Red Light, Go!

            So, about those traffic regulations.  I have not spent any time researching what the statutes say about driving here in Guangdong because, frankly, the written laws are irrelevant.  There are really only two rules of the road, and they’re very simple:  1) The larger vehicle has right of way; and 2) Red light, go!  Of course, drivers go on green lights as well, which keeps things inexpressibly lively out on the highways.  There’s no need for free-coffee rest stops here, because the sheer exhilaration of moving at speed on the roads is enough to keep you awake and alert.

 

Every week three or four of us teachers pile into a motorcycle-trailer contraption and drive a few miles down the road to a vegetable market.  It always staggers me to consider how many laws we would be breaking back home in doing this:  no helmets; no seatbelts; no seats, even, except for the plastic lawn chairs we load in at the start of each trip; ignoring lights; driving the wrong way down streets and highways; all in a vehicle that is clearly unroadworthy.  Along the way we navigate an intersection that you might find in any American city—if that city had not done any road repair for 10 years or so, and you happened to arrive there in the middle of a civil disturbance.  But here the bedlam is just business as usual, and dammit, we need our vegetables.

The market itself is fascinating.  I have learned the Chinese numbers, but only to 10, so the vendors obligingly hold up fingers to tell how much I owe them, or sometimes just show me the figures on their electronic adding machines.  It works out better than I would have guessed a month ago.  There is also a meat section in the market, but I confess I have been too much of a gastronomic coward to buy anything there yet.  It would be easy to become a vegetarian because there is absolutely no escaping the fact that you are eating parts of dead animals when you buy meat here.  You can even get to know your dinner, if you wish, because the animals are often alive when you pick them out.  I’ve already described the chickens.  The last time I was at the market I also saw eels and fish flopping in small tubs of water, saw a turtle thrashing its limbs feebly against a plastic mesh bag.  I also was told one vendor had a sackful of tasty snakes, but declined the invitation to inspect them.  As I say, I’m eating mostly eggs, fruits and vegetables these days, though I have also started taking some meals in the student cantine, where I can get a hearty plate of rice, chicken or fish, and vegetables for seven to ten yuan (AUD$1.25 - $1.60), and it saves me washing up.

I should say a few words about the people.  I have begun teaching now, and have a class of 30 freshmen, none of whom have had a foreign teacher before.  I got the impression at first that for some of them it was as if they had a unicorn at the whiteboard lecturing on the Present Perfect Continuous.  They were initially quite shy and reticent, but are coming out of their shells nicely now.

 

Our college shares a large campus with perhaps half a dozen schools.  The students at these other institutions have entered the “marching and shouting” phase of the year, as my teaching colleagues call it.  These students must undergo a month of quasi-military training, so they get togged up in battle-dress uniforms, stand or sit in the blazing sun for long periods and listen to what sound to me like angry harangues in Chinese.  Later, I’m told they will take to marching or running around campus in formation, shouting out slogans as they go, often at unsociable hours of the morning. For some reason, our students are exempted from this training.

Despite these militaristic drills, I have met with nothing but friendliness and kindness at every turn, and the people around campus are generally very light-hearted and affectionate.  It is absolutely normal to see two female students arm in arm or holding hands as they walk along, or two guys with their arms around each other’s shoulders—not “partners,” as we would say in the west, but just teens and early-20s who haven’t yet learned to feel awkward about physical contact with a close friend.  I have to say I envy them that.  Moving through a crowd, I do see a lot more smiling, animated faces coming at me than I am used to at home.  They enjoy their mobile phones, of course, but I have seen almost no one isolating himself between a pair of mp3 earbuds.  It’s quite remarkable.

And they are an active lot.  China used to be known for its prowess at table tennis, of course, but today the sports of choice here are basketball for the young and fit, and badminton for the older set.  Every evening after dinner young and old swarm down out of their living quarters for some exercise—vigorous or gentle—and a bit of socializing.  Other sports are practiced just as enthusiastically, but generally less competently, than these top two.  This evening as I was returning from the student cantine, for instance, I stopped to watch some comically inept students batting around a volleyball, and they soon invited me to join in.  It was great fun, and I actually didn’t make too big an ass of myself.  I may go back for more tomorrow if my legs don’t seize up in the meantime.

 

It seems that any form of movement, no matter how bizarre, is countenanced.  I have seen people gravely walking backward (or sideways) through parks, clapping at every other step; I have seen people dancing, in couples and singly, and striking preposterously affected ballroom poses while a boom-box played a cloying ballad nearby; I have seen rotund middle-agers dripping sweat and very adroitly kicking a shuttlecock around a circle, as younger people do a hacky sack back home, and of course tai-chi in the park is not just a stereotype—they really do it.

If I can manage to sort out some visa issues, I hope to visit Vietnam in a couple weeks, so my next installment may be about that country.  But don’t let me forget, on my return, to touch on “non-persons” and “the Hard Word.”   There’s just no end of interesting things to remark on here.
--originally posted 9/2010

Whoa, Didn't See That One Coming...

            Let me start off by saying I know it shouldn’t be done like this.  It strikes me as pretty bad form to be incommunicado for months and then to let fly with something from way, way out in left field that had not even been hinted at before.  So I apologize at the outset for doing precisely that, but really the only alternative was to continue in radio silence indefinitely and pretend nothing is happening here.  That also strikes me as a pretty shabby trick, and I mean to treat my regular readers—both of them—better than that.

            So let’s dispense immediately with the totally unforeseen, which, once absorbed, will make the rest of the news seem less shocking.  I am in China now, Guangdong Province, to be precise—way down south on the northern edge of the tropics, near Hong Kong.  I’ve been given a three-month teaching contract at a Sino-Australian accounting school, and will return to Melbourne in mid-November to pack up and prepare for the move to Vietnam in January.  Kathryn remains in Melbourne, holding down the shoebox.  My school is located about an hour outside Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton), which is the provincial capital.  I’ve seen widely varying population estimates for the city, but I believe the most accurate is about 10.3 million people, so it’s not just a blip on the map.  It’s the third-largest city in the most populous country on earth.  I have been here just a week, and haven’t met my students yet, but never mind—there’s plenty to write about anyway.

            I am in teacher accommodation here—foreign-teacher accommodation, I should say, because it definitely makes a difference.  My first few days here I had been admiring the hardihood and eco-friendly outlook of the fellow whose balcony faces mine, because he never, ever closed his doors and windows, no matter how dreadfully hot and it was outside.  He just went about his business shirtless and in shorts.  I meanwhile was hunkered down in my apartment with the windows closed and air-conditioning on full blast.  Then I found out that Chinese teachers, such as my friend across the courtyard, do not have air conditioning in their apartments—it’s only for foreign teachers, such as myself.  Though I’ve never spoken to him, I genuinely feel for the poor sod, and wish I could take a few shopping bags of conditioned air over to leave anonymously on his doorstep.  Strangely, the student dorms are air-conditioned, because students pay big money to attend these private colleges, but there are four to six occupants to each dorm room.  So I have it pretty good, compared to people around me.

            I’m on the sixth floor, and there is no elevator, so I’m getting plenty of exercise.  My cooking facilities are spartan-bordering-on-primitive, and my kitchen sink is actually outside, on my smaller balcony, but I have been able to make do so far on rice, noodles, vegetables, some canned fish, and lots of fresh eggs.  They have the freest of free-range chickens here—they wander everywhere—around the stores, along the roads, through the living compounds, and for all I know borrow motorbikes on weekends to visit friends who live further out.  But if they can get a passport and emigrate, they should do it, because there’s no future in being a chicken in Guangdong.  Cages at the markets are stuffed with them, panting out through the bars, and you are given the privelege of picking out the one who looks likely to make the tastiest soup or BBQ.  “Come back in 10 minutes,” the vedor suggests, and when you do he hands you a warm, weighty little bag.

            This past week has given me a strong dose of what my students must go through when they come to an English-speaking country.  About the only word I have found that means the same in Chinese and English is OK.  The rest is all new, but I have been trying to pick up a bit here and there.  I have made a set of flash cards for myself with various words, and I’m constantly flipping through them.  As I think of a new word or phrase I would like to know, I write the English on one side of a blank card and then go and bother an extremely patient Chinese lady who also teaches English at our school, and she writes the symbols and pronunciation on the other side for me.

            Yesterday, despite my language deficiencies, I managed to get into Guangzhou—the big city—on the bus, and even to buy a few small items.  Specifically, I was looking for short-sleeved shirts and a small chess set, and per a suggestion from a Canadian colleague, I went first to a large department store, Jusco, which stands for Japan US Company, or something like that.  At the time I was there (about 10:00 on a Saturday morning), the employee-to-customer ratio seemed to be about 1 to 4, which meant that the instant I showed even a passing interest in anything, an assistant was at my side to call my attention to its many fine features.  I stopped to inspect some shirts, for instance, which caused a woman to materialize from nowhere to show me that all of these Jusco shirts had sleeves and buttons, and came in different colors and were made of material.  She took it well when I declined her shirts, however.  I was a bit disappointed at the prices, frankly, this being China and all.  But these shirts were about RMB 150 and up, or around AUD $30.  I thought I could do better at the Bai Ma (White Horse), another market my colleague had told me about. 

Next my thoughts turned to chess, and an intrepid pair of shop assistants led me to the stationery department, where we eventually turned up an acceptable set.  And then there was some fun.  When one of the assistants finally understood I wished to buy the set, she immediately took it back and wrote me a ticket.  After some gesturing on her part, I carried this to a nearby cashier, who received my money and issued me a different piece of paper.  I brought this back to my helper with the chess set.  She then stuck a green sticker on the box and handed it over to me.  Note to America:  if you want to solve the unemployment problem overnight, simply institute the Jusco sales system in all of your stores.

One other interesting feature of Jusco was that they had a lot of their electronic and cooking devices revved up and going to show how well they worked.  I saw humidifiers puffing out foggy air for the comfort of those who find the tropical atmosphere of Guangzhou unendurably dry.  I also saw things like crock pots bubbling away on display tables beside the aisles.  I could imagine a personal-injury lawyer prowling through the store, licking his lips and wishing he could persuade just one Wal-Mart in the States to set up a similar display.  Then just turn loose a pack of mothers with young children, and his fortune would be made.

Eager for more commercial recreation, I moved on to the Bai Ma to look for shirts, but in the end I came away with only one.  I was soon overcome by the sheer scale and labyrinthine complexity of the place.  Imagine a multi-level rabbit warren lined with cubby holes selling jeans and women’s shoes and leather goods, with the cubby-hole staff sitting on low stools in the warren runs, eating noodles, and you pretty much have Bai Ma.  I soon wished I had left a trail of bread crumbs to find my way back to the subway entrance.  In the end I blundered into the men’s section, or part of it, but most of the cubby holes there seemed to be selling suits, jeans, and young-persons’ casual wear.  A few were selling dress shirts, but these were mostly long-sleeved, and frankly the patterns were hideous.  At last I found one small shop with some semi-decent, short-sleeved shirts and friendly shop girls who spoke a bit of English.  Unfortunately, only one of the acceptable shirts was big enough—a polo shirt with a logo that delighted me immediately.  It is in non-sensical English that is mis-spelled to boot.  It is supposed to say “Paul & Shark Yachting,” whatever that means, but instead it says “Paul & S| ark.” Oh well, it only cost RMB 45, and I’m sure it’s one of a kind, “a genuine fake,” as a shop assistant once assured a colleague.

Wow—what a place!  Remind me next time to touch on the local attitude towards traffic rules.  Well, they’re not rules so much as a set of suggestions, to be followed or not at the driver’s discretion.

--originally posted 8/2010

Let Seat Strine!

            Ah, I need some help—about three hours of your time, actually, if you can spare it.  Kathryn’s away, see, at one of her weekend booze-ups.  Excuse me, I mean at a conference.  That’s what they have to call their drinking sessions if they want to stick the university with the bill.  Anyway, I need to do the shopping, and I’ve only got two hands, and, well, would you mind?  You’ll enjoy it—it’s a nice little three-mile walk to the store, but only 300 yards coming back.  Don’t worry; I’ll explain as we go.  It’ll be fun, I promise. 

            So, this is our road—we go up this way, and yes, here we have High Street, Armadale.  Look at the date on that building there.  That’s when this suburb really got off the ground—the gold-rush years of the 1850s.  But now it’s ground zero for the Victorian wedding industry, as far as I can tell.  To save you counting, just on this next half-mile stretch there are 11 bridal shops with wedding dresses so over-the-top and overpriced that I’ve even seen some of the manequins blushing to wear them.  In addition, this street has 57 boutique clothing stores, 32 art galleries, 21 cafés and restaurants, not to mention the sundry bookstores, houseware stores, Persian rug shops, and four places to get your nails done, though we don’t have time for that today. 

Yes, there is rather a lot of money around here.  You will have noticed all the Mercedes, BMWs and Lexi, of course, and we have a pretty fair chance of seeing a Maserati or a Lamborghini somewhere along the way.  I recently learned that the neighboring suburb of Toorak is the most expensive in the state, and in fact is the seventh priciest in all of Australia.  So this is a community of bank managers, judges and old money—people whose antecedents probably wore top hats and pince nez, and said “What ho!” and “Jolly good,” or, when shocked, “Harumph!”  Since we moved in, I have daily expected a visit from the local citizens’ council to request that we strike camp and remove ourselves to a place more obviously suited to our station in life, but so far I guess we have stayed under the radar.  Possibly they think we are help for one of the estates.

            And well, here we are at Glenferrie Road.  Down that-a-way you have another 31 boutique clothing stores in case High Street didn’t have what you were looking for; and an additional 33 restaurants and cafés as well.  That stately Victorian pile across the way, hiding behind the scaffolding, tram lines and that outlandish Christmas wreath, is Malvern town hall, where the local government is housed and where I occasionally donate blood.  And—what?  Oh yes, those bronze sculptures—aren’t they sublime?

What do you mean, “hideous”?  What a philistine you are!  Look what it says here on the plaque:

THE SUN AND THE MOON IS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL OF HUMAN ENDEAVOUR.

THE FIGURES ALLUDE TO CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY:  THE MINOTAUR, APOLLO THE SUN GOD, AND DIANA THE HUNTRESS GODDESS OF THE MOON.

            Note the careful wording:  the figures allude to certain mythological characters, rather than depicting or representing them, which means the artist could throw in as much mythological rubbish as he wanted without fear of being called an ignorant jackass.  He could have added Neptune’s trident, if he’d cared to, or Thor’s hammer, or Ganesha’s trunk.  In one sense, though, these figures are genuinely universal.  They have no connection at all to this particular spot on the globe, but then, being hybrids, they have no connection to any other place either.  They would be equally irrelevant wherever they were set up, so they might as well be here, I guess.

            I tell you, if I could travel back in time and witness one moment of history in this place, it would have been the 1989 unveiling of these sculptures.  How I would love to have been there with maybe a dozen photographers to record the crowd reaction when they first beheld “The Sun and the Moon” and realized A) that they had paid for them; and B) that they and posterity would have them to enjoy for a long, long time.  I haven’t been able to track down a copy of the local paper for that date, but I imagine the headline was some variation on “Harumph!”

            But come on—we have shopping to do, and can’t aford to be swooning over artwork all day.  Up here is our local library—very helpful staff and an excellent selection of jazz and classical CDs.  And this is Malvern Gardens.  They’ll have some free Sunday concerts there this summer, as well as in other local parks; we’ve got the schedule at home somewhere.  Okay, get ready to skip now:  we have to cross the road.  Yes, of course I see the lights up ahead, but where’s the glory in crossing that way?  Mind the tram tracks in the middle, and do step out a bit—there is some traffic bearing down on us rather smartly.  Drivers here give no quarter; I’m convinced they get insurance-rate reductions if they can prove they ran down a certain number of pedestrians in the previous year.

            So this is our weekend routine, Kathryn’s and mine:  we do this one-hour walk to the store and have a talk as we go.  Oh, but look over there, back across the street.  That’s the Harold Holt Swim Centre.  Well may you ask.  Old H.H. was Prime Minister of Australia back in the ‘60s, but he went for a swim in heavy seas a bit south of here and drowned.  Yes, while in office.  They never did find the body, and—what’s that?  Well, yes, I guess it is a bit ironic, looked at like that.  Never thought of it; well observed. 

But oops, round the corner we go here.  Now isn’t this a splendid little piece of suburban heaven?  I actually like this neighborhood more than our own.  The homes are more reasonably proportioned, and they have more yard.  Also, they don’t hide behind brick or stucco walls, as they do back in Armadale, so you can enjoy your neighbors’ gardens as you pass.  And just look at those big, beautiful London plane trees marching up and down the street.  Aren’t they splendid?  The branches shake hands with their partner across the way.  It keeps it lovely and shaded on the hot, summer days.  Now one more death-cheating dash across a 46-lane speedway, and here we are at our usual supermarket, Coles.  Okay, I’ll tear the list in half—you get those items, and I’ll get these, and I’ll meet you at the checkout counter.

What, done already?  You are efficient!  Let’s see—it looks like you got the essentials.  Ah, Tim-Tams:  diabolically tasty, those things.  It’s totally misleading to call them cookies or biscuits—they’re simply in a class by themselves.  Personally, I think they ought to be available only by prescription, they’re so addictive.  And good, some ginger marmalade:  that’s superb as well.  Kangaroo steak, check; and good, some Vegemite too.  Yes, definitely not for everyone, but I think we’ve acquired the taste now—this is our fifth jar since our arrival last year.  

But there’s a story to that little jar.  Every now and then a really big organization here in Oz will do something so spectacularly stupid, that it is forced to curl up in a fetal position while the public kicks it in the kidneys and heaps abuse on it until it reverses course and sets things right, or until another organization does something stupid and gives the public a new target.  Here’s a perfect case in point.  A few months ago, Kraft, which makes Vegemite, decided that in order to boost the sales of this venerable Aussie product, they would have to update the stuff—bring it into the 21^st century.  It would be too simple, of course, just to come out with a clever ad campaign or sponsor an athletic event.  No, if a thing’s worth doing, it’s certainly worth over-doing, so they had a big contest to come up with a whole new name for the product. Vegemite was so yesterday.  But guess what name won.  Go on—let’s see what kind of ad exec you are.

Give up?  iSnack.  Truly.  iKid uNot.  Absolute howls of public fury, the head of Kraft’s CEO ended up on a pike, I think, and the name was changed back to Vegemite within nanoseconds.  But there were already a few thousand jars of iSnack being distributed, and they have slowly disappeared from store shelves as people buy them in the hopes that they will one day be collectible. 

But tell me, did you come across any abandoned baskets in your wanderings—a shopping basket half-full of stuff set down in an odd place?  Yes, I thought you might; I generally find at least one on every trip.  They mystify me.  I can only surmise that they mark the spot where a shopper was abducted by aliens, or suffered a fatal heart attack, or received a call to go perform emergency brain surgery somewhere, because I simply cannot believe that people would be such utter troglodytes as to fill a shopping basket with random items, many of them perishable, and then simply change their minds and leave the basket on a secluded shelf for the shop staff to deal with.  As I say, it’s a true mystery.  It wouldn’t surprise me to see a major investigative news item on the phenomenon.

And now we head out of the shopping center this way—no, over here—and behold, across the road, Caulfield train station.  From here we’ll catch a train toward the city.  Now, have a look at the sidewalks—see all the tiles with the horeshoe emblem?  Caulfield is home to a major racecourse, and earlier in the spring this railway station was a very entertaining place to embark:  every arriving train would decant hundreds of race-goers.  Now, don’t ask me why, but it’s an Aussie tradition to dress up—way, way up—for the races.  The men’s uniform is pretty standard:  suit, garish tie, perhaps a fedora, and a bottle of beer or bubbly in hand.  The women are the ones to watch, however.  Whether it’s bucketing down with rain, or the sun is out melting the pavement, the women go for nothing but superlatives in their dress:  the shortest, tightest, lowest-cut dresses allowed by law; the most preposterously high heels they can actually stand up in; and they finish it off by clipping a random bit of silk, felt, or lace on their heads, and by common consent everyone pretends it’s a hat, especially if it’s got a veil of some sort.  It’s quite a sight to see the young—and not so young—ladies mincing so carefully down the ramps to the underground passage, trying not to topple over. 

What?  Oh yes, there is a fair bit of graffiti—they do love to paint a wall around here.  If you’re looking for a good investment, sink your money into the company that supplies Australia with spray paint and you’ll do all right.  Every now and then our own local station gets muralized with some undecipherable gibberish, but the city must have some miracle-working cleaner on staff because the paint is typically removed within days and not a trace remains on the brickwork.  Ah, here’s our train.  One stop, two, and off we get at the third one, Toorak.

We’re just a few minutes away from tea and Tim-Tams now.  Mind your steps here—this is the street that nightly hosts a parade for incontinent dogs; I believe it won a five-star rating from Dogwalkers magazine.  Round the bend here, and would you believe that the last person to see Harold Holt alive used to live somewhere on this little nothing of a road?  I have no idea where, but I read it in the Sydney newspaper, so I guess it’s true.

And here we are, back home!  Come on through the gate with me and let me show you our beloved Shoebox. You know, I had a feeling you’d ask, so I measured it just the other day: it’s 10 ¾ feet by 29 2/3 feet, or about 318 square feet.  Thinking metrically, it’s about 3.29 meters by 9.05, or about 29.75 square meters.  Decidedly snug, but it helps us keep in check our urge to fling money in every direction, since everything we bring home must be able to justify the space it takes up.  But really, it has everything we need—a bathroom, space on the floor for our matresses, a small refrigerator, and two alleged cooking appliances, which I call the easy-bake oven and the easy-burn cooktop—the yin and yang of our kitchen. 

  

I’m not joking about loving the Shoebox:  it’s quiet and convenient and affordable.  Our neighbor, Paula, is hardly ever here, so we essentially have the back yard all to ourselves.  A delightful set-up, and it does help us keep things simple.  Anyway, here’s your tea; you get an extra Tim-Tam for being such a helpful bear.  Let’s get this on board, and then we can start thinking of the ‘roo and red—you will stay for dinner, won’t you?

--originally posted 12/2009

Adventures in Moving Out

            This is something of a time capsule—a diary entry I was working on almost exactly a year ago.  Somehow I just never found the motivation to tack on the conclusion and post it, but now does seem an appropriate time to finish the job in recognition of the anniversary it represents.  So here is what I wrote in early September, 2008:

A friend of mine, Jim, had a singular experience about 15 years ago.  He had built a home on high-bank, waterfront property on Bainbridge Island, and at 3:00 a.m. one New Year’s Day he got to ride that house down the cliffside to the beach.  This was not, mind you a poorly constructed house.  Jim had built it himself, by hand, and because he is German he is morally and culturally incapable of shoddy work.  It was a beautiful and well built house.

          Unfortunately, he had not built the bank below the house, and so, when weeks of rain had sufficiently lubricated the clay beneath the hillside topsoil, the whole thing simply slipped away like a tablecloth and stack of dishes off an up-tilted kitchen table.  Jim awoke just as his home weighed anchor, knew immediately what was happening, and says his first thought was, “I guess now I get to see how well I built it.”  How’s that for pride of workmanship?  When was the last time you heard of a homebuilder taking one of his structures for a nighttime slide down a cliff and regarding the experience as a good, if unexpected, chance to test the soundness of his carpentry?

          I had a similar feeling to Jim’s this past weekend as I helped our son, Benjamin, settle into the house he will share with four friends this school year:  “I guess we get to see how well we raised him.”  Not to suggest that Ben is beginning a slide down a cliff to a rocky beach.  I’m saying merely that he is now, to a far greater extent than ever before, on his own, and we, his parents, are commensurately less able to shield him from life’s pains.  Which is what we’ve been working towards all these years, of course—a sensible, responsible, self-reliant young man.  Nonetheless, our arrival at this point does cause a pang and gives one that over-the-falls-in-a-barrel feeling.

          In the weeks before the move, small tags of masking tape began appearing on virtually everything we own, marked with a “B” if Benjamin was taking it, or with a ludicrously knocked-down price if it was for our garage sale.  That was Labor Day weekend, by the way, and it netted us about $400—10% of that in quarters.

          Then, this weekend, we shoe-horned all of Benjamin’s chattels—and those of his friend Chris—into a 17-foot U-Haul truck for the three-hour trip to Bellingham, up near the Canadian border.  Ah, U-Haul.  “Adventures in Moving”—do you remember that slogan of theirs?  At the rental agency I looked for that familiar phrase but couldn’t find it anywhere; it’s completely gone.  Apparently U-Haul finally has realized that the last damned thing people want when moving is “an adventure.”  They might be looking forward to brighter days in a new location (perhaps where there is no warrant out for them), but adventure en route is not the desideratum.  You must have noticed that only tourism-related businesses use the “adventure” motif in their ads nowadays, and even they employ it with discretion.  You will never see, for example, commercials or billboards promising “adventures” in accounting, or in obstetrics, or laser-eye surgery, or divorce law.  There’s good reason for that.

          Nonetheless, I did remember the U-Haul ads of yesteryear, and for auld lang syne I began our trip with a bit of adventure by using the 17-footer to knock over the rental agency’s mailbox. The U-Haul lady was very nice about it. The box evidently takes quite a thrashing, and she keeps a maintenance fellow on retainer to come re-set it every second or third rental.

Among the above-mentioned chattels—computers, beds, pots and pans, kitchen table and a third-hand bicycle—was a leather sofa, purchased in July for $10 at the Rotary Auction.  It is the perfect sofa for a student house, in that it clearly has seen all that life can throw at a piece of furniture and remains, if not unscathed, at least recognizable still as a leather sofa, now past all caring what happens next.  It is extremely comfortable, and has an air of being ready for anything, from a Superbowl party to an unplanned pregnancy…

And, well, I’m afraid that was as far as I got in writing up our 2008 adventures in moving, probably because I recoiled in instinctive horror at the implications of that final sentence and could go no further.  I am gratified to report that Benjamin did enjoy a successful (i.e. no unplanned pregnancies) year following his installation in the rental house, and managed to cram what was left of his household items into storage for the summer.  He did this on his own because his parents had irresponsibly fled the country in the meantime, leaving him to fend for himself.  As of this writing, he is touring Europe, but will return at the beginning of September to share a different home with a different set of friends for the next school year.

And one year on, I am confident that, whatever lies ahead, Benjamin will do as well as my friend Jim and land where he lands, upright and exhilarated by the trip.  On second thought, if I know Benjamin, he’ll arrive at the end point reclining on his $10 sofa.

     --originally posted 9/2009

A Few Commuted Sentences

In preparation for making this entry I did a little research—very little, actually—and was chagrined to find that Seattle is not in fact among the American cities with the worst traffic congestion.  I had heard it was on that top-ten list; it seems to deserve to be on that list; and I had convinced myself that it was so.  But whatever its traffic ranking, Seattle’s public transportation is shabby and inadequate (or at least it was when we left 10 months ago, but perhaps Metro has wrought great improvements in the meantime), so we have been enjoying the much better transportation facilities here.

Which is ironic, because if you ever want to see Melburnians throw a fit, go ahead and compliment their city’s public transport.  “Oh, you’re joking,” they will protest.  “It’s terrible!  Connex has absolutely ruined it.  Back when the state ran the trains there was never a delay, and just look at what we’ve got now.”  What they’ve got now is an overlapping network of trains, trams, and buses that covers the city and its suburbs, and seems just fine to us, though, as indicated, we arrived here not expecting much.  Connex, a French corporation, operates the trains, though a Hong Kong consortium is due to take over in November; Yarra Trams runs the city’s famous tram cars; and I have no idea who controls the buses—Rupert Murdoch, perhaps.  Most of our travel is on the trains and trams. 

The $109.60 monthly ticket we each buy allows us unlimited weekday use of the network within zone one, covering the city and about half of the suburbs.  On weekends, the tickets are valid for the whole network, including the most distant suburbs, which gets us out into the hills for some bushwalking.  On weekdays, Kathryn brings her bike along, takes the train to the last station in zone one, then disembarks and cycles another couple of miles to work.  My daily train journey is just 25 minutes, door to door.  I have done this painless commute several hundred times now, if you count each direction as a trip, and cumulatively it has given me a fair bit of reading time, as well as opportunity to make pretty close observations of my fellow passengers.

They are from all walks of life, all socio-economic levels, and hail from every corner of the globe—a set of facts that delights me anew every time I look up and become aware of it once more.  Riders on the commuter trains are generally silent, except for the people on their mobile phones, though there never seems to be more than one or two of these per car.  When there are none, the silence can be a bit eery and oppressive to novice riders—at least, I found it so.  On one of my early trips I felt a strong urge to engage my fellow commuters in a rousing singalong of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” just to lift the somnolent and funereal atmosphere.  I was fortunately able to resist this urge:  it’s plain to me now that the results would not have been good.

The silence prevails even when the trains are very crowded, as they often become during the peak commute times, and riders stand jammed in the aisles and entry points.  As the train approaches a station, a passenger will shift very slightly toward the door, not saying a word, and his or her fellow commuters will likewise alter their stance enough to let the person by.  Only very occasionally will someone mutter “cheers,” if the others have really had to scrunch up, but that’s the exception.  It’s rather like bees tapping their antennae and passing smoothly through a tight spot in the hive, only with more iPods in the case of the train passengers.

On either side of the doors are signs announcing that certain seats are to be yielded upon request to elderly passengers or those with special needs.  I’ve never actually heard such a request being made because whenever anyone boards who fits the bill, the person in the nearest seat will immediately rise and offer it without being asked.  It really is striking for the outsider to see the way these veteran commuters, who normally seem to be deliberately ignoring the rest of the world, will instantly step up and act to help someone who needs assistance.

I got a close and unexpected look at this during my morning run the other day, when I came across a small old lady, tapping a white cane before her and apparently trying to tumble down into an underground parking lot.  She did not look like one who had left her Maserati there, so I stopped to ask if she needed help.  She did.  After a lot of garbled communication (she was from Hong Kong, and was difficult to understand) she called her boss and handed me the phone.  Apparently the tram driver had set her down in the wrong spot, and I soon found out where she needed to go.  I walked her to the right tram stop, where we waited till the next one arrived.  As we boarded together, the man nearest the door promptly vacated his seat for her; the lady in the seat next-door held my new friend’s arm and helped me get her settled; and the tram driver kept the traffic waiting till he was sure he knew where she wanted to get down.  And the thing is, no one took this as an inconvenience or an imposition; there was no fuss at all:  a blind lady merely wanted to go to work on the tram, and everyone regarded it simply as part of their morning routine to help things along and keep the commute running smoothly.  That’s the kind of place I live in now, and part of the reason I love being here.

I did forget to mention that pregnant women are among those “with special needs” and having, therefore, a free ticket to the seats by the door.  Australia encourages large families, and I have never lived in such a baby-rich environment as this.  So, along with the elderly and the infirm, pregnant women are regularly offered the doorside seats.  Of course, it is sometimes difficult to tell if a woman is pregnant, or is simply carrying a few extra kilos of non-baby weight.  And, just as in the U.S., it is an extremely faux pas here to guess wrong in this matter when addressing a woman.  A teacher I know says that because of this, a friend of his doesn’t usually offer his seat to a large woman unless he is sure she is pregnant.  His reason for such apparently unchivalrous behavior is pure Aussie—straight to the point, and mincing no words:  he would rather see a pregnant woman stand, he says, than see a fat woman cry.

--originally posted 8/2009

Weathering the Weather

            Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of Victoria

Or something like that.  Tomorrow, 21 June, is the winter solstice here in the Southern Hemisphere, so I think a weather update is appropriate.  Melbourne’s solstice forecast calls for partly cloudy skies, temperatures from 11° to 16° C (52° to 61° F), with northerly winds averaging 30 km/h (19 MPH).   In local parks the deciduous trees have not yet dropped all their leaves, while down below the daffodils are just about ready to start blooming. 

For at least two months, as we have been descending into this extreme meteorology, native Melburnians have been solicitously asking how we are coping with their cold weather.  They usually accompany the question with a little drawing in of the shoulders and a pantomime of pulling a coat a bit tighter around themselves.  Sometimes it’s not even a pantomime—they actually do pull the coat tighter, pull down their gloves, settle their winter caps and cinch up their scarves.  Our answer is usually some variation on “so far, so good,” and Kathryn and I avoid each other’s eyes.

            I have seen no frost here yet.  For my morning runs I am still in leggings and a tee-shirt, and am sweating copiously when I get home.  Just for the sake of comparison with our weather in Melbourne so far, here’s something a friend once told me of her stint in North Dakota.  One winter evening there, she was in a hurry and rushed outside immediately after a shower, her hair still damp.  On the way to the car her head brushed up against something, which caused her hair to shatter and tinkle to the ground at her feet like a broken icicle.  That, I submit, is cold. 

What we have seen here so far is pretend cold, and the people who pile on the layers and wrap up in woolen scarves are simply playing at winter, the way children put on everything in their closet and imagine they are polar explorers.  Several times already we have grossly over-packed for weekend excursions because friends assured us that we were visiting “a cold place.”  So now, when one of us says that Such and Such is supposed to be “cold,” the other will ask, “Is that cold cold, or Aussie cold?”  There is a substantial difference.

--originally posted 6/2009

Thereby Hangs a Tail

The school where I teach is closed today, 8 June, to observe the birthday of her Australian Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.  Be it noted, this is not the Queen’s actual birthday—that’s in April.  Today is merely the observation of her Official Birthday.  I don’t know what that means, precisely, but it does seem a pretty neat arrangement for someone, naming no names, to scoop in twice as many presents per year as non-monarchs would be entitled to.

Please understand, I don’t wish to make fun of, or cast aspersions upon, another country’s holidays.  After all, I come from the nation that gave the world an annual celebration of a burrowing, meteorologically prescient rodent.  Of course, Groundhog Day isn’t really a holiday, since no part of the US that I know of is depraved enough actually to give people paid leave from work to observe it.  Nonetheless, it’s right there on most calendars in the US (not merely on the annual gift calendar from Rodent Fancy magazine, as one might wish), and I just can’t believe that its presence there gives a real boost to America’s prestige.

            Never having celebrated the Queen’s birthday, official or otherwise, I did not know what to expect, and so committed to memory all three verses of “God Save the Queen,” in case I came across a public singalong somewhere.  But I have been disappointed in that regard, unless some carolers turn up this evening.  Australians seem rather ambivalent about the holiday.  On the one hand they, like me, enjoy a day off and the excuse to uncap a few bottles of their excellent wine.  On the other hand, they find it a bit contrived to celebrate the birthday of someone living half a planet away and to whom they are only distantly connected.  But, as I say, a day off is a day off, so most of the Aussies I know shrug their shoulders and go watch a footy game or something.

            But no Queen’s Birthday bar-be-ques this year:  it is raining at the moment, which is always a welcome event in Victoria.  But having mentioned bar-be-ques, I’d like to put in a plug for the superb bar-be-que facilities they have here—an under-reported part of this under-reported country.  We have visted dozens of public parks here in Victoria since our arrival eight months ago, and I would guess that at least half of them have a number of free (or very inexpensive) gas bar-be-ques available for public use.  These are formidable brick structures, topped by a solid, stainless-steel cooking surface that slants to a grease hole in the center.  Push a button and a gas fire underneath heats them up in minutes for you to grill your steak, burger, or what have you.  As I say, you pay a few cents to use some of them, but most are absolutely free.  They are the most amazingly civilized public facility I have ever encountered anywhere, and I never had heard of them before I got here.

            I don’t know what the traditional Queen’s Birthday dinner is, but tonight we are having kangaroo, ‘roo burgers, in fact.  Kangaroo meat is as commonly available as beef here, and generally cheaper.  My kangaroo mince, for example, cost AUD $5.00 per kilo (USD $3.96 per lb.), as compared with organic beef mince, which is AUD $16.00 per kilo.  Moreover, kangaroo is extremely lean (less than 2% fat) with a good, subtle flavor, rather like heart—not gamey at all.  Recently, it has been touted as well on environmental grounds.  Kangaroos are evolutionarily adapted to thrive in the Australian bush and outback, so they tend not to over-graze, as cattle and sheep do.  Kangaroo digestion also produces less methane (a greenhouse gas) than do other stock animals; one might call them the Prius of edible animals.  As I say, I don’t know what the traditional Queen’s Birthday dinner is, but it does my heart good to imagine her Majesty sitting down in Buckingham Palace to a nice, fat kangaroo tail, smoking hot off the barbie, washed down with a flagon of good Aussie Cabernet Sauvignon.

            I’ll leave you with that toothsome thought and the middle verse of “God Save the Queen.” It’s my personal favorite, though I do feel vaguely uncomfortable rhyming “our God arise” with “her enemies.”  I don’t know why.  “Frustrate their knavish tricks” is good though—seems to me the world could use a bit more knavish-trick frustration nowadays.

O Lord, our God, arise,

Scatter her enemies,

And make them fall.

Confound their politics,

Frustrate their knavish tricks,

On Thee our hopes we fix,

God save us all. 

--originally posted 6/2009

Cell Hell

            For those of you who have placed bets as to when (if ever) the day would arrive, the time has come at last either to pay up or to collect your winnings, depending on the accuracy of your guess.  Appropriately enough, it was April 1 when we finally, finally surrendered to the pressure of the cosmos and acquired our first mobile (cell) phone.  Wait, that’s not strictly accurate.  We’ve had the phone here since last October (a hand-me-down from Kathryn’s aunt Bev), but it was not until April Fool’s Day that we charged up the battery, bought a SIM card, and purchased some $30 of calling time.  I believe the sales lady said this will be sufficient credit to make one or two phone calls, providing we do it between 12:30 and 1:00 a.m., during the rainy season, to someone with the same hair color as me.  Of course, if the person I’m calling actually picks up his phone and answers the call, then all bets are off and the mobile-service provider places a lien on our home back in the U.S.

           

            I am not a big fan of mobile phones, and I believe we could have held out a while longer against the force of the cosmos, if we did not have to rent cars now and then to get out and see things.  Most recently, we wanted to sample the eastern end of the Great Ocean Road, a magnificent highway running 363 kilometers (225 miles) along Australia’s southern coast, from Torquay to Portland. 

We had reserved our car via the internet, and had arrived betimes at the rental office to pick it up.  The paperwork was nearly done, when the agent concluded brightly, “Right.  Now I just need your mobile number and you’re all set!”  Notice the phrasing, which implies that a mobile phone is just part of the standard equipment for a would-be car renter—as indespensible as a driver’s license and a working pair of eyeballs.

            “We haven’t got one,” Kathryn told her.

            “Then I can’t give you the car,” the agent replied in the same perkily efficient tone.

            “But you have our home phone,” Kathryn protested.

            “Yes, but we require a mobile number, in case we need to contact you about something.”  Presumably, this was in case of a national emergency, when the country’s entire fleet of rental vehicles might have to be commandeered to protect the homeland.

            “But we haven’t got one,” Kathryn repeated.

            “I can’t release the car unless I have two contact numbers, one of them a mobile, in case we need to contact you.”  She was still perky, but I got the impression the agent rather enjoyed having an iron-clad rule she could fall back on to turn us out, carless and dejected.

            “Ah, our mobile number,” I interjected.  “Gosh, yes, I have that right here in my notebook.  Let’s see.  It’s 11-1111-111, ah, 1.  Yes, that’s it.”  And off we went with the car.

            Actually, it didn’t quite play out like that.  Kathryn, who is marginally more honest than I, proposed giving the agent aunt Bev’s mobile number.  Would that suffice?  Happily, it would.  So Kathryn called her aunt, got the mobile number, and passed it to the agent.  “But we won’t have that phone with us,” Kathryn warned her.  You still won’t be able to contact us.”  The agent didn’t give a tinker’s damn—she had her mobile-phone number, and the letter of the rule had been fulfilled:  we had our car for the weekend.  Outside the sun emerged from behind the clouds and the birds began singing once more.

            We could foresee this scene playing out again and again, however, so we decided simply to take the plunge and activate the phone we already had at home.  That was my project on April Fool’s Day.  “What kind of plan do you want?” the lady at the mobile shop asked me.

            “The kind that gives us a number that we can give to car-rental agencies.”

            “How many calls will you be making per month?”

            “On average?  Zero, give or take.”

            “SMS?”

            “Oh, even less of that.”

            “Ah, in that case, we have a product called the ‘Don’t Even Think of Using this Phone’ Plan.  For a flat fee you get a SIM card, a number, and a small plastic bag.”

            So I got out of the showroom down only $39, but I had a phone that was theoretically operational, and a small plastic bag to put it in.  Moreover, I had a number, a real number that I could give to any petty fuss-budget who might ask for it.

            We still are not thrilled to have a mobile, but friends assure us that soon we’ll wonder how we ever got by without it.  “What if you’re out driving and you break down?” they ask.  “What if you’re hiking and you’re attacked by a dingo?” 

Well, I suppose they’re right.  We’ve paid to activate the thing, so we might as well bring it along when we’re on a trip.  That way, if we break down, we’ll at least have the phone to wedge under the back tire so the car doesn’t roll off down the hill while we wait for help.  And if a dingo attacks, we’ll have something to throw at it.  I guess that kind of peace of mind is worth $39.

--originally posted 4/2009

Quibbling Rivalry

Now here’s something singular I’ve recently discovered:  there seems to be a kind of jocular regionalism here in Australia—a semi-serious rivaly between the states that is overt enough and edgy enough to be detected even by someone as obtuse as I.

Exhibit A:  One day in our early weeks here in Melbourne, as we were sitting in the office of the local telephone company and limbering up to sign a 900-year lease on our DSL modem, we happened to mention to our young salesman that we were planning a Christmas trip to Tasmania.  “Oh, don’t go to Tassie,” he told us immediately.  “They’re inbred there—they’ve all got two heads.”  He grinned a moment later to show us he was kidding, sort of.  But I’ve since heard the same comment, nearly verbatim, from another Melburnian.  This one added, “In fact, if someone tells you they came from Tassie, you ask if you can see their scar.  Where they took off the other head, you know?”  He made it clear that while some people might tell a joke like that, he never would.

But before you start feeling too sorry for the Tasmanians, consider Exhibit B, which I found printed on the back of a Hobart milk carton:

 

“Not everyone can be on the front line helping to protect Betta Milk.  But to ensure that our milk stays in our state, there are suspects YOU can look out for every day to give Nikki and Frank a hand (after all, those mainlanders can be shifty…).” 

In case it’s not clear that these “shifty mainlanders” are retirees from the rest of Australia, Nikki and Frank give you tips for spotting them.

If you live in a small town, don’t think it can’t happen to you—right in your back yard!  Identifiable by their recent retirement, lack of children and abundance of cash to splash, these mainlanders often take refuge as those looking for a ‘tree change’ or ‘sea change’.  These are some of the most shifty and resourceful mainlanders; clever enough to embed themselves into your town’s psyche, then complete their mission methodically over a period of time.

Do your part to help protect our state.  If you suspect unauthorised milk use, contact the Betta Milk website and our new recruits will investigate your case.  Betta MILK.  Betta TASTE.

I have read this several times, letting it embed itself in my psyche, and giving it the benefit of every possible doubt, and the kindest conclusion I arrive at is that it was simply a grotesquely botched attempt at humor: the website given for reporting “unauthorised milk use,” after all, just links to the home page for a Tasmanian internet provider. A less charitable conclusion is that we ought to wait a while yet before we absolutely rule out the two-head theory.  Do but consider:  this amazing screed did not write itself spontaneously and get itself imprinted on a milk carton.  Someone had to scratch his head (maybe both of them) and compose it; others looked it over and edited it, possibly cutting sections deemed “over the top” and a bit strong for inclusion on a family milk container; still others approved the final draft and set the type to print it onto the carton.  You get my point, of course:  a bit on the tetched and paranoid side.

And what of the non-shifty, non-embedded mainland retirees (surely there must be some who just blundered over and thought the place looked nice)?  What are they to make of this crusade against them?  I know a daily read like that would cause me to look up now and then from my morning bowl of flax and bran, just to make sure a lively cohort from the Betta Milk Protection Squad wasn’t sweeping in through the garden gate, lit torches in hand, to welcome me to the neighborhood.  

But meanwhile, back here among the shifty mainlanders, I find Exhibit C on the back of some of our milk cartons:  the lyrics to “Advance Australia Fair,” the national anthem.  So now I really don’t know what to think.  On the one hand, Australia’s milk is perfectly wholesome, and if there really is a rising tide of virulent regionalism, I’m sure dairy products will play an extremely small part in any likely civil disturbance.  On the other hand, I’m beginning to wonder about my own milk use to date: was it all fully authorised?  I certainly don’t have documentation to prove it was.  So, out of an abundance of caution I have decided to switch to the excellent Australian soy beverages.  For now, their producers seem wholly indifferent to my politics or national origin, and the most incendiary thing on the carton is the cholesterol information. 

--originally posted 3/2009

Tasmania Part 2--the Convicts

 You know a place is going to be interesting, with or without deadly wildlife, when even the relentlessly perky Lonely Planet travel guide gives it a grave and wistful introduction.  After rattling off an impressive list of Tasmania’s many attractions, Lonely Planet Australia asks, rhetorically, why the locals have been so slow to cash in on them.  Ah, well,

The answer’s buried in a grim colonial and indigenous history.  Don’t be surprised if you find yourself crossed with a mournful spirit or an inexplicable sense of sadness.  The ghosts of the past are real but it’s taken until now for Tasmania to face them.

While I can’t report any mournful spirits, etc., I will say we wandered around a few small towns that felt a trifle “odd.”  Understand, I mean that in the most neutral sense possible.  It was just the kind of odd where, in the movies, a young couple stops at a sleepy burg for lunch, and afterward the man says, “Huh.  This is a funny place, isn’t it?”  And the woman says, “Oh, I don’t think so.  They’re just nice people.”  And then the car breaks down inexplicably, they wind up spending the night there, and, of course, all the locals turn into werewolves as soon as the moon comes up.  That’s the kind of odd I mean.  But, of course, we were camping well away from the towns, and so weren’t privy to any lycanthropic activities.

Today, less than 3% of Australia’s population lives in Tasmania, so you would be excused for failing to guess that under its former name of Van Diemen’s Land, it was actually the site of England’s second colony in the region.  Its first settlers arrived in 1803, some 15 years after the founding of Sydney.  Though initially there were no prisons, convicts were among the island’s first English residents, sent there to do the heavy lifting for their overseers—clearing land for agriculture, constructing government buildings, and generally establishing the settlement’s infrastructure. 

In 1822 the first prison in Van Diemen’s Land was established on Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbor; the prison at Port Arthur followed in 1830.   These settlements were expected to make money, and they did.  For a time, Sarah Island was home to the largest shipbuilding enterprise in the southern colonies.  The penal colony at Port Arthur produced, according to one visitors’ pamphlet, “ships and shoes, clothing and bells, furniture and worked stone, brooms and bricks.” 

For the most part, the inmates at these prisons were re-offenders—those convicted of “crimes” after the initial ones that had earned them transportation from England.  Given the for-profit charter of the prisons, and the fact that convicts represented nearly free labor, you will not be surprised to learn that the law made it relatively easy to “re-offend.”  A male prisoner could do it, for example, simply by answering back to a work boss, and some female convicts “re-offended” by becoming pregnant, often with the help of those appointed to reform them.

In 1853 Van Diemen’s Land abolished convict transportation, becoming the last part of the British Empire to do so.  Three years later it officially changed its name to Tasmania (after Dutchman Abel Tasman, the first European to sight the island), in an effort to shed the unsavory reputation it had acquired under the old name.  Sarah Island had closed as a prison in 1833, after only 11 years in operation, and the prison at Port Arthur closed in 1877.

Today, by contrast, Tasmania does face its ghosts and makes no secret of its convict origins; indeed, the prisons still turn a profit, but now as tourist destinations, Port Arthur being the state’s top attraction.  It welcomed more than 250,000 visitors in financial year 2007-08, and it was doing a brisk business the day we turned up, in early January 2009.

It is nearly impossible now, wandering through the parklike grounds—the greenest corner of Australia we have found yet—to imagine the dread the place once inspired, the misery it was witness to.  It rained some the day we were there, but that only served to freshen the air and to add a sparkle to everything when the sun next came out.  

Mason Cove, the harbor, is not large, but it is thoroughly charming.  Its glassy surface gave us a beautiful dual image of the the opposite shore, no matter where we stood.  Without effort I could imagine thronged café tables on the quayside and a dozen pleasure boats lying at anchor in the sun.  They were not there, of course, but that’s what the setting seemed to call for.  What I could not picture was an unkempt sailing vessel, bobbing slowly at the jetty, and discharging wretched and ragged men to stand blinking up at walls and bars and guards with guns and whips, which was the reality, 175 years ago. 

The main penitentiary building was gutted by fire in 1897, and today is a picturesque ruin set amongst broad lawns, its golden stone walls glowing in the sun against a backdrop of dark gumtrees on the surrounding hills.  The rest of the buildings are dotted here and there on the spacious grounds in various states of decay, restoration or modification.  Some of the minor ones are left to molder, to give one an idea of their real age, I suppose; some have been adapted to new uses (the former lunatic asylum now is home to Museum Café, for instance), and at least one, the separate prison, has had several rooms restored to their purported conditions when inmates actually lived and worked there, making brooms.  But once again, the rooms were too orderly and pristine to convey the sense that real human beings actually had lived and worked and grown old there. 

Here’s a contrast:  I have a friend whose grandfather was a guard at the prison on Alcatraz Island, in the San Francisco Bay.  A few years ago, my friend’s father was taking a tour of the old prison, wandering through the cells, when he found and photographed a two-word character sketch of his father, scratched into the painted metalwork by an unknown inmate.  It was not complimentary, but I believe it delighted my friend’s father because it proved that real people had lived and interacted in that place, and that proof breathed humanity into what was otherwise an empty and lifeless building.

This is where Port Arthur did not quite work for me.  By so thoroughly sanitizing the place, and scrubbing out all traces of any individual’s sojourn, the curators of the site have made it much more difficult for visitors to come away with a sense of what it had “really been like,” which is, after all, the main reason most people visit historical places.  Of course, it is a question that has existed as long as there have been tourists:  what is the proper balance between authenticity (whatever that means) and commercialism?  Do you keep things as rough and squalid as they would have been in the penal-colony days, or do you plant lawns to take advantage of the area’s naturally beautiful setting, and so make things more pleasant for families looking for a day out?  There’s no universal answer, of course, and each heritage site must be considered individually, but I will say that here the emphasis seemed to be more on having a good time rather than on a sober consideration of the place’s history.

      I certainly do not fault Port Arthur for being uninformative.  There was a staggering amount of information on tap, in a variety of different media, and even interactive research stations to discover whether one might have had ancestors at the prison. Also, a walking tour with a very knowledgeable guide was included in our admission price.  But I do think the commercial side won out to an unfortunate degree.  Was it really necessary, for instance, to have Felons Bistro (“dine with conviction”) right in the main visitor center?  I don’t know—perhaps it was.  But I know, too, that having such things at every turn does make it more difficult to lose oneself in the historical and the long ago.
      --originally posted 3/2009