The Other Side Of Down Under: Brisbane And Sydney
By
Leonard Zwelling
Although I am certainly glad we went to Perth and the surrounding areas in Western Australia, in general I found it a little bit boring. The gardens are nice enough, some of the scenery is unusual, and going to Margaret River was like going to Napa. However, I kept getting the feeling, both in Singapore and in Perth, that I had travelled an awfully long way for nothing all that special. Then we got to Brisbane in Queensland on the east coast.
Brisbane is a city we had just not considered on our previous visits to Australia. It is beautiful. We were there on January 26, Australia Day which is sort of like July Fourth for us (it’s when the British came to Australia in 1788), and like Columbus Day, scorned by the indigenous people of Australia. It is the end of summer. School started the next day. But as we were taken on a car tour of the city and hit all the beautiful vistas, I still didn’t feel like I had made it to Australia. For the most part it was that unique accent and driving on the left that cued us in to where we were.
Then, on the day after Australia Day, we were taken an hour north of Brisbane near the Sunshine Coast to Australia Zoo, the site of the Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin’s vision of building a living monument to Australian wildlife. And did he and his family ever succeed!
This is a magnificent facility with kangaroos running about ready for feeding and koalas in the trees and a genuine crocodile show where these gigantic creatures swim in and demonstrate their ferocity and agility in the water, and the relative limits of their mobility on land. Of course, there are snakes and wombats and wallabies, too. Now, I felt like I was in Australia. We sure weren’t in Kansas any more.
The highlight of the Irwins’ place is the hospital where ill or damaged animals are rehabilitated. We saw a hysterectomy on a koala and surgery on bats as well as the feeding of tiny, tiny marsupials like possums. Amazing!
And this care for the fauna was emphasized the next day at the Lost Pine koala sanctuary where there were over 100 koalas. They were in every tree, even in the cafeteria. We fed the kangaroos again. I couldn’t get enough of this. These kangaroos are very domesticated, so at ease around humans. They were so at ease that a male and female pair hopped off under a tree and started making a baby kangaroo, something you don’t see every day. There were snakes and more crocodiles and lizards, too. The huge ostrich-like cassowary is here. That is a rare bird, indeed. These creatures native only to Australia are so unusual to us Americans that they make you sure you are really here.
The trip from Brisbane to Sydney is due south. Despite only a small change in longitude, we lost another hour as Brisbane does not employ daylight saving time and Sydney does and remember it’s summer here. So, as our plane passed over the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the iconic Opera House, watches had to be reset.
As we walk the streets of Sydney after landing, I am struck by what appears to me to be the real difference between Australia and the United States. Now, I don’t mean the accents. And, I don’t mean the animals. And, I don’t mean the vegemite or driving on the other side of the road. I mean there was a sense of contentment and pride where ever we went in Australia. So many people we have met are from somewhere else and have been welcomed here and they aren’t at war with each other either. In the U.S. the country is gripped by fear and distrust and the immigrant is the enemy. It seems that Australia, despite being the younger of the two democracies, is acting in the more mature fashion and surely in a manner more consistent with the Constitution of the United States than is the United States.
We came through Sydney to see two things that we had adored during past visits, the Towanda Zoo and the Sydney Opera House.
We got a personalized guided trip through the Australian part of the zoo and again saw creatures only native to this continent. We got up close with the koalas, but not with the Tasmanian Devils which could be fatal. These cancer-threatened marsupials (it’s a contagious mouth carcinoma) have one of the strongest bites on Earth. We saw the birds of prey demonstration as we had over twenty years ago. It had completely changed. It was still entertaining, but far less gory than it was in the past when a true predator bird pulled apart a live mouse.
We got another guided tour of the Sydney Opera House. It is still one of the most magnificent structures on Earth. This time, because of my limited mobility, we got a tour for the wheel chair set and were lucky enough to see both the big stage where the symphony plays and the smaller Joan Sutherland Theater where the operas are staged.
All and all, after three visits to the Land Down Under, I have to say that the action here is in the east, Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.
But the biggest take home message for me is that this is not a country in fear and it still welcomes immigrants even if becoming a citizen is still difficult unless your skills are wanted here. No one is painting anyone else as the enemy here. Everyone is cordial. There is a huge influx of foreigners in the service industry and I have no idea whether they can stay or not, but they are working and productive.
We have seen some homelessness, but very little. There is no police presence anywhere and the streets are clean.
I am so sorry this is not what America is, but Australia has one-tenth the population of America, thus a bit easier to manage. Nonetheless, Sydney and Melbourne are each bigger than Houston and seem to have far fewer problems than we do.
There is something about the Australian psyche that could never be mistaken for that of an American. We all might think about that.
It’s a long way away, but right now, it is far closer to embodying the American dream than we are.
