Cold Day in Sydney

Jan 14

Well, John has sent me out to Macca's... again! To upload the posts... again! He looked at his data balance and it seemed like he is so close to his limit that he might have uploaded the new data amount to the wrong cell phone number. He has a booklet with the cell phone number on it but perhaps he picked up Janice's booklet by mistake and put the data into her account. Or the Vodaphone Australia system just ate his money. They made clear that they could not (would not, maybe) undo any incorrect information entered when he was finishing the transaction.

Anyway, he also asked me to tell you about the day and upload a video if Macca's lets me...

John watched the morning talk shows and the weather people said showers early and late and a high of 25. So, John thought he would be fine with a shirt, short pants, and sandals if he took along his 'old man' sun hat and travel umbrella. Well, just as in Canada, the forecast was wrong. It never made it close to 25 and it spitted rain from time to time throughout the day. John found himself surprisingly cold, waiting for the Sydney Explorer bus.

After having another talk with Gail who called, he took the bus to Circular Quay where he boarded the Bondi Explorer. This was to take him along the beachside precincts and towns on the south side of Sydney Harbour leading to Bondi Beach, the most famous of all of Australia's beaches.

Along the route he saw panoramic scenes overlooking Sydney Harbour and took a couple of scenes. He also saw the approximate area in Double Bay where Nicole Kidman used to live (and recently sold for $14M Aus). The driver said all the homes in Double Bay are worth between $5M and $10M. And they are not mansions!

Unfortunately, the buses are set with the A/C on because it is the summer and as a result it was freezing in the bus. It was warmer outside when John got off at Bondi. The surf lifegaurd station said the air was 20 degrees with a 15 knot wind. The wind and misty rain made it seem colder than that. However, John did walk on the sand to be able to say he walked on Bondi Beach!

John saw a little of that Aussie spirit with all the surfers in the water, waiting for bigger waves. The waves were big enough but he thought the surfers wanted better. That was not all he saw. A woman about to go out surfing casually removed her bikini top to put the top of her wetsuit on. It raised no eyebrows and John thought that in these sorts of ways Australia is healthily laid back.



John went to Macca's and got some Chicken McNuggets just to feel a little warmer inside. Then he went back across the road to wait for another bus. This time he decided it would be warmer in a museum and since the Bondi bus would stop outside the Australian Museum that would be his choice. The commentary had said that it had an exhibition about Australia's indigenous peoples and he was keen to see and learn more. There was also a special exhibition of wildlife photography that he wanted to see.

It was extra to see the wildlife photos but John paid as it was only a little extra with a regular museum entrance. The photographs were sumbitted by photographers from around the world as part of a best wildlife photographer contest that the museum sponsors. There were Canadian photographers along with those from many other countries. The overall winner was of a wolf jumping a gate. There is quite a controversy because there are claims that it was a tame wolf living in a compound in Germany who was trained to jump the gate. If true (and it is still not decided yet) that would have broken the rules of the contest because the animals have to be wild and free and captured doing something that is natural for them to do. Experts says wolves will not jump fences or gates in the wild but rather try to slide between the railings if they can.

The only thing odd about the exhibition was that the overwhelming number of photographs - maybe 80% - pictured snowy, wintry scenes. They were stark and dramatic, of course, but John wondered if the snow made the photographs seem subconsciously somehow more exotic to the local judges in Sydney the same way rainforest pictures would seem to judges during a Canadian winter.

The next exhibit was about the Indigenous peoples of Australia. John learned a great deal. For example he came to appreciate that the cultures of the peoples, that some call aborigines, are the oldest living cultures in the world - between 60,000 and 120,000 years old. That means their cultures were in existence during the last ice age! They make the ancient Greek civilization on which all Western cultures are based, seem very young, shallow, and inexperienced.

The cultures were perfectly adapted to the Australian continent and climate. Their spirituality is so complex that most Westerners cannot understand it. John was struggling to understand about dream time and ancestral paths but got glimpses that his sense of Gaia and how we all belong to Mother Earth might fit happily alongside theirs. Although the peoples had no written languages and didn't make permanent dwellings and didn't farm or keep jobs or believe in individual ownership, that did not mean that they were, or are, primitive. In fact, their cultures are, or should be, considered part of Australia's national treasures!

So, it was sad to see the ways that these people have been treated. They suffered the same sorts of abuse as suffered by Canada's First Nations and the indigenous peoples in the United States. As happened in Canada, their children were taken from them and 'westernized' in residential schools. The missionaries tried to destroy the languages and the cultures by brutalizing and abusing the children. The governments did the same, through force of arms to the adults (the exhibit detailed many massacres of indigenous Australians). You see, in the early 1800's it was considered sport by the settlers to hunt the 'abos' but the settlers would get their knickers all twisted when the men fought back and killed some of them. So the settlers would pressure the British governors to bring in the troops.



However, in fairness, it has to be noted that Australian government has recently taken responsibility and apologized - officially - and has settled some land claims. John saw the actual proclamations in the exhibit.



John thought that Britain - as a colonial power - has a lot to answer for in so many places around the world from North America, to Australasia, Africa, India and so on. Then he realized that he would have to include all the other European countries who were trying to do the same sorts of things: Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. By and large, their inhumane treatment of indigenous peoples and their destruction of so many ways of life brings shame on all their histories.

A very sad and sombre John left the museum to find his way to supper and his hotel.

TRB