A Journal of Winter in the Southern Hemisphere

The Decision

The decision to travel to Australia bore all the classic hallmarks of my decision-making
process: a spontaneous impulse followed by an afternoon of furious logistics. By
dinnertime I had airline bookings, six hotels scattered across the southeast, the Red
Centre, and Tasmania, multiple car rentals, and a lattice of domestic flights. And voilà —
I was ready to trade the baking heat of Bakersfield for the winter of the southern
hemisphere. An Australian summer has never tempted me; an Australian winter, on the
other hand, is my kind of season.

Sydney — Arrival

I landed in Sydney at seven in the morning and, defying jet lag with the stubbornness of
a man who has paid for the day, dedicated it to the city: the fabled Opera House and a
climb up the storied Harbour Bridge.

The Harbour Bridge was completed during the Depression for about six million pounds,
and it exemplifies the unyielding resilience of the Australian people — a chapter of lore
embedded deep in the national psyche, much as the Empire State Building, another
child of the Depression, stands as testament to American grit.

The Opera House, famously, was conceived by its Danish architect, Jørn Utzon, who
arrived at those soaring shells while contemplating the segments of a peeled orange.
Now, I am from Kern County. I have seen my share of oranges, and a fair number of
their peels, and not once have they whispered architecture to me. I don’t know what
Utzon was smoking, but it was mighty good stuff. The ledger tells a more familiar story:
a budgeted seven million dollars ballooned to over a hundred million, and the planned
four years of construction stretched to fourteen — a virtual certainty in today’s
construction business, where timelines and budgets are rough estimates deployed
chiefly to bait the investors.

The Park Hyatt, a perennial stomping ground for British celebrities, offers pretty
exclusive views of the majestic Opera House, while the ferries below continually shuttle
enthralled tourists to the surrounding attractions.

The Blue Mountains — Katoomba

Early the next morning — technically Day One in Sydney proper — I headed to
Katoomba, a town of natural beauty nestled in the lap of the Blue Mountains. A
pilgrimage to Katoomba mandates three rites: viewing the Three Sisters, carved by wind
and water from the sandstone escarpment; admiring Katoomba Falls (the name itself
derives from an Aboriginal word for shining, falling water); and an up-and-down on the
Giant Staircase, some nine hundred steps descending nearly eight hundred feet into the
Jamison Valley. My quadriceps registered a formal complaint on the way back up; it was
overruled.

The two-hour train ride back to Sydney became a minor adventure when, halfway
through, the train stopped dead — a “network failure,” the announcement said. Such
failures, I am told, are not unusual, a product of aging infrastructure and long-running
labor disputes. Every country, it seems, has its own version of deferred maintenance.

The Red Centre — Uluru

After a two-night stint in Sydney, I boarded a three-hour flight to Ayers Rock in the
Northern Territory. The 2,500-kilometer journey offered a monotonous, mesmerizing
view of the land below: a Mars-like surface, red and cracked and inhospitable to life.
Then, descending, I caught my first aerial glimpse of the sacred behemoth the Anangu
people have revered for some thirty thousand years. Uluru rises about 1,140 feet above
the plain, runs nearly ten kilometers around, and continues for kilometers more beneath
the surface — an iceberg of stone in an ocean of desert.

I rented a car at the airport and drove to the hotel with a fair amount of trepidation, this
being my inaugural attempt at driving on the left side of the road. The rental car and I
reached an uneasy truce somewhere around the second roundabout. That evening, the
desert rewarded the effort with a spectacular sunset at the Dune Top viewing area — the
rock smoldering orange, then crimson, then a bruised purple as the light died.
Early the next morning I drove some fifty kilometers to Kata Tjuta for the Valley of the
Winds, a hike of a couple of hours through domes of conglomerate rock that make a
man feel agreeably small. On the way back, I paid my respects at the base of mighty
Uluru and took in its majesty up close — a thing photographs flatten and presence
restores.

Tomorrow, I head to Cairns, Queensland, as the adventure continues.

– brij