Arriving in Oz.

The full account of all that’s happened will be recorded in a written journal of this adventure. These posts will be an abridged version of the telling, so as not to bore the reader with details extraneous to the narrative.

I’m not overly afraid of flying, but there is, of course, always a risk involved with being several thousand feet above the ground. But excitement is a great way to overcome fear or trepidation, so I had decided ahead of time to have some John Williams ready for the several take offs I would have to deal with. All in all, the trip out to Sydney went much more smoothly than I had imagined it would. On the three hour flights to Denver and Los Angeles, we received a miniature bag of pretzels and a miniature drink. (This would later stand in stark contrast to the BOX of snacks and full-sized drinks we were given on the half hour flight to Brisbane and the hour flight to Gladstone.)

The overnight flight to Sydney was another matter altogether. We were given a good dinner, a midnight snack at 2 am, and a hearty breakfast along with shrink wrapped pillow and fleece blanket combination. Although there were hundreds of shows and movies on offer from the seat back consoles, I contented myself with the 668 page book I had brought for the flights and train rides: Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ‘Martian Tales Trilogy’. It tells the story of Virginia native John Carter and his adventures among the people of Mars. It seemed an appropriate story to parallel a trip to a far-off land teaming with alien flora and fauna, as well as red people and red soil.

The only kink I ran across in transit was at the Sydney airport. The bane of my existence there was to be the self-serve passport machine that, as I later discovered, required scanning one’s passport to get a ticket that would then need to be taken to another gate in order to get through. It felt a bit like trying to clear a level in a video game and having to restart the level a few times to get it right. But customs was really easy and the train stop was easily accessible and conveniently located below the terminal, Here again, though, there was a process of figuring out how to use the Opal card I had purchased to pay and get through the gates.

From the Sydney airport, it was a matter of a short, double-decker train ride to the train stop at Circular Quay (key), which was next to the wharf of the same name. There are wharves scattered all around the harbor and this particular one had seven ferries bound for different stops, much like bus stops and stations. The ride over the water on the ferry took us past the harbor bridge and the opera house on our three minute trip to Kirribilli. Upon disembarking, it was short climb up a steep flight of stairs towing two heavy rolling suitcases and a backpack. But it was well worth the effort.

The street I stepped onto was filled with beautiful purple Jacaranda flowers, both hanging on the trees and littering the ground and cars below. Imagine fall in Ohio, except all of the leaves are tiny and purple. This only happens for about a week each year, so my timing was accidentally perfect. Accompanying this assault of dazzling color was an almost palpable wall of humid fragrance, the street being lined, I later learned, with pleasantly pungent jasmine flowers.

My accommodation was to be the Glenferrie Lodge, a large, 19th Century house that, impossibly, had over 70 rooms. There was also a large dining room which had cold and hot water available 24/7 and a garden where people liked to sit and talk in the mornings and afternoons, thought those who attempted to eat meals there quickly found that the magpies and kookaburras are not shy about swooping in and stealing food from plates. Australia is nicknamed ‘Oz’ as the people refer to themselves as ‘Ozzies’ (we say ‘Aussies’), so it was amusing to me that the hotel proudly announced itself on signs as belonging to the ‘Emerald City Hotel Group’. No men with silly hairstyles poking their heads out of small doors and demanding ‘Who rang that bell?!’ when visitors rang, I’m sorry to say.

Instead there was a friendly Asian girl. In fact almost everyone who worked there was Asian. After seeing several large groups of Chinese people in floppy sun hats excitedly talking amongst themselves, I asked someone if I was in the Chinese portion of the city. ‘No, that’s just Sydney’ was the answer. In fact, it turns out that 44% of the population here are mainland China born. This would hit me in a big way on Monday, but it actually made me quite happy since most of my English students are Chinese and I’ve grown very fond of them. If you put London and Shanghai into a blender you’d basically end up with Sydney. So if I ever want to join a Chinese congregation and help where there’s a need, I may come back.

Just around the corner from the Lodge sat the Admiralty House, where the Queen stays when visiting, and Prince Harry had been just the weekend before. All of the houses in the vicinity where huge and expensive-looking stucco homes with red, Spanish tile roofs. From the sounds of the magpies, kookaburras, and cockatoos to the colors of the bottle brush plants, rainbow lorikeets, and Poincianas to the shapes of the fig trees, gum trees, and white Ibis birds; everything was fascinating and different.

A new world waiting to be explored…