Sculpture by the Sea

    Sydney beaches are some of the most beautiful in the world, and the most famous of them is Bondi Beach.  Get on a train at Town Hall heading to Kings Cross and you’ll most likely end up in a car full of yunguns wearing board shorts and bikinis. Some drag surfboards. Others drag children, prams and fraying patience. They all ride to the end of the line, Bondi Junction, then catch the 380 bus to Bondi Beach.

    Before departing for Sydney, I was in touch with an acquaintance who owns a flat here. He mentioned an art event called Sculpture by the Sea. It is just what it sounds like – sculptures installed close to the beach along the cliff trail that stretches between Bondi and Bronte beaches and beyond. I decided to take this in on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, but chose to begin the walk at Coogee Beach, which is much farther out, because someone had told me that the works stretched that far. Either I misunderstood or the event changed, because I walked 2.5 kilometers to Bronte Beach before I saw any art. I have noticed a pattern developing here that I tend to believe what people tell me and act accordingly. It’s often problematic. Whatever. I got to see the art and that’s what I wanted, and since there were lots of benches along the way, as well as water fountains where I could refill my bottle, all was right.

    I wish I could tell you specific information about each work and the artist that created it, but sadly, I can’t. The event opened officially over the weekend, and I was there on Wednesday. That meant that not all the work was installed, or not completely installed, or not tagged accordingly. But I got a couple tan lines, anyway, and got to Bondi where I found a spot to lie in the sun out of the wind before I caught the bus and train back to the city.

    Besides the well-known beaches like Bondi and Bronte, there are smaller inlets, many of them sheltered from prevailing winds. Of course, they aren’t surfing beaches, but the water is still wet and cold and the sand is still warm. Just about all of these inlets has its own Surf Life Saving Club, complete with ocean pools and stuff like that. Which brings us to another form of sculpture by the sea, The Australian Lifeguard.  Just how does one become a lifeguard in Australia?

Photo from Google Images

    First of all, you have to be gorgeous. At least, that’s the conclusion I came to after watching one of the most popular Australian reality series, “Bondi Rescue.”  “Bay Watch” got nothing on these guys, primarily because the "cast," if you will, aren’t actors. They’re cool and nice to look at and quite good at keeping swimmers between the flags and rescuing stupid or careless people from certain death. Maybe this curiosity of “Mommy, where do really studly lifeguards come from?” should have occurred to me before, because of the show “Bay Watch,” and I live in California and all of that. But until I saw all of these surf clubs, I never considered that life guarding is a career and the effort that goes into it. Plus, the profession is a way of life. There is a lifeguard exchange, sort of like exchange students, life guarding in different parts of the world. There’s even a lifeguard exchange visa. There’s a Life Guard magazine. I might be stating the obvious here, but lifeguards are, in fact, professional athletes.

    Sexy Bondi is the beach that gets a lot of attention (including a visit from David Hasselhoff himself), but Bronte is where surf lifesaving actually began. Surfing was actually against the law in Australia in the 1800s, but the law was freely flaunted (as stupid laws are) and surfers sometimes found themselves in trouble, courtesy of a rip tide called the Bronte Express. After a drowning in 1895, a handbook was assembled, drills and training commenced and before the end of the 19th century, lifeguards were giving demonstrations on technique at local pools.  The first groups of life savers was formed at Bronte in 1903. 

  Most surf and life saving clubs have ocean pools where lifeguards train and swim lessons are taught and so forth. To me, even the ocean pools look terrifying, even with their sturdy concrete walls and iron railings.

   

    Next, off to Melbourne.

A Night at the Opera

   Sydney is a showy city – a harbor, a fabulous bridge, world-class beaches and surfing. Opportunity to spend a whole lot of money abounds at all of these places. The Harbour Bridge Climb costs more than $200 for a single adult. I turned that down, especially since I do not like heights, and a pedestrian walkway goes all the way across, anyway. Surfing holds a mild fascination for me, but I understand that once I step into the ocean, I become part of a food chain of which I am not on top, and how can I count the cost of the loss of a limb?  Having grown up land-locked, I do not sail.

   But.

   The Sydney Opera House is an entirely different matter. Not only is the building a fascinating work of art, it plays host to about 1,500 events annually, everything from Don Giovanni to Janet Jackson. The campaign for a proper opera house was started by Eugene Goossens, who was director of the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music in the 1940s. At that time, the symphony performed at Sydney Town Hall. It took until the mid-50s, though, when the right NSW Premier came along who would actually budget funds for it, to launch an architectural competition for a building. Funny thing – the design by Danish architect Jorn Utzon (pictured above right) that the entire world identifies with Australia was overlooked initially. Those sails were a radical design. An interesting bit of trivia: the design was pulled out of the pile of rejected entries.  But, it was declared the winner, and planning commenced. Timeline and budget: Four years, $7 million. Actual timeline and budget: 16 years (1957-1973), $120 million (a cost overrun of 1,400 per cent). Utzon resigned in 1963 over arguments about budget (new political administration), was not acknowledged as the architect when Queen Elizabeth II opened the house in 1973, and died in 2008 without ever seeing his completed masterpiece in person.

   Delays and cost overruns were due to the challenge of building the roof, a design that was literally ahead of its time. No one knew how to build it. Architects and engineers considered it a series of parabolic shapes, but no amount of ciphering could yield a formula that would allow structurally sound fabrication. By the way, the design of the SOH was the first time a computer was used to assist in the construction of a building.  Utzon finally solved the problem by discovering that the “sails” could be built based on a spherical (actually, hemispherical) design, like slices taken out of ½ an orange.  And the roof is not really a shell – it is, rather, a series of concrete sections that were poured and assembled on site. Also, the roof really isn’t white, it’s cream and yellow, and it’s made up of 1,056,000 special triple fired, triple glazed, Swedish-made tiles. (If it was white, the roof would be blinding on a sunny day.) The tiles are in a chevron pattern, which I didn’t realize until I saw it up close. Utzon said he was inspired by a bathing suit he saw a woman wearing at the beach. He liked the way the pattern looked on curves.

   The construction materials are pink granite, poured concrete, four times more steel cable than what is in the Sydney Harbour Bridge, ceramic tile, white birch, and brush box wood.

It is the only symphony hall in the world where you can sit behind the orchestra and still hear it. Oh, and Vladimir Ashkenazy happens to by the Principal Conductor and Artistic Director.

I could go on and on, because I find these things fascinating, but I’ll stop before everybody clicks back to Facebook.

   I promised myself that I would see an event at the opera house while in Sydney, and I actually ended up at three, none of which were in the Concert Hall, much to my disappointment.  Somewhere along the line I got the idea that the Sydney Opera actually performs at the opera house, and it does, but in the Opera Theatre.  Likewise, the production of Julius Caesar that I saw was staged in the Drama Theatre.  The fourth venue is the Playhouse which is a flexible black box theater where smaller or more experimental works are produced.

   The very first day I was conscious in Sydney (the day I got lost in the Botanical Gardens for the first time) I headed straight to Circular Quay to find out what was on. Turns out quite a lot. Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, author, thinker, dissenter and general voice of reason, was to be awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, and was on the schedule for a Q & A. The only opera that was on during my time here was Mozart’s morality tale, Don Giovanni, which is not a favorite. Julius Caesar was being staged by Bell Shakespeare, with a woman cast as Cassius. Interesting.

   So I finally go back to buy my tickets on the day that Noam Chomsky is scheduled. I approach the lobby understanding that the lecture is most likely sold out, which is confirmed by a sign posted in the lobby, but surely they still have tickets to other performances. Close to the ticket line stands a woman, off to the side. I walk up, she approaches me.

   “Do you have a ticket for the program today?”

   “No. I don’t.  I was going to check for cancellations.”

   “Would you like one?”
    (Would I? Would I?) “Uh, yes.  I would.”

   “Here. Have this one. My friend couldn’t come today.”

   Good golly. A free ticket to Noam Chomsky.

   To summarize what Prof. Chomsky (pictured left) said: The nut of it is that we are rushing like lemmings into the sea, led by the bankers, CEOs and politicians who don’t understand that they, too, will drown as we all take the leap together. He believes that Obama’s record is even worse than G.W. Bush’s in that he hasn’t dismantled enough of W’s policies, including the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Plus, Obama gets a failing grade on environmental issues. A brilliant man. I took notes. And my companion was charming – a former drama teacher with a daughter who is getting her PhD in Hip-Hop Studies. (wtf? academia. sheesh.) She also happens to be a marriage celebrant, and gave me her card. Just for her personal contact info. Not that I need a celebrant. Unless she knows something that I don’t.

   After Chomsky, I stood in line again to get tickets to either the opera or the Shakespeare production. As it turned out, if I took a tour of the opera house that day, I could get an opera ticket for $50 (which is typically $150). I took the bait and bought the tour, which is where all the little gems of knowledge above came from.  I also bought a ticket for Julius Caesar. That put me at the opera house three days in a row.

   But still didn’t put me in the Concert Hall for a performance.

   Well, I’ll be back in Sydney on for New Year's. There’s always the New Year’s Eve Gala. (Riiiiight.)

North Head / South Head

      There is a wonderful thing here in Sydney called a Multi-pass.  Most cities have a version of the multi-pass – a week- or day- or month-long ticket to use public transportation. Here, the pass allowed me to use trains, buses and ferries with impunity for seven days. I actually ended up purchasing more than one of these little miracle tickets because I was bound and determined to explore every neighborhood in Sydney. While I fell short of that goal, I still used the hell out of them.

       The very coolest part about the pass was the whole ferry part. Really? I can ride the ferry for free? (ok, not free, but …) All I want? Honest? The ticket agent was a little taken aback by my enthusiasm. The first place I decided to go was Manly.

       Manly cove was named by Capt. Arthur Phillip, governor of New South Wales from 1786 – 1791, and chose the name based on the indigenous peoples’ “confident and manly behavior.” Capt. Phillip was a pretty progressive guy for an 18^th century Brit. He was speared through the shoulder by an aboriginal man at Manly (just a misunderstanding) but held his men back from retaliating. He also nursed the colony along – forbade slavery, endured famine to the point that his health was endangered, decreed stealing food a capital offense, and persevered even though Britain had all but forgotten about their continent-sized jail on the other side of the world.

      Taking the ferry to Manly takes about a half hour and originates from Circular Quay right between the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. The views are tremendous, of course, but you want to be a few minutes early to get the best seats outside. I happened to skid in just at the last minute, but elbowed my way out there, anyway. Another advantage to being The Lone Traveler. There’s usually room for just one more.  

     At the Manly information kiosk, a nice woman explained the way out to the North Head and gave me a map (I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was going to be largely useless) and actually walked me outside to point out the correct bus stop. These Aussies seem to be highly attuned to my challenge. In the meantime, I sat down at a picnic table by Manly Beach and ate my tuna sandwich and chocolate covered caramels. On the way to the bus stop, I was distracted by a sign about protecting the Manly penguins. Penguins? Here? I thought they hung out on another continent called Antarctica. Turns out there are penguins here, specifically Little Blue Penguins, and their numbers are endangered. The penguins are the smallest species of penguin and they live on the southern coasts of New Zealand and Australia. In Manly, they make their home under the wharf, returning from their hunting at dusk, at which time people decide to snag them as pets – or people’s pets decide to snag them as food. A gregarious woman sitting on a nearby bench, not quite finished with her own sandwich, mentioned that just the other day a dog who was on a sailboat moored in the cove jumped off the boat and nabbed a little guy. The penguin was killed, of course, no word if it was eaten. (I didn’t want to ask – she seemed upset.) Since it wasn't yet dusk, I didn’t get to see any of the flightless water fowl.

Manly is the farthest north point of Sydney Harbour, half of what makes up the entrance. (The South Head is the other part of the natural gateway … imagine that.)  From the North Head, there’s nothing but open sea and sky (see large photograph above.) But since it is the outermost reach of land, a quarantine station was built there in the 19^th century. Too bad they waited that long. Most of the aboriginal folks in the harbor area were dead by then from small pox and other diseases of European import. Now, the quarantine station is a boutique hotel called Q Station. The former First Class passenger accommodations are now suites with balconies overlooking the cove, and views to Sydney. Nice. Not cheap – about $350 a night for the good ones.  The quarantine station is where the bus route ends and where I started my walk out to North Head.

       As detailed in my last entry, I have a tendency to get lost – even when there’s only one road and I’ve been instructed to go straight down said road until I reach a destination that is the only one on the map. I made it down to the North Head trail, which was really a road, which made me wonder if I was on the right path because it was described as a trail, and there was no trail, it was a bona fide two-lane road, so I started doubting if I was in the right place, because I’m a writer and editor and I damn well know what words mean, and this was not a trail, it was, in fact, a road. I was pretty sure that I was on the right path because the nice lady at the information kiosk had mentioned a car park area with a great view of Sydney, and I found that. I kept walking anyway, and reached the end loop where I did finally find a trail – a beautiful bush walk that led out to the cliffs that offered fabulous views of the Tasman Sea.

       Then there was the question of making my way back and finding the trail (but was it really a trail because there wasn’t a trail here until I reached the end of a road …) to Shelly Beach, on the ocean side of the north peninsula. I wandered back and forth, stopped in at Q Station lobby a couple times to check my map; they gave me another map, and I still couldn’t find my way to Shelly Beach. So I took the bus back and walked The Corso to the beach, getting there just in time for lifeguard training. Not bad timing, and just the scenery I needed to see. I bought an (expensive) ice cream cone (funny how ice cream always makes sore feet feel better) and sat on the wall watching bronzed young men go through their paces. At the blast of a whistle, a whole line of them took off with some sort of hybrid surfboard, plunged into the waves, paddling furiously until they were just about out of site. I should point out that there were bronzed young women, as well, but I wasn’t interested in their tan lines.

      My timing was better for the return voyage, and I secured a seat on the second level up front. The sun was s setting behind a light cloud cover, lighting up the sky behind the opera house and bridge. I sat to Susan and her companion Harry (a cousin from England, whom she referred to as “haitch”) and quizzed me on what I had seen so far. She pointed out the sunset sailing races, and asked me if I had heard of the Bridge to Beach Swim which starts at at Harbour Bridge and ends at Manly Beach. Her boyfriend (an "action man" as she identified him) does the 11 kilometer race every year.

     Which brings us to the matter of sharks. With some amount of pride, Susan declared that the harbour is full of sharks. She actually used the term "infested." In fact, in 2009 race officials cancelled the swim due to the number of recent shark attacks in the area. As the Brisbane Times wrote, they feared the water could be too "bitey."  Although there are several shark attacks every year at Sydney beaches, most are not fatal. In fact, it's more likely that a person will drown than get eaten by a shark. But. There is shark netting at many of the swimming beaches, including Manly Beach, maybe because the last death caused by a shark attack occurred there in 1963 while a young woman and her fiance played in about one metre of water. Most attacks are by bull sharks, who thrive in both fresh and salt water, and whose behavior is unpredictable and aggressive. (geez, do they drink and gamble, too?)

Manly Beach, site of the last fatal shark attack in Syndey Harbour

     After talk of sharks, Susan pointed out Kiribilli House, the official Sydney residence of Prime Minister Julia Gillard. It sits nearly straight across the harbor from the opera house and is easily seen from the ferry. The woman was especially pleased that the PM’s boyfriend is a former hairdresser, which is her profession.

       (A digression: The Aussies don’t hesitate to push satire as far as it can go. In September, the third episode of the television series, “At Home with Julia” depicted the PM and her guy in a position – ahem – under the Australian flag. While it is illegal to sit on the Australian flag, it is not a crime to use it as a sheet.) 

      The next ferry excursion was to Watson’s Bay, which is on the South Head.  Named for a guy named Watson, of course, specifically Robert Watson, former quartermaster of HMS Sirius, flagship of the First Fleet. Watson was variously harbourmaster of the port of Sydney and first superintendent of Macquarie Lighthouse in 1816.

View from The Gap toward North Head.

      Of course, there’s another gorgeous cliff walk out to lighthouses, past beaches and above the pounding surf. The first stop was at The Gap, though, a famous scenic point where in one direction there are gorgeous views of Sydney’s Central Business District and from the other, the sea. The Gap is also one of the top spots in Sydney for suicides (about 50 per year) and also for marriage proposals (no stats available) which cynics might say amount to the same thing. Seriously, there are signs all around The Gap with toll free numbers to call for help – before a person jumps. 
     What with all the cliffs and pounding surf, there are also lighthouses. Although the Macquarie Lighthouse has the distinction of being the first in Australia, the Hornby Lighthouse (lower head) with it's slimming vertical red and white stripes is the one that’s more photogenic. A tragedy motivated the creation of the Hornby – actually two tragedies – the wreck of the Dunbar at South Head on August 20, 1857 and then the wreck of the Catherine Adamson on October 23, 1857 at North Head.  Only one out of 122 people survived the Dunbar wreck, an Irishman named James Johnson who later became a lighthouse keeper at Newcastle. The Catherine Adamson passengers and crew fared little better; five survived (including the captain) along with two bulls and a horse. An enquiry blamed insufficient navigational aids and ordered the construction of the Hornby on the lower Southern Head.

       Once again, I asked for directions before setting out, partly because I expected to be able to see the lighthouse from the cove where the ferry landed. But no. So I popped into a hotel, and asked the nice woman at the desk how to get to the lighthouse.

       “Which one?” she asked.

       “Ummm, well, the lighthouse.” I pointed vaguely.

        She stared. “There’s a map just there.”

        She pointed vaguely.

        I took a map and started peering at it.

        “It’s just down this road. Go out, take a left, walk until you see the foot path.”

        “Foot path?” I had gone down this road before. Literally.

        “Yes. A footpath.”

        “Where’s that?”

        “Just down there.”

        When in doubt, smile and say thank you.

         So I walked down the street, and came to Cove Camp Beach and immediately assumed that I had missed the footpath, but lo, there it was, as promised. However, there had not been mention of a beach, too, so I was momentarily disconcerted, yet pleased that I didn’t panic.

        I walked across, let the ocean chase my feet, and took the footpath. A short walk brought me to yet another fabulous view of Sydney, and a little bit further on, I found the Hornby lighthouse. After retracing my steps, I was back at The Gap and debating whether or not to keep going to the Macquarie. Sure – I decided. I’ve got time. I can catch the ferry at 5 or 6.

        Well, I kept going, even though my feet hurt and I was tired, because I don’t know when to stop. I am learning the valuable lesson that much of sight-seeing is best done from a sitting position. By the time I got back from the Macquarie and Signal Hill, my feet were burning. After limping down to the wharf, I learned that the last ferry left at 3:05 p.m. Since the Manly ferry ran on the half-hour, I had just assumed that this was the same. The bus worked, though, and stopped back at Circular Quay from where trains run back out to Stanmore.

Next, a night at the opera.

Directionless

One of the trees that points a person in the wrong direction. RBG.

I grew up in a world of grids: fields, sections, and town lines and you always knew what direction you were going because there was no escaping the sky, and consequently, the sun – and even if you didn’t know your compass point heading, you knew that the Johnsons lived there, or oops, was that the Langen’s place?
    But when the First Fleet arrived in Sydney, they set about the business of basic survival; roads led to Tank Creek (the fresh water supply) or to the quarry where all the sandstone was extracted for structures. I don’t think the military or the convicts worried about a grid that would be easy for 21st Century travelers to follow. The travel agent I worked with is native to Sydney, and warned me that I would find Melbourne’s mass transit much easier to navigate. But the mass transit is not an issue; I’m not driving the bus. Her apt comment was that Sydney streets evolved “higgledy-piggledy.” Apt description.
Each suburb (inner suburb, anyway) has streets running at odd angles to each other, some curve around one way, then another, snaking through one city and then into the next, and then back again into the same town where it started. Streets end, interrupted by developed blocks or train tracks. Dead-ends don’t always show up on maps. One night in Newtown, it took 45 minutes to find an address. (After a point, these things become a matter of principle.) I stopped in various cafes and shops, asking locals where are Station and Bedford Streets? “Oh, I think I’ve heard of Bedford … Mike – d’ya know Bedford Street? No?  Sorry luv. Good luck.” Finally, I found the address with the assistance of a very nice Irish girl who has been in Sydney only a couple months and snorted in derision at the locals not knowing other streets or addresses  – “They just know their own little grid and fuck-all about the rest.” That can probably be said about most of us.
   Which brings me to the case of the Royal Botanical Gardens. My second day here – after 11 hours of much needed sleep that one would think would have rendered my brain functional – I asked about directions down to The Rocks, the oldest part of the city. I asked at the nice young man at the desk how I could get to 83 George Street, near The Rocks. His face was blank.
   “The Rocks?” He asked.
   “Yes, The Rocks. I think it’s down by the Opera House? Down near the harbor?”
   “Ooooh – yeah, The Rocks. Well, the train is the quickest, but you have to switch at Town Hall to another line to get there.”
   He looked at me with – what? – regret? Sympathy? He could read my disability.
   “Or you could take the bus. You can catch it right over there, across the street. Goes straight down there. Take you awhile, though.” More sympathy.
   “Oh. Well … what about walking? Is it far?”
   “Walk? You want to walk? It’s about half an hour. All you do is …”
   And I didn’t even hear the rest. Pure gibberish.
   The solution: Googlemaps. Looked simple enough. I printed it out. I walked to the door of the hotel, stepped out onto the curb and hailed a cab.
   Sigh.
   So, like most days I’ve spent here, once I was dropped off at the Rocks, I walked nearly all day. And decided instead of trying to catch a bus, or figure out the train, I would walk back to the hotel through the Royal Botanical Gardens. I had my map. And there was another one right there by the entrance gate.  Go kitty-corner across the park, and out through the Woolloomooloo Gate on Cowper Wharf Roadway, and up those steps, and down those, and a quick left then a quick right, then onto Macleay, and I’m back.
   Right.
   I still haven’t figured out that the harbor really is north of the city. Until I conquer that bit of information, maps will probably continue to be nothing more than mysterious drawings. The directory through the Royal Botanical Gardens was never clear to me, and although I thought I was going in the direction (does anyone really ever think they’re going in the wrong direction?) I was not. There is the Palm House and Tropical Center. Then around the bend to the … Palm House and Tropical Center. Finally, I was close to the Macquarie Street gate, and, by that time, knew it was the wrong way for sure, and asked someone for directions.
   “I need to get the hell out of this park.”
   She stared. “Well, you are. Macquarie is right there.”
   “No, no. I need to get out of here … at the … Wooomooomooo…. That gate.” I pointed to my pitiful map.
   “Oh. Well, that’s where I’m going if you’d like to follow me.”
   Sydneysiders walk fast. But I got out at the right gate, down the steps, across the street, down two blocks, up the steps, etc., etc. and all that.

St. Mary's Cathedral.

   The thing about the Royal Botanical Gardens is that a whole lot of interesting things are in or around them, notably the Government House, the State Library, Parliament House, the Mint Building, St. Mary’s Cathedral, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Hyde Park is adjacent, as well, yet another expanse of green to navigate.
   The Royal Botanical Gardens actually started out as the Governor’s land. The RBG portion was farmed originally, but poor soil, rats and planting at the wrong season messed up those yields, so the servant who was farming them found land farther west, and Governor Macquarie decided he and his wife would have traditional English gardens. They built all kinds of high walls, and used land (The Domain, or “Desmesne”) as a buffer between their home and the penal colony. But they weren’t above using inmate labor; in 1816, convicts declared Mrs. Macquarie’s Road complete. Gov. Macquarie liked rules and regulations, though, so no one was allowed in the park. As time passed, he allowed people of good standing to use the green space. And now it is a public reserve, Macquarie’s residence now a museum, The Government House. It’s situated just south of Bennelong Point, where the Sydney Opera House stands.

Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbor from the Royal Botanical Gardens.

   The next time I wandered into the RBG, I was with my hostel roommate Scott. This time I kept to the outer perimeter of the park, on the sea walk which borders Farm Cove, the inlet between the Opera House and the terminus of Mrs. Macquarie’s Road. We walked by the carved wall that was carved after Queen Elizabeth II arrived Australia via Farm Cove, the first reigning monarch to stand on Australian soil. We walked all the way up and around and go to … Mrs. Macquarie’s Road. And a little further down the way, to the Palm House and Tropical Center. Haven’t I been here before? This time, though, I found my way back and saved face as a tour guide. Along the way, Scott pointed out the bats, which are really flying foxes. Think Corgis with wings. Cute, yet somehow sinister with those leathery things, and the little claw on the tip.  They make an inordinate amount of noise. I was a bit disappointed that the call wasn’t from some exotic bird native to Aussie-land. And then we were accosted by cockatoos. Which was Scott’s fault because he saw a woman feeding them and wanted to do it, too, and before you know it, I had one on my head.  Not long after that, I was done with the Royal Botanical Gardens.

Bats. The red furry things are bat. Ok, flying foxes. Whatever.

   The Art Gallery of New South Wales stands in the part of the RBG that is still referred to as The Domain. Before attempting another excursion that went anywhere near the gardens, I consulted my guide to Sydney, ascertained the correct train station, looked at the maps again and yet again, and set off. To make sure I knew where I was going, I asked the nice ticket agent at the St. James train station which direction I should go on the way out. He pointed out the way.
   “Up the steps here onto Macquarie (Macquarie again!) then right, and you can cut across the park if you like, it’s shorter.”
   “Oh, no, I get lost when I cut across parks.”
   He looked baffled. Probably my American accent.
   Up the steps … uh … left on Macquarie? Or right? Well, there are all those museums … left. It’s a left. 

   I should have known something was up when I went by Martin Place, which is a stop in the Central Business District, which is south of The Domain, but I thought nothing of it, possibly because I was distracted by a large group camping out in the mall area that is synonymous with corporate Australia: Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Reserve Bank of Australia, Macquarie Bank, and other powerful corporations are headquartered there.
   A 99% demonstration had been assembled in solidarity with their American friends on Wall Street, protesting the same sorts of things that aren’t nearly as prevalent in Australia – yet. And that’s the way these people want to keep it. They resent how their country has started to emulate the U.S., particularly how company CEO’s pay keeps increasing. The demonstrators I spoke with really weren’t fans of former PM John Howard or his buddy George W. Bush, either. Interesting that these folks are protesting, even though their country has been relatively unscathed by the current economic conditions and has about five percent unemployment, as opposed to our nearly 10 percent. They didn’t have the real estate debacle that we enjoyed, either. Yet they’re quite sensitive to going along with what they consider bad examples, most notably those on Wall Street.

More shouting needed - like those Americans.

 “Yeah, we’re goin’ good but we need more shouting and chants, I think. I saw the Americans on the news the other night and they shout and chant a lot.”
   I hung around probably too long, and kept walking to the left, finally coming across the Australia Museum, which houses the natural history type of stuff. I knew that this was not necessarily close to the art gallery. So once again, I ask for directions.
   “Not that I don’t want to visit this museum as well … but I’m looking for the Art Gallery of New South Wales.”
   Blank stare.
   “The art gallery, you say?”
   “Yes.”
   “Well, it’s out the door, go left, and you’ll find it just down Art Gallery Way. In The Domain, you know.”
   Yes, I know. But left? I had been going left. Ooooh … left. Which is really right. Oh.
I head into The Domain, even though I know as soon as I walk into a green space I’m done for. And I find the signs for … the fucking Palm House and Tropical Center. This can’t be right. I go the opposite way.

Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Not where I wanted to go.

  And end up at the Conservatorium of Music. Which is quite close to the Government House. Down by the Opera House, almost. Not anywhere near the gallery. How the hell did I do that?
I am beaten down by green space. I accept defeat once more.

   Morning often brings optimism with it, so I set off again in search of the art gallery. This time I went right instead of left on Macquarie, and saw St. Mary’s cathedral (where I stopped for a rest the day before, just before I got lost in the RBG once again.) With only one wrong turn, I found the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where admission is free and one can view classic European and Australian art, as well as contemporary Australian art. There was also an exhibit of post-World War I German art, but I decided to stick to the free stuff, of which there was plenty.

Art Gallery of New South Wales.

    It’s tough to visit an art museum in one day, and I decided to cruise through the galleries. Like the maps I’ve used, the galleries had quite a lot of missing information on their paintings, especially the contemporary Australian galleries. Little interpretation or history was given for many of them, and I got frustrated looking at work that might have been even more pleasing or disturbing with the right info. I took a minute to chat with one of the docents about the upcoming Picasso exhibition (opening November 12), and she urged me to be sure to visit the Aboriginal Gallery as well. “Just down the escalators all the way, and on the left.”
    Easy. I went down the first escalator, stopped for lunch (an average Caesar salad) and then down the next escalator. And the next. And yet one more. And down there on the left appeared to be a theater … but if I took a hard left, I saw a gallery. With art that blew my socks off.
    I do not know a lot about Aboriginal art. What I do know is that the original inhabitants of Australia are thought to be the most ancient race of humans and that they speak of the time of creation as “dream time.” My perception, from what little I’ve read, is that these people have a true understanding of the “all is one” concept, and act according to those principals. The tribes were nomadic, and some still are. Their story is similar to the American Indians, in that many tribes were made extinct by murderous attacks and diseases against which they had no immunity. No photographs were allowed in the gallery, not even those taken without a flash. I can’t even begin to explain the impact all the work had on me, both contemporary and traditional pieces. But I can share the text of the last piece I viewed, a piece created in 2009 by Vernon AhKee, born 1967. It is a large canvas (5’ x 5’, I’m guessing) that is painted completely white, with large letters stenciled on it – a poem in which all the letters run together as though it’s one entire word per line … here’s the text of the poem:

In the desert I saw a creature
naked bestial who
squatting upon the ground
held his heart in his hands
and ate of it.
I said is it good friend
it is bitter bitter he answered
but I like it because it is bitter
and because it is my heart.