A Vacation While on Vacation

We left almost everything in Sydney and departed the city at 7:45am for a Blue Mountains field trip.  Tonight we are sleeping in Leura, New South Wales, near one of the national parks that Australians are most proud of.  The point of a field trip when you are botanizing, is not the destination, but the journey. So, we made a series of stops.

The first stop was a couple of hours out of  Sydney along a road cut to an old quarry.  The quarry stone was used to build "the oldest sandstone bridge on the mainland."  This means there is an older one in Tasmania, and by my calculations, that makes this mainland bridge the second oldest bridge in Australia.  However, I don't want to offend anyone by not referring to it as "the oldest sandstone bridge on the mainland."

The interesting plant on this walk was an Astrotrichna that had two distinct forms even though they are a single species.  The forms had likely been separated for a long time, but came into contact with each other due to the disturbance of the road cut.  If you saw the plants in the forms, you would assume they were different species, and if Linnaeus had received the samples in the eighteenth century, he likely would have given them two names,  The modern definition of a species is based on the ability of members of a population to reproduction with each other.   The even more modern definition of a species is based on looking directly at the actual DNA.  By these definitions, the plants are all the same species, in spite of how they look.

Why is this interesting?  The diversity of life fascinating, whether you like flashy animals or subtler life forms like small plants or slime molds or beetles.  Remembering that Darwin's most famous book was called On the Origin of Species,  we realize that most of the time we consider why there are so many different species.  Finding an example of the opposite--looking different and actually being the same, is just an interesting.  It begins to tell a story of local adaptation and the amount of time and natural selection needed to make a population into more than one species.

While the botanists were looking at plants, JR and Alan explored a little more quickly and in a slightly wider range.  Alan found a skeleton.  Trevor, one of our accompanying botanists, and who has a wide knowledge of natural history in general, thought that it was a bush rat.

Our next stop was in the Blue Mountain National Park. The area had dwelling areas of the aborigines that were 20,000 years old. The area we wandered around felt like being above treeline in the northeast, but it wasn't. The vegetation type is refereed to as "heath." The exploring boys dropped out of site for a few minutes, and re-emerged to pull Mark and I out of the open and underneath a rock where the wind erosion had created a very striking honeycomb in the rock. The photo at the start of this entry is an example. Above is a wider view of the rock. With another short walk we came to a dwelling place that had some ancient symbols etched into the stone. This semi-circular symbol probably meant safe camping place.  These etchings were very hard to discern because they are subtle, and also because they are 20,000 years old.  It is humbling to look at them and think, "In my whole lifetime, will I every communicate anything, in any way, that will be looked at and understood 20,000 years from now?"  I don't expect to--in spite of this blog!

We stopped for lunch at a mountain tea room-- and had excellent sandwiches on very homemade tasting bread.  Alan ate three in the time it took most folks to consume their first.  His appetite has returned in force.

We've all been like kids on a family vacation these past two days.  We don't know a lot about where we are going ahead of our arrival, although we get a few timely clues along the way.  This doesn't matter too much since we sort of don't really know where we are anyway, and none of us visitors is driving.  Australia, New South Wales, is a big place.  So, we tamely climbed into the van after lunch, and exited at the next stop a few minutes later reading a sign that said "Scenic World."  Barry, the Royal Botanical Garden botanist who is driving our van told us we were going to take a little railroad ride, walk around and then come back in a sort of gondola skyway.  If you've been reading the blog, this sort of sounds like our day in Kuranda.

We quickly received our tickets, and loaded into a car.  Railway, I would suggest, is a very broad term, that mostly describes the tracks--not the car that sits on the tracks and certainly not the incline of the tracks.  We found ourselves sitting in fairly open cars, though with a cage top--and even I had very little head clearance.  As we move forward, the soundtrack from Raiders of the Lost Ark started to play.  We were plunged into utter darkness and pitched steeply forward.  We were on a railroad, but it was a railroad that had been used to take miners to the entry of the mine shaft.  In less than a minute we had descended about the length of six (US) football fields.

How would that be for a commute each morning?  The point of a field trip when you are botanizing, is not the destination, but the journey....

The bottom was very interesting too.  More tree ferns!  And, quite a lot of remnants of the mining and information about the history and culture of the mine.  (A 'random' example: boys started work at age 14.)  The boys and I had a long walk along the boardwalk, and ran into Trevor and a pair of lyrebirds that was fun to watch for a while.  They scratch at the leaf litter on the ground with a fierce concentration.  Meanwhile, a different species altogether, the scrubwren, followed in its tracks to glean whichever smaller invertebrate morsels had been left behind.  The male lyrebird we were watching also called to the female.  Lyrebirds are incredible mimics.  John Roy and I saw a tape of one at the Melbourne Museum that sounded like an ambulance, a chainsaw and a camera all in the space of a minute.  (This tape segment is part of David Attenborough's Life of Birds.) Today, the one we watched sounded more like a bird.

We did take a steep gondola ride back to the top, and it didn't have quite the thrill or the soundtrack of our descent, but it was scenic.  Then we were off to our next stop, a view of the famous rocks, The Three Sisters.  This area has rocky faces below a table, and the three rocks that remain were once a group of "Seven Sisters."  We had just enough time before dark fell to climb down and stand in the niche of the sister on the furthest left.

Standing in the shelter of a sister.

We've all had a splendid dinner with champagne and four wines.  It is getting quiet in our Blue Mountain hotel room.  Alan says his most vivid memory from today is finding the bones.  JR says his is the railroad ride.  Mark's most vivid memory is seeing the really tall tree ferns in the mining area.  All this, and we still have the journey back to Sydney tomorrow.

South of Sydney

The botanists were off on a full day field trip to some natural areas south of Sydney, and the boys and I went with them.  We stopped throughout the day, and the main areas we saw were rainforest.  Above are two photos from my walk on "The Fly," a spectacular walkway in the canopy in Illawarra natural area.  When I got out onto the catilevered terminal end, JR was bouncing up and down.  He swears he was encouraged to do this by one of the graduate students from Russia.  I am not sure who to believe...

From the rainforest part of the trip, my absolute favorite was seeing tree ferns.  We don't have them in the "new world," and Australia is my first old world rainforest, so I was quietly excited. They are ferns, so they look like ferns, except that they stand as tall as small trees.  The are old, as a group--- older than any seed plants.  There are lots of ways to define success, but the photo above shows one way.

We went to Minnamurra rainforest next, which has both subtropical and temperate rainforest.  The area has been saved from too many human footsteps with an extensive boardwalk.  We had an excellent botanist/ecologist show the group around.  This area was carved out by a rivulet which added to the diversity.

In the latter part of the afternoon we drove to Royal National Park, stopping at a scenic overlook for a photo along the way.  Here are a pair of photos from what looked to me like the edge of the world.

 Boys on the Brink

Botanists on the Brink

We arrived at our last stop in Royal National Park very close to sundown.  Royal National Park is the oldest national park in the world, ahead of Yellowstone in the USA.  We were out of the rainforest and into a desert-like habitat, with sand underfoot, not because of the current coast, but because of an ancient coast that became sandstone under pressure, has now had uplift and erosion turning it back into sand particles.  We saw the biggest diversity of plants in flower.  Before I had even set foot from the van, though, John Roy, who had alighted first, was on his way back to me with a Banksia pod in his hand.  In our family we know this plant and its pod because my father, who is a wood turner, makes vases from them.  Banksia is highly dependent on fire, at a high temperature, to reproduce, and the seeds also seem to require a drenching rain after the fire.

Banksia under a sliver of the moon at sunset

We have been accepted into the clan now, and have another trip tomorrow, to the Blue Mountains. We leave at dawn....

Alan has read four books so far on this trip Down Under, and I am hoping that the fifth book lasts until we are home!

Independent Boys and International Botanists

The morning mission for the boys and me was to see the Sydney Opera House on a tour.  Mission:  failure.  We arrived when there was a performance or two, so no tours.  The best we accomplished was a close up, and a trip to the bathrooms.  These bathrooms, though, were worth it since they were clearly as designed as the rest of the building.  As you can see from this photo, the sinks are one solid piece of porcelain, maybe?  And it has been gently cast in the form of a wave.  Each trough of the wave is a sink "basin," and the water runs off the back as if it is heading for a collision with the back-splash.  We will go back--obviously if I am impressed with the washroom sinks, I just have to see the rest of the building.  We have plans for the next three days, so I can't hope to return until Sunday, our very last day in Australia.

Entering The Rocks, with school children on the green for a lesson.

We walked from the Opera House through Circular Quay to The Rocks and saw The Rocks Discovery Museum.  The Rocks are the oldest area of Sydney.  Various municipal governments have tried to "clean up" the neighborhood at various times in its history.  Probably unfairly, it has been thought of as a poor neighborhood, but evidence from excavations really make it seem as though it has always been working class at worst, and perhaps never an actual slum.  Construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge took some of the buildings of The Rocks down, and again in the 1970's urban renewal tried to rebuild the older neighborhood.  Fortunately, protestors prevailed, and the area is home to many artists and quaint little shops today.  We enjoyed the museum since it took such care to explain the urban archaeology.

We returned to Circular Quay and boarded a ferry to take us around to Darling Harbour.  The ferries are great.  They are a fast way between shore points in the city, but the best part is that the views are spectacular.

Luna Park in North Sydney (the other side of the Harbour Bridge. Does that face look kid friendly to you?

We went to Darling Harbour (yet again, for the third day in a row) because Mark had invited me to dine with the botanists.  That meant the boys were on their own.  I set them up for a showing of Transformers 3D at the eight story IMAX, bought them lunch, and gave them still more cash for dinner and a potential game of laser tag.  In the photo they are eating Subway.  Yes, you can take the boys out of the country, but you can't always take the country out of the boys.  They did also play laser tag, and of that shocking amount of cash, they returned 80 cents.

I had a splendid evening.  There are 30-40 participants at this meeting.  Mark gave his talk today, and I was able to hear it.  Great job and interesting discussion from the other members.  Then they were photographed, and I got to be one of the photographers:

We headed around the garden on a very selected tour to see specimens from the Apiales group.  These plants have more subtle flowers than most people are attuned to.  In North America, most members of this group are not woody, but in a botanical garden, you can see species that are tropical and trees or shrubs.  When you walk through a garden with a group of botanists, you go slowly.

Finally, we all had dinner.  This group is very international so it was very fun!  There are scientists from South Africa, Russia, France, and Australia, of course.  It's not uncommon for an individual to be international all by themselves-- so born in China and works in the States, or born in the States but works in France, or born in New Zealand and works in Australia. Most of the scientists have traveled for research purposes, outside of their residential country.  This group has been trying to meet every three years,somewhere in the world, for the last twelve years or so.  They give me the feeling of being at a college reunion.  It was a very convivial group.  I may maneuver to become a tag-a-long from now on.

In spite of the good cheer, I can also wax philosophical about everyone being together here.  It is not necessarily easy to get together when everyone comes from distant parts of the world.  Whichever botanist organizes the trip loses time from his or her regular work to do so.  There is no doubt, though, that being together is very useful.  One way that it helps is by giving students a wider group of contacts.  Many of the participants are PhD students or post docs.  The other way that it is helpful is in giving everyone a chance to hear about how work is progressing prior to publication, which can take a long time.  I think the best part, though, is that when you are sitting with a group of international botanists, it is clear that the plants belong to all of us. 

The scientists looking at a specimen.

The Morning in Bullet Points but the Afternoon gets a Paragraph

Morning
* Walked Mark to the Botanical Gardens for his meeting.
* Rousted remaining boys for a trip to the aquarium.
* Walked to aquarium.  Saw half.
* Informed by youngest boy that he had a cold and couldn't continue.
*Left older boy at aquarium and walked younger back to apartment.
* Walked back to aquarium and speed saw the second half.  Interesting animal not in Melbourne:  a manatee.

Afternoon
With Alan resting and blowing his nose at the apartment, John Roy and I went back to the National Maritime Museum to see the exhibits.  You may recall that I was not a maritime enthusiast, in particular, but had been won over on the ships yesterday.  The inside exhibits also won me over, especially the traveling exhibit about Robert Scott's last expedition.  Scott set out to be the first to reach the South Pole.  He didn't succeed in being first; he was beat by 34 days by Roald Amundsen in 1911.  On the way back, in early 1912,Scott and his little pole party of six all perished.  The exhibit was excellent because they recreated, to scale, the hut that up to 25 men lived in at Cape Evans on Antarctica while waiting to make the trek to the pole. While getting to the pole was a goal, the expedition was more generally for science as well.  There are photos and specimens from many smaller trips that the men took around Cape Evans, including one to collect the eggs of the Emperor penguin for embryology study.  The hut still stands and still contains 8,000 individual items from Scott's and then Shackleton's 1914-1917 expedition.  New Zealand and the UK Antarctic Heritage Trusts protect it.

I hope this exhibit travels; it would be interesting to many other people.
More information about Robert Scott.

We bought food and cooked in again tonight.  Fish and veggies for me, lasagne and veggies for JR. Alan stuck with chicken schnitzel- even though we bought him soup as well.  Mark is out with botanists for dinner.

I am hoping to get to tour the Opera House tomorrow...it was on today's agenda, but the morning bullet points altered the plan.

Mellow, Maritime Monday

Mark and I went out walking this morning for exercise, and also so that he could scope out the place where his Apiales meetings are going to be this week.  They are meeting at the herbarium in the Royal Botanical Gardens.  The humans were very peaceful in the garden.  The birds, the names of which we have yet to learn, were making a racket, and it was not a friendly racket.  I commented that a recording of this group would be appropriate for the scary moments in a movie.

When we returned to the apartment to rouse the boys, we decided to head out to Sydney Harbour Bridge.  This bridge was built in the 1930's and has a pathway for pedestrians, as well as cars, and railway cars.  They are not apparent in the photo, but some people do the very popular bridge climb up and out of the archways of the bridge while wearing rock climbing harnesses.

The walk gave us beautiful views, and after walking around North Sydney a bit aimlessly, we decided to return to Darling Harbour via a water ferry.  This gave us a nice water view of "The Rocks," the oldest part of European settled Sydney.  It may be too simplistic to say that this is where they dropped off the convicts in 1788, but that is more or less the original British oriented start of this historic district.  The aboriginal peoples lived there for thousands of years before this.

We made the return trip to Darling Harbor for two reasons.  First, Alan had been talking about gelato non stop.  Next to the IMAX there was a gelateria that sold 16 types of chocolate gelato (along with an equal number of non chocolate flavors.)  Alan was so on message about gelato that we all decided that would make lunch.  Once we got to the gelateria, though, Alan smelled Subway and moved in a different direction.  The remaining three family members, who had been thoroughly brainwashed to desire gelato, kept on mission.  We tried a chili chocolate gelato--I liked it, Mark will likely not have it again.  It's good though--cold temperature with a warm after glow in the mouth.

Our second mission was the National Maritime Museum.  We walked through the door and Mark especially wanted to see the replica of HMS Endeavor, Captain Cook's ship that also carried wealthy amateur botanist Sir Joseph Banks and Linnaeus' student Solander.  "She's in Darwin," we were told, apparently going around Australia this year.  But a reconstructed 1608 Dutch trading ship called the Duyfken was in port.  The other attractions were the submarine  HMAS Onslow and the destroyer HMAS Vampire.  All those sub movies do a good job giving the sense of little space, but still, being in the space itself caused me to give a lot of admiration to anyone who chooses this line of service.  John Roy is standing near three bunks, above.  Yes, that is three bunks:  top middle and very bottom.

The seamen's galley on the Vampire.  One breakfast item: 'yippy beans.'

The destroyer had more space, of course.  Vampire had a peaceful service, and was used for training near the end of her commission.  One of the best parts of this museum was that the ships were staffed with volunteers, and without even asking, you could tell they were all ex-service men.  The last volunteer, on the sub, found out that John Roy was going to begin a welding program.  He hailed JR over, sat him down, and talked to him for a good ten minutes about how he needs to get his welding "ticket," and then continue to do a program for pressure welding, a higher skill area of use in maritime manufacturing.

I have to admit, that left to my own, I never would have gone near this particular attraction.  Goes to show you though, learning from enthusiasts is interesting, almost no matter what.  I ended up really liking our time on the three ships. Good thing, since we didn't have time to see the inside museum displays, and the boys have asked me to take them back!

Mark's meeting began this evening with an opening reception of about 30 scientists.  The boys and I stopped at a grocer and cooked.  Alan got ready made chicken schnitzel and chips.  He was delighted that the chicken was in the shape of a heart.  JR and I were more healthy and cooked veggies, salad and meat.  It was nice to not to have a restaurant meal and maybe ameliorate the gelato lunch.  Maybe.

Harry Potter in Sydney

We left Melbourne this morning and flew to Sydney.  We have been sort of getting the lay of the land.  Since our rooms weren't ready, we walked to the Sydney version of Victoria Market--not like Melbourne's of the same name.  This Victoria Market is like a Melbourne arcade, and we found some lunch.  Then back to the hotel to unpack, visit a grocer, and get set up with internet. (I needed to rent a Vodaphone mobile internet access for this leg of the trip.)

Sydney apparently has the largest IMAX screen in the world, and guess what is showing? Right--I know you read the title pf this post.  Believe me, Hagrid was HUGE on this screen!  Harry Potter is really over:  no more books, and no more films.  We have had a whole series of summers with Harry Potter.  In 2000, we were driving cross country when the fourth book was released.  We found a little book store in Mitchell, SD a few days ahead of the July 8th premier.  The bookseller was very low key and set aside a copy for us.  I read it out loud to everyone over the road noise as we drove.  The sixth book also came with us on a summer vacation, to Acadia National Park in Maine.  The family had me reading that one aloud until I couldn't hold my eyes open any more.  (Right, it must have been past 9pm---but we did spend all day hiking, I earned my sleepiness!)  I remember that one day we got up and realized we would not be able to go anywhere until we finished, so we stayed in cottage and I read.  Dumbledore dies at the end, and Mark still swears that his vacation was ruined.

Seeing the last movie in 3-D on a great big screen was pretty exciting.  I also think it was a nice experience to see it with such an international audience also.

Sydney has a reputation of being a bit more hectic and with less charm than Melbourne.  It is a bigger city population wise and in area.  It's too soon to be certain of its character yet.  It is Sunday after all, and things seemed a bit quiet.

The IMAX theater is at Darling Harbor, which has a boat show at the moment, and this added some glamor to the evening through the boats and the people who own them and came to see them.  It's a few degrees warmer here and definitely feels like spring.

Dinner with Family!

Until this post, it has been a little known fact that I have family in Melbourne.  We have been looking forward to visiting with my (second) cousin Lisa, her husband Lawrence, and daughter Zoe, and today was the day.

The price of bananas!

We met for a get acquainted/reacquainted Japanese noodle lunch near the Victoria Market. John Roy chatted so much his lunch barely looked touched.  Alan made his ramen vanish in no time flat, though. 

You can see the meat hooks near the ceiling.

This market is a wide eyed experience.  It has a 'swap meet' section for merchandise, but it's the food market that really grabs the attention.  There is a green grocer section, a deli section and a fish and meat market section.  Lisa told me that Australia imports very little produce.  It was amazing that there was domestic pineapple in season at the same time as strawberries, rhubarb and asparagus, citrus and apples.  We were there near to the end of the selling day, and the butchers were actively hawking the meat. It was a very old world experience to be able to shop for food this way, and very attractive.  We each selected the meat we wanted to eat for dinner:  sea trout for Lisa, lamb for Mark, Lawrence and myself, a beef sausage for Zoe and rump steak for JR and Alan.  We had a little more time to gawk, and then set out for the train to Lisa & Lawrence's home.

We're still digesting our mixed grill dinner, with greens, fresh chips from the seller down the street, and Lebanese pastry for desert.  We also got to play with Quinn, the labradoodle, and learn a little Japanese from Zoe. Basically, it was just great to spend a Saturday evening in a home with nice conversation, and we are grateful for the hospitality.  We hope they like the Pleasant Valley, New York maple syrup we carried over for a hostess gift.  We also hope we can have a chance to return the dinner sometime.  We are advertising Mark's beer can chicken as an enticement.
This is our last night in Melbourne - Sydney is going to have a lot to do to measure up.  I have really liked this city!