Obviously addicted

A second trip to Antarctica? Obviously I'm addicted. But consider that some of the people I travelled with were on seventh, thirtieth and hundredth trips. Now that's addiction!

This time I travelled almost due south from the southern tip of NZ to the southernmost part of the Ross Sea, returning to Hobart. It's quite a voyage, around a week each way. The ship stopped at a number of beautiful islands and I was able to visit some of the wildest and weirdest places on this planet.

As usual there's a page of photos available, with a link to a short book containing my impressions of the voyage.

Antarctica

Bruce visited Antarctica during December 2007.

His full report is available here.
Some photos are also online.

Return to Kokoda

10-21 September 2007
Rosie taught at Kokoda School from 1967-1969, the same time that Bruce was teaching in the Snowy Mountains.

For those who aren't familiar with southern hemisphere geography, Kokoda is in Papua New Guinea and to this day the name retains a special place in Australian history. It was the area where the Japanese army suffered its first defeat in WW2. It was a complex campaign in horrendously unfriendly terrain, largely fought by barely-trained Australian militia experiencing their first battle. To this day the efforts of the local Papuan people in assisting and rescuing wounded soldiers are held in the highest esteem by Australians.

Rosie's sons Mark and David attended school in Kokoda, and in 2006 Mark returned there while researching a film script. He received a heartfelt and deeply moving welcome from his ex-schoolmates and, after passing on insistent requests for Rosie to return, she did.



You can see a selection of Bruce's photos here, and if you want the full report it's available as an Acrobat document on that site.

You're not gonna believe this! Really.

This is the last installment for this jaunt and we're saving the best story for last. But first...

The home stretch was a long one: Denver to LA, then to Auckland, Wellington and finally Melbourne. We spent three days in Wellington, the first to sleep off the trans-Pacific collywobbles and the other two to enjoy the company of Mohammed Ali Amiri and two of his friends.


Ali was one of the hundreds of refugees rescued by the MV Tampa in 2001. He spent far too long detained on Nauru until eventually the NZ government accepted him as a refugee. We'd heard lots of good things about him from others who were with him on Nauru, but had only had email and phone contact with him until now. The three of us stayed at the home of two of Ali's friends in Wellington, Bronwyn and Ken. He filled us in on the "lost years" on Nauru, telling some chilling stories about the behaviour of Australian cabinet ministers (one of whose initials could well be PR) who visited the island and heartening stories about the kindness of the local people and some of the detention centre staff.

Ali, Bronwyn, Rosie and Ken

He's working hard in Wellington, saving up to travel to Pakistan and search for his wife and child, neither of whom he's heard from in seven years. Later this year he'll even qualify as a Kiwi citizen. Fortunately none of us are too passionate about rugby football so our friendship should survive this exciting change in his life.

Bronwyn and Ali took us to many of the beautiful places around Wellington and we had some excellent meals together. But most importantly we were able to talk and listen and pass on news of the many friends we share.

And then we went home. By the time we drove into Castlemaine eight weeks had passed. We had far too many stories to tell and there were far too many people to thank for their delightful company and kindness. Apart from a very unpleasant encounter with TAS staff at Denver airport there was nothing we wouldn't do again, but probably won't.

The Magic Moment
Once upon a time an eight year old called Greg moved from Alliance, Nebraska to Bexley, NSW. His father, a teacher, was on a Fulbright exchange with friends of Bruce's family. Greg had some fond memories of Australia so in 1973 (two years before Bruce met Rosie), at a time of a desperate shortage of trained teachers, Greg offered himself to the Victorian Education Department. Being sensible folk they accepted his offer and Greg soon found himself teaching at Doveton, near Dandenong.

Upon hearing this Rosie's ears pricked up: she grew up in Dandenong! A few probing questions (and nobody does probing questions like Rosie) revealed that they shared a number of friends at the Dandenong Methodist Church. Greg then related one of his most embarrassing moments: it seemed like a good idea to ring his mother on Mother's Day, but wasn't sure how could this be done. International calls, even as recently as 1973, were expensive and therefore not easy to make from a coin-fed public phone. "Go and ask that lady," suggested one of his friends at the church. So Greg asked "that lady", who kindly allowed him to come home and use her phone to ring his mum. Marie and Greg enjoyed a long chat and all seemed fine until, at the end of the billing period, the charge for $75 came in. Greg says he didn't eat too well for a couple of weeks after paying "that lady".

So who was she? We had our suspicions, but Greg couldn't remember. She may have been a widow, he thought. Couldn't remember the house. Couldn't recall the street. Did remember that his diary was buried in the basement back in Lincoln. Upon returning home very late after the long drive from Alliance to Lincoln he descended into the archives, mined for the diary and found the relevant entry. "That lady" was a certain Mrs Harrison who lived in Potter Street, aka Rosie's mum.



Thank you for reading this, and we look forward to bringing you a PNG blog later in the year.

Rosie and Bruce

No prairie dogs were damaged during the making of this blog.

Who was that prairie dog I saw you with last night?

16-19 May: Lincoln to Denver via Alliance
We started Wednesday with the best of intentions (a trip to Omaha, perhaps) but when Greg found some video cassettes of Bruce's family taken in 1987, the day sort of dissolved into a video to DVD transfer session at the uni's computer lab. Not that sitting at a 105 cm monitor driving a smoking-fast Mac G5 is too awful. Rosie and Linda visited Irving Middle School (Linda's place of employment for the past few decades). In the evening we visited the Denicola's new house on the outskirts of Lincoln and enjoyed a good chat with a number of Greg and Linda's friends. Again! (The night before we'd dined with their monthly Dinner Club at The Oven, and enjoyed the food almost as much as the fine conversation around the table.)

On the Denicola's new deck with Greg and Linda.

It's a long way across Nebraska, at least 4 cm on the map and even longer by road. We set off fairly early, did a little unplanned shopping on the way (nice shoes, Rosie!) and then headed west along the freeway towards Grand Island. Why? Well, during Bruce's last (first) visit to this part of the planet in 1992 he enjoyed a meal with George Mohr, who along with Greg had been inveigled into working for the Victorian Education Department in 1973 or thereabouts. George is now working at a high school in Grand Island and was looking very pleased to be there.

No overdue library books here!

This was possibly because it was the last day of the academic year and all the students were streaming out the door as we arrived. George and Bruce tried hard to catch up on 15 years in 15 minutes and did it pretty well, but we had to travel much further so departed earlier than we'd have liked, but still glad to have seen George.

We left the interstate highway at Grand Island and headed north-west towards sandhill country. Lunch came and went. We continued west in great comfort (the new car is excellent, Greg!) and the land gradually got lumpier.


Low, rolling sandhills covered in a fine veneer of grass support a lot of beef cattle. Beside the road ran a railroad carrying long trains of coal wagons. According to a back-of-the-envelope calculation, about half a million tonnes of coal travels across Nebraska from Wyoming every day. That's a lot of carbon dioxide, but we got to see even scarier things later.

As the sun set slowly in the west we rolled into Greg's home town, Alliance. Bruce first heard of the place 50 years ago. His family met Greg's parents Marie and Byron when Byron exchanged houses and jobs with our neighbour, thanks to a Fulbright scholarship. Alliance isn't big, but it does have Marie and that has to be a major asset. Big hugs and lots of reminiscences took up most of the evening as we ate well at the Alliance Country Club (on the edge of town, next to the lake-that's-now-a-cornfield). Also dining with us was Bob Howard, a long time friend of the family who has written extensively about the state's history.

Bob Howard Snr, Bruce, Marie and Greg.
(Excuse the hairstyles: it was pretty breezy out there!)

First thing after breakfast the next morning Marie exercised the ivories on her piano by delighting us with some Debussy and certain antipodal tunes. Rosie and Bruce maintained the high musical standard by not singing along. And then...

A few years ago a farmer on the outskirts of Alliance decided to erect a replica of Stonehenge. Not for profit, but just as a whimsical way of, well, making something different. Something not to be taken seriously. And so was born...

Carhenge!

It made us laugh in the nicest way. So wrong, so weird and yet so gloriously silly. The world may not need too many more Carhenges, but it does need many more people who don't take life too seriously. We loved it.

Greg then showed us a house that his father's woodwork class had built in 1948. It's still in the hands of its original owners and you can bet that its builders remain proud of their work as they drive by.


It would have been good to hang around Alliance for a while longer, but we had to go. To Denver, which is a long drive. Marie came along for the ride so we were able to continue exchanging stories all day as we drove through ever-lumpier country. Some of it got quite spiky.

Chimney Rock, for obvious reasons, was a major landmark for pioneers moving west along the Oregon Trail. (The chimney was much higher then.) We called into the museum near the rock for a closer look. On the farm next door lived a lot of prairie dogs.

Rosie was very impressed by them and, while the rest of us were gazing at Chimney Rock, she must have jumped the barbed wire fence, sprinted across the prairie and nabbed one because in no time at all she was back beside us, holding it up for the camera.


As we headed south-west towards Denver we noticed small, heavily-fenced enclosures just beside the road. Lots of them.


This demanded a closer look so we launched our trusty drone and snapped a view of what's inside the fence:



No, it's not a dam. The Cold War is still chilling away under there. At the top of the picture is the tunnel entrance that leads down into the missile silo (bottom of enclosure). You'll be as delighted as we were that no incoming missiles were targeted on any of the silos we drove past that day.

And so we arrived in Denver unscathed. John Craig collected us over a fine dinner just outside Denver and delivered a rather limp pair to an excellent motel not far from the house where he and Ellen (EJ) live.

Geek alert!
After 15 years of emails John, Greg and Bruce got together,
live and in colour, for the first time.

We were utterly exhausted after two long days of travelling and hardly remember hitting the mattress.

Next morning we had a good yarn with John and EJ, hearing their plans for marketing one of John's inventions and related topics. Lunch was great (Sweet Tomatoes restaurant) and then we had just enough time for a drive through Castlewood Canyon, outside Parker, before we had to be at the airport. We'd have liked to spend more time with John and EJ, but we had to be in New Zealand the next day.

Or was it the day after?

OK, so where are our battleships?

14-15 May
It's easy to get to Nebraska: you go to the Albany airport, catch a plane to Chicago, wait until you're very bored and then catch a flight to Lincoln. Linda and Greg whirled us from the airport to their house, where we started catching up on the fifteen years since Bruce had last visited. Discussions continued late into the night, with a break for a superb Iranian meal at a good eatery in Lincoln. Much talk. Both Linda and Bruce are already running out of operating vocal cords.

Lots of surprising things happened the next morning: Bruce woke up late. Rosie and Bruce sat down to breakfast together. It rained. We met people we'd only ever emailed before (hi again, Ed!). We became admirals. We visited Nebraska Educational Telecommunications' headquarters and met some great people making great programs (hi Al, Lora, Brian and Jann!). We had a lively and stimulating conversation over lunch with Ron Hull, mostly about public radio and television.

Whoa... what was that about admirals?
It's all true. There we were, enjoying the artwork and architecture of the state Capitol, taking a look the state Senate in session and some quick views of the city from its tallest point, when we were herded into a press briefing room adjacent to Governor's office and, in a short but dignified ceremony, presented with embellished documents certifying that we were now Admirals in the Nebraska Navy. Honest. They're signed and sealed by Governor Heineman, so it must be true. Bruce had heard rumours of this high honour on his previous visit, but to actually find oneself in sole command of a flagship... er, where was it? This was the tricky bit. Have you looked at a map of Nebraska lately? It's a few million years since its geography has been able to support a navy, and in the meantime it looks like we're going to have to uphold one of the other duties of Nebraskan admirals: to seek and save the Nebraskan Sea. So much for our dreams of retirement. When we return to Australia the usual 19 guns (not pointed at us, if you please) will be an adequate salute. Hint to the brass band: something by the Village People should be apt.

Admiral Rosie with Admiral Bruce and seaman Greg

Clearly, life on the prairie is not going to be dull this week.

It's a long way round to the top

7-13 May
Albany is the capital of NY state, but you probably knew that. This makes it the centre for much of the state's administration, and that inevitably means big concrete buildings. The old buildings of the city look fantastic. For example, there's the education building, with its massive colonnade of tall classic columns built in the days when governments saw education as something to take pride in, a benefit to society instead of a drain on its taxpayers. Similarly opulent and impressive stone public buildings dot the city and stand in sad contrast to the concrete wasteland of the Nelson Rockefeller-inspired plaza containing admin buildings, the wedding cake pile of a museum and a couple of very tall towers in which lots of busy ants move around shuffling paper to keep the state running. On a sunny day the plaza is pleasant enough, with fountains showing off how close it all is to the waters of the Hudson River: we didn't dare try to imagine what it must be like on a cold, windy day with snow in the offing. Suffice to say that just beneath the acres of fountains and concrete the designers were smart enough to build an entire duplicate, all underground and heated, to allow the area to actually function during the cold months.

One of the tall buildings has an observation deck, so we headed for the lifts. Wrong! First you have to go downstairs, stand in a line, produce photo ID, get photographed and then wait while a security pass is printed. Then back where we came from, up a floor, past the security guys (who smiled big friendly smiles and didn't look at the passes) and into the lifts up to floor 42. And it's worth it. You get a great view of the Hudson River, the plaza, the good-looking buildings, the rest of the region stretching away to the Airdirondacks and, just below in the middle of the city, a cricket pitch. Not quite what we expected to see in the capital of NY state, directly behind the governor's mansion.


It's tulip time! Albany's Washington Park was bursting with tulips, surrounded by lots of kids enjoying the colours and adults enjoying the sight of the kids enjoying the colours.

Our time in Albany was very relaxed, thanks to Joan and Graeme's careful planning and the willingness of everyone to take things at a sensibly steady pace. Having warm-to-hot, sunny spring weather all week also helped. Joan chauffered us to various essential commercial venues (coffee shops, clothes shops, coffee shops, yummy food places and coffee shops. And did I mention the coffee shops? On Saturday we drove to Troy, not the one with the dud horse, but the one just up the Hudson from Albany.

It's where the Mohawk River flows into the Hudson and, in the way of many rivers, a series of small islands have formed at the junction. On one of these stands the remains of a factory where the first pre-shrunk cloth was manufactured. While it might have been interesting from an industrial history angle, we were more keen on walking around the island and enjoying the fair that was taking place just across the river. Big mistake! Rosie's brand-new baggy slacks picked up a bit of dirt during our wanderings and needed a wash when returned to Albany. They emerged squeaky clean in a very figure-hugging capri style with a tiny tab warning "Do not wash" flapping in the breeze. Pre-shrinking may not be hi-tech, but it's just as relevant as it was a hundred years ago.

On Sunday we all piled into Joan's car and headed for NY city, or at least the northern outskirts thereof. Clancy gave a cello recital at State Univ of NY at Purchase, where there's a magnificent performing arts centre. Being Mother's Day there was only a small audience, but the music was superb. The rapport between Clancy and his accompanist Noreen was magical - they've been working together for twelve years, so that shouldn't have been the surprise it was - and it was a very special moment when Clancy took the opportunity to wish Joan a happy Mother's Day during his introduction to one of his compositions. Afterwards we joined him for a fine dinner at a nearby restaurant and then returned north to Albany.

Did the earth move for you?

It did for us. A night in London to gather our wits before traversing the Atlantic was made interesting by our choice of place to rest our heads: about 20 metres above a Tube tunnel to be exact. But the view from the window was great, even in the middle of the night, with all those big trees in blossom. Did we mention the need to pack antihistamines?

3rd May
The flight from Heathrow to Washington was notable for the number of movies Rosie managed to watch, and United Airlines's ability to forget Bruce's food requirements and then recover magnificently, serving up some great dishes made from First Class leftovers. Four hours at Washington airport waiting for a 25 minute connection to Philadelphia was a test of patience, and Bruce ended with cramped thumbs after hours of texting the ever-shifting delayed flight time with Rosie's sister Joan and her husband Graeme, who were waiting for us in Philadelphia. But were we glad to see them! Within minutes they had us tucked up in bed in a good hotel. Fortunately Philadelphia's subway runs half a dozen blocks west of it, so we slept well.

4th May
First impression of Philadelphia: it's crammed full of people we know. Pressed the button to take the lift down to breakfast: waiting in it were Graeme's brother Noel and his wife Betsy. Walked into the dining room and there were Claudio and Maggie from Rome. Half a muffin later in came a friend Rosie had first met in Lae in the late Sixties. You really would not have wanted to share the room for a quiet breakfast over the newspaper.

Later in the morning we moved to another hotel, this time a 1754 house near the centre of the city. It also happened to be the location of the wedding and subsequent festivities.

Rosie's youngest son Owen joined us in our suite late in the afternoon and we romped off to a big dinner to meet everyone else in Philadelphia. Well, most of them.

5th May
Wedding Day. Yesterday was cloudy, cold and breezy: today stayed blue-skied, calm and almost hot. Noon wedding.

Rosie and Bruce dressed up.

Sister act

The courtyard garden.

The bride arrived on time, the garden was perfect and the ceremony a delight.

We talked a lot. We ate far too much. We laughed, and we cried. Clancy's cello playing was as beautiful as ever. We still have stars in our eyes (those cameras!). A great wedding.

And no, we did not join the karaoke crew late in the evening, which is probably why (a) Philadelphia still has a reuptation for fine music, (b) we didn't wake up in jail and (c) Owen spent half the next morning apologising for leaving just before it was his turn to perform. Smart bloke, Owen.

Clancy, Owen and Amanda before the karaoke night.

6th May

Recovery day. We walked around the oldest part of the city, noting the presence of the Delaware River and the house where one Mr Kosciuszko lived. (A fellow Pole's later travels took him past a high hill in south-east Australia that he thought resembled Kosciuszko's tomb.) We ate a long lunch and then enjoyed a barbecue at Tamsin and Scott's house. This was especially enjoyable because both families had worked out each others' names and relationships by then, so the night went far too quickly leaving many more stories still to share.

7th May

Packed up. Found our way out of Philadelphia onto the interstate heading north to Albany. Stopped at a few places to keep the driver alive (Joan was also our navigator and only hope of getting anywhere). It's good to be in Albany!