August Winter Down Under

So I’ve been AWOL… for a good solid three months or so. Oops. 

So much has happened in that time I know I won’t actually sit down to write about it all in detail but the gist goes as follows…

I spent a brisk, sunny week in Sydney, standing proud in the world’s largest natural harbor and within sight of the Blue Mountains, so named for the haze created by eucalyptus’ natural oil. I stayed a short walk from downtown with a climbing friend of a friend from Vietnam, in an old, slender, artsy house that reminded me of home. I spent days walking through central Sydney: past the naval yards, through ritzy historic wharfs, past super schmancy fleets of sailboats, amongst the botanical gardens, past the opera house and up onto the Harbour Bridge. I wandered through historic colonial neighborhoods into the CBD, exploring buildings brimming with filigree and tile and landmark towers and marble fountains throwing up rainbows in front of imposing orange cathedrals. I walked the Anzac Bridge’s pyramidal cable span and dropped into Darling Harbor, looking down on submarines and warships housed in the city’s naval museum (and the fanciest public bathrooms I’ve ever seen). I met with friends at Sydney University and wandered an ivy-blanketed castle-type building that really, truly, should belong in Hogwarts.

I spent an afternoon and evening with family friends reaching back to WWII: an unlikely connection originating– from what I understand– between a Jewish American intelligence officer and his German informant that has somehow endured through future generations 70 years later and half way around the world.

I rode a ferry west into Sydney Harbor, following the Parramatta River past the Olympic Stadium, under slender bridges and into narrow waters where mangroves encroached on boat lanes marked by painted, battered pylons.

I found myself a proper smoked salmon sandwich to munch on as I walked Manly Beach’s broad expanse under the sun, watching surfers in their natural habitat before becoming hopelessly lost in the scrub as I made my way up past a castle-like international university to the North Heads. I watched whales surface and spout across from the city’s skyline just outside the harbor’s mouth, lined by rugged cliffs and churning water.

I just barely managed to catch up with an old friend from martial arts, huddling around her space heater as we compared Australia’s lack of insulation (Sydney doesn't do heat or insulation) and our visa and injury woes… and realized our relationship’s change from that of instructor and pesky teenager to friends on equal footing.

I spent a beautiful day and night in the Blue Mountains huddled around a woodstove, waking to my first snow since 2014 dusted onto firewood in the back yard and climbing sandstone cracks for the first time in my life, then headed straight back with a new travel buddy as we embarked on a three-day road trip south toward Melbourne. We stopped into famous overlooks and explored further off the trodden path, laying flat on cliff edges to eye seasonal waterfalls dotting sheer, deep orange canyons blanketed by eucalyptus spread before us.

We drove through apple orchards, past farm stands and roadside national crests constructed of rusted cars. We slept a night on a country knoll, waking above of a world of cloud just in time for the sun to break over frosty orchards and fields of boulders and sheep. We visited a country dairy farm where I made friends with the resident grizzled dog. We ate lunch on a riverside and watched old steamboats come in for the evening. We traveled for hours in the dark on unsealed roads and Taner taught me tips and tricks to safe driving around kangaroos at night: “Really, they’re all just unpredictable little shits.”

I moved to a place called Eildon, a tiny town on the edge of a massive lake surrounded by rolling hills about two hours northeast of Melbourne, to start working for the Outdoor Education Group. I showed up to frigid, damp, PNW-style bone-penetrating cold and dozens of kangaroos (with babies!!) chowing down on the daily outside my kitchen window. I pulled a SERIOUS blonde moment when, for the first two days of my residence, I didn’t register the AC unit could also spew heat into the room and huddled miserably in multiple sleeping bags (for the record: I’d just come from over a year in the tropics after growing up on a woodstove and central heating).

… I may or may not have have also inadvertently locked myself out of the house five minutes before my first day of work. Without my shoes. (My boss was nice about it.)

I did around six weeks of training for work and learned lots of things I probably should have picked up years ago: I can now drive a stick shift, drive with a trailer (but it’s not pretty), carry out basic bicycle repair, drive on the left side of the road, assess tricksy murderous Australian trees for camping safety, and paddle a canoe solo in a straight line. I saw a platypus!!! I learned a few more nifty knots while I did my rappel assessment in them midst of a glorious snowstorm, and taught just a few Australians snowballs can be more economically constructed by collecting snow from picnic tables rather than grass. (For the record, guys, that “blanket” of snow you see on the ground is in fact a light dusting.)

I gambled on the weather and lost, climbing into the clouds on sopping sandstone and casting my rappel rope to descend into a cloudy abyss, convincing myself I was high in the mountains at home.

I made it home to the states for the busiest seven days of my life: I saw a few of my best friends, introduced my oldest friend to Venice Beach (got ultra sunburned) and went to a Dodgers’ game (read: ate neon blue popcorn, cheered for flying babies and watched no fewer than three police evictions). I picked summer blackberries with my adoptive grandma, (accidentally) drove on the wrong side of the road, caught up with old horses and met new ones (with super cool tricks!). I basked in the glory of tall, dark, dense sun-dappled forests full of cedars and firs. I dropped into favorite old haunts for classic Portlandian food and geeked out over new gear in my favorite gear shops. I watched the most mindblowing Perseid meteor shower I’ve ever seen from the top of a fire truck in the countryside. I spent an afternoon wandering the Mission with my aunt in San Francisco. And in my lifelong adoptive family, I watched the first cousin of my generation marry an incredible man in one of my favorite places in the world.

I drank a LOT of coffee.

I landed in back in Australia with blisters from wedding heels to one last week of training in the mountains southwest of Sydney. I saw my first echidna, an oversized hedgehog half-buried and clutching for dear life onto tree roots in the dirt. I saw dozens of wombats: pretty much a cross between a teddy bear, a bison and a gopher, and one of the goddam cutest animals I’ve ever seen… except they dig lots of burrows in lawns (and unlike moles, their holes are actually large enough to take a fall into and seriously wreck yourself).

This winter has been hectic as all getup, dogged by injuries, visas (combined Australian and Vietnamese bureaucracy, anyone?), and various other insecurities and uncertainties. But: I’ve also met some super, super cool people. Cool and smart and rad and welcoming enough that I’m actually slightly intimidated by a quite a few of them. I’m in a steady, likeminded, community for the first time in a long time, living for the first time in my life in a house with folks I’m stoked to be around and highly respect rather than people I’m simply able to coexist with in the same building. It all makes So. Much. Difference.

Here’s to the next ten months…