My Australia Chapter: The End

My time in Australia is coming to an end. What I thought was a journey to a place became a journey to a place and back, as I am returning to live in the US. While I write this post, my head is violently filling up with pictures of tawny frogmouths and rainbow lorikeets, low blue sky or countless stars on a black night sky, red dirt and immaculate white sand, friendly reef fish, and blooming gum trees and grevilleas. My heart feels like an ocean of emotions. I see ourselves wading in a stream in the MacDonnell Ranges when the brown snake comes to meet us. I see my husband and daughter chasing the shingleback lizards in the Flinders Ranges and playing with tens of small jewel spiders in Western Australia. I see the biggest orb and orb spider spread like an umbrella over our heads in Northern Territory. We swim in the water hole to which the crocs didn’t make it yet, but where flying foxes flock in the tall gum trees. I hear the waves of the Indian Ocean breaking onto Penguin Island while dolphins grab the fish at an arm’s length from the boat. I taste the rose Turkish delight, Greek rose jam, Cherryripe and honeycomb chocolates, passion fruit and honey, tens of kinds of mangoes, and of course, the scrumptious burger with beetroot. Kangaroos hop and bearded dragons bask on the roads I travelled seated in front of the Land Rover Defender. Green ants, bull ants, cicadas, huntsmen spiders, locusts and katydids follow me in the insect memories I will never want to forget. My friends, my neighbors and my peers, ah, I will miss all of you so much! Australia is beautiful. I’m just kidding: this is not the end. I will come back.

Rottnest Island (Western Australia)

I don’t know what this island, which is 19 km from Fremantle and into the Indian Ocean, looked like when the Dutch discovered it about 200 years ago, but despite being surrounded by a reef and white sand beaches (check out the picture), it was given the name “rat nest.” This is what Rottnest means in Dutch. Why? Well, the island is small, about 4-5 km wide and 11 km long, and has thousands of quokkas, a marsupial the size of a cat rather than a rat, but the Dutch thought they were simply rats. Especially if the Dutch descended on the island at dusk, maybe seeing so many of these creatures made them also think they were “another “ invader… You can see from my picture that a quokka looks a lot more innocent and (hopefully!) larger than a rat. But the highlight of this boutique island (round trip ticket for adult, $72.5; bus ticket for the day for a hot bus that runs only every 30 min in a one direction loop, $10; cup of coffee $4.5) is its natural beauty, as always. The water is diverse shades of blue, turquoise and green as if it’s block colors being mixed on a painter’s palette, and snorkeling in the reef is a deeper trip into that palette of colors. There is life everywhere and highly dense, from birds to fish and of again quokkas. Speaking of fish, we stopped at the island’s information center as soon as we arrived on the island and asked where to go snorkeling. We were told that any bay is rich in reef and fish, but THE Information Centre omitted to tell us that the day before a 5-m great white shark had been spotted in one of the island’s bays… I am writing this post using both of my hands, so yes, we didn’t encounter any shark! From an ecological point of view the island is paradise, too, as no cars are allowed, just the lame tourist bus and bikes. Birds nest on the island’s shores and salt lakes in thousands. Only the museum reminded us of just another penal colony of Australia and fishing that led to the extinguishing of some species…

The Pinnacles (Western Australia)

This is a difficult post. So many people used a lot of different words to describe the stone pillars you see in my picture that crystallize from the mustard-colored sand, how am I going to say anything new or appealing about them? I can only tell you how I felt in their presence, as this must be a unique feeling. I walked in the Nambung National Park, which includes The Pinnacles, with the feeling I normally have when I walk in a cemetery. I imagined that just like under each heavy stone is buried a body that one day carried a light soul, the same way under each pinnacle were buried thousands of marine life bodies, trees, and other forms of life, which one very ancient day ago thrived with the boiling spirit of nature. Of life. But unlike in a cemetery, here sand plays hide-and-seek with the remainings, uncovering them from the past (indeed, just about 6000 years ago the pinnacles were hidden under the sand) and remodeling them in the endless game with the wind (the shape and gently rounded corners of some pinnacles are the result of this game).

And as if this beauty is not enough, visit The Pinnacles at sunset, when the light palette is so rich, I was sure to be on a different planet…

Wildlife Crossing

This sign is no joke! From ducks to kangaroos, and centipedes of course included, wildlife very frequently crosses the road in Australia. Everywhere.

The three pictures were taken in Western Australia during a one week span, but the same abundance of wildlife intersecting paths with the humans is one of the signatures of Australian life.

Unfortunately, very often the wildlife crossing is in danger and gets killed, as we saw in Kangaroo Island, where more kangaroos littered the roads than jumped on the sides. My favorite picture, the one where the duck is crossing in front of the sign warning of ducks crossing, is not the best shot I could take, but is the most accurate warning I have ever seen on a road.

Western Australia Christmas

Without going back in time too much, I am posting today about my Christmas in WA. 8:30AM, breakfast at Maccas in CBD (only place open) with old pastries and the company of flies. 9:30AM, Drive from Perth to Bunbury only to find out that the Dolphin Discovery Centre was closed on Christmas day. HOPE that more tourists would convince the underwater Observatory personnel in Busselton to keep it open! Noon. Drive the 53 km from Bunbury to Busselton in the Geographe Bay. (These are coastline and beaches one would imagine the Paradise were embellished with them, so the trip and the walks were like floating in a warm and breezy white and blue land.) More disappointment… Busselton: the longest wooden jetty in the Southern Hemisphere has a big lock on the ticket booth. Walk the 1.8 km into the Indian Ocean, and find another big lock on the gate of the Underwater Observatory at the end of the jetty. I have a picture of that locked gate, but found it too sad to post! I hope all Western Australians who work in these places, and pretty much all places where we wanted to have a cup of coffee or something to eat but were closed, had a great Christmas and didn’t travel to any place where they also got disappointed with EVERYTHING being shut down. My lesson: don’t travel during holidays in Australia. My Christmas tree? The gorgeous WA Christmas tree, but if you read carefully about it, it’s a parasite to avoid as much as looking for coffee in WA on Christmas day…

White Christmas? YES! Let's see if this picture tricks you, too, into thinking that there is snow in the distance, the top of it being blown off by the wind... OR this is a dune of very fine and white sand whose top is being blown off by the coastal winds?

Finally, late afternoon, back in Bunbury, two cappuccinos and a milk shake, $22.50. I don’t even want to remember the name of this café where I got so ripped off… Best Christmas day event? A true gift and memorable surprise, Orfa Turkish Bakery! Open until 9PM and making the best kebabs and rose Turkish delight!

Stromatolites and Thrombolites

I don't know how many people get excited about going to Western Australia to see the oldest creatures on Earth, but I did. I read that they are among the first forms of life on the planet. Basically, only the Earth itself is older than these formations. Stromatolites and thrombolites are ancient prokaryotes, Cyanobacteria, which inhabited the Earth about 2.5 to 3.8 billion years ago, during Archean, and can be seen now in this "rocky" small piles about 30-40 cm wide and 20 cm tall in shallow salty/fresh lake water or close to it. These mounds that look like loaves of bread contain billions of Cyanobacteria as well as calcium carbonate and sediments. What I think is fascinating about the stromatolites and thrombolites is that the Cyanobacteria, when in abundant numbers on Earth, produced so much oxygen as metabolic byproduct that all the oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere and became toxic to these first forms of life. It destroyed most of them. This was how life expanded on the planet, as the process was so slow that the oxygen allowed the aerobic forms of life to develop and thrive. The first picture shows the Thrombolites we saw at Lake Clifton in Western Australia, which is part of the Yalgorup National Park. These are "young" Thrombolites, geologically speaking, as they are about 2000 years old and alive. Their ancestors are those that enabled life formation billions of years ago.

The second picture shows the stromatolites we saw at Lake Thetis in the Nambung National Park, in Cervantes, WA.

The third picture is that of a figure posted at Lake Clifton to explain the difference between thrombolites and stromatolites.

The surrounding forest and bush from Lake Clifton thrived with an endless web of webs (I hope you can see them below), all created by jewel spiders. There was no border among webs, just as if someone laid an endless piece of fabric onto the area. I believe the lake is home to flies and mosquitoes (mozzies) enough to feed onto these other insects. This was an impressive finding, although I had to duck my head quite often, so I wouldn't stick my head in the webs.

Penguin Island

Penguin Island is a classical ecotourism destination located less than one hour (~50 km driving plus ferry crossing) from Perth. Despite the closeness to the Western Australia capital city of 1.75 million people and the summer vacation season, the island has very few visitors. This would be hard to imagine in Europe or North America, and we appreciated the privacy especially when admiring the abundant wildlife and the waters. The Shoalwater Islands Marine Park, which includes Penguin and Seal Islands, is rich in marine, terrestrial and seabird wildlife. I am not talking just about the little penguins, pelicans (see picture), terns and stilts, kites and ospreys, Australian sea lions (see picture), and bottlenose dolphins that we spotted there, but also the Western Australia seahorses and leafy seadragons, turtles and fish that populate the waters. Seagrass carpets a wide area around the island and supports fish, which in turn feed the many dolphins visiting daily. Seagrass and shallow waters also color the landscape in memorable tones. I hope the pictures reflect my impressions a little bit. A wooden walking trail circles the island and also offers refuge to skinks and little penguins. To us, it offered a chance to walk around the entire island and admire the views, the nesting colonies of pelicans and bridled terns (see picture), while the Indian Ocean breeze coiffed our hair in original seagrass style… It’s a place to always want to return to.

“Jewel of the Desert”

Eucalyptus macrocarpa is one of the most delightful surprises we had in Western Australia. I’d call this gumtree a bush, as it doesn’t grow tall from a main trunk. Instead, it spreads long branches just from above the ground. The leaves are light green-grey, and if we weren’t in the desert, I would have said they were frosty. However, the color and texture are meant to protect the tree from the scorching sun of Western Australia’s desert. The delight though came from the flowers. They are giagantic, at least 20 times bigger than the eucalyptus flowers of most other gumtrees (they reach up to 10 cm in diameter). The size and color of these flowers, intense red, made me think they were roses. I took the picture of this Eucalyptus macrocarpa in the Kings Park and Botanic Garden in Perth, with sweat dripping on myself and the camera – 40 degrees Celsius – but I simply could not stop looking at them, smelling and touching them… The park is rich in native flora and a pleasure to visit. It had boab trees, tuarts and grevilleas specific to Western Australia, and it also offered expansive views of the city spreading over Swan River to the Indian Ocean.

Personal Impression about Perth CBD

I posted yesterday a picture from the London Court, which breathes a strong English air, but I said that it made me feel that Aussies are 
still looking for their identity. At least from architectural and urban points of view… To continue my thought, London Court is on the side of a regular shopping
 mall and a street with office high-rises of non-descript architecture. It is the trophy that sits on a dull pedestal. The surrounding areas of Perth CBD are new with some modern touches
 on St Georges Terrace, but except for the very British London Court,
 the rest of the city has a common urban flavor, with nothing standing 
out. Quite unfortunate, we stayed in a hotel in walking distance from
 the mall, right in the middle of the CBD, but it felt as out of place 
as the London Court, because the neighborhood consisted in more office 
buildings and small chain cafes that were mostly closed due to the 
holidays. About 15 minutes away from the Hay Street hotel was the nicer area of
 Northbridge, with the cultural district and a concentration of cafes, discos
 and restaurants. Another 15 minutes in the opposite direction 
from Northbridge were some gardens, the Perth Bell Tower and the jetties
 for the boats to Fremantle. We took a scenic ride on the
 Swan River (today’s picture) and admired private villas, the Swan Brewery and an infinite number of 
small boats and windsurfers. A good 15-minute drive from the hotel
 were the Kings Park and Botanic Gardens, about which I will write
 more tomorrow. I found a common feature of the major Aussie cities, 
including Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, which is
 their layout around big bodies of water. I guess this is actually 
their identity, which is not necessarily architectural, but 
"locational." And although this country is so dry, most major cities 
disguise this characteristic by being built around rich bodies of
 water.