Field Report 9:
More East Coast of Australia - March 4, 1999

By Jeff Bell
 

Here's the usual ancedotes and ponderings from your travelin' Yank:

New South Wales is the current state, mate. NSW, as is in print often, together with Victoria comprise the lower right hand quarter of Australia. Haven't gotten to Victoria yet, that's Melbourne country, but I've covered a good deal of NSW. Lots of green country, kinda like the South, lots of those friendly McD's golden arches too, and KFC ads too. It struck me that it's convenient that fries are a yellow color, 'cause that really make those Mikey D's signs jump out at you.

No sooner had I sent off my last correspondence commenting on how you have to take care driving down here, I'm on a country road having just checked out a beach and I see this sign that says "CREST". And I'm kinda tired, and I think, "oh yeh, that's their way of reminding you that your 'cresting' a hill" 'cause this "Crest" is confusing to my American-raised brain. And I realize that I am in the RIGHT lane. So I get over to the left. No panic, I'm tired, but it registers that I've never been in the wrong lane quite this seriously. I got about 40 yards and I go over the top of the hills, and there's a car about 100 yards away coming the other way. Slowly it sinks in. I nearly f@#%%@ up. Bought the farm. Kicked the can. But I made it back, back to Sydney and turned in my car.

It rained alot this week. A whole lot. One day I realized at 3:30pm when it stopped for about 5 minutes, that it was the first break in rain that entire day. Did a few drives up from the coast up to the tablelands and walked a few drizzly tracks (trails are tracks down here, which means there must be some other would for track) and saw some waterfalls and lots of kangaroos. They either stop and stare at you, crawl slowly using all fours in a pincher sort of movement, or (the best), they pogo away on closely spaced hind legs. The first reaction to the pogo is to want to laugh, because it looks so strange to see these giant animals doing, well, a bunch of standing broad jumps.

Once I saw a large kangaroo which was really big—six feet and mighty thick. Another time I stopped by a soccer field in a country town which was filled with 'roos, just grazin.

Biggest, Best

There's a lot of things that go on down here, that when you see 'em, you don't like 'em so much, but then you realize, "oh, yeh, we do/have that at home too." Like the propensity to label things as the "world's largest...", etc. The first cave to have electricity in it, the earliest such and such in the Southern Hemisphere. One sign here pointed out that this was one of the only lighthouses in a semi-tropical environment where you could observe humpback whales migrating. Yeh, and if you stand on one leg and wear a hat, you'll be the only one in the world...

One guide referred to us as their American cousins, and it's true, it's a good way of describing the relationship. Like us, there's a sort of hyperactivity here to manufacture culture, and a lot of energy goes into it. I think it's a frontier mentality, there's less to work with, less history, your surroundings define you more than your past. At best it can create some creative, free and exciting ways of leading your life (surfing mate!). Short lived fads flourish. On the downside, some good stuff gets bowled over by less interesting new stuff. At one point in the 70s, Sydney was planning to tear down the remaining old part of the city, nearly wiping out any vestige of the early settlements, which went back to the late 1700s.

Surf

Surfed a few spots on the return trip from up North, but the swell was diminishing, and Port Macquarie wasn't nearly the size it had been a few days before (although the pod of dolphin were still out there). At least I thought the swell was dropping. I sold my board and the next day dropped into Newcastle where there was a pro surfing contest, and the swells were 5-10 faces, and beautiful! It was amazing what some of these guys would pull off on these waves. They use really light (fragile), short boards, perhaps 6' 2". The event was called the Mark Richards Pro Surfest, the same fellow I bought my board from, who I learned was world champ '79-'82. I spent a day feeling sad that I let my board go, I'd definitely created a renewed interest in becoming a surf grommet again.

Nimbin

A couple hours inland from Byron Bay, the hip town on the farthest east point of the continent, is the truly hippie town of Nimbin. The wave crested years ago (as Hunter Thompson once said) clearly had it's high water mark in Australia in Nimbin. The town was immediately recognizable as having all the trappings of hippie-dom (they even have a museum, appropriately non-traditional, clutter of memorabilia and acid-inspired creativity), the dark wood slate floorboards, neon paints, organic inspired back-to-the-earth recipes.

It was rainy and my first stop was...at the country working space of an artist, Maxx Maxed. Maxx had been in Nimbin for 21 years and was quick to tell war stories of seminal logging protest marches, talk about scary right wing people, as well as his interests in music, etc. He was sharp witted, smoked too much, and would flash a smile which reminded me of the smile Jerry Garcia used to have which would somehow sum up the drug experience in a single moment. Maxx had a couple of grown kids, and he talked about his divorce, while his trippy art business I noticed was very carefully put together and the space he had was a very nice country setting. It would have driven me crazy to spend too much time with Maxx, but I did have to concede that he and his art really were an accurate reflection of the spirit and soul of this place. And while it was hard for me to synthesize Maxx, with all his contradictions, into my own scheme of things, I noticed that he never asked much about my background. Maxx probably had a hard time himself synthesizing where he fit into the scheme of things. Maxx had his hands full with himself.

Janolan Caves

There are the most amazing (to me) caves a few hours west of Sydney, and I spent an overnight out there, taking guided tours through the spectacular chambers and corridors and still only saw a fraction of what was out there. The hotel out there reminded me of the Yosemite and the Ahwannee hotel. Very old and grand, and in the middle of wilderness.

The cave themselves were a miracle. The caves began forming about 400 million years ago and some of the most spectacular stalagtites/stalagmites/columns were created slowly over the last 60 million or so years. They estimated that only 10% of the limestone out there had been explored, so potentially there are many caves still to be found.

The most spectacular sights were 50 meter high domed rooms, filled with dozens and dozens of enoromous, beautiful formations. And when they shut off the lights, believe me, it was dark, too dark too see (as Bob Dylan said). Very mysterious, I noticed that couples would react by doing a lot of hugging and holding, it looked like it was a parallel experience to going to a drive-in movie for the first time.

The story of these caves is a perfect analogy of the story of conservation and man's interaction with his world. These caves, which were created over a period of tens of millions of years, millions of human generations by comparison, went entirely unnoticed until less than 10 human generations ago. And now in that short period of time, humans have engineered a way to have scores of people see these wonders each day.

But in this same short span of time, only a couple of human generations in fact, one bit of the cave was accidentally permanently destroyed. It seems that back around 1910, folks got tired of the 6 hour path to one of the most spectacular sections called "the Orient". So they employed a rather recent technology called dynamite to bore a hole 150 yards or so through rock to create a shortcut to "the Orient". Well, at the very end someone made a miscalculation, and the last blast blew a hole into the Orient and entirely destroyed it's first chamber. So 60 million years to create, and in a virtual instant after it's discovery, part of it's gone. Ain't that a killer?

The analogy has a lot of other sides and complexities to it—complex concerns about contaminates introduced into the chambers, concerns about some John Hinckley type character coming along some day to damage some delicate part of the cave to prove his love for some public figure he is fixated on, and all those things that we can't even predict or see.

The history of the caves clearly point out how we are absolutely at the beginning, infancy if you will, of the human discovery of the secrets of the world that have been cooking for a long time. Hopefully thousands, millions of generations will enjoy these same wonders.

Seems we are lucky to live in this naive time, when we can see things like this in such a rare, unprotected state. For example, it's scary when you look up at this cave's most beautiful creation, known as a "shawl", the largest being 30 meter tall, razor thin, magnificantly shaped and colored and realize that in spite of surviving 60 million years, the whole thing would come crashing down with the sidewards pressure of a single human hand or a small flying object. Can it be possible to save this beautiful creation? Down here, they haven't yet brought out the metal detectors yet or checked the visitors' medical history for signs of mental illness, who knows what future generations will do or figure is wise. The old time guides at the caves have the same concerns as the younger guides but seemed to be more at peace with the state of things, at some point I guess when you've done all your going to do about something, you can take some comfort in just relying on your own hope for the wisdom of others.

Sydney vs. Melbourne: New South Wales (Sydney) license plate says "The Premier State". Pulling no punches, we're #1, and you're not. Victoria (Melbourne) license plate says "On the Move". Kinda implies that the others are not.

Next stop: Outback (Ayers Rock, Alice Springs), Melbourne.

Current fav radio single: Crash Test Dummies, "Keep A Lid On It". Very fun.
 

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