From

From: White, Jamie D (WHITE)
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 10:21 PM
To: White, Jamie D (WHITE)
Subject: Happy Australia Day!

Aussie Word of the Day: “icypole” (popsicle)

Happy Australia Day! Hope you’re all well and had an enjoyable holiday season. We’ve had an action-packed month since last writing. Sara (May) and Joanna have been off from school on summer holidays since Dec. 17, so we’ve been making the most of the opportunity to get out and about.

We celebrated Joanna’s 6^th birthday with 10 or 12 or 14 of her classmates and their siblings -- I never did really know how many were planning to come or how many actually made it -- right after school let out on the 17^th. Then, Jamie’s brother John and sister-in-law Kay spent Dec. 20-27 with us. It sure was great to celebrate Christmas with family. We had a wonderful time visiting with them and giving them the whirlwind tour of Melbourne and Victoria. We spent several days driving along the Great Ocean Road (on Victoria’s southern coast), venturing off now and then to explore obscure carriage tracks, hike to stunning cliff-top views of the Southern Ocean, splash around and collect shells, and check out koalas that other motorists with keener eyes than ours had spotted lounging in gum trees along the back roads.

On New Year’s Day, we caught a ferry for Tasmania (10 hours south of Melbourne). After the day of swaying and dolphin-spotting, we hired a car and drove to the cabin we’d rented for a week. The cabin was in Gowrie Park, population 35, at the foot of striking basaltic mountains. Every evening, we enjoyed walking around tracking wallabies and spying the occasional echidna. We made a few day trips into Cradle Mountain – Lake St. Clair National Park, where we bundled up in winter clothing and dodged the sleet and rain while bushwalking past pencil pines and giant heath plants that looked like palm trees. We had a lesson from a ranger on identifying wombat, possum, wallaby, and Tasmanian devil scat, after which we were very excited to encounter poo along the path and put our new knowledge to use. (We can personally attest that there ARE Tasmanian devils alive and well in the wilds of Tasmania – although we didn’t actually SEE them. Nor did we see any of those telltale apple-core shaped tree trunks we all know they leave in their wake from our Bugs Bunny-watching days.) It was considerably warmer along the coast (although still too cold for shorts). We went on playground hunts, saw some Aboriginal rock carvings, made paper at a handmade paper factory, fed kangaroos with joeys and saw Tasmanian devils at a wildlife park, and hiked along a river watching a platypus diving and surfacing. We also visited a cheese factory and a honey farm, where the free samples were a huge hit with the girls. There were 40+ different kinds of honey and heaps of popsicle sticks so visitors could help themselves.

On a day when the weather looked iffy, we visited a limestone cave. Our tour was cut a little short because of the wedding(!) beginning in the largest chamber, but we did get to see the cave’s resident glowworms (my favorite part). Glowworms are mosquito-related insect larvae that live on the roofs of caves over water. They make sticky web-like traps and emit light like fireflies do, except that their light doesn’t blink on and off much and it attracts prey, instead of mates. Adult insects hatching from the water in the dark of the cave head towards the first light they see -- and get entangled in the glowworms’ webs. Pretty incredible. The guide turned off the lights so we could see the glowworms better, and it was uncannily like being in a planetarium show.

Since returning from Tassie (pronounced Tazzie), we’ve stuck around Melbourne. Last week, the city hosted the 2005 Deaflympics, and we enjoyed having the opportunity to watch the (free!) gold medal matches in men’s and women’s beach volleyball. The US men ended up taking the silver, and the US women took the bronze. It was funny to be surrounded by so many US flag wavers. (Other Americans we’ve met who are living in Australia tend to tell people that they’re Canadians.) We’ve also been taking advantage of some of the many events scheduled around the city for the upcoming Chinese New Year celebration.

Last Friday, we attended the first half of a cricket match between Australia and the West Indies, with some of Jamie’s lab mates. (We arrived at 2 p.m. and left when the players broke for “tea” – supper – when the score was Australia 301-West Indies 0. In fairness to the West Indies, they hadn’t yet had an opportunity to bat.) It was quite an experience. It was lots of fun noticing the differences between cricket and baseball – like how the fielders don’t wear mitts in cricket, except for one guy, who wears two (one on each hand!). And how there are two batsmen at once, and they carry their bats with them when they run, and a single batter might be responsible for more than 100 runs in a row! And how the “bowler” (pitcher) takes a huge running start from the middle of the outfield and gets penalized if he “throws” the ball (i.e. pitches it with a bent elbow). It was also entertaining noticing the differences between US and Aussie stadium security guards. (Actually, the Melbourne police were there acting as security guards.) The guards searched all fans’ bags at the gate, and the list of contraband items included not only the things one would expect, like bottles, but also inflatable toys and torn-up paper. Evidently, the search wasn’t very effective, since beach balls were flying around everywhere. The police took it upon themselves to confiscate and pop on site every beach ball they saw. The crowd responded each time with good-natured booing and heckling. Given the pace of the cricket game, I guess most fans live for the sideshow. We actually saw a guy get booted out of the stadium for starting the wave (referred to here as “the Mexican Wave”), so apparently somebody cares deeply about trying to make the fans show some proper traditional sense of decorum. It’s not working.

Jamie’s back in the lab preparing for an early February conference in Canberra. The girls took swimming lessons last week. Tomorrow, they’ll be starting their new school year. (We’ve been amazed at how many families seemed to be “on holiday” for the entire period of Christmas to Australia Day. The city streets are STILL nearly empty during the typical rush hours.) Joanna will be in a grade 1/2 class, and Sara (May) will be in the same 3/4 classroom that she was in last year (this time as a 4^th grader). I’m thrilled that Sara (May) will be having the same teacher, as I really respect her and plan to continue volunteering in her classroom. We’re hoping that Joanna handles her transition a little more smoothly than last time around. She’ll now be going five full days per week and will begin Italian (perhaps in the same class as Sara (May)). We’re a bit concerned, since most of her good buddies ended up in the other 1/2 class, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed. Her teacher seems terrific, at least.

Australia’s been deeply touched by the Boxing Day tsunami disaster. Television coverage has been incessant and very graphic. Many Aussies were vacationing at Thai resorts (including our next-door neighbors, who got word out several days later that they were okay, and a local Aussie Rules Football star, who was swept off a beach while on honeymoon). Australian citizens seem proud of the unprecedented way in which they as a nation and as private individuals have been stepping up to the plate to provide financial assistance and regional leadership in the relief efforts. Many see this as a step in the right direction for Australia’s foreign policy.

Several days after the tsunami, some graffiti that I really appreciate appeared outside a neighborhood bar – “I MUST CONFESS: IN THESE TRAGIC TIMES I SOMETIMES FEEL HAPPY.” Hope you do, too, and you aren’t afraid to confess it. We’ve posted a few new photos: [fill in URL]. We miss you all and are eager for stories from home!

Love,

Laura, Jamie, Sara (May), and Joanna