Melbourne and The Great Ocean Road

Last Thursday night, the kids, Mark, Dean and I boarded a plane in Newcastle. After that lovely airport experience, we hope to never have to fly out of Sydney again.

We landed in Melbourne (pronounced Melb'n, NOT Mel-born) at 8:00 and were snuggled in bed in our old but good enough hotel right down in the CBD (pronounced as Jordan loves to say: Say-Bye-Day.) First thing Friday morning, the 5 of us bundled up with coats and hats and waded through ankle-deep leaf piles to the Queen Victoria Markets--600 plus booths of produce, meat, bread and aisles and aisles of what I lovingly refer to as "crrrrap" (you must exotically roll the 'r' to get the full effect.)

But allow me to back up a moment to the leaves.
It is autumn down under the equator.
However, in mild Newcastle, the trees whose leaves turn rust and gold and fall off stand out amongst the deciduous trees that retain their green leaves apparently all year round.

But not so further south in Melb'n. Here, all the trees were in the process of changing and losing leaves by the millions. What added to the excitement of fallen leaves was that many were the circumference of soccer balls. Their size caught Gabe and Jordan's attention. The two of them spent the weekend competing to see who could find the biggest.

This is the park across the street from
our house.


We kicked and skipped our way through the puddles of leaves to the markets. Melbourne effectively paralyzed me with its cornucopia of sensory stimulation. There were people of every culture, language and costume; smells from morning bakeries and restaurants whose door opened onto the city blocks we walked along; cold winds whipping through my clothes; sounds of people laughing, vendors selling, and children screeching.





This is Gabe and Jordan trying to plant a
palm frond in the wind at the beach in
Melbourne. They did finally manage to
get it up! For a minute.









We spent time meandering down the long aisles banked on both sides by wares of all kinds. Mark and Dean surprisingly enough, lapped up the unending supply of touristy crrrrap to bring home to loved ones--oops, that might end up being you! I chaperoned the kids who are learning spending techniques and watched them pass by much of the crrrrap, that was either too expensive or too, you know, crrrrapy.







Then it came time to decide what we were going to do the rest of the day. I sometimes freeze in situations like this when the options seem limitless. Luckily Mark and Dean have much more honed filters so they can sift through it all and zero in on the things that our crew would most enjoy. Where I see limitless options, Mark tends to pave a most practical path. We left the Market and spent the rest of the day getting on and off the tram, exploring several pockets of this great city. I have decided that if I come back in another lifetime as more of a city girl than I am now, I will live in Melbourne. The only thing that it has working against it is the weather. It's either really cold or really hot. Otherwise, it is easy, friendly, culture-rich, eccletic and beautiful as it wraps itself around a bay, has saved lots of room for enormous parks and has a river running through it.

We have a sequel to the story about the mentally unstable populace on city street engaging and terrifying our children. The kids inadvertently plopped down onto a tram seat across from a man we later determined was mentally handicapped or developmentally disabled. What was remarkable was that both kids, independent of each other, picked up on the fact that even though this man looked and talked abnormally and even though he was very talkative to them, he was safe and friendly. Gabe noticed that the man sat back when the kids sat down, allowing them space rather than getting in theirs. Jordan picked up on his ability to think logically because he suggested that the kids use their newly acquired chopsticks to bang on pots and pans early in the morning to wake up their parents but that they only do it once. He said the first time would be funny but after that, they might get in trouble. That proved to Jordan that his brain wasn't "messed up like that lady." Fascinating to watch them learn discernment. Not that it was our intention to introduce the topic of differentiating between alcoholism, mental illness and mental retardation, but at least they are handling these unforeseen situations quite well.

After a very long day with miles of walking and tram-riding, complete with a pre-birthday sushi dinner for Dean, we all collapsed in bed back in our hotel rooms.

Saturday morning, on Dean's birthday, we awoke to pouring rain. It was disappointing to say the least as we'd hoped to spend some time in the Botanic Gardens and Gabe had his heart set on visiting the local amusement park, Luna Park. (I am sure that is where Dean wanted to spend his birthday as well!) This would have been Gabe's first viable opportunity to ride the big roller coasters since he's just recently poked his head up over 48 inches.

What the rain did do for me was force me to stay sitting inside the car most of the day which was the right way to spend the day before a marathon. We did don rain coats and jump out to explore the fabulous children's section of the Botanic Gardens before we left town. The garden paths wound in circuitous routes demanding adults to stoop beneath the low cut trees. We explored a dense and very vertical bamboo forest, hopped from rock to rock along a small stream and watched the kids crawl through the tunnel of a huge tree. I love kid-centered places, especially outside in natural settings where children get to feel like masters of their own domain. It's so magical in places like that. It awakens the few nerve endings left in my body that can still feel that magic too.

Into dry clothes and back into the car, we headed south and west. Destination: The Great Ocean Road.

Through Geelong (which we all took to calling either G-love or Geelong Funk, thinking fondly of George all day) and then into Torquay which advertises itself as "The Surf Capital" (though they don't specify of what they are the capital--Victoria? Australia? The world?) As Torquay gave way to even smaller coastal towns like Jan Juc, Anglesea and Fairhaven, we were awed by the scene to our left. The ocean crashed on rocks and rolled gently onto beaches. The color was that same turquoise blue that never fails to evoke comments of disbelief that that color actually exists in the wild outside a tube of toothpaste. The waves were five and six feet high and higher. In some places, because of the sandbank formations, the waves rolled in unbroken for many meters. In other words, very fun to ride on a surfboard which many people were doing.

On the other side of our curvy road was bush and hills. I imagined, before white people built roads and buildings, what it must have been like for the Aboriginal people to crest the cliffs after their trek through the thick, dark forested bush and pick their way down the steep declines to end up right there on the beach. Likely, what they did was follow one of the rivers that carved a valley between cliff walls that would lead them down gentle slopes and then open out onto the beach.

Once we reached the town of Lorne, the adults in the car became singly-focused on assessing the remainder of our drive to Apollo Bay for run-ability. Lorne would host the marathon's starting line the next morning and 8am and Apollo Bay , where our rental house awaited us, would host the finish. We drove the 45 K (28 miles) noticing the abundance of healthy rolling hills. None of them impossibly steep but the sheer quantity of them made me wonder what I was getting myself into. During our drive, we were all gaining hope that the dreary rainstorm of Saturday would mosey on out of town by Sunday morning. Call it naivety or self-preservation but I truly had an inability to fathom that the gods would allow hundreds of hark-working, dedicated and pure-hearted runners who were not out to hurt anyone (aside from themselves, of course) to run in such dismal conditions. Little did we know that rain was only one of the climatological elements we needed to pray would go away. While we were working on hoping the weather would improve, we didn't consider that it might actually get worse.

We made it to Apollo Bay in time to pick up my race packet, go to the grocery store, and make and eat dinner and a special birthday cake. I went to bed that night listening to the rain and the every-increasing wind outside the window. I didn't sleep much.


I woke up early Sunday morning, bundled up and hopped on one of the buses that carried a few hundred of us to Lorne. It was raining and windy and then it would stop and the patchiness of the clouds would spur false hope that maybe it was going to clear just in time. That would have made for a great story, wouldn't it? But literally three minutes before 8:00, it started to pour again and it was at that moment that I opened my closed fist and let my last kernel of hope for good weather fall to the ground and roll into a puddle.

I ran this marathon and in spite of the on again, off again rain, in spite of the strong often gusty head winds and in spite of being unprepared to ascend and descend so many hills, I had a great time. The few times the sun came out lifted my spirits the way those crazy spectators can sometimes do when they are ringing their cow bells and cheering with gusto. I felt fresh and strong and steady the whole way. I was well-fueled and well-hydrated. I had a feeling all the way along that I was only hours away from finishing my first marathon since 2004. And I was right. the bonus was that I beat my previous time by 18 minutes on a much more challenging course with "adverse weather conditions." (You know, that's a nice way of saying the weather stunk which is a nice way of saying something else I won't say on this family friendly blog.)

The part of the race I liked least of all--even worse than the weather or my sore quads was the fact that this particular marathon was three kilometers longer than a real marathon. So after you run the first 42 kilometers (26.2 miles) and cross a finish line with a big digital clock displaying your finishing time, you have another 1.8 miles left to go before you can stop. 1.8 miles down the road is where you get your official time (without which your 42 K time doesn't count though to whom it doesn't count I'm not sure.) It's also where your family is patiently waiting in the same adverse weather conditions to see if you're still alive. So while my goal of running a strong 26.2 miles was achieved, I had to convince my aching quads to keep at it for another 15-20 minutes. I walked for a while which was unfortunate because it made it almost impossible to pick my pace back up to even a jog. But I managed so I could come around the corner running the last several hundred meters rather than walking for no other reason that I thought it might be really confusing to the kids, after we all made such a fuss about this race, for them to see me sauntering over the finish line. And I'm glad I was running when I got to where they were waiting, just 100 meters before the finish line, because both kids grabbed one of my hands and the three of us crossed that finish line together. I was a proud and happy mama.

Meanwhile, Mark, Dean and the kids slept in, made pancakes and built a huge fort in the kids' bedroom. Oh, I forgot to talk about this house. Suffice it to say, Mark and I decided we'd like to come back to Apollo Bay every Christmas break to stay in this house and we'd like any of our family and friends who are so inclined to join us there. It was spacious, clean and well-stocked for a large group to live. and it was just down the track from the beach and a few blocks from town. Pencil it in if you're interested.

After the race, we went back to the house where I sat for the majority of the rest of the day (save for my 30 minute massage during which I, of course, laid down.) Kids played inside mostly and Dean and Mark explored what they reported as a very wild and alive section of beach/sea.

Next day we got out fairly early so we could make a number of stops on our three hour drive back to Melbourne for a 5:00 flight. First stop was (ridiculously for me) a steep little hike to a breath-taking lookout spot above Apollo Bay. What a view. I again thought of the Aboriginals whose home was this area and wondered if they felt the same awe looking down on the edge of the lush land cradling the wild sea.

We met a couple at the top who were on a post-retirement jaunt around Australia in a self-contained camper van. They'd been gone 14 months and when they reached Melbourne, they planned to flip a coin to determine which direction they would take back home, the long one or the short one. What freedom.








Here are the kids climbing even higher on the hill looking over the town of Apollo Bay.

My attempts to walk back down this hill were pathetic. Especially as the kids ran down, back up and down several times for every pained and limping yard I manage to descend.

Our next stop was in Kennet River where we were told that if we drove up this road a bit, we might spy wild koalas. So we did and we did. None of us had even hoped to see wild koalas as they have several qualities that keep them well-hidden.
They are the same gray and beige color of the trees they live in, they are very shy, they look like filler in the crooks of the trees and because they sleep 20 hours a day (that's what a high carb, no protein diet will do for you) they rarely move. But nonetheless, we pulled over on the side of this dirt road and spotted a mother and her little baby in the first tree, sleeping. And if that weren't exciting enough, there was another one in the same tree who was awake and climbing around, albeit at a snail's pace. It was good fun to engage in this mutual checking each other out. They looked at us with the same inquisitiveness that I felt. So yes, Serena, we have seen wild koalas



















Here are Gabe and Jordan waiting patiently in hopes that the parrot will land on them. In the end, the birds out-waited the kids.




Our next destination was a golf course but not for the reasons you might think. We stopped there because we'd heard about a resident mob of kangaroos and we were not misled. We arrived at the golf course in Anglesea and there, on the 10th fairway (the closest hole to the parking lot) were about 30 kangaroos. They were splayed out all over the hillside right below the tee box. I imagine they were safe enough there unless a complete hack came up and whacked the ball all of 30 yards in which case, they'd be at risk of being beamed. Otherwise, most balls probably fly right over their heads. We parked and walked over to the 10th tee box and there were three or four kangaroos hanging out on the side of the tee box, prepared to spectate but, on this slow Monday morning, bored. They were all laid out in the centerfold pose that I love so much about kangaroos.

Onward we went to Bell's Beach, our last tourist stop before we made our way to the airport. Bell's Beach is world-renowned for its surf appeal. I didn't really know what to expect and why we were headed out to this beach but I knew that I couldn't drive right by without stopping to see. And now I get it. We parked on the top of a bluff and walked down some stairs (my poor quads) to a lookout point. From there, we could see down to the ocean which was probably fifty feet below us. None of us had ever seen anything like this before.





The waves which that day were probably five or six feet high, formed maybe 200 yards out and rolled all the way into shore before they broke. Once a surfer caught a wave, which didn't look hard that day as the ocean was glassy and smooth, they could ride it for 20-30 seconds. That's like the difference between skiing in the midwest where you can maybe make 20 turns before you get back on the chairlift and go back up and do it again and the Rocky Mountains where you can get off at the top of a chairlift and spend 15 minutes coming down having to stop and catch your breath because the runs are so long. It was unbelievable to watch these surfers ride a wave for so long. They must have been in heaven. No wonder this spot is so well-known, even amongst non-surfers like us. If I were a serious surfer, I would make sure not to leave this lifetime before I surfed Bell's Beach.

That being our last stop, we made our way to the airport and successfully and easily arrived back home in Newcastle, well-traveled and happy.

Since last weekend, we've all gotten back into our Newcastle routine. We are all battling colds and sore throats but nothing too traumatic. Dean left and we were sad to see him go. It was wonderful to spend such good time with such a good friend.


























That's all for now!

Beneath the Southern Cross, Part Six and Out

I haven’t mentioned yet that it was only because of the dolphins that we were even out on the beach that morning. It was really cold with strong chilly winds blowing that sent us inside as soon as the dolphins swam back out. The kids and my parents found an empty movie room where the Planet Earth series about the ocean was playing so they cozied up in there and watched about two hours of documentaries. Mark and I found some wind-protected sun and laid in it like lizards.

I guess we must have fallen asleep because the next thing we knew, my parents were telling us that they’d left the movie room and Gabe had made some friends and they were all playing Frisbee around the corner. I pictured a bunch of eight-year old Australian boys on holiday with their parents. But when we walked around the corner to come see, opening up in front of me was: Grateful Dead meets seaside resort. Gabe’s new friends were 20-something guys who’d come to Monkey Mia prepared to play. They had Frisbees and juggling balls and those sticks you can make dance. We ended up spending the day with them. There was Gil and Omri and Ruven
from Israel and another
guy from Spain and two women from France. Suddenly, after all the flies and long desolate outback driving, stinging sand and frigid morning winds, low-budget accommodations with a sink that wouldn’t drain and a grocery store with sketchy-looking meat and produce, finally after all that, we’d found a bit of paradise.There were dolphins, palm tree-spotted grassy areas, happy music, a friendly café, a sun that was warming everything up, and new friends to play with. My parents took pictures and read in the shade. Mark and Gabe and I played volleyball with
some Israeli, German and Dutch folks. Jordan made the dancing sticks dance and made us all some delectable chocolate chip cookies out of sand. Gabe learned to juggle. Mark and the kids took out a canoe while I took a little nap in the sun. We laughed and played all day. I think the last thought on each of our minds as we drifted off to sleep that night was, “Thank God.”

We enjoyed who Gabe referred to as “The Guys” quite a bit and now have a place to stay when we visit Israel. One of the funniest things I’ve ever heard is an Israeli saying, “Good on ya mate!” Spending time with a group of people from all over the world in Monkey Mia, Western Australia kicked wide open the doors to international travel in my mind. For my entire 38 years, the world has always seemed a faraway place to me. It’s been a world of which I feared I may never see more than pictures. And the US has always seemed vast enough to be a world unto itself. It seems things have been flipped onto their heads for me as the world now feels like it is right around the corner and the US but a very small part of it all.

We all agreed that Monkey Mia was worth seeing afterall. Therefore, we awoke early the next morning to greet the dolphins and interact with them on what to them was just another Wednesday morning. Gabe had a bit of a hard time watching the dolphins on the second day as his head kept jerking backwards to the grassy area to see if The Guys were there yet. I’ve never heard him so excited to see anything appear in his life than he was when The Guys rolled out of bed at about 10am and sauntered out into view. “They’re here!!!” he yelled and took off running toward them faster than a bat outta hell.

We learned a new Aussie phrase that morning. We had spoken, the day before, with Capes, the Aboriginal tour guide who told us that he’d be happy if we joined him on his morning guided walkabout the next day. All we had to do was meet him right here at 8;30am. So we dutifully showed up at 8:30 am and he wasn’t there. We checked with the information people who said that that tour was fully booked. Fully booked? We’d just spoken with him the day before and he didn’t say anything about needing to make a booking. So we thought the information people must have been mistaken and we went back out to wait for Capes. He never did show up. We found it all very peculiar that he didn’t show up for a fully booked tour that no one else seemed to be waiting for either. We mentioned it to one of the dolphin rangers a bit later and he laughed. ‘Fully booked’, he explained, means that Capes won’t be in today. Maybe he had a late night the night before, wink, wink. But for all intents and purposes, that tour is ‘fully booked.’ Got it.

On our second day in Monkey Mia, after the dolphin had had their morning tea and chat with the people, we ran into another exchange family who were also visiting this part of the country during their school holiday. The 10 of us took ourselves on the guided bush walk and enjoyed laughing and chatting with this other family who are from Seattle and having challenges and joys during their adventure in Australia as well. The afternoon was another lovely day on the beach, in the water, playing with The Guys and relaxing like one does at a resort.

Once we befriended Shark Bay or it befriended us, I realized that the land we were in was quite spectacular. I loved seeing the red dirt of the off-shore land butt right up against the white sand on the beaches. At one point I was looking out the front window of the camper and I could see deep red dirt on my right and bright white sand on my left as though I were in two different places at once. The ocean was just as phenomenal as it ever is. My stepdad, who is an ex-naval officer and submariner commented that he'd never been on the Indian Ocean before. I asked him if it looked any different, wondering if it maybe had an Indian flair to it. He said he couldn't see much of a difference but that he might if he got to know it better. I loved the rich red and kelly green colors next to each other especially with the bright blue sky as a canopy over both. I knew that against all odds, I was going to miss this place.

We had one more night in Denham (the town just down the road from Monkey Mia that we were staying in) so we made our way back there and while Mark and the kids went to the grocery store, bless their hearts, I had a rare opportunity to walk through a museum without children. My parents and I visited a surprisingly gorgeous museum telling the story of Shark Bay. I learned so much about the history there that what had felt like a god-forsaken, fly-infested, wind-blown forbidding section of the world was becoming a place I was falling in love with. I learned about the Aboriginal history there and the indescribable tragedy of their early experiences with Europeans. I learned more about the animal life, the struggles they have with non-native animals and their efforts to return the area back to its natural state. Through some video documentaries that played in a loop for anyone to drop in and have a listen, I heard from people who’ve lived in Shark Bay all their lives and what their impact has been on the land over the years. This whole experience taught me so much about sitting still and seeing what’s really there rather than coming into a place with expectations that it be something I already know. It wasn’t a coastal paradise like so much of the eastern coast has been for us. It was harsh. It was empty. It was dry and intimidating. The people were rugged. Of the six of us, I may have been the one that wanted to leave the most. I was trying to talk Dave and Mark into driving the camper van back down south through the middle of the night. But we didn’t leave and I didn’t spend the three days there waiting for the time to pass so we could go back somewhere better. I sat still and watched and learned and found an incredible amount of joy in exactly what was there. We didn’t create a good time for ourselves, we just allowed one. When it was time to go, none of us wanted to. None of us.

Luckily, on our way out of town the next morning, we had one more stop to make that allowed us to prolong our fun. We stopped at a place called Ocean Park. Ocean park is either open from 9-5 or 10-5 depending on which of the signs you believe as you drive down their road. Apparently the 10-5 sign was the accurate one because their gate was still closed at 9:00. But we really wanted to come see this place as it was touted to have a shark display that was well worth seeing and really good coffee. So I went in and asked the guy who was in the middle of his breakfast if he wouldn’t mind us coming in a bit early because we were on our way out of town. He was more than happy to accommodate us and within 15 minutes, we’d begun a private tour with him through Ocean Park.

This is a place with about a dozen man-made tanks of all sizes and they temporarily house the sea creatures that live in the surrounding ocean. What they do is go out almost daily and go fishing. When they catch things, they bring them home and put them in their tanks. When the creatures start showing signs of not wanting to be in captivity anymore (usually by stopping eating) they release them back into the wild. As a result, we were able to see sea snakes and sting rays and huge groper fish the size of small pigs and tiny little clown fish and turtles and a lobster and a squid and several huge sharks. They sometimes have in their tanks hammerheads and blue sharks and great whites. This day they had lemon sharks, sand sharks and a nervous shark (that’s just its name but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for it.) We watched him hold a big, bloody fish head out on a long line for the sharks to swim by and attack. I could feel my adrenaline spike just a bit every time one of those animals jumped out of the water with its mouth wide open and teeth poised to pierce some skin and I wasn’t even in the water. After a while, a crowd joined us on our tour and someone asked if you had to worry about these sharks if you were to see them in the water. Our guide replied, “You don’t have to worry about any sharks. What’s to worry about? If you see one, just get out of the water.” He seemed serious. It was a little disturbing.

Ocean Park was the last stop of our visit to Shark Bay. We drove back down the road off the peninsula and bid adieu to the swarms of flies we knew we were leaving behind. We settled back into our places in the camper and readied ourselves for the long drive back down through the empty and vast desert.

About halfway to Geraldton, where we were to spend the next two nights, we stopped at a National Park called The Pinnacles. Remember that for hundreds of kilometers behind and ahead of us all we saw was red dirt, squat dried green scrub and one two-lane road splitting down the middle. That was it. Nothing else. Until we turned left down this road and suddenly we were on another planet. We were surrounded by light tan/white rocks that stuck up like giant stalagmites (remember that word?) Thousands of pillars of rock stood anywhere from one foot to ten feet tall. A wax museum of petrified ghosts. And I’m sorry but it would take a stronger woman than me to talk about the pinnacles without referring to their phallic nature. Quite a bizarre place in the middle of nowhere.

We got out of our camper and climbed all over the pinnacles, trying to keep our thoughts out of the gutters. The kids got to eat their lunch on the top of one. We played hide-and-seek behind them. We saw two wild emus saunter by like they were native New Yorkers making their way down a crowded 5^th Avenue. It was quite a spectacle. At the risk of sounding not very smart, I will tell you that there was a sign that explained the theory of how the pinnacles came to be and why only in that particular area. Alas, those scientists lost me after the first few sentences. I can tell you there were rains and mountains and a build up of sediment and that it all happened a very, very long time ago. But that’s about as far as I can take you.

We had our fill of the strange tall rocks, remarked about the absence of flies and climbed back into the camper to make our way back to Geraldton. We spent two nights here and had a nice time renting bikes, walking around town, going to the beach and swimming though the water was pretty cold. It was a relaxing time in Geraldton but not a lot of excitement to add to the blog.

Our trip was just winding down at this point. We left Geraldton, made our way back to Freemantle to spend our last night and then returned the camper and got on the plane. We said good-bye to Western Australia. Who knows if any of us will ever return.

All in all, we were all pretty impressed with our flexibility—at least in our behavior if not always in our attitude. Had we known what we were getting ourselves into ahead of time, we probably wouldn’t have booked the trip in this way. But we were all deeply glad we did.

We came back to Newcastle and one of the most remarkable things to me was how genuinely happy we were to be “home.” It really does feel right here. We are happy to be here. We found out from someone the day after we returned that while we were gone, it had rained non-stop for 13 days in Newcastle—the entire school holiday. Monkey Mia just scored another point.

My parents stayed with us for 2 more days after our trip and we were all very sad to separate when they left. It’s so good for us to be together and so hard to say good-bye. The kids really benefit from having people come visit I think. And so do Mark and I. They made it home safe and sound, reporting that after being gone from the US and immersed in a slower culture for 6 weeks, they are missing it here. I can only imagine.

So back into our lives we’ve gotten. Everyone’s back in school. I’m back to my writing and other projects and activities that I’m enjoying. And there will be more blogs to come as things unfold. Our love to all of you!

Beneath the Southern Cross, Part Five

The next morning, we woke up early with the specific intent of going to visit the dolphins. Monkey Mia is one of very few places in the world where wild dolphins come up to the shore to be fed. It’s a fascinating story, really. About 50 years ago, a woman began feeding a dolphin off her boat. She did that long enough and consistently enough that she taught the dolphin how to come eat fish from her hand right off the beach. Within a few years, tourists came and swam with that dolphin and the others who had heard the news and had come to join in. After a short while, as you might imagine, the people started mistreating the dolphins, feeding them all sorts of crap, distracting them from getting their own food in the ocean, handling them too much, etc. The dolphins were too friendly with humans and they were endangering their own lives. A group of biologists/conservationists took over the care of these dolphins about 10 years ago by coming up with a protocol of feeding. This is how it works: Every morning, 365 days a year, the dolphins are offered 3 feedings between 8am and noon. It is up to them whether and when they come for those feedings. When they first show up near the beach in the morning, a wildlife expert or 2 or 3 will stand knee-deep in the water as 2-5 dolphin swim at their ankles. The rangers talk to the crowd of tourists who are about ankle deep in the water and tell them all about the dolphins. They’ll talk and answer questions for about 20-30 minutes while the dolphins just hang out and schmooze with the crowd, swimming up and down the length of the crowd along the edge of the ocean. After the rangers have talked all about them and their history, they bring down buckets of food with the names of each of the 5 dolphins on them.

They only feed 5 and those five are females who are 10 years or older. The five they feed are Nikki, Puck and her daughter Piccolo, Surprise and her daughter Shock. They’ve been feeding Nikki and Puck and Surprise since they were 10 years old and before that, they fed their moms. The rangers pick one person from the crowd at a time to come take the fish and hold it under the water for the dolphin to come take. Jordan was picked twice to do this as we witnessed 4 feedings over 2 days. After the fish are gone, the dolphins usually swim away and come back, or not, for another 2 feedings later in the morning. The rangers only feed them a small snack to allow the dolphins continue to get the bulk of their food on their own. Sometimes the dolphins come back later in the day just to see people but they don’t get fed.

They don’t seem to come just for the food. The dolphins really seem to enjoy the human interaction as much as the humans. It is amazing to watch. The dolphins will swim slowly by the crowd on their side so their eye is up out of the water so they can see everyone. They have distinct personalities that the rangers refer to as they talk about each of the dozens of dolphins that hang out in Monkey Mia who all have names and birthdates. They say that the mama dolphins tend to bring their new babies to the shore to show them off to the rangers the day they give birth. They don’t feed babies who are still nursing (which some can do for up to 6-8 years, my goodness) because they want to make sure they are fully capable of taking care of themselves in the wild. They don’t feed males because, apparently, male dolphins are not good guys. They are aggressive and sort of one-track minded. They are focused on teaming up with a few other males, corralling a female when she is in season and kidnapping her. They take her out to sea for a few weeks and won’t let her get away. Then they all mate with her and then let her go. Usually, 12 months after a female dolphin disappears from the beach at Monkey Mia for a few weeks, she’ll have a baby. One of the rangers said if you were thinking about coming back in your next life as a dolphin, don’t come back as a female. They have a rough life. Kidnap, rape, up to 8 years of nursing if their baby isn’t killed by a shark which 50% of them are, and they never go through menopause so they can be impregnated even when they are old and over it.

That sort of dented my dolphin-worshipping bubble. But the way these rangers care for these
amazingly smart and gorgeous mammals is very inspiring. They are a model program and other parts of the world are working to emulate something similar. The goal is to allow masses of people to have up-close interactions with dolphins so that the animals get into the hearts of people who will do what they can to protect them from maltreatment without disturbing the natural habits of the animals.

Beneath the Southern Cross, Part Four

Shark Bay is the name of a large area. The bay itself is enormous and the land mass surrounding the bay is a peninsula that juts out from mainland Australia and is the most westerly point on the continent. (I like that I can now say that I’ve been to the most easterly point in Australia, the most westerly point and the southern-most land mass in the world besides Antarctica. I don’t know that I’ll make any money off those claims but everyone’s gotta have something.)

As we began our venture onto this peninsula, we stopped at a few recommended places. The first was the home of the Stromatolites. Now these guys deserve their own blog page, their own website. Tiny, microscopic organisms called cyanobacteria build up to form these stumpy rock-looking creatures called Stromatolites that live in the ocean.

These stumpy rock things are my new heroes. 350 billion years ago, give or take, there was not much oxygen on the earth so it was not a very friendly place for life. The only living things were these cyanobacteria who apparently didn’t need much. But what these organisms did was produce oxygen. Over a few billion years, they increased the amount of oxygen in our atmosphere just enough to make it possible for other, more complex life forms to survive here. Without them, you’d not be reading this blog right now. So while we may feel a deep connection to the chimpanzee as a distant relative, it is these stumpy Stromatolites to whom I feel I owe my life. They only exist in this one area in the entire world because the sea right there is so high in saline that it is too salty for any other animal to live in and therefore, safe for these fragile little Stromatolites because there are no predators or competition for food. Seeing them and learning about their role in, well, in my life, made me feel like I had completed the ultimate pilgrimage. If it weren’t for the flies, I’d have stayed with them to pay homage much longer. But the flies drove us back to the relative sterility of the camper van and on we drove to our next stop.

Shell Beach is a beach where tiny, white, perfect seashells are piled by the trillions, 30 feet deep for several miles. There is no sand to speak of. Just shells. Most of them so tiny you could fit two or three of them on a dime. It is spectacular. But the climate there was just unreasonable. At the parking lot end of the beach were the flies. Once you got on the beach, the fly population thinned (notice I didn’t say disappeared) but the winds picked up and whipped specks of tiny shells at our legs. The sun bounced off the white shells producing a brightness that scoffed at our sunglasses. We decided it was a good time to let the kids run free and because we were in a bay, the water was calm enough for them to practice snorkeling.

Sadly, it was freezing and none of us could stay in for very long. I thought I’d go for a swim to work off some of my building frustrations with our new climate but the ocean was so shallow that for what looked like miles, it didn’t even reach my knees. Things were starting to look more and more grim and we were having a harder and harder time shaking it off. We toweled off the kids and bundled them and their purple lips back into the camper and drove the rest of the way to our caravan park.

The Denham caravan park. Let’s just say it was low-budget. The good news was that when we arrived in this little town just down the road from Monkey Mia, we discovered that the flies had disappeared. Because the 80 mph winds made it impossible for them to land anywhere. The sand, on the other hand, had no trouble at all stinging our legs and arms and faces as we tried to walk down the street in town. We finally had to just turn around and escape the gale force winds by staying in our cabin the rest of the afternoon. But we had something to do—we put our heads together to form an escape plan. We were all miserable (except, of course, my stepdad who, for those of you who don’t know is pretty much happy anywhere,) and we all wanted out. We thought about driving in the middle of the night to get back to civilization, we called all sorts of other caravan parks around Perth to find somewhere else to stay. We talked about some of us flying down to Perth from there while two people drove the camper van back. We were willing to forfeit deposits and spend more money on alternative accommodations. We were willing to sell our souls to get out of there. We felt like we’d just driven over 10 hours straight into the belly of hell. But because it was the school holiday, the supposed masses of travelers, with whom we still hadn’t crossed paths (though it was now becoming clear where they all were,) had reserved everything in Perth. We were stuck. We couldn’t leave because we had no where else to go. It became clear that our only option was to muster up all the internal resources with which we were each endowed and make do.