On the Ghan

I am typing this entry while seated in the dining car of the mighty Ghan, a luxury passenger train traveling from Adelaide to Darwin right through the center of the continent. As i look out the window and a flat, brush covered countryside reminicent of the mesquite country around Sonoita, Arizona, I am reflecting on how we got here

We left Gloucester last Friday for a drive to the airport at Newcastle. It was a long and winding journey, as is every drive in this country. On the east coast of Australia there is no such thing as a level, straight road, and almost as rare are stretches where the pavement is in good repair. Once we got to the airport we boarded the jet for Adelaide, a two and a half hour flight that actually served a meal of sorts. (American airliners take note: it is of small expense to provide something to your passengers beyond a miserly package of stale pretzels and it goes a long way towards improving the disposition of your customers.) We spent two nights in Adelaide waiting for the train in what was purported to be a five star hotel and took in a few sights, including the Adelaide art museum and the Library of South Australia. The latter was particularly impressive with the standard lofty reading room and interesting exhibits of documents and publications pertaining to Australian history. The downtown area where we stayed is a bit rowdy, though, and during my early morning walk on Saturday I passed crowds of thirty-something revelers who had apparently been at it all night. The trash strewn on the streets from these folks was incredible, and before I returned to the hotel at sunrise an army of street sweepers and leaf blowers were busily cleaning up the mess. It is a never ending job because the same thing happened Sunday morning as well

MUCH LATER: The train passed through miles and miles of outback terrain, with the parched contryside getting drier as we moved north. The brunch in the dining car proved very adequat. I passed on a traditional English breakfast of bacon, sausage, beans, egg, toast and a fried tomato to settle on a chicken breast served on basmati rice. Superior to last night's dinner, I ate it all and eagerly awaited the off train experiences that we signed up for at the beginning of the trip. Jayne and I chose to do the "Explorer" package consisting of several sites in Alice Springs, a city of about 28,000 in the heart of Australia. It was surprising to see civilzation after so many uninhabited miles and we disembarked at the train station to board a passenger bus that took us to the oldest European built site in the Northern Territory: the Alice Spings telegraph station. When my son Benjamin was a young adult he confessed to us that during his childhood he tired of being hauled to "crappy frontier towns" during our family vacations. It is true I overdid it back then, preferring the ambiance of false fronted wooden buidlings lining dusty streets in various western states we traveled through, and that Benjamin could not appreciate my obsessions because he had not grown up watching "Gunsmoke" on television as I did in the early 1960s. The Alice Springs telegraph station was a collection of buildings constructed in

the nineteenth century, a small community built around the only available water source to service the trans-continental telegraph line which parallels the present day route of this railroad from Adelaide to Darwin. The tour guide explained that the first explorers mistakenly thought that a stagnant pond in a dry riverbed was actually the site of a spring, and that the person who located the station named it after the wife of his employer. Unfortunately, Alice never visited the place because she could not bear travel by camel back (the only option in this parched land) and so as a result "Alice Springs" is really niether "Alice" nor a "Spring." This did not stop the locals from erecting a statue at the train station to commemorate the camel journey she never took!

Other stops on the day tour were at a reptile center where an active, chirpy bloke who spoke with machine-gun rapidity told us about fifty times that the dangers to humans from Australia's notorious venomous snakes has been severely exaggerated, but that the danger from salt water crocodiles was certainly very real. I believed him. The last stop on the tour was at the Alice Springs School of the Air, an institution founded in 1951 to provide distance education to isolated outback children by means of a ham radio broadcast. The service continues today via the internet, but it was interesting to think that these people had pioneered the idea of distance learning seventy years before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Today's off train trip will be to Katherine Gorge where we will board a tour boat and sail out among the crocodiles. Should I survivel, I will report the results in my next entry.

The Kindness of Strangers

I am reminded of the line uttered by Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire" for today's essay, primarily because within the last twenty-four hours I have seen the best that the people of this country can offer a traveler. I have also seen some of the most mediocre that the country can offer, but more of that in a minute.

the first incicent happened in Gloucester when i had come to town with ronald on a grocery run. while he was occupied with his business I went up to a streetside ATM machine to get some cash out of our checking account. All was going well with the transaction until the end when the machine said "please take your card,' and it made the mechanical noise to eject the plastic into my waiting hand. unfortunately, the device jammed, and the card was barely visible, just peeking out from the slot. Had I my pocket knife, I would have easily pried the thing forward with no worries, but my thick fingers and very closley trimmed fingernails did not allow a grip on the edge of the card and it suddlenly was sucket into the bowels of the machine, and the transaction canceled. You can imagine my distress, and I was so upset that I did not notice the armored car people who had just pulled up and entered the bank. I followed them in and an officious, nasty woman was unlocking the door to the back end of the machine for the guards. I quickly explianed my plight, but the bank woman was completely unhelpful, assuring me that there was no way she could access the guts of the ATM and that I was out of luck. I quickly turned to the guards and begged them to help me, and a big, brawny fellow listened to my story with no small degree of skepticism. When I told him I was a visiting American and would be severly disadvantaged by losing the card, I could see he was yeilding and finally he asked my name. I not only told him that, but I described my card to the gnat's eyelash, and he turned from me to the machine. As quick as I have written these lines he got the card and handed it to me, after which I warmly clasped his hand and said, "Thank you, mate!" What a great guy!

My second experience was much more pleasant. I have been a member of the Masonic fraternity for over two decades and uring our visit here I noted that the town of Gloucester has an active lodge. Furthermore, I noted that they meet on the first Wednesday of the month, which coinicided with the last day we were going to be in town prior to leaving for our rail adventure. As I result, I showed up at the Gloucester lodge on the night of a full moon with more than a little apprehension of how I would be received. I am fully paid up on my dues to my home lodge in Bozeman, Montana, Gallatin #6, but it has beeen some time since I actually visited a lodge. I was unsure of the grips and passwords necessary to gain admission, but I needn't have worried. The brother who met me at the door was friendly and his inquiries were met by me with the correct responses (well, almost correct). What followed was a fantastic meeting with a group of fine fellows who were excited to be hosting a visiting Yank. In addition to presenting me with a beautiful lapel pin theyalso placed at the Master's table for the post meeting meal. It was a wonderful experience and made me glad that I have continued my association with the fraternity.

Peregrinations

"An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day"

I cannot find the attribute for the above quotation, but I can readily testify to the truth of it. I have been a steady morning walker for years; twenty five years of strolling back and forth to work while I was employed, and four years plus of dawn patrols since retiring. I took periodic breaks from this regimen, especially when I was struck low by the West Nile Virus in October 2021, but for the most part I have put in a couple of miles every sunrise whenever possible. My walking companion in Tucson, Rick, is as convinced of the health benefits as I am, and I am delighted to report that Ronald has joined me in this practice during our visit here in Gloucester.

Although their lovely home is well within walking distance of the small town, Ronald and Jane cannot safely make the journey on foot because the narrow channel of Thunderbolt Way forces one to walk inches off the pavement and much too close for safety. This unfortunate

feature only lasts about 100 yards, after which there is an excellent pathway leading safely alongside the road, but that 100 yards could get you killed here easily, especially with locals who seem to be in a much greater hurry than I would care to drive. Additionally, a common enough occurence here at dawn for a heavy fog to blanket this valley making a combination of hazards difficult for a waker to survive that 100 yards. As a result, Ronald gets behind the wheel of his "ute" and we drive the ridiculously short distance to the Gloucester District Park, a large green swath of cricket ovals, swimming pools, and paved walking paths that wind along the river and over open meadows. It is a great place to walk, and each morning we encounter many

locals exercising their dogs or otherwise doing the same as us: trying to prolong our septuagenarian lives. (Actually, I am a few months shy of qualifying for that label, but Ronald isn't.) Along the path are a variety of brand new excercise machines that use one's own body weight for push ups, pull ups, pull downs, leg extensions, and other tasks that can help a walker keep his or her upper torso in as good a shape as the legs. Overall it is a first class park, and pretty as a picture. Added to the novelty of such a large park in such a small town is the signage, which to this American seems particularly whimsical. We will begin our train journey next week and will have to forgo our walks, unless one gains access to the top of the passenger cars and leaps from carriage to carriage ala Jesse James. That seems a lot more dangerous than that 100 yards! As it stands we will likely have one more walk before our drive to the Newcastle airport on Friday, and then perhaps a few strolls around the Adelaide CBD prior to boarding the Ghan for Darwin. Regardless of where we walk in the mornings, I am fully expecting that all day blessing.

A Minor Beef

An old saying advises that one should not eat seafood in a place where you cannot see the sea. It could also hold true in reverse: do not eat beef where you CAN see the sea. This lesson was brought home to me over the course of two drives we have made from this delightful mountain town to the Pacific coast, and the pleasures of these trips thoroughly outweighs any negative vibes brought on by eating a dodgy hamburger.

Our first trip to the coast was a drive to Crowdy Head, a promintory jutting out into the sea featuring a small, picturesque light house. Like all drives in New South Wales, the way was

neither straight nor level, traversing pavement that had last seen an upgrade when Robert Menzies was prime minister. The scenery was fantastic, though, with rolling hills, thick forests, and open cow paddocks that provided an endless array of beautiful views. We stood at the lighthouse and gazed out at the sea, hoping that an errant whale or two might breach during their migrations north from the Anarctic. The place reminded me a bit of another lighthouse we have visited at Byron Bay, the easternmost point of this continent, because there was no development visible on the shoreline to the north and south. The quiet rhythm of the waves always puts me in mind of the eternal, with the ocean providing the heartbeat of our planet. From that point we retraced ourselves to what can only be described as a large metal shed situated along side the road where a oyster market and takeaway stand served up some pretty good fish and chips. There were also at the parking lot of this establishment rack after rack of oyster nursery beds drying in the sun, made more interesting from the fact that I had tried my first oysters just moments before inspecting them. We then made the drive home over the same route as the morning's jaunt. It was a lot of fun and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Our second expedition yesterday was over much of the same highway to the costal city of Forster, which reminded me of a miniature Manly with high rise apartments and busy streets. Here Ronald and Jane had some shopping to do, primarily to procure food and litter for the service of the real masters of their home, two cats named Sylvia and Sebastian. They also stopped at a sporting goods store where I purchsed a nice small pair of binoculars which we immediately employed at another seaside overlook which provided an opportunity to look for whales. Alas, there were none of the Leviathans to be seen and we adjourned to a dockside cafe.

Hamburgers are a common enough meal in Australia, and the country hosts such familiar American franchises as McDonalds and Burger King (here known as "Hungry Jacks"). When ordering a hamburger at a pub or independent restaurant, the burgers take a different turn from the plain Yankee model with toppings that include (among other things) sliced beets. Generally speaking these Australian interpretations of the sandwich are quite tasty, but at the aforementioned cafe the opposite was encountered. Instead of ordering fish and chips again (like any sane person would have done) I ordered a hamburger that proved inedible. There were no beet slices, but I suspect there was little beef in the burger as well, and it was smothered in a sweet barbeque sauce that did not do much to improve the flavor. A mild case of indigestion resulted from my culinary escapade, but it did not last long and shortly after returning home I was back on my feet, wiser for the experience: always eat fish at a place that specializes in serving it, and if ever in doubt about the burgers at other establishements, order the chicken schnitzel instead. I have rarely had these flattened, breaded chicken fillets fail me at any pub where I have ordered them. (And yes, they have KFC here too, but the schitzels at just about anywhere else are going to be much superior).

Dartz

Regular readers of this blog know that I enjoy a game of darts around the house, primarily because it is the one barroom sport one can play without a competitor. The game's origins are murky, dating back to the Middle Ages, but the modern version was was invented by a carpenter from Lancashire named Brian Gamlin in 1896. To be played properly, one must hit the numbered pie slices on the target in combinations to count down from 301 to zero, but that method is beyond this writer who cannot do math in his head. A much more simple game is called "cricket" which (when played by this American at least) requires the player to hit the 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, and 15 in sequence and exiting the game with a bullseye. This is the game we have played at Ronald and Jane's estate for the past two days. We had some construction to perform prior to play, however.

Part of the pleasures of hanging around here and doing not much of anything is the daily wild bird feedings that Ronald performs. He buys bird seet at the market and distributes it every afternoon

on the driveway leading to his large outdoor shed.The birds come down from the trees to peck away at the seeds, making a noise like soft popcorn popping while they feed. They are truly beautiful, with the Crimson Rosellas and Rainbow Lorakeets being my own personal favorites. There are other varieties: magpies, crested pigeons, and ducks. They all gather together, but then they segregate themselves into groups, much like kids at a junior high school cafeteria, and who knows who are the "cool" ones here. Watching them from the open door of the shed is really fun, and one afternoon a magpie simply stood in front of me and complained in the most varied vocal fashion for about five minutes. What an incredible range of songs and noises they make! Unlike American magpies, who simply squawk, these fellows have a combination of whistle and hum that is truly remarkable.

Hardly content with just bird watching, Ronald and I set out yesterday to build a dart board backing mount out of some spare wood that was lying about the shed. The wood came from an old deck that was dismantled and the boards were as hard as a rock. We laid out three vertical boards and

then attached a series of horizonal boards to them, having to drill pilot holes prior to setting in some screws with the driver. Due to the stupidity of the builders, the drill seemed to be working overtime trying to get a hole through the wood, but towards the very end we figured out the proper speed adjustment for the drill and got a pretty good laugh at our previous efforts. The resulting mount was as heavy as a refrigerator and we had to think for a while how we were going to mount it on to the metal walls of the shed. Ronald came up with the idea of placing two boards on the exterior of the shed and then putting bolts through the wood to hold it in place. The results are impressive, as the photo shows, with the dart board mounted strong enough to withstand a hurricane. We have had several games of cricket since, and it promises to be a pleasant reminder of our stay once we leave this delightful place next month.

Golden Gaytime

Yesterday we toured the Mountain Maid gold mine operation near the townsite of Copeland, about fifteen miles or so from Gloucester. The discovery of gold in the area dates back to 1876 when word of mineral riches caused a rush of miners to establish an instant town in a rocky, remote gully. As usual, the placer gold was quickly washed out by panning and sluice boxes along the small creek and the era of corporate mining began shortly thereafter. The mines were worked in the area on and off until the 1930s, and active work did not resume until an owner from Newcastle decided that spending weekends in the bush crushing quartz would be a great getaway for him and a few mates. It was the remainder of their operation that we saw yesterday and, like Mitch McConnell at a press conference, it was a moment frozen in time.

We had made reservations for an official tour earlier in the week and as a result we were met at the parking area by our guide, Matt, and his two volunteer assistants, Anna and Danny. They led us through what I can only describe as a jungle but what they called a "dry rain forest" because there

were no palm trees. There were plenty of other trees, though, including one which had very broad leaves about the size of a Frisbee that we were warned to avoid. Apparently these leaves are covered with very tiny spines that actually sting any unfortunate who might brush up against them. We all had on jackets and long pants, so we were protected somewhat, but I could not help but to imagine how hostile that environment must have been for ancient Aboriginies who did not have the benefit of our protective clothing.

The tour was a combination history lesson and botany lecture, and both were quite enjoyable. The cabin where the latter-day miners stayed during their weekend labors was dark and primitive, not exactly the sort of weekend recreational site most would choose. The rock crushing trip hammers were very impressive, and Danny fired up one so we could see it in operation. A simple device, the ore crusher looked like it could handle rocks up to about the size of a softball. The forest was very dark, partly because the trees were so thick, but also because the creek gully was so deep and the walls on either side so steep that it was hard to imagine sunlight every reaching the bottom. After we were on our way we had a picnic lunch at an overlook of the Barrington Tops, a mountain range that looked a lot like the Ouachita Mountains of Western Arkansas. Higher than the Ozarks, the Ouachitas feature the same rolling forested slopes but with more rocky outcrops. The view was splendid, the lunch was delicious, and the temperatures quite chilly at 3,300 feet above sea level so we did not linger.

A short drive brought us back Gloucester where we stopped at the grocery store and I purchased some delicious ice cream bars that share the title of this essay. Today I believe we will do little more than assist Ronald in building a back stop for his dart board and watch his daily feeding of the wild birds in the area. There are some truly beautiful birds here and I hope we can get some good photographs this afternoon.

Return to Oz

I type these lines in Gloucester, New South Wales, a small cattle and dairy community where our friends are hosting us for the next couple of weeks. We arrived last Friday in Sydney and spent that day trying to get our biological clocks reset at a hotel near the Central train station and visiting a few places that we remembered from earlier trips. The flight across the globe was rather easy this time, primarily because Jayne and I both flew first class and were able to lie down in a narrow bed for as long as we wished. The food was not particularly to my liking, but I appreciated the bottomless champagne glass.

The train to Gloucester from Sydney station was four hours long, but quite pleasant, allowing us to relax in the first class coach while watching the countryside roll by. It takes a long time to get out of the heavily urbanized Sydney area, but once that is accomplished the forests, meadows, and farms pass in an enless series of green foliage. Once we got to Gloucester, our friends, Ronald and Jane, met us at the staion and whisked us away to their country estate just outside of town.

Their home is beautiful, with a wrap around porch, four bedrooms, two living rooms, and a swimming pool and spa. The home is simply beautiful, with space every where you look. The day after our arrival, we were taken to a craft fair held on the grounds of the local park. Much like such affairs in the states. there were shade structures erected over merchants offering a variety of goods from hemp clothing to macrame pot holders. The weather was beautiful, slightly overcast with temperatures in the sixties, I estimate. Not bad for the middle of winter.

Today we will drive a few miles outside of town to visit and tour an abandoned gold mine. Apparently there was quite a strike here in the early years and all that remains of the mining camp called Copeland is the operating infastructure of a large mine. The forest has reclaimed all the land taken up for stores, houses, and pubs that were hastily erected here in 1876.