Final Thoughts

After a week at home, I've finally gotten my pictures posted and my thoughts somewhat organized. Pictures can be viewed at http://www.kodakgallery.com/dolphoto/australia?

Money
Australians use coins for amounts up to $2. The half dollar is huge, larger than our equivalent. The $1 is larger than the $2. Bills have little plastic windows with a different shape for each denomination. Must be a great aid to the blind.

Toilets
The answer is down. Toilets flush so the water just goes down. Filling a sink showed that the water did swirl clockwise. Toilets have two buttons: half flush and full flush. I'll leave it to you to consider. Public toilets are ubiquitous. Each local council provides for some. There was no cuteness in the labels. It was almost always "female" and "male." Most were pretty clean.

Environmental Awareness
The two buttons on the toilet are part part of the environmental awareness that's common in Australia. Parks not only have trash cans and ashtrays, but they also have recycling bins. People take reusable bags with them shopping. Nothing, including empty shells and dead coral, is to be removed from the reef. It is all considered important to the ecosystem.

Smoking
Smoking is nowhere near as open as I'd been led to expect. It's almost as restricted as in the US. Prices are twice what they are here after conversion. Package warnings are more harsh. Anti-smoking ads are more common. Unlike the US, however, smokers are not treated as pariahs. Nobody, at least nobody nonindiginous, is treated that way.

Driving
Driving on the left is easier in Australia than in the UK because the roads are wider. My only real problem was that the lights and wipers were reversed on the steering column. I had the cleanest windshield in Australia. Roads are pretty good except when they're awful. I didn't see any highways like we have here. Most were two lane roads with the occasional passing lane. Speed limits seldom exceed 60 mph (100 kph) and are strictly enforced. The only dirt roads I was on were in South Australia, but that doesn't mean they aren't pretty common. Gas is expensive, about $4 a gallon after conversion. That may look cheap to us soon.

Racism
Racism is unacceptable, but that doesn't mean it is absent. One woman told me that Cairns was dangerous at night because "there are all those aborigines and they're always drunk." Sound familiar? That was the only blatant case I encountered. In South Australia, there were monuments to efforts at reconciliation. In Victor Harbor alone, I saw two such cases. One was a set of three flag poles representing England, France, and the indigenous people. The other was "Kondoli," a mosaic composition centered on a right whale.

Aboriginal Culture
After centuries of repression, aboriginal culture is now glorified. (That doesn't mean the people are.) There are many museums dedicated to aboriginal art. There is no one aboriginal people. Aborigines in different parts of the country are different in language, culture and appearance. Basic spiritual beliefs seem to be pretty common, however. What we call Dreamtime is what the aborigines consider history. The characters are mostly related to animals and each person believes they can trace their ancestry back to one of them. Dancers at Tjupakai introduced themselves as so-and-so of the (kangaroo/platypus/etc.) people. Men and women live largely separate spiritual lives and there were no female performers in the three troups I saw. There were, however, many running the businesses.

Shopping
Shopping was little different than it is here. Prices were about the same on average. Malls and strip malls were common.

The main grocery chain is Woolworths. The general merchandise area is like the ones we had here. Same old crap. The grocery section, downstairs in multistory buildings like in Europe, has everything our stores have. Brands are a mix of US, UK and Australian, with P&G using their British brands.

Whereas in California I've found one store that has sizing that treats my size as small to medium, I found two of these in Adelaide alone. One size really does fit all. Although there were certainly many stylish business people in Sydney, most people I saw were dressed relatively casually.

Wildlife
The wildlife was even more spectacular than I expected. Seeing large mobs of wild kangaroos in South Australia was a great treat. I got to see two Rosenberg Sand Goanas, the only species I know of with my name. Platypus are much smaller than I expected. Koalas are soft and wooly. Reptiles are supposed to be everywhere, but I never saw any in the wild.

The birds deserve special mention. The variety was amazing. Parrots, rosellas, lorikeets, cockatoos flying around. Kookaburras laughing. There was a downside to the bird population. They were incredibly noisy. On Heron Island it was the black noddies. In Cairns, it was the lorikeets (almost forgivable as they're so beautiful). Sleeping late was seldom possible.

People
I can't say enough about the Australian people. They are warm, honest, and funny. Not a day went by without some pleasant interaction. A simple transaction often turned into a 20 minute chat. This wasn't isolated to the tourist trade, either. It included places like the little coffee shop in the main business district. Nearly every day, an Australian probed me about how I was enjoying my trip. Those from Melbourne, escaping to warmer climates, were unhappy I had by-passed their city and made me promise to include it on my next visit.

Australians spend a lot of time seeing their own country, in large part due to the cost of getting anywhere else. The reasons for the explorations go beyond financial issues, however, as evidenced by the many people I met who were on very long treks. There is a lot of pride in their own country that manages to fall short of chauvinism. This pride does not extend to the government. Australians are very good about separating a people from their government. They are also very vocal in their complaints about the current federal government. The states maintain a good deal of autonomy.

Only once did I feel any discrimination from traveling alone. That was at a restaurant where the maitre d' wanted to save his only outside (smoking area) tables for larger parties. As soon as I used the d word, a table was found. Elsewhere, I was just another person. There were many solo Australian travelers.

Lessons Learned
The biggest lesson I learned was that I could very happily live in Australia. The thought of retirement there is very appealing.

On photography, I discovered that I could copy my memory cards to CDs everywhere. That included low-tech Heron Island. It gave me a great sense of security to have that backup. Unfortunately, I did lose some pictures. Those were of the dugongs, not great shots, but the only documentation I had. The underwater casing I got for my little point-and-shoot camera was great. The slow reaction time of the camera was a bit of a problem, but I got many great shots.

My packing was pretty dead-on. I took more dressy clothes and long pants than I needed. This would have been different if I had gone out at night more. Laundry facilities on Heron Island and in Cairns took care of any short-falls. Shipping the warm stuff home from Hervey Bay was expensive, but it gave me enough room for souvenirs and gifts.

The shoes I brought for walking on the reef were absolutely wrong. They let in all the broken coral which made walking painful. They were perfect, however, for every place else I went.

The only time where I did anything I really regret was when I found I couldn't go to Kangaroo Island. Instead of rushing off to Adelaide, I should have checked the whale sightings. If I had, I probably would have seen a right whale.

My blue folder turned out to be very valuable. Not only did it make sure I was where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there, but it helped with other situations. For example, there was a question on the car rental rate in Adelaide. All I had to do was whip out the email and it was immediately resolved.

Three weeks can go amazingly fast.