Hunter and Upper Hunter Valleys

30 May 2009

I sit in the end room of a hotel that, by other standards, would be a motel. The difference being that we are in wine country. It is only my second venture out of Sydney, the first overnighter, and I see that I have been missing out. It ain’t New Zealand, but then it ain’t Sydney either. I have driven a couple of hours north into the Hunter Valley, the east coast’s wine country. There is some production in the south, and a very well known region south of Perth on the west coast, the Margaret River region. I haven’t gotten out to sense the desolation and sparsity of people that the vast majority of the country is, but this is countryside, and the towns are just a couple thousand people. The largest that I came to after leaving the suburbs was 22,000. Some would scarcely count as a town at all.
This is a chance to take a deep breath. I just don’t think that I am a city boy. I do enjoy the convenience that comes from being close to so many things. I revel in getting so many things done in daily life without starting a car. And there is a constant feeling that you are in a place where so many other people want to be. So city residence must be a good choice.

It may be. But it isn’t mine. I love the feeling that comes over me when I step out of that setting. I remember the same feeling when I drove north out of Madrid after being there a few months straight; I stopped the car a couple of hours after sunset just to look at all the stars, hear the masses of crickets. Today it was rolling down the window of the rental car and smelling grass, that Aspergillus smell when the grass gets some rain. And later in the day, even the smell of the weeds (milkweed?) was pleasant when I stopped to take pictures from the end of a dirt road on a hilltop overlooking the Hunter Valley around sunset.

Now, a couple of things I know are true. I would not appreciate it to the same degree if I lived out here. But is that to say that I wouldn’t enjoy it at all? Or, more importantly, that I wouldn’t enjoy it more than the city? I am pretty sure of the answer.

The other truth is that it is probably not feasible for me to live in the country. How miserable it would be to have to make a long drive to a hospital in the middle of the night. I stew over the frustration during those drives, so it is probably healthier to minimize the time spent doing it.

So I guess the point is—the points are—that, firstly, I am glad that I have family living in the country so that there is somewhere to go; and secondly, that a more moderately-sized city is a good compromise for my uptown girl and myself.

An overlooked criterion for choosing a place to live: wineries. The more of them that you cluster together, the better the restaurants will be. Santa Maria, where else can you find such secluded, truly quaint restaurants serving such high quality food? I am stunned by how good dinner was and yet how many other places there are around very similar. And no golden arches or DQ’s here. In other settings the diner linked to the motel should by all rights be a dive, where some of the gravy has dribbled off the side of the plate when splashed on the roast. But here are cloth napkin, low-lighting, swank joints where half the words on the menu are esoteric, French, or both. Some wear jeans, but only in the fashionable sense with an expensive shirt and a lot of hair gel. (Except for that one bloke that wore his with a hoodie whom I noticed when he went out to sit at a table on the deck to have a smoke in near freezing cold. ‘Nough said.). But it is not just the food that takes a step up; where there is good wine, there is good culture. Concerts, festivals, and the like abound here.

Just a thought: gaps in knowledge can be quite subtle and understated. I have seen this in surgery, albeit the place I focus most of my attention when comes to assuring these holes are minimized. But I came across one tonight while starting a new book, Down Under by Bill Bryson. Isn’t New Zealand part of the Australian continent? I have looked at the maps that include the continental shelves (okay, Google), and they seem to lie on the same one. They are very close to each other relative to any other bodies. Antarctica is close, but I don’t think either wants to claim association; and besides, we know that Australia and Antarctica are two continents. I just remember learning that Australia was the only continent that was a single country, and the only country that was a continent. Bryson said the same. But where does that leave the Kiwis?

The second day, following a great breakfast, was a departure from Hunter Valley to… Upper Hunter Valley. Out of the wineries, into thoroughbred country. Like the wineries, there are a couple of other clusters of farms, but this is one of the big ones, if not the big one, a claim fortified by the recent influx of international neighbors, particularly Sheikhs Hamdan and Makhtoum (sp?), big purchasers at the sales in Lexington and elsewhere around the world. It is not as continuous a collection as you see in Kentucky. Instead it intermingles with cattle ranches and small homes. All of the sudden amongst the barbed wire fences will be fancier fence railing, a big stone entrance with security cameras, intercoms, etc. A very pretty area with a more relaxed feel, and a bit of oddity and you really see them try to create luxury in the midst of nature.

The clouds rolled in not long after noon, of course just as I drove the rental car up onto a ridge for the best scenery. So the remainder of the trip was a splash through desolate dirt roads. Thank goodness for GPS systems and rental cars. I stopped once for a lone kangaroo up in the high altitudes, grazing in the cold mist. I just never thought of them as cold weather critters, but this fellow seemed pretty content.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Yesterday I returned from a second trip up to Hunter Valley. Joao Panattoni, a friend from the hand surgery fellowship in Kentucky, flew over from Singapore for the week and wanted to take in the same scenery. It was a great trip. We saw a lot more kangaroos and mingled among a small mob of them, who seemed plenty alert but none too worried by our presence. We were never close enough to touch/get pummeled by any of them, but we got some good photos. Tasted some wine as well and got some education on the Australian viticulture.

Two months down

From May 24

This weekend marks two months since Ana and the kiddos moved back to Louisville, marking a good point to see how things are going.

Bachelor living is like riding a bike. The microwave and I have become good friends, and I have found that I spend more time doing the basics-- cooking, cleaning, laundry. No surprises there. At the same time, I have been spending more time working on hand surgery. So from a time management standpoint it has been good.

It is not worth the trade off, however. Again, no surprise. It is a rare opportunity to get to rewind the clock, go back to living in a manner similar to how it was before, erasing the bias that we all have telling us that the new way is better. I get more done this way, but it is a lonely time. I look forward to getting things back in order.

I have been doing some fun things around here though. For example, last night I found a good restaurant and movie theater down in the King's Cross area just east of the Central Business District (downtown to you and me). You can find it in the recent news as the place where the bloke was shot in the leg last weekend, big news for this land of limited guns. But the area is not as dangerous as the anecdote makes it seem. It is a lively area with clubs and bars and late night/ early morning night life. But tucked among these businesses, just a block off the central hubbub is the Govinda restaurant. Menu ordering on the ground level, buffet restaurant on the next floor up, movie theater on the next. But wait, there is more! The yoga classes and meditation rooms are on the ground floor, as well. Additionally it is a vegetarian restaurant, due to its hare krishna nature. I haven't frequented many, hare krishna or vegetarian, but since they had good movies showing right upstairs in a more quaint atmosphere, I was willing to give it a go. Consistent with my (few) past experiences, vegetarian restaurants do a great job of emphasizing spices. It was very good.

The movie and atmosphere were good, as well. The place probably only held about fifty people. It could have held more, but they would have to pull out all the cushions and pillows to put in chairs. It was much more comfortable, especially immediately after a meal, to lie back and watch the flick. They showed Easy Virtue-- again, good--likely due to it being an adaptation of a play. Much tidier weave to the plot than most movies.

Today I headed back down to the other side of the harbor, just a bit beyond King's Cross, to take in a game of Australian rules football. The only team in Sydney, the Swans (Go ahead, quake with fear at the mere name.) were hosting the Port Adelaide Power. You learn as you go with these things, and I found that I sat in the worst section of the stadium; the sun actually came out today-- for the first time in several days, as the front that caused flooding north of here lingered. I found that the sun sets directly opposite of section 11 this time of year. So for the glare in the photos, I apologize. Ana, I slopped the suncreen on a couple of times, as well as the SPF 30 lip balm. One for the skin cancer, two for the cold sore.

The game is actually admirable and interesting. It is easier to get your head around than the British sports of cricket and rugby. In short, it has the same ideas as most ball-and-goal sports, but instead of passing from hands to hands, like American football, or foot to foot, as in soccer, it is optionally bumping with your hand like you would serve underhand in volleyball, or to cover more ground quickly, punting to your teammate. As a result they are very accurate kickers. They also tend to be tall felows with a more lean build than in rugby, partly due to their height, partly due to all the running over this large field. The game moves around the field much quicker than other sports, and goals happen in a flash. So final scores tend to look more like basketball than soccer. Granted, they get six points for kicking through the central uprights.

This particular game was a rout. After just the first quarter, the mighty Swans (giggle) were leading 49-6! They went on to win by forty points.

So I have gotten out some, and there is plenty more to do. I have adjusted to the difference of the rest of the family being o'er yonder stateside, calling when the time change allows, making video calls. The trip home a month ago actually made a big difference. I thought it might actually be detrimental, but I guess seeing that I was still important to the kids but that they were getting on well without me made me feel better. I no longer subconsciously feel that this disruption causes any irreparable damage. It stings a bit, but there are some upsides. For example, I know that going home will be the best.

In the meanwhile, a few friends are coming over soon. Joao, a friend of mine from the hand surgery fellowship in Kentucky, originally from Brazil and currently in his second fellowship in Singapore, will be here for a week next month. Dita, a friend from animal science classes in college, whom I haven't seen since college, will be here and in New Zealand for a couple of weeks, as well. And Amenia and her son, Hudson, are going to be here in late July and August. Each will be really fun and will make for a good winter.

I have decided that, while supplies last, I will include the odd photo of the blog. This is from the children's hospital. Lord help the poor guy that can't recall what an egress is in the middle of the panic of an emergency.

Swept clean

From a 23 March, 2009, Ana's birthday, a week ago.

I admit that this is more written for my own benefit. I never want to forget what a bad day this has been. The next time I go out the door without kissing them goodbye, that I get frustrated getting their teeth brushed, that I grumble picking up the toys from the living room for the xth time in the same evening. I never want to forget Trey’s bewildered face, Ryan’s blown kiss, or the tears running so fast down Ana’s face, or those down my own for that matter. Or how Ryan’s lip quivered for a just a second as she sat in the tub last night and wrapped her head around the fact that I wasn’t going to be on the plane with her.

A heart-wrenching day. The worst I have had in years, at the very least. From a few weeks away, it all seemed so manageable, so much the right choice.

This afternoon, just minutes after they took off, I opened the door to the apartment, to an abyss six floors above ground. The place might have looked the same if the three of them were in the kids’ bedroom napping-- some lego blocks in the living room, the toy stroller with Ryan’s latest doll (named Trey, or as Ana and I call him, 3.2) partly covered by the blinds where it came to rest just a couple of hours earlier. The remaining grapes from the bunch they devoured after breakfast, now sitting unwanted at the table. The bedsheets wadded from when they each got up with the same routine of any normal day.

Then there is the closet. No clothes sticking out the top of semi-closed drawers, no dresses on the hangers, no stuffed animal and unmatched sock blocking the sliding mirror door from moving along its tracks. So hollow, except for the clothes unwanted or unable to fit in the suitcases, set aside to be donated. The permanence of the change sinks in. A small stack of bedtime story books sit on a single shelf, the rest barren. The same books that were so valuable to us for different reasons even just last night; for myself and Ana, for curling up with them with limited distractions before they drift off; for Ryan, for the adventures and images, as well as the chance to stay awake just a few more minutes.

No sounds: no Cinderella videos, no giggles, no one running to me —or doing the best they can—because the thing they want the most at that moment is my hug and kiss and attention.

No smells: for better or worse on this one, but I think more of Ana’s cooking, Ryan’s hair, Trey’s skin. Nothing.

Just a sterile apartment swept clean of love. Suddenly I realize how undecorated the walls are, how wonderfully the high chair sat like a throne at the end of the dining room table. I can almost see him sitting there, his waves, his looks. I feel like I just need to go pick him up to set him there to make the chair complete.

I can’t imagine going through this for three months, much less nine, missing both kids’ birthdays, not celebrating my own with them, Christmas. I stick by the decision that in the long run it will be for the better—better job, hopefully better income. In the short term, I am getting this education without the worry that my family is not getting the basics covered, or that Ana is feeling idle, or worse resentful. But I can tell you right now that it sucks. I have been slapped awake. On the good side, this is an opportunity few get to really feel how fortunate they are. And the images from today are more poignant than any for quite sometime. But the sadness is dreadful. As I mentioned, it makes for the worst day I have had in a really long time. I have been lucky not to lose someone really close to me, and there are plenty of circumstances that people are facing at any given moment far worse than this, but unlike most other circumstances, this has the bitterness of being self-induced, that jagged little pill. Albeit a response to outside forces, but right now other alternatives feel like they would have been better. I hope that my mind changes soon, and stays that way.

The big decision

Written 17 February 2009

Photos are gratuitous kids shots.

Wow, things have a way of drawing themselves out, and time slips past quickly. Like the speed at which the ground beneath you flows as you keep your eye on some distant object on the horizon that stands immobile.

That immobile object could be any of a number of new acquaintances, be it the Australian immigration service, the internet service crews here, or the construction across the street from our apartment. A solid six weeks have gone by, but the only change I have yet noticed is that I finally got my visa a couple of weeks ago, although I am still waiting on physician identification numbers and the like to come rolling in.

My hope is that the nine months will pass as quickly as the first few weeks. That I can keep my eyes on something slow, say, my learning, and the days of 2009 will be little more than painted lines on the highway.

Ana is headed back to the States, as most of you know. Trey and Ryan will of course go, as well. Despite living frugally over the past several months to accumulate some savings for the move, Sydney was more expensive than we had estimated. Additional delays in getting documents finalized meant that starting work could not happen for a then-undetermined amount of time. When there began to be a zero sum on the horizon, that no money would be in the account after a very close and estimable amount of time, decisions had to be made—find a way to cut expenses or increase, even obtain, income. Even breaking even when the paychecks started was questionable.

The stress was heavy. From my standpoint, the assurance of provisions for wife and kids was dwindling, and any answers on the horizon required preparations. If Ana was going to work here in Australia, the visa limited her to twenty hours weekly. That not only halves the income she could earn, but it limited her options of potential jobs. Many more are available for those willing and able to work full time. Furthermore, those jobs that accept part-timers are rarely lucrative to the level she could and has earned in the states. A final back-breaking point was that time at work for her would be time the two kids had to be in someone else’s care, and childcare here in Sydney is exorbitant, exacerbated by the recent shutdown of the largest childcare chain in Australia due to financial mismanagement. Decreased supply with stable demand means both high costs and increased length to wait lists. The childcare facility on the hospital grounds has a list now two years long.

At the point I could not ensure security, I came home, dropped my bag, and told Ana that the only answer might be for her to try to get her position back in Louisville. The look on her face and the excitement in her voice at the mere prospect was a strong argument in favor of that decision. She got right on it, and her phone call back to Cogent was met with equal excitement. It took a while to confirm her return with the executive office, but it was done, and her first day back will be the first of April.

Ryan will be back in school, and Trey will stay home with Lola, who thankfully is going to stay with them. Things for them will return to something similar to what it was less than a year ago. Sans Dad.

It is a tough but worthwhile decision. The security is a great lift of my shoulders. Ana will clearly be happier, and I can see that nine months of not working has been a task. I hope that it won’t matter that much to the kids in the long run, and that the difference made in the job I have, the place we live in the future, the opportunities provided them will outweigh the change to family structure they have the next couple of weeks.

As for myself, there are days when I look at the good differences the upcoming months hold—the time I can dedicated to reading and learning, more opportunities to exercise, ease of travel to go see Australia, maybe even other countries while here. It turns out Trey and Ryan aren’t as impressed with the harbor bridge as they are with jumping castles and dessert.

There are other days where the obvious losses seem greater. But the decisions are made, and we will have to see how it goes. Fortunately, all of it is transient.

The irony is that an increase in understanding of the system has led to less taxation. They give large rebates to those who work in the hospitals, splitting the tax deduction with the business, so my taxes will be half what it would be with other jobs here. They also give returns through a program that compensates you for coming to the big city with much higher standard of living as a result of a given job. And let me tell you, the cost of living here is higher than Louisville, Kentucky! But the rebates have made it more affordable. The job has started, so there is the assurance of income. Now making ends meet is doable. Estimates look like Ana’s end is doable with her income. It is nice to have that stress off, but the fact that going into debt didn’t come to fruition somehow makes the circumstances seem less real. But it all has worked out in the end, for now. So on the bad days, I'll just keep my eye on the horizon and let the painted stripes fly past. On the good days, I'll look a little closer and post the photos that I take.

Home found

Written 10 January 2009

Day five in Sydney, the first Saturday. A chance to kick back? Hardly. We have gotten to celebrate reaching a couple of goals, on time I might add. Yesterday we got our apartment. Today I am resting more assured that we will have all the necessities when we move in on Monday. There is still a good deal to do tomorrow, however.


Photo 1: balcony view south, towards downtown. Some buildings just east of downtown are in the distance.

Each tour of the neighborhoods had made us decrease our radius from the hospital considered suitable for living. Before my trip to Sydney at the end of November Ana had made an excellent list of houses and a couple of apartments within a maximum of an anticipated ten minute drive. In retrospect, that seems like a drive from a county away. First, ten minutes estimated on a Google map ain’t ten minutes big-city style. My guess is that the main thoroughfare past the hospital was not expected to handle the daily traffic it takes these days. While this area is nothing like Manhattan, it is far more congested than, say, North Dallas. Maybe the best comparison would be Austin. The roads here are fairly narrow and the undulations of the terrain lead to winding roads. When people are packed together, they have little room for others of different pace or knowledge of the area. You better have a plan when you hit the roads, keep your mind on it, and execute.


Photo 2: the view west, directly across the street. The nearest building the Royal North Shore Hospitals dialysis center. Middleground: the new research center and medical school library. Brown building in distance: the inpatient hospital, i.e., workplace. Commute time: four minutes, with traffic.

Another factor in shrinking the search was expense. Everything costs a good deal here. And the more we have hassled with making purchases to get settled in, the more we think about having to sell or give it away in just a few months. The beauty of it is that it keeps the contrast between need and want fairly clear. We aren’t going to rough it, but I also don’t think we will be hanging any Rembrandts on the walls. Or perhaps anything more than family photos, for that matter.

Photo 3: balcony view north. High-rises in distance is Chatswood, the upscale district of the city, proported best schools, etc. In between, the offices of two of the city's television stations, the main highway northward.

Maybe we will decorate by fate, searching only for huge bargains, or be okay with putting up nothing whatsoever. Point being that we finally decided on a place right across the street from the hospital complex. There are several apartment towers that oppose the huge grounds of the hospital. Our place will be lined up just a few hundred yards from the inpatient and surgical building, the hospital proper. Call should be pretty good. Additionally, the train station is even closer, due south about 200 meters. And the station is not just a platform and a ticket window. The tracks mainly travel above ground throughout the city, but it is very much a Metro layout and system. As a result, the “station” is placed amongst high-rise buildings and covered with a layer of commerce. An open-air plaza is right over the tracks, and the perimeter is lined with restaurants of quite a range. Of course, Mickey D’s is there, but there are a couple other fast food places indicative of the ethnic diversity of the city, a fresh fruit market, a very good restaurant with low lighting in the evenings, good wine it seems, and great coffee also served at a walk up counter. There is a pharmacy, a newsstand, and a grocery store. With everything so close and convenient, it is worth a little more to be in this area.


Photo 4: the view from the south balcony looking westward. Train tracks below and out of view (the train is electric, nearly silent). About 3 miles away: Tasman Sea.

Searches for a new home, new technology

Written 8 January 2009

Okay, I was just wrapping up the last blog, discussing some of it with Ana, when we realized that I should make an entry for today. So while I will post this a couple of days after the previous, realize that it took place on our second full day in Australia, amidst apartment hunting in the big city. Now it is the same big city that I was saying that I wouldn’t enjoy as much, but I also said that I was keeping an open mind and meant that I would unabashedly embrace the good things.

Our great revelation was compounded by two factors. First, while many blessings have befallen Aotearoa, the internet has hardly recognized the place. In fact, some study that a coworker quoted me listed New Zealand as having the poorest internet structure of any developed nation. Any. How did they let Ireland or Portugal slip past them? Even the way you get internet there is different. It is not just a matter of downloading or uploading speed. Only the big companies, such as the hospital where I worked, had unlimited access and high speed. And by high speed, I mean relative to dial up. You will see what I mean in a minute. The rest of us outside of the corporate world purchase quantities of download per month. For example, we bought a middle-of-the-road program allowing three gigabytes of download at high speed for NZ$40 per month. More downloads would cost more, and the same download quantity at higher speed would cost more. A lot more.

And for clarification, 3 Gb is enough to handle all our emails, web brousing, facebooking, and iTunes downloads, almost. We still ran over a little a couple of months. But we couldn’t venture into videos much and had to avoid sites that kept spooling information to you, updating their information every few seconds. We also couldn’t pull up Youtube videos of Sesame Street and the like for Ryan.

The second factor in this compounding process that I alluded to is that nothing progresses like technology. Six months in New Zealand has let other lands carry on at breakneck speed.

Zoom in to the four of us strolling (actually three of us strolling and one in a tike-toting backpack) along the sidewalk in a high-rise section of North Sydney after seeing the last of the open viewings of apartments that we had listed for the day. We stopped into a computer store to get some opinions on internet connections, companies, the quality available, etc. The very pleasant Chinese fellow, the presumed owner, was happy to talk to us about it and gave us a brochure from one of the many providers in the area, one with which he was apparently associated, since a blank on the brochures application page for the provider representative had already been filled in with his name. The plan provided 50 Gb of warp-speed downloading of 20 Mbps for AU$50 (about US$30). “So what plan did you have in New Zealand?” he asked. We responded that we got 3 Gb of high speed download for NZ$40. “Thirty gigabytes?” he questioned, as though his Mandarin ears had misinterpreted my American accent. The look he gave when he counted the fingers I held up to correct him told us what we needed to know. Things were about to get a whole lot better.

Bill Gates. NOT a Kiwi.

Sydney Wildlife World

One of the first places that we made weekend excursions to was the Sydney Wildlife World. Despite how it is normally in the states, this place is located on the harbor right near downtown. It is wonderful to have such a menagerie for the kids to see just a short walk from the train station. Additionally, it was an air-conditioned facility, making it a great refuge during the hottest days of summer. We bought annual passes for entrance to both the wildlife park and the aquarium, wonderfully located next door to each other. The next posting will be about the aquarium.

The great assortment of wildlife, so different from North America, makes for some great photos. I only put five here, but I should add more in another posting. I have also put them on an album on my Facebook page.

Photo 1: Would any Ausie wildlife park be complete without the koala. One of the symbols of Australia, the mascot for the national airline.

They are less slothlike than I thought, but not by a whole lot. They apparently conserve energy, since they reap their energy from eucalyptus only. This is one of their survival skills, living off a food source that no other animals really compete for.

Look closely at this koala's tummy.

Photo 2: This mother is toting her little one around. Both spend a lot of time napping.

Photo 3: Ana meets with one of them. Actually all four of us were allowed to mill around with four koalas in a small area. Most napped. One was designated as the petable one for the day. Unfortunately, today's koala was the grumpiest of them, according to one of the guides. Note his social interaction in the photo.

Photo 4: Maybe even more Australian than the koala is the kangaroo. They had one adult and a few adolescents in a large enclosure, no girls so that there was no competitive behavior. Here the oldest is the boldest, feeding close to the path for the people.

They are scrawnier than I expected.

Photo 5: Equally exclusive to Australia, but less known, is the cassowary, touted as the world's most dangerous bird, according to the Guiness Book of World Records. Note the pleasant look on this fella's face. In the same family as the ostrich and emu, he is a little smaller but has sharp talons and a powerful kick, admittedly in defense of self or nests.

And that horn! So attractive.

There are three different breeds, differentiated by the pattern of the red waddle.

Sydney Aquarium

The Sydney Aquarium has some of the same benefits of the Wildlife World-- location, convenience, air conditioning-- so it was a good place to hole up when we first moved here. As expected Ryan got a huge kick out of it, though I wasn't far down the excitement scale.

The loggerhead sea turtle

This boy was in the big tank with numerous fish, sharks, manta rays, and others. But he holds his own. Big old boy.









This smaller tank was no doubt organized to elicit screeches from every child from ages two to eight. Clownfish and friends: "NEEEMO!"















When you run into Ryan, and she goes on about dugongs, this is what she is talking about. The southern world's relative to the manatee. I think he smiled for this photo.
















The cuttlefish. I wrote a middle school paper on mollusks (very enthralling read, I am sure) and became a big fan of the octopus, and to a lesser extent, the squid. I intentionally skipped over their other relative, the cuttlefish, since there wasn't much in the encyclopedia about them. Since then I have learned some incredible stuff about them. The abilities of the smaller ones to dupe the larger ones is, well, inspiring. It throws off the survival of the physically fittest, but maybe they are advancing in other ways faster.

Jellyfish. Just a photo that came out nicely. I think the middle one of these posed, as well.

No, these are not the poisonous fellas found up near the Great Barrier Reef.

The market and Palmie

One more blog posting that from a couple of weeks ago. We rented a car for the weekend, and while we could have used it to venture much farther out, we decided just to make closer, more convenient trips, since there was plenty still to see more proximally. So Saturday included a day trip to Palm Beach. Like other Palm Beaches, this is also known for the nicer homes. It is a weekend getaway for the more affluent but includes a very nice publicly accessible beach. One of the current popular television shows is base here, at least in storyline.

The first photo is just snapped climbing out of the car. Not much doctoring required here. Just a lovely sunny beach away from town. Objects may be closer than they appear. There were more people than this photo lets on. What it also doesn't show is the strength of riptide. The incoming waves were pretty tough, but the undertow was like standing in an intermittent, fast-flowing, river.

The second photo is of the same coast line, a little further south as we took side roads and turnouts on the way back to the city. One of the beauties of Australian culture is utilitarianism. Take Ana's hat, for example. During the week, an ordinary flower pot holder.


This third photo is of the weekend market at the Rocks, a district just north of downtown. In fact, it is just a very short walk from one to the other, the difference being that the buildings become shorter, a good bit older, and a little more historically significant as you near the harbour (spelling as when in Rome). By the time you are at the north end of the market, as we were here in this photo, you are in the shadow of the Harbour Bridge. All the goodies that you would hope

to find in a market are here. Nothing that you need, a lot that you might want.


Finally we decided on something that we might want, a caricature of the kids. More for marking history than historically accurate, the drawing was whipped out in just a few minutes as one of the last efforts of the day. Ana likes it, and I hope others do as well. It includes a squiggle representing the Sydney Opera House, and a bridge in the background-- both great landmarks just a stones throw from this point. But Ryan looks to be about fourteen in the photo, and Trey, who just is on the verge of mastering running, holds a skateboard. But it was fun to get it, and I was surprised how well both of them held still for the artist.

First thoughts on arrival to Australia

The blog entry below was written during the first week we were here, when Aotearoa was still on my mind regularly, when we were living out of a hotel room. I am glad that I took a few moments to document a mindset in transition.

It is a shame that the most cathartic times are also the busiest. There are a lot of thoughts and feelings that you run through when moving like we are right now. The nostalgia for the place you are living; the separation from friends, knowing that there is very little chance that you will have closeness of that degree with those people ever again; the fondness for the memories that you have made; the appreciation for the things you have learned and seen.

Within a matter of minutes your perspective changes, not much longer than looking away from your rearview mirror to the road ahead. Different thoughts prevail. The stresses of the move; the stresses of the budget; concerns for safety; the need for basics, such as where to find groceries, the papers for the customs, or even how to get to where we will spend the night. It is a rapid and rough change that doesn’t leave enough time to revel in the beauty of what has been created over the past few months. Perhaps that is something that should already have been done-- an easy perspective to take consciously, but the reality is that the physical separation is a much more effective stimulus for these feelings.

Point being that I am taking this time now to document what cannot be documented when you are pushing three trolleys of luggage around a couple of airports, when you are looking at your kids, comparing them to how they were six months ago and imagining what another twelve will do for them.

If these are feelings I feel alone, I am not the only one going through his mental scrapbook. As I write, Ana and Ryan lie in bed looking through video clips from Louisville on Ana's phone. The only reason they are not clips of Christchurch is because she had to use a different phone there. I am sure that the impetus to start looking at those videos was the same as mine.

I miss New Zealand a great deal, and while I try to keep an open mind. Realistically I don’t think that Australia will measure up. When I look back a couple of years from now, I think that my love for New Zealand will have faded very little. I don’t see any reason why I couldn’t come across the same caliber of people here as there, or Louisville for that matter. In both places I made friendships that I hope I keep up for life. And there are surely going to be amazing sites here (Australia). But the intangibles, the very things that I have come here to absorb, are so great there. The rhythm of the people, the generosity, the knowledge of other peoples and humility about their own; I am sure that these will be very different here, not just because we have changed countries, but the entire scene is different. Small city to big, small economy to strong, a more intramural lifestyle. I’ll take it all for what it is and love it. I just know which one fits me better.

An interesting point is starting to twinkle on the horizon. Many of the differences between the Kiwis and the Ausies also exist between the Americans and both of them. It’s just another big step to realizing what my homeland is, appreciating others for what they have and at the same time recognizing what we lack and what negative things we unfortunately do not lack. But you cannot change things unless you know what changes to make. And some are not to be changed, just accepted. Yes, we have a lot of good things, and I wouldn’t even suggest absolutes, but in my current state of mind, missing what we have lost, I am just taking a long look around, seeing the familiar and wondering what to make of the unfamiliar.