A Guest Dispatch from Dianne
We had a week in Sydney, which is not the capital of Australia. Lance didn’t know this. This was my third visit. I have a friend from my Peace Corps days who moved down to Oz on a two-year contract around 1975. She is still there—but that’s a story for another time.
Australia, like the U.S., is best understood when you start traveling across it. A four-and-a-half-hour flight took us from Darwin on the northern coast to Sydney on the east coast—from the sparsely populated Northern Territory to a city of more than five million people. Quite the contrast.
Compared with New York, Sydney and Singapore gave us a striking impression of cleanliness and modernity. Both have their share of historic buildings, but we were struck by the newer infrastructure, like subway stations filled with artwork instead of rats fighting over pizza.
There was inventive architecture, like The Cutaway, and a fascinating mix of Asian and Western influences.
There’s a lot to do in Sydney. We ate passionfruit gelato and rode the harbour ferries. We toured the Opera House, then returned one evening for a fabulous production of My Fair Lady, with Nathaniel Parker as Henry Higgins—a treat for any Inspector Lynley fans among you. Lance has never watched it, although being in PA school has left him little time for television.
We also saw two photography exhibits at the State Library, explored the Royal Botanic Garden, visited my friends, and spent some time watching ibises in a local park.
For my personal elective, we visited a Sydney Costco. My friends aren’t members and had never been inside one; they were overwhelmed by the size and the chaos. Just parking took moral courage and fortitude. Most of the merchandise was familiar, including Halloween and Christmas decorations. A giant bag of whelks1, however, gave me pause.
Another notable observation: For the first time in all my travels, we didn’t change any money. All tapping, all the time, for purchases large and small. For us, at least, the cashless society had arrived. We didn’t need cash for tips, either; tipping isn’t generally expected in Singapore or Australia. A much nicer, more humane system. Regular unleaded gasoline worked out to about US$6.50 a gallon.
Then it was time to go home and reclaim our missing Thursday.
On the way to Singapore, time zones and the International Date Line had swallowed a day. We left JFK on Wednesday night and arrived on Friday morning. There was no Thursday. At all.
On the way back, that lost day was returned to us as an interminable Sunday. We left Sydney at 11 in the morning, flew across the Pacific Ocean for 12 hours, and arrived at LAX at 6 that same morning—five hours before we left. Lance and I parted ways in Los Angeles for nonstop flights home to New York and Raleigh, respectively, both arriving in the early evening.
Then came the challenge of readjusting to a sleep-wake cycle almost exactly opposite to the one we’d spent three weeks in. It was not pretty.
Jet lag is real.
- Whelks or welks are any of several carnivorous sea snail species with a swirling, tapered shell. Many are eaten by humans, and supposedly have a mild, sweet, briny taste. I will never know. ↩
Series 21 concludes Sunday.
