Going Down Under
From the top of the Rialto Tower, I looked down on a Melbourne of
soaring, steel-and-glass obelisks, canyon-like streets, a vast casino
complex and wide river esplanades.
Just beyond the river, on the muddy field where the circus used to
perform, a sprawling cultural center flashed its roofs in the sun.
Wherever I looked, everything was new to me. But then I recognized
the pier at the harbor to the south, where the bay stretches in a
100-mile arc. When Loni and I disembarked there 40 years ago to start
our life together, Melbourne was a sleepy provincial town that closed
down on weekends. What happened?
What happened was that my past had vanished. As I explored the city,
I discovered that the discrete dress shops and quiet tea rooms I
remembered had changed into loud boutiques and noisy cafes;
that giant squat corporate fortresses hovered over the ornate mansions
along tree-lined St. Kilda Road; and that our rustic, peaceful garden
apartment now had barred windows.
Still, I rode the same clanking yellow-green street cars as before.
And in the lush Royal Botanic Garden I retraced the past where, where
on quiet Sunday mornings, we had pushed our new pram with our new baby. Once more, I fed the quarreling magpies and the sedate black swans. And on that note I ended the sentimental part of my journey and closed the books on the past.
On a rainy Saturday morning, I boarded the tour bus for Alice Springs
--the 'Alice' from the movie "A Town Like Alice"--10 days and 2,300 miles
away in the arid heart of the country. I was ready for some really
exotic experiences.
We started out mildly though by traveling for two days through
Australia's rice growing region in the basin of the Murray--Australia's
Mississippi--where fields are graded to within 0.5 inch by laser
techniques. Now here is laser research that really pays off at $1,000
per acre.
The first stop of genuinely exotic interest was Coober Pedie, an
extremely hot, one-hill opal mining town in the desert where people
live mostly underground. You buy an attractive hill face "lot" and
get a contractor to start digging. A three-room home will cost you
$50,000, which you could earn by taking out a $16 license to mine opal.
From the picture, you see that a miner's life is hot and cramped but,
hey, you'll have a real cool home.
After Coobie Pedie we traveled through vast plains of salt brush and
spinifex, with occasional kangaroos or wild camels, until you come to
Ayers Rock, or Urulu in the local aboriginal language. Ayers rock is
just that: an enormous reddish rock in the middle of nothing. The
first thing tourists do is climb it. After that they visit the
Aboriginal Center nearby to learn that the rock should not be climbed
because it is sacred. Being a sensitive person with weak ankles, I
never climbed it in the first place.
In Alice Springs, where the local river is very wide and entirely
filled with sand, I learned fascinating things about the local
aboriginal culture. Such as that, yes, there is a Great Father in the
sky, but he just looks on. Who really counts is the ancestoral being
of the "dreamtime"--kangaroo man, emu woman, etc.--who shares your
soul.
Then there is the food, or "bushtucker," the aborigines find in the
wild and offer to daring tourists like me. The item of choice is
"witchetty grubs," fetching three-inch-long white grubs that live in
the roots of the witchetty bush. Real afficionados eat them raw, but
I had a grilled grub, toasted briefly in hot ashes--a "one-minute" grub.
It tasted like chicken, as do all things you're afraid to eat and
swallow quickly.
I took the train back to Melbourne and stopped off at Kangaroo Island,
where the koalas are said to number in the thousands. I saw two, and
both had their backs toward me. I also visited a dozen or so sea lions that were
sleeping on the beach, while another one was desperately trying to get
their attention. It reminded me of a faculty meeting, and I realized
the time had come to go home.
So what had I learned from all this? That it is good to be home? Not on your
life. I'm saving up for my next trip and another helping of witchetty grubs.
See you around, mates!
-Adrian Korpel At Random
