wide distribution. Fruits and vegetables occupy the largest portion of the market—almost 50 percent of the market is dedicated to fresh produce.

The splendid Queen Victoria Market might not be a reason to travel to Australia, but if you’re heading for Melbourne, it’s certainly a place to visit, at least if you’re serious about food.

Produce at the Queen Victoria Market

Feathered Friends

While staying in Melbourne, I caught a tour down to see the large penguin colony on Phillip Island. I actually wrote about this, and included an excerpt from my book about the penguins coming ashore, back in June 17, 2007, when the blog was still fairly new. (However, if you missed the earlier post, you can see it here.) Because penguins were pretty well covered, I thought I’d talk a bit about some of the other Australian birds I love—these ones for their songs or calls. The links will take you to videos where you can hear these wonderful creatures.

Kookaburras are the largest members of the kingfisher family (they can reach lengths of 17 inches). They are also the fastest kingfishers, are very territorial, and mate for life. While there are birds in Australia with lovelier songs, there are no others that can so easily put a smile on my face. Whole families of kookaburras greet the day with everything from raucous laughter to quiet chuckles—and it is almost impossible not to join in.
Kookaburras

Australian magpies are handsome, crow-sized birds with pure white markings splashed across jet black feathers. They are bold and can be comical, but are most appreciated for their lovely caroling.
Australian magpie

My visit to the Dandenongs was not the first or only time I heard the whip bird, but I did hear it a lot as I wandered amid the tree ferns and mountain ash in these mountains outside Melbourne. Unlike the kookaburras and magpies, whip birds are rather shy. So while they are often heard, they are rarely seen. It their call, like the whistling of a whip being swung, that gives these birds their names. The long “whip” sound is actually only made by the male. You often just hear that sound, but if there is a little “tweet tweet” immediately following it, that is the female responding.
Whipbird

There were only a few times I was in a forest where I was surrounded by bellbirds, but they were remarkable times, with the ethereal, crystalline ringing sound of the birds stopping me in my tracks.
Bellbirds

The lyrebird is named for its tail plumes, which, when erect, look like the outline of a Grecian lyre. The male is a master mimic. In this excerpt from David Attenborough’s series on birds, you will recognize several of the bird songs identified above, as well as surprisingly good imitations of some human devices, from a camera’s motor drive to a car alarm to a saw.
Lyrebird

Tree Ferns

After a few days in the city, I had the pleasure of heading into the nearby mountains—the Dandenongs. I was delighted to find myself surrounded by greenery. It is a lovely feature of Australia’s largest city’s that there are mountains and wilder, or at least more rural, areas quite close at hand, where one can escape to cool beauty.

The Dandenongs are home to the Australian mountain ash, an impressive eucalypt that can attain heights of 300 feet. Beneath the tall trees, the ground is blanketed in ferns—although I guess one can’t actually say the tree ferns were blanketing the ground. These odd, ancient ferns actually tower over those ferns that do stay at ground level.

If the tree fern below reminds you of pictures you’ve seen of the age of dinosaurs, there’s a good reason. The fossil record shows that the types of tree ferns found in Australia were quite common during the Jurassic Period—and earlier.

Of the three genera of tree ferns, one clings to the hot, humid forests that follow the equator, from Southeast Asia to Mexico. But the other two have a far wider range, with several species that are quite comfortable in cooler climates or in mature forests at higher altitudes. Here, amid the towering eucalypts, the tree ferns (which can get to an impressively tree-like height of 80 feet) tower above the shorter ferns, adding a middle level to the general greenery, making the forest seem even greener.

Tree Fern

The Australian Impressionists

I spent a couple of days hiking around Melbourne, seeing and learning as much as I could about the city and its history. On the second day of my wandering, I found myself captivated by the National Gallery of Victoria. I go into some detail in my book about the history and development of painting in Australia, so I won’t go over all that here, but I did want to share more about the paintings that were my favorites—the works of the Australian Impressionists. This group was also known as the Heidelberg School, after a region where the painters loved to camp and paint the countryside and light that had so entranced them. These were the first artists to really capture Australia on canvas—the beauty, the hardships, the magical light, the openness, the strangeness, the wonder.

Though many would follow, the four founders of this school were Frederick McCubbin, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, and Charles Conder. Their images have become iconic, reflecting the history, the life, and the reality of Australia. They may have been impressionists, but they captured their subjects more truly than those who had tried to use more traditional art styles.

To avoid the legal issues involved in trying to pick up images that hang in museums or other private collections, I’m just going to give you links. There are a few articles, should you wish to read more, but there are also a lot of these men’s paintings, so you can get a taste of what their work was like. I left the gallery at the end of the day almost feeling as if I’d spent a day out bush.

Australian Impressionism, overview with paintings.
Paintings and where they were painted, from the National Gallery of Victoria.
Tom Roberts, background.
Tom Roberts, paintings.
Frederick McCubbin, paintings.
Arthur Streeton, paintings.
Charles Conder, painting.

National Gallery of Victoria

Melbourne

Melbourne is the most European of Australia’s cities. This is due as much to the sudden, stunning wealth generated by the Gold Rush in the 1800s as it is to Melbourne’s settlement history.

Melbourne was settled by free men, not by convicts. It started as a village for cattlemen, and grew at a comfortable pace—until the discovery of gold. The population surged. The next big population explosion came at the beginning of the 20th century, when people from eastern and southern Europe were fleeing the devastation of war. As a result, Melbourne is rich in European-style cafés and great Italian restaurants, pastry shops reflect the traditions of Vienna, Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest, and the town is home to the third largest Greek-speaking community in the world, after Athens and Thessalonica.

The older parts of Melbourne are elegant and charming. Architecture is often imposing and reflects both European sensibilities and the wealth created by the Gold Rush.

Among the delights in Melbourne is its still-extensive fleet of trams, or streetcars—the oldest network of streetcars in the world. Hundreds of trams run over a couple of hundred miles of track, both through the city and out to the suburbs, making this an easy city to get around—and in an environmentally friendly way. The trams are a cultural icon here every bit as much as the cable cars are in San Francisco. While no system of transportation is completely without flaws, Melbourne’s trams are remarkably reliable, affordable, and simply a fun way to get around town.

Tram in Bourke Street

Mark Twain in Melbourne

The day after I returned to Adelaide from Kangaroo Island, I departed from South Australia. I would return later in this trip, and I have visited SA each time I’ve returned to Australia, but this first visit was at an end. A Greyhound bus carried me across the miles, and I had soon crossed into the state of Victoria, and by late afternoon, I was in Melbourne.

The day after my arrival offered me a chance to visit offices necessary for arranging whatever sights I’d see in Melbourne, but the following day everything would be closed. I had arrived just in time for the Melbourne Cup. In my book, I quote one line from Mark Twain’s book Following the Equator (published elsewhere as More Tramps Abroad) about the Melbourne Cup, but I thought you might be interested in what else Twain had to say about the event.

Mark Twain visited Australia in the late 1800s, while on a world-wide lecture tour. He was realistic and humorous in his appraisal, but also, on the whole, quite flattering. He said of Melbourne itself, “It is a stately city architecturally as well as in magnitude.” Twain also arrived at the time of the Melbourne Cup, and here are his observations (and I might add that little has changed since he made wrote this).

It is the “Melbourne Cup” that brings this multitude together. Their clothes have been ordered long ago, at unlimited cost, and without bounds as to beauty and magnificence, and have been kept in concealment until now, for unto this day are they consecrate.

And so the grand-stands make a brilliant and wonderful spectacle, a delirium of color, a vision of beauty. The champagne flows, everybody is vivacious, excited, happy; everybody bets, and gloves and fortunes change hands right along, all the time. Day after day the races go on, and the fun and the excitement are kept at white heat; and when each day is done, the people dance all night so as to be fresh for the race in the morning. And at the end of the great week the swarms secure lodgings and transportation for next year, then flock away to their remote homes and count their gains and losses, and order next year’s Cup-clothes, and then lie down and sleep two weeks, and get up sorry to reflect that a whole year must be put in somehow or other before they can be wholly happy again.

The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies. Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out. Each of them gets attention, but not everybody’s; each of them evokes interest, but not everybody’s; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody’s; in each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory. Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal—and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup Day is supreme it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, which can be named by that large name—Supreme. I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose approach fires the whole land with a conflagration of conversation and preparation and anticipation and jubilation. No day save this one; but this one does it.

As in Twain’s day, the crowds still throng. TV cameras still feature the fabulous clothes and ladies’ hats purchased for the event. All businesses in Melbourne close for the day, and I have read that everything—work, traffic, conversation—in all of Australia stops for the few minutes of the actual Melbourne Cup race (because while there are races all day, only one is the actual Melbourne Cup).

Fortunately, I got to enjoy this with a friend I’d made while touring elsewhere, along with her friends. So I was able to get swept up into the celebration of the race—though not with the expenditure on wardrobe.

Sheep and Seafood

There is the usual range of jobs on Kangaroo Island that one would associate with a small town near a geologically significant tourist destination—workers in government, retail, hotels, and restaurants, park rangers, scientists. But the majority of the non-tourist income is from sheep ranching and seafaring—or, more specifically, fishing. I was too early for the crayfishing season (by three days!), but I was delighted to dine on whiting that was only hours away from having been caught.

Crayfish are what we in the U.S. would call rock lobsters—succulent crustaceans that thrive in these cooler southern waters. My experience of crayfish would wait for my visit to Tasmania, but because the season here was so close at hand, I did get to witness some of the preparations for the season. Tidy little cray boats lined the docks and shore, with fishermen busily outfitting them for work. I did think, given the roughness of the ocean at these latitudes, and the history of shipwrecks along this coast, that the boats seemed a bit dauntingly undersized.

Cray pots were piled high on boat decks and on the docks. Though they were busy, the fishermen were also Australians (and small-town Aussies, to boot), which meant friendliness won out over bustle, and most stopped to say “g’day” and chat about the season ahead.

Below is a photo of a couple of the cray boats moored at the dock. So now, when you go to a restaurant that offers Australian rock lobster, you’ll be able to picture the dainty vessels that probably made these delicacies available to you.

Cray boats, Kangaroo Island

Admiral’s Arch

The Remarkable Rocks are not, in fact, the only remarkable rocks on Kangaroo Island. The island as a whole is a patchwork of ancient and noteworthy features. In fact, some of the exposed rocks and outcrops are of such geological significance, they have been designated as “geological monuments.” Of the 27 designated geological monuments on the little island, I saw three: Remarkable Rocks, the fabulous and extensive Kelly Hill Caves, and Admiral’s Arch. These are, however, considered to be among the most fascinatingly picturesque.

Admiral’s Arch is not your usual water-carved natural bridge. It is, in fact, an ancient cave that has simply been broken into by the waves. Stalactites still cling to the remnant of the cave’s roof. The weather was brooding, which made less than ideal conditions for photography, but seemed to match the dark, haunting, ruined aspect of the exposed cave.

I’ve read that a boardwalk and viewing platform have now been added at this site, as much to protect the rocks as the tourists. As a result, while there is a little less adventure involved in seeing the arch, it is much more accessible than when I visited.

Admiral's Arch