I come from a land...up over?

(written from Australia, sent from Thailand)
G’day from Australia! It’s been quite a week here and it’s hard to believe it’s already over, especially since I worked for most of it. My work has an office in Atherton, Australia up in the northeast, so I was able to fly into Cairns a few days early to play before getting down to business. As always, it was never enough time but here were some highlights and other memorable moments, mostly in chronological order:

• While walking around downtown Cairns my first morning, I looked up to discover fruit bats flying overhead. They love the huge mango trees by the library, and they became my archenemies by eating the mangoes before I could get to them.

• Going to the market to discover they have 3 local varieties of mangoes, and the season was just starting. Atherton is up in the Tablelands, where they appear to grow everything—avocados, potatoes, strawberries, peanuts, mangoes, and bananas to name a few.

• Tim Tams! I became addicted to these chocolate “biscuits” (cookies) when I visited NZ and Sydney in 2005, so buying a pack was the 2nd thing I did in Australia. After 24 hours of flying, a shower was #1 out of necessity…but I was thinking of them the whole time. They have several new flavors including hazelnut mousse—tasty, but the new filling affected its “Tim Tam slam” drinkability (look it up in Wikipedia). I averaged nearly a pack a day in an attempt to make the most of my short time here, and the only flavor I didn’t get to try was white chocolate. I’ve heard they’re now available in the US, so while my tastebuds are celebrating my waistline doesn’t want to investigate.

• Snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef. I only had one free day to play, and chose to spend it snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. It didn’t disappoint! Our boat looked like the luxury yachts I kayaked past in Newport Beach growing up, and it raced us to 2 of the outer reefs: first Saxon, then Hastings. The ship’s racing, combined with choppy seas, made most of the passengers a little seasick and even I felt queasy by the afternoon, but by staying out in front or in the water I was fine. I loved seeing the variety of fish, but it was all the different types of coral that really captivated me. We found Nemo, by the way, and a few of the other varieties of clownfish. I can tell my 5 years of working with “professional treehuggers” has rubbed off, though, when I was disappointed by the lack of education the tour provided—it was only fun. I enjoyed it, but it was sad to see damaged coral from being loved too much.

• “…and ye shall know us by our basketball courts…”(our chapels are pretty recognizable and outside the US, the court is often in the parking lot) I love going to church abroad. You always meet great people and it makes any place feel a little less foreign. To boot, the Sacrament Meeting talks were exactly what I needed to hear.

• Roger’s hospitality. My colleague, Roger, was kind enough to play chauffer, tour guide, and host during my stay, a courtesy he’s extended to other visiting staff. The Tablelands are fairly rural, and Roger’s house was just outside the shire of Yungabarra on a hilltop with fantastic views over fields with rainforest on the surrounding hilltops. It was so pleasant to sit on the deck and eat breakfast, watching the cattle graze and the clouds roll by. Roger lived for several years in the Solomon Islands and has a deep love for PNG and all the islands of Micronesia. As a result, the décor reminded me of the Bishop Museum in Hawaii. I should probably mention at this point that he’s from NZ originally, and when I told him which church I was going to attend on Sunday I learned that most of his extended family is LDS. He was kind enough to leave a Book of Mormon they’d given him at my bedside, which made me feel like I was staying at a Marriott. It was because of him that I didn’t have to attempt driving on the other side of the road, ate regional cuisine, saw the wildlife, met the locals, and watched Aussie and Kiwi films. More on that to come.

• Local food. I was treated to a Sunday dinner that included kangaroo steaks. They tasted slightly gamey, but mostly charbroiled from being cooked over a fire in his backyard. I also saw kangaroo sausage, or “Kanga Bangas”, at the store.

• The wildlife I did see, and the ones I avoided. The rainy season will be starting soon, but right now it’s bone dry, making it all the harder to believe I’m on the edge of a rainforest. The fields are brown and the ground isn’t muddy. Apparently this is good, as it means I didn’t have to worry about leeches when we hiked through a bit of rainforest, and I’m relieved to say the only python I saw was road kill (Roger said that during the snakes’ mating season, he found 3 of them in the house!). I love Australia, but why does it seem like everything’s out to get you? Did I mention that the beaches of Cairns have saltwater crocodiles? Again, was happy to not have that nature sighting. So what did I see? Butterflies, birds, a kangraoo rat, and my highlight: a platypus. It was dusk at the time so I didn’t get a close look, but it was fun to see it glide through the water and under the weeds before disappearing again.

• Teatime with the CSIRO staff. CI’s “office” is actually just a few rooms at a field office of CSIRO, Australia’s equivalent of the US’s NSF. This office focuses on rainforest ecology, so while Conservation International doesn’t actually do any work in Australia, we have a technical partnership with them. It was interesting to chat with them, and a lovely tradition I wouldn’t mind bringing back with me to DC.

• My attempt at “Aussie rules” football. Roger invited me to join him on Monday after work for a local pickup game with various guys in the community—I’d say the ages ranged from 10 to 60. Like most sports of the Commonwealth, I don’t fully understand Australian football but I was willing to give it a shot. Basically, a team would kick the ball to their opponents who would then run towards them. You could only pass backwards and had to stop once you were tagged, putting the ball down and stepping over it for your teammate to pick up and resume play. Thankfully they didn’t take it too seriously, as I was the only girl playing and clearly the only one who didn’t know what they were doing. I was flattered when they tossed me the ball and so relieved when I actually caught it that I was easily tagged. My strategy was simple: stay behind my teammates and tag any opponent with the ball (years of chasing Devan made me pretty good at this). And since it was on a Monday, I’m counting it as FHE.

• Grocery shopping. I love visiting grocery stores when I travel to see what everyone else is eating, and my cart is as much about survival and nutrition as it is flavor and curiosity. For example, on my most recent trip I bought:

-Mangoes and bananas (both locally grown)
-“Tasty cheese” (that’s really the name—I’m pretty sure it’s just cheddar)
-Cadbury’s (the local stuff)
-Tim Tams (double coated), plain biscuits (cookies), and Milo for teatime
-“Late night Kebab”-flavored crisps (potato chips)
**note: the Commonwealth is known for unique flavors of potato chips compared to the US, and one brand is currently having a contest to pick a new flavor. One of the other flavors in the contest is Caesar salad. I didn’t get to try it, but I did try honey-baked ham before catching my flight.

• Visiting the pub in Yungabarra. It was interesting to meet some of the locals, who all seemed so happy living in a small town and were all looking out for each other. Speaking with a beekeeper made me think of dad.

So that’s it, and I thoroughly enjoyed the slower pace that week—except for the internet speed. Part of my work involved sending data from the Australia server to the DC server, and I quickly became impatient with how long it was taking. Coincidentally, they had a piece on the news about a competition to send a large amount of data (the movie “Duck Soup”) from a rural town to a Sydney suburb 130 km away. The contests were a pigeon, a car, and the internet. The pigeon won, with the car arriving about an hour later. As for the internet, it crashed twice and they finally gave up on it. I’m not sure how good pigeons are at trans-oceanic/hemispherical/continental travel, so I’m bringing it back on disc as a backup. Am I ready to pack up and move here? Part of me says yes, but I don’t know how well I’d handle the slower pace long-term—especially with so many places to see!