Our Love Affair

Today is Australia Day, Australia’s national holiday that celebrates what’s great about Australia and being Australian. Like the 4th of July in the US, it’s a day full of outdoor concerts, barbecues, family and community celebrations and fireworks, and lots of Australian flag-themed t-shirts, hatwear, tattoos and beachwear. And, with Rick’s contract up on December 31 this year, today is quite possibly the last Australia Day that we will spend Down Under. It’s got me reflecting on the Australia that we have fallen in love with.

You would have to be living under a rock to have missed hearing about Oprah’s Ultimate Australian Adventure, her recent four-part television event during which she repeatedly declared her LOVE for Australia. It was an eight-day adventure that had her travelling to some of Australia’s great tourist attractions, like the Great Barrier Reef and Uluru. She held two of her shows on the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House (renamed the “Sydney Oprah House” for her visit), interviewing famous Australians like Steve Irwin’s family, Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban and Russell Crowe. And she showered her largesse and generosity on some she encountered, with many weepy made-for-Oprah moments.

Because we too are Americans who LOVE Australia in our own gushy sort of way, we sat down as a family to watch the shows. Although she certainly shared some of the magnificent and exotic beauty of this country, and she was able to touch on some of the cultural aspects that define Australia (Terry Irwin’s tearful reflection on the core value of “mateship” really spoke to me), I was disappointed to come away with an overall feeling that she didn’t capture OUR Australia. Perhaps it was the slick advertising (and too much of it!) or the inherent limitations of an eight-day excursion, but it was too much video travel brochure for me. I wanted to see our Australia there, to proclaim to all the world why we have fallen in love.

But, I suppose that our Australia can only be appreciated after setting down roots and experiencing the everyday- not an experience that many Americans will get. The first thing that struck us about Australia, and continues to strike us to this day, is the authentic hospitality and openness of the Australian people. While I am generally a reserved and quiet person who likes to keep to myself, after four years of constant exposure to people genuinely welcoming me into conversation wherever I go, from the neighbourhood to the shops, sport and school, I have developed a legitimate outgoing streak. A few weeks ago while we were travelling on a ferry on Sydney Harbour, my sister was shocked to find me engaged in animated conversation with a stranger I had just met, a Guatemalan linguistics professor who worked at a local university. Where had her shy and retiring sister gone?

Another characteristic we have come to appreciate is the egalitarian nature of the society. The belief that everyone should be given a “fair go” is a key ethos of Australian culture. Australia provides universal health care, and we have had enough encounters with the health system to be very pleased with the quality of the health professionals and the care we’ve received. Higher education is affordable because of government subsidy- we’ve never heard anyone agonize over the cost of higher education. Tipping is essentially unheard of, although restaurants often have the “tip” line on their checks, hopeful to catch tourists unawares, I suppose. Service industry workers, like hairdressers, waiters and taxi-drivers are not looked down upon as “lesser”, but treated as equals and paid a fair wage.

We have truly valued the education our children are receiving here. Perhaps influenced by the laidback and open nature of the people, schools seem to be more open and accessible. While in the US we are used to lining up outside the main school door to greet our children as they emerge from enclosed buildings, here the parents gather in the courtyards and open spaces outside individual classroom doors. This means that you get a chance to regularly watch the children’s interactions with their teachers, as well as get a chance to have short chats with the teachers on the veranda steps. We LOVE school uniforms, which promote the egalitarian ethos and encourage community spirit. I am not looking forward to readjusting to life without them.

Although we would like to see smaller class sizes (Erin’s 4th grade class had 31 kids last year), we have been impressed with classroom discipline and the quality of teaching. In a refreshing departure from the madness about the separation of church and state in America’s classrooms, children are offered scripture classes every Thursday morning from a faith of the parents' choosing (or they can choose a non-scripture activity instead). And it is not at all uncommon for children to miss 2 or 3 weeks of school because they are travelling with their families on domestic or international trips, either back to home countries like India or China (or America!), or for family adventure.

We have also observed that life in Australia is simply more family-friendly. The standard entitlement for annual leave is four weeks (and everyone takes it.) Long service leave is also standard- about 13 weeks of leave is accrued once an employee is with an employer for 10 years. And while there seems to be some movement to increase working hours (trying, sadly, it appears, to adopt the American mindset), it is being strongly resisted. Australia also provides government support payments to families with children (sadly, not to its temporary resident visa holders). Working parents (men or women, as I understand it) are also entitled to one full year of leave after having a baby, with 18 weeks paid by the government at minimum wage.

There is one big problem, though. And that is that Australia is so far away from our families, and indeed most of the world. I don’t know- perhaps that is one thing that has allowed its culture to develop so uniquely. So despite our deep love affair with this country, culture and people, the US still calls us to return to our roots.

But no worries, mate. We'll still call Australia home.

.

A New Year's Eve in Sydney

Dad and the kids

My dad ticked an item off his bucket list two nights ago.

Since my mother died in April, Dad has been determined to see Sydney’s New Year’s Eve fireworks display up close. I am not sure whether this was a lifelong interest, but over the past couple of years, I know that it was mentioned more than once. But it was never a priority enough for my mother to get them out of the US immediately after Christmas so that they could make it here in time.

Although we assured him that the view from the tv screen was more than adequate, and far preferable to the crowds we would encounter, he was adamant. He was not to be deterred from this life goal. He paid a couple hundred extra dollars to leave New York City a few days before my sister and nephew, who are also visiting in January. Even a two-day delay out of New York City due to blizzard conditions seemed to strengthen his resolve, arriving just one day early on the 30th.

One of the attractions that makes Sydney Harbour so beautiful is that there is a huge amount of land that is set aside as parkland, reserve, or is otherwise open to the public. While crazy numbers of people make their way to the Opera House forecourt (look for it on Oprah!) or Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair for unobstructed viewing and partying, we decided to seek out one of the more family-friendly and theoretically alcohol-free sites. So, armed with our picnic dinner, two lawnchairs and a blanket, we made our way to the train at about 5pm. We got off at a train station that was a short walk from a park on Lavendar Bay, just northwest of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We joined the masses setting up their blankets, chairs and tents at a spot with a lovely, close-up view.

It is important to note that December 31 was a gorgeous, sunny, hot summer day here in Sydney. The sky was perfectly clear, and the sun was just getting low enough that it wasn’t scorching hot (Australian sun is INTENSE). Remembering waiting until the last possible minute to brave the freezing wind chill at Boston’s First Night to view the midnight fireworks, we relished being able to luxuriate in the warmth and beautiful blooming gardens all around us.

Fortunately for us less hardy members of the family, Sydney is also a very family-friendly place. At 9pm, they have a family fireworks display, which meant that the kids and I could come along and see the show, and then head home, while the hardier (and more determined) members could stay until midnight. At exactly 8:45, red smoke lit up the bottom of the bridge, and a firework or two was set off to prime the crowd. At 9, the display began, including the display of the symbol on the bridge, which was an “X” for a “Make Your Mark” theme. It was, quite frankly, about the most fantastic fireworks show I think I’ve seen. One of the neat things about the fireworks is that they are spread out over numerous spots in the Harbour, including some of the buildings, lighting up great lengths of sky and sea. And we all enjoyed seeing the “X” turn into a giant red smiley face, and then an “Oooo” face with a rounded mouth, as the display neared the end. A little Aussie light-heartedness to finish off the show.

Afterwards, three tired children and a satisfied mother headed back north to Epping, with a slightly later bedtime than expected after an unintentional detour down the wrong train line. Dad and Rick stayed on. From all reports, the midnight display was beyond spectacular. Rick later recalled that during the finale, he was just so awe-inspired by the way the whole sky and harbour lit up, and the booming filled his chest, that he found himself involuntarily grinning.

But the best report of all? When I groggily greeted Rick as he crawled into bed at 1:30am, he simply replied:

“Your Dad is very happy.”

Camping on Cockatoo

Since we have moved to Australia, we have slowly developed an interest in camping as a family. This unified interest has taken time to develop. While I grew up camping with my family, Rick’s family tended towards B and B’s and cottages. Rick envisioned tents and campers packed together like sardines in a crowded campground and found that vision incredibly unappealing. I was eager to recapture treasured childhood memories of camping in the US National Parks and meandering across the US in the trusty VW camper, but cringed at the recollections of my harried mother trying to cook a meal in that tiny camper with the family crammed around her as the rain bucketed down outside. But we know that we are going to have to start camping if we want to explore some of the more remote areas of Australia that we are eager to see.

Fortuitously, an opportunity came along to join good friends for a night of camping on Cockatoo Island. How can one resist the novelty of camping on an island with a view of the Harbour Bridge in what is arguably the world’s most beautiful harbour? And better yet, camping with two other families would help ease the transition to outdoor living because they were sure to remember the items that we were likely to forget, and could give us guidance on tented living.

So, on a Saturday morning in November, we drove through the exclusive suburb of Hunters Hill (I gave a wave in what I thought might be the general direction of Cate Blanchett’s home) and arrived at the Woolwich ferry dock. All hands were required to carry the camping supplies one stop to the island. We were delighted to find that we had been assigned a spot right at the edge of the water and hauled our gear over in large trolleys provided for that purpose to set up our tents.

Cockatoo Island has an intriguing history. After the British arrived to found their penal colony in 1788, the island was chosen to house the country’s most dangerous convicts, and the convicts were forced to construct their own prison. Later, a reformatory school for girls was run there. In addition, it also became an important industrial and shipbuilding centre for the Royal Navy. During WWII, it became the major shipbuilding and dockyard facility for the South West Pacific following the fall of Singapore. In 1992, the dockyard closed (the prison had long ceased operating). Now facilities are being restored by the government, and activities are being held to attract the public. I wonder who came up with the idea of setting up a campground? That’s certainly thinking outside the box!

In the afternoon, we took a self-guided tour of the island to explore the buildings and ruins and the tunnels connecting the two sides of the island, and delighted to come across a man asking his girlfriend to marry him up in the Military Guardhouse with a lovely picnic and a sign spelling out in rose petals “MARRY ME”. I’m pretty sure that the hearty applause of 14 onlookers was not what they expected after their passionate embrace! We later saw a skywriting plane spell out "Marry Me Jax" and figured it was pretty fortunate that she had said yes earlier- otherwise, that skywriting would have been a bit of an embarassment. Later, we simply sat and visited, enjoying our front row view of the sailboats continually capsizing in the water as the winds picked up.

By dinnertime, the campground was full of tents, and the atmosphere became almost festival- like, with groups of campers enjoying each other’s company as they munched on nibbles and barbecued their dinners on the electric BBQ's. Outdoor living is something that Australians do so well. Almost every park has an electric BBQ or two- this camping facility had 8 grouped together, and people stood around and chatted as they grilled their Aussie BBQ standard beef sausages (mind you, this campground also had a huge fridge, four washing-up sinks, a microwave, and an instant hot water tap- we weren’t exactly roughing it).

As we ate our dinner, we became aware that the increasing winds seemed to be reaching gale force, and our tents at the unsheltered waterfront were starting to lose the battle. We tried to fortify them with guide ropes (thank goodness for those veteran campers!), but our flimsy nylon tents did not stand a chance, and they simply flattened with the wind. Finally, when the tent pole of one of the families in our party snapped, we decided to haul all the tents back into a more sheltered area, where the winds were still blowing, but not flattening, our tents.

I cannot say for certain that I got one wink of sleep that night. The lack of a pillow (I decided they were too much to carry, but I’m now willing to revisit that decision), the whipping winds and the unusual surroundings all conspired to keep me awake. But as I relished the aroma of everyone's early morning eggs and bacon sizzling on the BBQs and downed my much-needed cups of coffee, I couldn’t help thinking what a great adventure this was for our family. How many American kids (or adults, for that matter) will get a chance to camp in the middle of Sydney Harbour and explore Sydney’s convict history? And maybe now that we’ve taken our first camping step, we’ll feel brave enough to move on to more extensive camping trips- exploring more of the remote areas of Australia, and filling our family life with memories of more adventure.

Erin gives a try to hauling our camping gear in the trolley...

...but returning the trolley to its dockside location was a lot more fun!

The view of the Harbour Bridge from Cockatoo Island.

A view of the campground from above.

The girls loved having their own tent!

Cheers,

Anne

Happy Halloween

I am shocked to note that it has been almost a full year since I last updated this blog- I suspect that means we've been very busy living life in Australia, and not spending as much time reflecting on it!

This year, I was feeling nostalgic, so rather than carve a watermelon, as we have done for the past 3 years, I purchased an orange pumpkin (a "pumpkin" to Australians is what we Americans call a "squash") and Rick and the kids carved a proper jack-o-lantern. Lachlan has very proudly taken it to preschool this morning and it was given a place of honor on a display table with other Halloween-themed items. The children were fascinated to touch it!

We have once again stuck to our tradition of just taking the kids to trick or treat at the houses of our two neighbours, but we did get our first lot of trick or treaters this year. Trick or treating is certainly starting to take hold here, much to the delight of the young and seeming consternation of many of the adults who are not so keen on the rather ghoulish nature of the whole thing.

I must admit that I do understand some of their misgivings. When you grow up with memories of dressing like Raggedy Andy, a scarecrow and a "tacky tourist", and attending school costume parades and Sunday School Halloween parties, Halloween is about the innocent fun of dressing up and getting special treats. But when your introduction to the holiday is as an adult being bombarded by the demonic and ghoulish by the retail and media industries, why would you want to allow that to darken your culture and stain your children's upbringing?

Sticking to our family's tradition of keeping the costumes light and fun, we are happy to present...

Bam-Bam, Wilma and Pebbles

Cheers,

Anne

Happy Thanksgiving

...from our little Pilgrim family to yours!

We have just celebrated Thanksgiving '09 on a hot and sunny day here in Sydney. While the rest of the country went about its normal business on just another November Thursday, we took the kids out of school early, made our Thanksgiving crafts and watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (we have to do something to homeschool them in the Thanksgiving traditions!) Rick even played some audio of American football games through the web so that we felt like granddad was watching games in the next room!

While we stuck with some of our traditional fare, like my great-grandmother's potato stuffing, we abandoned the hours of roasting a turkey in a hot oven for grilled chicken breast on the barbecue. My Aunt Sarah has been visiting for the past 2 weeks, so it was wonderful to have her with us, and her contribution of a pumpkin casserole made with canned pumpkin smuggled through customs was a treat! (I must add, it was also a pleasure just to have another family member to enjoy making the meal with.) Our neighbors Wes and Margaret, who have joined us for the past 3 years now, made the meal complete. Embracing our culture, Margaret has made a delicious, Martha Stewart-worthy apple pie for the past 2 years, even though she had never made one before.

The kids topped off the day with a post-meal swim in the pool with Rick while we cleaned up the kitchen- not quite a football game in the late autumn chill, but we have to work with what we are given!

We pause to give thanks for all of our family and friends around the world. How blessed we are to have crossed paths with you during our lives.

Much love from Anne, Rick, Erin, Claire, Lachlan (and Aunt Sarah!)

The only turkey that graced our Thanksgiving table was the

cantalope, pear, grapes, cheese and red pepper variety!

Happy Halloween '09

Another warm and sunny Halloween for the Daceys. Although there have been some movements afoot to make trick-or-treating more widespread in the neighbourhood, only random houses do it and the only focus here seems to be on the witches, ghosts, goblins and skeletons, and none of the more fun or innocent costumes that one can come up with for Halloween, like we do in the States. So we have stuck with having the kids go to the neighbours' homes on both sides- just enough excitement for all!

Superman, Crazy Girl and their bunny.

Our Watermelon Jack-O-Lantern- there are 2 or 3 token orange pumpkins for sale in every grocery store, but watermelons are in season- yum!

With love from the Daceys

The Outback

Reflecting back on "things not accomplished" in 2009, I realized that I had failed to post any pictures or reflections of our first outback trip that we took in October 2009. So, in an effort to start out 2010 strong, I thought I would put my thoughts together before my parents arrive in a few days and we start preparing for a trip to Tasmania with them!

Ask an American what they think Australia looks like, and they'll likely imagine the harsh, unforgiving territory of the outback- the desert land of scrub brush, red dirt and vast open skies. The fact that we had been here almost three years and hadn't gotten there yet seemed nearly criminal, so Rick managed to cobble together 6 days off during the kids' two-week spring holidays for a quick peek.

Getting ourselves out there, though, involved marathon driving through long stretches of desolate territory- our furthest destination, Broken Hill was a 2-day, 14-hour drive west from Sydney. Our first day's 9-hour drive took us from densely populated Sydney through the less populated but still heavily-trafficked Blue Mountains, to two-lane country roads and on into the sparsely populated edge of the outback. As we got into the outback, the roads became littered with kangaroo carcasses, the unfortunate byproduct of massive road trains (trucks with two full-sized trailers pulled behind them, and in the lesser-populated states, three) barreling through the outback during the night.

At this point, it's important to point out that our kids are fantastic travelers, and we certainly never would have attempted a trip that would require over 38 hours of driving in 6 days if they weren't. People often ask what the kids do while we are traveling, and I must confess that I have always been very "anti-screen" in the car- we have never allowed a portable DVD player or video games for our car travels (I admit that those long plane flights have been another matter entirely!). So as not to push their "fantastic traveler" status too far though, we finally broke down and bought a Nintendo DS Lite game player to help pass all those monotonous miles. However, we limited the time it was used and still spent plenty of time playing games, counting emus (we reached 64 by the end of the trip!) and singing silly Australian songs like this one here: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/fr0zBwuz3LUsxjrwQsF1ew?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ2lpdy6loSbvgE&feat=directlink

One of the 64 emus we counted along the way, along with some of his outback friends!

Our most western destination was Broken Hill, an isolated mining city on the far western edge of New South Wales. Some of the places we visited were an old train museum, the GeoCentre, which explored the amazing geology of the ore deposits in the area (the BHP in BHP Billiton, the global resource company, stands for Broken Hill Propietary Co.), a tour of the base of the Royal Flying Doctor Service and a sunset visit to the desolate Mundi Mundi plains, where the Mad Max movies were filmed.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service brings emergency and essential health care to remote and rural Australia

The kids entertain themselves while waiting for sunset on the Mundi Mundi plains.

After Broken Hill, we made a 5-hour drive over dirt roads for a two-night stay in the shearer's quarters at Turlee Station, a working sheep station. It was rustic (think corrugated iron roof and plywood walls), but a step above camping, with private rooms, beds and a separate kitchen/dining room that we shared with the other guests. Rick's favorite activity at the sheep station was making campfires and gazing for hours at the amazing outback night sky, which is just beyond description in its immensity, depth and vast host of stars. The kids, on the other hand, took the greatest pleasure in seeing just how dirty they could get playing in the outback dust around the quarters. It took weeks to get the car back to normal, inside and out, after all of the dirt road driving on this trip!

The purple and cream-colored doors were ours.

We are still finding dirt in the car's cracks and crevices!

While we were at Turlee, we visited the unanimously-declared highlight of our trip, the World Heritage-listed Mungo National Park, where 40,000-year-old human remains have been found. Lake Mungo dried up about 14,000 years ago and a spectacular, giant crescent-shaped dune called the Walls of China has formed on the eastern shore of the lake. The Walls of China consist of both fragile rugged outcrops and enourmous mountains of soft sand.

What fun it was to just be able to play on the dunes for an hour!

On the last day, we drove home all the way from Turlee to Sydney- with stops, a 13-hour journey. Although we had intended to stop for a night along the way, it proved too tempting to power all the way home. But this short trip gave us a real yearning for longer trips in the less-populated and geographically harsher parts of Australia- so much to explore!

Anne