Up, Down and Over in Australia

Back from R&R! And although it really is good to be back, I had a blast.

I mistimed by visit to Melbourne. Had no clue the Grand Prix was there that weekend, but it really wasn’t so bad. I heard the cars practicing and doing the qualifying (or whatever it’s called) and got to watch the fighter planes practicing for whatever it is that they do.

Don't we all?

That was quite cool, actually. Very Top Gun-ish. As I was walking along the beach, I could hear the roar of a plane – you could hear it WAY before you could see the thing – and then he’d come into sight, doing all kinds of maneuvers, like a kid would do with a model plane. Up, down, in circles, upside down and everything, until he just shot up and disappeared. I guess he came down later, but I never saw that part.

My first impression of Australia, though, was first of all, it was more sun than I’ve seen in a LONG time (and I’m back to polluted skies now) and second, that a lot of people smoke.  A lot of people smoke here, too, but I don’t notice it. There, in both Melbourne and Sydney, there were just smokers everywhere.

Another thing in general that I appreciated – so very Western! – was the availability of drinking water. They brought it to you at meals! Had water fountains everywhere! Oh, I’ve missed that, just as I’ve missed clean public toilets with … wait for it … toilet paper!

Oh yeah, I enjoyed the little things.

I had a lot of highlights in my 10 days in Australia. The whole trip kind of crept up on me. I was there about as long as I was in Alaska when I went there, and I did as much adventurous stuff, but the difference was, that time I had it all mapped out and booked everything in advance.

Best golf course sign ever.

This time around, I had two things planned – the penguin trip and a double shore dive – but everything else was spur-of-the-moment. And by this I mean I was on web site one evening that said “Dive with Sharks!” and the next afternoon that’s what I did.

Yep. I dove with sharks. This was after my double shore dive, and I think I was endangered more on that than with the sharks! I’d gone to Manly – a half-hour ferry ride from Sydney – and gone diving in the morning. On our second dive, the guide brought us up a LONG way away from where we were supposed to be. We could see the shore, but it was quite a ways. We started swimming, and I had a hard time for a couple of reasons. The biggest, or so I thought, was that the wetsuit I was wearing was too tight at my neck and I could only breathe comfortably if I was completely horizontal in the water. Well, if you’re diving and need to swim, it’s more efficient if you do it on your back. And since you’re wearing an inflated BCD – the breathing thing – you cannot be completely horizontal.

So there I was, trying to kick my feet and having to hold two fingers at my collar to pull the neck thing out so I could breathe. And I just didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere. I finally told the instructor that I was really tired. She came back, took a look and said, “When did you lose a fin?” And that’s when I figured out why I was making zero progress – in the initial kicking, I must have kicked off a flipper, but I never saw or felt it.

Obligatory Opera House photo

Since you can’t really swim with one fine and zero would have been futile, the guide had to tow me. It was kind of embarrassing, but there just wasn’t anything I could do. And the guide was really embarrassed, too, because basically it was her initial screwup. But no harm, no foul. I lived to dive with sharks later that day.

But realistically, that, too, was tame. The sharks looked quite killer, but they – Grey Nurse sharks – aren’t designed for attacking humans. God made them to be able to stab little fish, not big things. So it was perfectly safe, and it took place not in the open water but in this giant Living Seas-type sanctuary/aquarium thing that held about a kajillion gallons.

The drill was you go in, kind of flop over a tunnel (seriously, it’s like walking in outer space – very hard to do), walk to the shark tank, then pull yourself up on the tunnel thing and just hang there as they did their thing. They took a max of four people at a time, but when I went, it was just me and this woman from Sweden, whose boyfriend was too scared to do it. He stayed in the tunnel (the thing where visitors to the sanctuary walked through to see the underwater world) and took pictures of her the whole time.

Had to stay here. Had my name written all over it.

We didn’t even use fins on that one, just the booties. It wasn’t so much as “diving with sharks” as it was “walking under water and hanging out as they swim by.” But it was very cool. As it turned out, the sharks, while fascinating, weren’t even my favorite part. They had these giant stingrays – we’re talking over three square feet – but also three big ol’ sea turtles. As I was leaving the shark tank and going back over the tunnel to exit, one of those guys smashed into me. That was my highlight – being hammered by a loggerhead.

Previously, I’d seen the penguins while in Melbourne, so the dives – all three of them – were additional critter highlights. The penguins, recommended by Laurie, were pretty awesome. It’s a sun-goes-down thing, when these little guys – called Little Penguins, previously known as Fairy Penguins – come out of the ocean and into their little nests. You’d see one surfacing, then a wave would roll in and they’d multiply, like Children of the Corn. You couldn’t photograph them, but they also had a few at the Living Seas-type place and I got some shots of those guys. I really need a better camera.

Can you see the joey?

So the diving was the “down” part. The “up” was another spur-of-the-moment thing when I decided to jump off an airplane. I’d thought about skydiving before but hadn’t had the opportunity. I’ve said before that I’d like to do it, although bungee jumping holds no interest to me. I enjoy the scenery, and you can’t do that bungee jumping. Skydiving seemed like a good way to get another perspective on God’s handiwork.

With that in mind, I was fine with it. I had a false start when the skydive place and the travel agent I went through mis-communicated between themselves and had me going a different day than they told me, but the day of was flawless. Beautiful weather, no wind.

It was kind of like waiting around at a track meet. There were 14 of us jumping and only two fit in the plane at a time.(This was tandem, so by that I mean two jumpers and two instructors at a time in the plane.) There was a lot of waiting around, even initially. As it turned out, I was the first in the group of 14 to go (me and a girl from Singapore whose husband was a wimp) and the first out of the plane.

Me, post-jump

Oddly, I was never at any point worried about it. I was actually a little anxious that I wasn’t concerned about it, but I couldn’t muster up anything. I kept thinking, “Gee, I should really feel like I’m going to wet myself, but I don’t.” And I told my instructor guy I was reserving the right to freak out at the last minute, but it never kicked in. I was perfectly calm the whole time. It wasn’t some kind of adrenaline rush like I thought it would be. It was completely chill and relaxing.

I even liked the little plane on the way up, although the four of us were basically sitting in the trunk of a car. The pilot had a seat, but the two pairs of jumpers were just sitting on the floor. I kept thinking panic would set in, but even once I was harnessed to the instructor and he said there were almost three miles left, at the three-mile signal put on the goggles and at the two-mile he’d open the door and at the one we’d step off, I figured I’d start having heart palpitations. But no.

It was gorgeous, though. The freefall didn’t even feel like falling – I was expecting something like the Toy Soldiers thing at Disney or the Free Fall thing at Six Flags or whatever – but it’s just this wind rushing by you so that you can’t hear anything. Then there’s a jerk – my back hurt the next day – as the chute opens and then you’re just gaping at the awesomeness of it all. And then it’s over. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

I saved the bridge walk for the last day. Honestly, I was more hesitant to walk the 1,400 steps up the Sydney Harbor Bridge than to jump off an airplane, but it was incredibly tame. I think I pictured steeper steps and a lot of hiking, like I did at Tiger’s Nest in Bhutan. But this was just walking up a gradual incline with a lot of stops on the way so that you could bask in 360-degree views of Sydney Harbor, which I loved. In one little port – just one of many – I counted over 100 boats.

So my R&R was a complete success. The Linley House, my one lodging splurge, was awesome, with it being my first encounter with another Linley and me being the proprietors’ first Linley in the flesh.

I met up with a colleague in Melbourne and had a great time with her. We had a couple great lunches and then caught a movie. (And I saw another one while I was in Sydney, and watched “Nightcrawler” on the plane, so I’m down to three in my Netflix queue.)

Ate at Margaritaville’s. Never been there before and didn’t know there was on there but enjoyed it in Leila’s honor. I had fish and chips a total of three times, but was too full to have dessert with the Margaritaville meal, even though it was $14.95 Key Lime pie.

Melbourne, in particular, had phenomenal places to eat. I mean, you name it, they had a restaurant catering to it. My colleague and I discussed this at length. She asked if I knew this one type of street food from Taiwan – a chicken breast that’s pummeled flat and served on a stick – and I’d indeed had it. She said there was a restaurant there specializing in it. Seriously, this random street food from Taiwan, and there it is in Melbourne.

Anyway, I just had a great time all around. Now it’s back to work tomorrow, though I went in today and cleared out 450 emails (I’d unsubscribed to a listserv to cut back on the emails and am so glad I did.) So tomorrow it’s back to reality, but I am ready for it.