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…

99 Problems and a Seaside Silver Lining

"Cookies!" An old woman asks me. Slightly bedraggled, she carries a slender walking stick, wears a light green shawl and probably hasn't showered in a week. "Marijuana cookies or brownies?" This is the third time in a half hour I've been offered weed by a street hawker in the style of a 1940's newspaper boy. 

The small town of Nimbin makes the Oregon Country Fair look like a straight-cut prosecutor out of the prohibition. Nestled in the verdant maze of hills just south of Mt. Warning, the place is famous for hippies, weed, and a lack of concerned cops. Not that the town is geographically big, mind you: the main drag, spanning an entire two blocks, is a screaming mash-up of the outback, the '70s and modern fantasy pop whimsey. Apothacaries lie next door to Mad Hatteries, next to the town’s token seedy tattoo parlor, next to the general store, next to the tea shop (“Winter is coming… increase your circulation!”), next to curiosity shops filled with dragons and Buddhas and butterfly posters and chandeliers and VW bus cookie jars and wool leggings. Street vendors sell tie dye shawls next to Starbuds– some combination of coffee shop and brownie operation– while the town’s candle factory welcomes visitors a block down the way.

I left Brisbane late this morning in the jankiest old white ford van you could ever hope to see, straight out of 1990, sporting blingy Mercedes hubcaps. The Beast's owner, a young Dutchie named Maddie, includes a comprehensive run-down in her introduction: “Sorry I’m late; I had to replace the cable. By the way: there’s no air conditioning. And the speakers don’t really work. And the windshield wipers only work going one direction. And be careful of opening the side door all the way because it will fall off.”

... Right. Noted, noted and noted again.

After our stroll through Nimbin we roll into a backwoods pull-off for the night, and find ourselves sharing the site with the two most genuinely offensive people I've ever met. I spend the next hour staring into the fire as they carry on about how Trump and Putin would rule a perfect world, Bill Clinton is a rapist, we should expel all the Muslims and kick all the Mexicans back south of the border. Then they change tactics to, "I used to carry 14 rifles, but then that wanker had to go shoot up Port Arthur." Somewhere in the conversation, pig's blood makes a cameo. They wrap it all up by detailing backpacker murders in Northern Australia, telling me Orlando was hilarious, laughing in my face and making it clear that if we ran out of gas the next day, they'd be sure to come find us and help us out.

I wake up half way through the night to an abandoned campfire, glowing crimson logs collapsed onto the leafy ground.

Sunday morning we skip camp early and make our way to Coff's Harbour, following half-eaten back roads through national forests full of trees so straight and slender and evenly spaced you might think they had been planted. Occasional towns of ten or twenty buildings alternate with river crossing accompanied by multiple flood water depth indicators. Theoretically there's a superstorm coming in, and although we appear to have dodged the brunt of it freeway signs still warn "IF ITS FLOODED, LEAVE IT."

We roll into Coff's Harbor around midday to a roiling ocean and pounding surf. While driving rain and wind promptly snap my oft-ignored umbrella, they also insure we get to walk the harbour’s beach and pier sans company. We return to the car absolutely drenched.

Somewhere south of Coff’s Harbour, the back windshield wiper stops working. Then the Beast’s low battery indicator flares to life. We shut down the radio, turn off the lights and unplug our phones. A short time later the oil and break lights join the battery indicator. Also, the engine appears to be frying.

We pull off into a little town where a small pie shop’s big friendly giant of an owner does his best to help us out, while Maddie does her best to imitate your archetypal clueless blonde: “Do you have enough water in the radiator?” I don’t know about cars, I am a girl. BFG refills the van’s radiator, Maddie unceremoniously dumps some amount of oil into the engine, and we continue on our way.

We arrive in Port Macquarie just in time for the storm’s torrential rain and wind to arrive in earnest, booking beds for the night in quite possibly the coolest hostel I’ve ever stayed in, flip flops nailed to structural beams next to a movie room around the corner from murals and a woodstove and a pool table. While flash flood warnings inundate the news (no pun intended), Maddie tries to look under the van with a weak flashlight. My brother in Amsterdam told me I should look at the break pads… Oh, I just found my spare tire!!... Uh, right. When did you buy the van? Maybe six months ago.

The next morning the Beast greets us with a clanking rattle.

While Maddie takes the Beast into a garage I wander past a row of fishing boats and eager pelicans to Port Macquarie’s break wall. Local fishermen perch on the wall’s long stretch of graffitied rock, lines cast into post-storm swell as it crashes and rolls into the jetty. The sun  breaks onto turquoise water as my walk follows a winding seaside path along scrubby forested headlands and sandy coves accented by haphazardly piled rock. Two men at a small cliffside lookout lend me binoculars to watch southern right whales breach and spout offshore.

I detour inland to the Koala Hospital– a fully equiped wildlife rehabilitation center and the only one in the country dedicated solely to koalas. I wander amongst the permanent residents’ enclosures as they snooze the day away for the most part, although one one-eyed, one-legged gentleman makes a point of stuffing his face with all the eucalyptus as he can reach from his lazy lounge of a perch. A wild koala keeps an eye on the operation from the very top of a nearby tree.

By early afternoon, a mechanic has managed to wrangle up the necessary bolts to fix the Beast, (as well as the seatbelts, which were apparently also obsolete).

On our way out of town we make a stop by Tacking Point to visit the country’s third-oldest lighthouse, watching wind catch spray and whip it seaward from monster swells coming into land below. We spot some gray whales breaching under a spectacular neon rainbow in the clearing sky, then follow the night’s storm south toward Sydney through rolling hills and golden fields.

We roll into the city after dark and pass within ten blocks of the place I'm staying as Maddie declares she needs me to navigate to her caravan park, and by the way, I'm not driving you back into town because I'm tired and I don't like traffic.

Awesome.

Two and a half hours, a nice long walk and a double-decker train ride later, I set my bags on the doorstep, take a nice deep breath and say hello to parents of friends of friends halfway round the world from home.

Snapshots

I moved on from Brissy this weekend, leaving behind the most mismatched,  disfunctional set of housemates in the most unsanitary house I've ever experienced. I feel like a year's experience living on a Vietnamese island, complete with "pet" rats, ants, spiders, snakes and a howling cat, combined with my general penchant for mild disorder, allows at least some validity to the above statement.

I also left behind the land of places known as the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, and Surfer's Paradise. (Yes, it's a legitimate place on the map. It also happens to be accessed through exit 69 off the Pacific Motorway.)

My last few weeks in the city were somewhat laid back, scattered with some super fun random experiences with a new roommate.

I watched night fall over Brisbane from Mt Coot-Tha, a promontory rising high above the rest of the city.

I argued with a group of 8th grade girls about the popular phenomenon known as Drop Bears, in which unsuspecting tourists are regaled with tales of koalas with butts made of stone that drop from trees to kill you on the spot. Oh, and slathering your hair with vegemite is a "natural" drop bear repellant... Obviously. 

I ate some stellar fish and chips in the 25th story penthouse of a five-star hotel in the city center... and paid absolutely nothing for the experience.

I went to my first Greek Festival since one memorable middle school field trip. I watched a speed eating champion decimate his competitors in a honey puff-eating contest while I munched happily on baklava and spanakopita, then wandered through a carnival ground complete with flying, spinning terror machines and giant creepy stuffed animals heavier than the kids who win them.

We took a solid day to explore the area around Mt. Warning, leaving early to visit a place called Natural Bridge. The winding road crested and dipped into Mt. Warning's ancient caldera amongst twisting ridges and rivers blanketed in old, dense forest. A mellow wander brought us to a short drop where a waterfall plummeted into a pit, glancing off a well-worn log before rushing past haphazardly piled blocks, through a cave and emerging from a dark stone span dripping with ferns. 

We climbed the mountain for sunset; although the more novel idea would be to watch the sun rise on Australia from the top, that would have required (a) putting up with some seeeeriously drugged out backpacking hippies and (b) a companion willing to wake up early enough to arrive and begin hiking around 2:00 am.

On the way in to the car park we crossed a small creek where dozens upon dozens of rock cairns and arches had been pieced into a miniature wonderland in the dappled shade. Soon after we began to hike a rhythmic scratching off-trail revealed a lyrebird-- probably one of the coolest animals on the planet-- foraging in the rainforest duff. (If you've never heard of a lyrebird, check them out here; those things are crazy cool! Even better: the bit is narrated by David Attenborough.) The trail headed straight up for 2.5 miles– none of that bullshit hiking up and dropping down to lose all your hard work before starting up again. We climbed until rainforest gave way to brittle, whippy trees and dry brush, and howling wind greeted us at a last small landing before chains lined a final scramble to the mountain's peak. 

From the summit we looked north through biting wind all the way to Brisbane, faintly visible between the caldera's border ranges. We looked east to the Gold Coast and the sea before turning south to spot Byron Bay, its distinctive cape marking Australia's easternmost point as it extended into the sea beyond Mt. Warning's lengthening shadow. 

As we circled back to our original position, a carpet python crept into the brush alongside our path. A sinking sun bathed the land in a golden glow before disappearing behind the westward mountains in blazing crimson clouds, and then we began our descent. 

I took one last walk along the river, soaking up this city of bridges half way around the world from home, before I began packing my belongings in classic fashion the night before I left. 

Rainbows for Days

I live in a room commonly referred to as "the closet," tucked into an unkempt brick house in a neighborhood that actually happens to be pretty schwank, filled with fancy houses, vintage op shops and narrow twisting streets. My house itself sits a half-block from Suncorp Stadium; if I knew anything about Aussie sports I'd be able to follow rugby matches solely though the deafening noise on game nights. A distinctive bitter, sultry tang often wafts over the neighborhood from the XXXX brewery, located just down the road, where monster crimson neon letters illuminate the night. I'm a short walk from downtown in one direction and from the river promenade to the other, with all the mass transit I could ever want in easy reach.

I'm still getting used to viewing the coastline as situated to the east, and I have to remind myself almost every day that the sun shines from the north at noon. I'm also still adjusting to seeing lorakeets flock over the city in lieu of starlings and foot-long lizards sunning themselves next to ibises on the riverbank. City parks greet me with bronze platypuses adorning picnic benches and monster trees, and mantises make themselves at home in my living room.

Communication, too, at times proves simply baffling. Don't get me wrong– we all speak English here, but the words coming out of our mouths tend to comprise utterly different languages. Gas stations are called servos, freeways motorways, downtown the CBD (central business district), and neighborhoods suburbs (once I figured that one out, everything seemed a whole lot closer together). Ketchup is tomato sauce, Jello is jelly, red peppers capsicums, SUV pickups are utes and afternoons avos. "Mass transit" doesn't exist in local vocabulary. I will never, ever bring myself to instruct a class full of sixth-graders to make sure they have thongs on their feet. Just as I've cringed at a few phrases heard in "sophisticated" conversations here, one or two words used in daily conversation in the states would probably result in writeups if I let them fly at work in Queensland. Sometimes I feel like I walk a super fine line between dialect clarification and presenting myself as an utter idiot.

The stars, however, have begun to feel more familiar: Orion hangs in the sky every evening, a welcome reminder of the first constellation I ever recognized on my own one crisp winter night after a school event. I've learned to find geographical south from the Southern Cross and its pointers, following in Orion's path, and I get to see Scorpio in all of its blazing glory.

Work in late April takes me southwest of Brisbane and inland, to an area filled with mountains and ridges and the occasional lake. I spend two days backpacking near Lake Maroon with rowdy 13-year-old boys, hiking through dry forest to the top of Mt. May to look southward over a sprawling web of worn ridges and mountains, and an occasional lake nestled in the arid land. We spend the last day canoe orienteering, criss-crossing Lake Maroon from shores lined vibrant lily pads and dead trees as sea eagles accompany us overhead. The boys provide a day filled with comic relief, complete with tantrums thrown over (intentionally) capsized canoes and compasses disregarded for "general haunches."

Later in April I work further north, at a site where the road to high ropes looks down over the Glasshouse Mountains, glowing through the golden hour as they rise from the plains while I gather firewood with my girls. The place also introduces me to Aussie snakes: a red-bellied black greets us from smack in the middle of the cow paddock as we head toward our orienteering session. Which would have been way super cool, had I not had 17 antsy twelve year olds in tow.

Outside of work, I play. In early May I head north one morning with a friend to the Eumundi Market, which once upon a time was probably a quaint, slightly touristy, classic Aussie coastal craft and produce market. Today it's more of a historic tourist trap, half-chintzy yet still totally enthralling: I wander rows of organic wraps, tropical produce and handmade jewelry. I also find imported games (repackaged and sold by independent shops), stalls brimming with chintzy jewelry and belts... and cuddly stuffed koalas made from very real, silky-soft kangaroo fur.

I spend the night south of Brissy with friends camping in Springbrook National Park, arriving to set up tents just in time for a frogmouth owl to determine my rainfly the ultimate evening roost. We wake early to cocoon ourselves in sleeping bags and watch the sun rise over the gold coast, flaming rays punching through low clouds to spread over the sea. Our hike later that morning (after coffee!) follows a mellow down and around the cliffs curled around the Purling Brook falls in a widespread embrace. Vegetation changes drastically as we descend, merging from dry, windswept gumtrees to fully buttressed rainforest complete with bromeliads latched to canopy branches. A delicate, fickle rainbow greets us from the mist at the bottom of the falls, where water plunges into a pool below bands of orange and white columns stained black.

The trail eventually arrives at a deep, shade-dappled pool beneath a short drop where we break our cheese and apples and crackers as we watch a monster brown eel makes itself at home among the rocks below us before beginning our walk home.

I spend another Saturday climbing with my friend Paul at Mt. Tibrogargan, the largest of the Glasshouse Mountains. We climb 200 meters through awkwardly angled basalt begging to explode beneath us, dodging golden orb spiders the size of my palm in webs suspended amongst the sparse brush spotting our route (I very nearly pull off a torso-sized block and shred our second rappel rope in the process). I watch rainstorms move across the coastal plains beneath us as we ascend, rainbows taking shape in the sky next to me. Paul leads the last pitch through a somewhat infuriating downpour, topping out to a sweeping view of the Glasshouse mountains to our left and the sea to our right before we descend to dry sweatshirts, water, and a stop into a nondescript fruit stand serving a locally known gem known as Pineapple Crush.

At times the rock we climb on around here likes to test my faith in the world's integrity. But: it makes me think and guts up and trust myself, and I get to place gear while I'm at it. And the rainbows... I've seen more rainbows since arriving in Queensland than I ever could have imagined. They're just so mindblowingly vibrant; they blaze and linger in the sky, just long enough for the rest of the world to fade for a moment, before picking up and continuing on my way.

Common Sense Ain't Common

I've found my way into outdoor education here, traveling each week to run programs for kids ranging from nine to 15 years old. The industry is different from home: every year starting in fourth grade, kids go to camp as part of school curriculum to engage in teamwork activities, development challenges and outdoor recreation pursuits. Whereas Outdoor School in Oregon centers strongly on field science, community, expanding social and environmental awareness, here it focuses more on teamwork and leadership development through structured, sometimes expeditional, outdoor rec. My work is an odd mashup of everything I've been doing in the past few years, drawing on ODS experience working with school groups, Asia Outdoors work guiding climbing and kayaking, Search and Rescue navigational skills and lifelong pursuit of... following fun outside the city.

The everyday differences? I've shifted from mandatory long pants and rain coats to sunscreen and hat checks, from raccoons and deer and coyotes to kangaroos and killer snakes and spider webs with a tendency to rebound like trampolines. I've relearned how to bandage snake bikes from venom that simply dissolves your flesh in ugly fashion to venom that works it way through your lymphatic system in uglier, faster fashion.

The work has been an awesome introduction to the local industry, allowing me to explore how centers situate themselves, how their views and methodology differ and how they treat their staff. I also get to travel and meet people-- although I'm based out of Brisbane at the moment, I work in a three-hour radius from the city. My first week had me headed north to a place called Brooyar, teaching kids to belay each other and climb on deep red sandstone cliffs. Our base sprawled beneath rolling hills alongside a creek filled with fish that nibbled the dead skin off our feet as we relaxed under a full moon after sending kids to bed.

I stayed on to climb that weekend on undulating sandstone with a coworker named Paul, one of those guys who's kind of hard to figure out at first but offers so much goddam knowledge and skill and life experience you just want to hang out and explore and learn from and do things with the guy. I returned with some new friends from Brisbane to set highlines in the same spot, called Point Pure, and stand in the sky for the first time since mid-2014.

Photo: Nico Torres-Don

I spent my birthday with a few friends from my first week of work in a small coastal community called Noosa North, eating proper pizza, napping in the sun on the sand and "learning to surf"– code for I just got my ass kicked by the water, a lot– on my first beach full of breakers and currents and waves in recent memory.

A couple weeks later work took me south to Tyalgum Ridge, nestled into the edge of an ancient, sprawling caldera surrounding Mt. Warning– a basalt plug known as the first place in Australia to see the sun every dawn. During the day I ran kayaking beneath paddocks filled with horses, goats, alpacas and oreo cows. After work we gathered to drink beer and chat as we watch clouds boil into thunderheads, giving way to brilliant lingering double rainbows over the mountain. Crimson and green king parrots foraged amongst nearby shrubbery as black macaws emerged from the mountains,  forewarning imminent rain with their descent into the caldera.

Being foreign in this field has proved something of both a blessing and a curse. In a lot of ways, I'm able to lean on my nationality to bond with my kids. We argue the merits of Shapes vs Goldfish, Vegemite and Butter vs PB & J (Jam, as they call it here, because Jelly is in fact Jello on this side of the world). Occasionally the tactic backfires, though: at one point my 8th-grade girls inform me with the most blasé attitude ever that goannas are super tame, and you can totally walk up to them and put your hand in their mouths. (You can't; their claws are no joke and their bites are ugly as sin.)

While my coworkers field quintessential pesky 9th-grade curiosity (How many dreadlocks do you have? How many girlfriends have you had? Do you have a girlfriend for every dreadlock? How many times have you done drugs?), my personal FAQs center on "world politics" more often than not (What do you think of Donald Trump? Are you going to vote for Donald Trump? Do you like Donald Trump? Have you met Donald Trump?). And, very, very occasionally, "Have you ever seen a bear?"

Interesting enough, I have similar conversations with so many people I work with here. "I would never come to America," they tell me... "you guys have bears there!!" And in Oz you have brown snakes and taipans and redbacks, all of which I'm willing to bet are more common here than bears in the states.

I've never really worried about bears or raccoons (really, if you're going to worry about something, make it the raccoons!) because I've simply grown up playing in places where we coexist and securing food in potentially troublesome territory. West coast wildlife safety is second nature to me. Here in Australia people don't worry (too much) about snakes and spiders because they're part of the natural web amongst which they've grown. We walk heavy and keep from sticking hands blindly into hot crannies. And somehow, that means more hard-to-see little things that kill you faster are way less scary than big, easy-to-see things that run away from you. Chilly nights are natural to me and 90°F weather unbearably hot just as the kids I work with bask in summer heat and perceive snow as alien.

That's just it, though. Wherever we live we contend with hazards of some sort, which can be pretty much eliminated through a little education, logic and common sense. We just have this skewed, glorified perception of the unfamiliar, whether it be politicians or environment or wildlife, abroad or closer to home in settings we're unaccustomed to.

I should write a book of Classic Kid Experiences, including but not limited to:

• The girl who tried to pet a horse after we told her not to. The horse very nearly took off her boob... (As terrible as it sounds, it was really, really hard not to laugh after the fact.)
• The boy who spent 20 minutes crouched under a shack composing a motivational speech for his raft building team. The text in its entirety? "Men, keep doin' what you're doin'."
• The 6th grader who actually took some personal responsibility: "I did something stooooopid in the bushes and now my boat is covered in spiders!"
• The other 6th grader who curled in on herself on high ropes while belting, "I came in like a wreeeecking baaaaallllll!"
• The girl who came up with her group's teamwork motto: "Cheating is more efficient than doing it the right way!"
• The 11-year-old boy who told his instructor, "With all due respect sir, you're not in the military any more and neither am I. You can't teach me anything, old man!"
• The girl who insisted I should have whisked the deadly snake away from her tent's vicinity with a stick instead of letting it go on its way. 
• The boy who got sent home for exploding bottles of hair spray in campfires, after letting loose language that made Game of Thrones look mild.

And on that note, as a long-time mentor back home has been reminding me since I was nine: Common Sense Just Ain't Common.

Stranger in a Half-Familiar Land

Brisbane reminds me strongly of home... even more so than Melbourne. It's a relatively small, liberal, bike-friendly city full of green spaces, bisected by a large river. Bridges cross the water in a dizzying spiderweb and downtown– or the CBD, as they call it here– edges straight up on the water. Like home, half the city's draw is easy access to beaches and mountains within a few hours' drive. Unlike home, the city proves downright impossible to navigate. There's no grid, no numbers, no alphabets. The river meanders in dizzying loops, negating any sense of direction as I follow the shore. Instead I find twisting roads, neighborhoods scattered without apparent organization and road systems named after the first person to arrive. Said road systems were apparently established following old cattle tracks, and it is in fact still legal to walk your cows down the middle of the highway.

That being said, Brisbane's mass transit is somewhat ingenius. Throughout downtown and neighboring central districts a network of tunnels provides traffic-free causeways for busses and emergency vehicles (one or two of these allow civilian traffic to bypass large portions of the city underground, as well). Trains reach outward from the city, passing through stations shared with bus routes. Ferries cross the river in the absence of bridges' span. I carry a single card that gets me anywhere I want to go: I load it with money and a universal network deducts credit when I board and disembark busses and trains and ferries throughout the region depending how far I've traveled. For all the weird and frankly obnoxious first-world issues I've encountered since arriving, this goes pretty far to make up for it. P-town, take notes!!

Speaking of weird and obnoxious first-world issues. I have yet to encounter a place where I can fill a bag of bulk coffee beans, chuck them into a grinder and take the finished product to a counter to check out. Coffee literally comes in two forms here: whole beans (rare) and superfine power (ubiquitous). My french press is on the strugglebus. And, drugs are more regulated here than I've ever experienced in my life. I knew I had it easy in Vietnam, walking into a pharmacy and leaving two minutes later, two dollars down with necessary drugs to treat whatever gross infection accompanied the monsoon's heat and humidity. But seriously, Australia makes the United States look easy. Benedryl cream doesn't exist here... even ibuprofen is regulated in packages of more than 24 tablets.

Other things that've changed: Voting is compulsory. I literally signed a friend's ballot, with street address and everything, as a witness to verify he had voted before he could send it in. My entire identity also seems to have changed since arriving in Oz, as it's affectionately known. Whereas at home in a country of immigrants we tend to inquire about each others' heritage, here, I'm simply American. My accent screams it to the world.

The states have turned into a running joke. Everywhere I go conversation turns to a certain redhead with the world's worst combover. Unfortunately (and understandably) people find the whole thing a vastly entertaining comedy show more than anything else; the very real, very menacing impact of what Donald Trump has said and spread into peoples' lives in schools and at home doesn't extend across the sea...

In any case, I chase work north to Brisbane in mid-March, landing for a couple weeks mid-city with a couch surfing host named Stefan, your quintessential brilliantly scatterbrained German physicist. My first night we take a walk along the Kangaroo Point cliffs above which he lives, walking past bolted wall upon chossy bolted wall literally smack across the river from downtown's nightime glow. We find a perch to watch the sun's light fade over the city as flying foxes the size of ravens emerge, flocking over the river on slow wingbeats before descending in droves into trees to cling amongst fruit-filled branches next to roosting brush turkeys. Bats' chatter accents the city night like an army of droids as they squabble amongst themselves.

My first weekend in Queensland, we drive south to Tamborine Mountain in the late afternoon with Stefan's brother. As night falls and wind rattles palms we hike down through the rainforest, finding bioluminescent mushrooms rooted in decomposing logs, glistening brown tree frogs and (introduced, invasive) toxic cane toads larger than my fist. Another trail leads to a short waterfall tumbling into a small pool surrounded by cliffs from which trees grow and ferns cling in thick bundles. Glow worms' tiny, turquoise lights shine by the thousands from the foliage, reflecting in the pool to create a full constellation surrounding us as the crescent moon and stars overhead complete the 360-degree illusion.

Later in the week I head north to explore the seaside cliffs and beaches of Noosa Heads with another friend from the area. Gary and I walk broad golden beaches filled with sunbathers on neon towels and watch surfers play in classic gray-green waves before making our way into the headlands' thick scrub. As storms darken the sea offshore we skirt rocky shores and pass tangled roots the same deep ocher hue as western red cedar. We find waves crashing into sheer, vaulting walls beneath wind-twisted trees and look down on broad, sweeping coves embraced in green... for all the nature documentaries and publicity, no one ever mentions you can find places on this continent so verdant.

Toward the end of the day we hike a couple of short Aussie-style mountains, looking east to the Sunshine Coast in its classic Australian sunbathed, beach-swept splendor. Then we turn to gaze south over the Glasshouse Mountains, broadly clustered ancient volcanic plugs jutting from the land toward Brisbane, and the sun sets on my first week in Queensland.

Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree

The crisp morning air carries a snap, fresh with the scent of dew-dampened earth. By smell I could almost believe I'm home in the high desert, except crimson and blue parrots gleam in the sun as they dart across the small clearing out front and white cockatoos perch amongst gumtrees while kangaroos bed down on the lawn overnight and spiders the size of my hand make themselves at home on kitchen cupboards. By midday, however, the sun beats through air drier than anything reminiscent of Oregon gorges rimmed in juniper and sage.
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I touched down just after midnight; my passport is the first of the year in Melbourne International Airport to read "28 FEB." I walked down a hall filled with automatic passport processors and agents who greeted me with a twang. By 1:30 AM I collected my bags and found the welcome embrace of my mom's cousin Esther. In an offhand tone she informed me that "I'd normally go home across country, but we'll take the freeway tonight because there's more chance of kangaroos."

Between the kangaroos and the accents, I'd walked straight into a movie.
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I spend my first week with Esther, becoming re-acquainted with the developed world. We go on a sustainable houses tour, where buildings collect sun from the north and back yard fruit trees droop with ripening apricots. We take care of the nitty gritty, setting up my first international bank account and obtaining a sim card while I apply for jobs on the side. We take time to explore the area around Esther's place, an hour's train ride northwest of Melbourne in a rural town called Woodend. We drive to Mt. Macedon, a deceptively large undulation rising above the countryside, from which we look over the plains extending below. We walk around a historic sanitarium's small remnant lake where Esther points out laughing kookaburras as they fly amongst gumtrees growing tall over sun-dappled ferns. We head north for a morning, hiking a trail amongst rolling land filled with small rises and dry runnels and the sun glares through trees' slender leaves.

Terrain is different here, lacking prominent landmarks. The earth undulates with windblown trees, but I find no ridges or mountains or rivers or valleys by which to gain my bearings. Other things have changed, as well: I've traded earthquake architecture and tsunami protocol for summer shade maximization and wildfire evacuation plans. Instead of deer, I scare up kangaroos. And, kangaroos are... simply a part of everyday life.

I remember watching the womens' world cup years ago when it was moved to Portland on short notice, and seeing my first streakers as they raced onto the pitch, streaming banners reading, "Adidas kills Kangaroos!" Funny thing is, they really do seem to simply be Australia's version of backyard deer, commonly regarded as pests.  They graze on lawns, they're ubiquitous on road crossing signs and their meat is sold in supermarkets... apparently kangaroo bbq is a thing here. I never foresaw myself writing "no kangaroo" into dietary forms.

I find my way into Melbourne after a week basking in the blessed quiet of the non-Southeast Asian countryside. I meet up with a blast from the past at the Sydney Road Party, a once-yearly block party reminiscent of Alberta Street's Last Thursday. It's been six years since I studied next to Juan De Dios in the Galápagos Islands; somehow we managed to miss each other when he came through Cat Ba during my last month or so working in Vietnam.

Photo: Juan De Dios Morales

Together we wander Sydney Road at its liveliest: street bands play in front of historic churches, food stalls line sidewalks in front of Victorian facades from which the road draws so much character and women dressed as flamingos on stilts dance around children as they weave through the crowds. An old man in a fuscia plaid hat, rubber boots, translucent shift and crimson polka-dot thong wails on a harmonica as he manipulates a wooden duck marionette with gusto. A massive concert organ parked on a side street belts classic tunes in a one-machine symphony. I eat my fill of watermelon and massive wraps as I navigate the mayhem, eventually following Juande into a hardware store to provide moral support as he builds a camera base for an upcoming trip to Indonesia. Also, I buy proper shades for the first time in years.

I spend the night at Juande's place near the university where he's finishing grad school, reminiscing with his girlfriend and roommates in a welcome reminder of Latin American hospitality and relaxing in a place that feels so comfortably lived in after extended time in hostels homestays and hotels. 

I crash the following nights with Georgia, an artist recently returned from overseas, originally from Esther's town of Woodend. We wander city parks and avenues brimming with factory outlets and secondhand shops as I pursue my mission to reestablish a wardrobe decimated by SE Asia's heat, humidity, wind, sun, saltwater and corrosion. We bond over tattoos, world travel, shopping, and some quality time in my first proper-sized bouldering gym since leaving home.

My search for functioning clothes also takes me to Brunswick Street, lined with Victorian facades and independent cafes, vintage shops and high-class grafiti-filled alleys.  Cathedrals bookend the avenue, glowing in late afternoon sun as trams cruise the center lane. If Sydney Rd is Alberta St, down under-style, then Brunswick St is most definitely Hawthorne Blvd with a twist.

I take a day to explore the city's botannical gardens under low clouds, wandering through pockets of succulents and plush wetlands full of unfamiliar birds, long toes splayed through slender rushes. I pass sweeping arrays of flowers surrounding the Governor's Mansion as I work my way toward the city, eventually finding a bridge to cross into downtown. All around me an odd mix of Victorian influence and cathedrals mix seamlessly with ultra-modern architecture bursting with color. Federation Square, ringed in abstract glass and metal paneling, sits across from the classic Flinders Street Railway and shares real estate with St Paul's Cathedral, dwarfed by surrounding skyscrapers erected since its construction in the 1880s.

In some ways, Melbourne reminds me of home. The city sings with art and music. Everywhere I look I see tattoos displayed carefree. Coffee shops wait on almost every corner. In other ways, however, I experience a stark contrast to the town which raised me. The metropolis carries a staunchly urban atmosphere. Rather than cold, clouds bring humidity and pounding monster raindrops to interrupt the day's dry heat. Parakeets flock in place of starlings. In the afternoon, streets swarm with youth in old-style school uniforms. Sprawling metro stations burst to overflowing during afternoon rush hour. At the end of the week, however, the train carries me back into the countryside, to family and kangaroos and gumtrees and kookaburras, and the crisp morning scent of dew-dampened bush.