Australia
The Beginning of the End
NOTE: I wrote and published this story from home in San Francisco three months after I was traveling in Australia, making it significantly retrospective (as opposed to the previous stories in this publication, which were authored concurrently with the visits).
Australia in late February is where the trip truly started to unravel due to COVID-19. I was on an adventure around the world smack in the middle of a global pandemic. We were challenged from the very beginning, including an epic storm (Force 12 on a scale of 12) while crossing the Atlantic, as well as a gastrointestinal virus outbreak on board, which nearly prevented us from porting in Polynesia after crossing the Pacific. While my fellow passengers had been remarkably game to ride all of these waves, when we reached Australia, it felt as if we were desperately trying to outrun coronavirus, yet quickly running out of safe places to go.
Frankly, it has been difficult for me to relive the experience, review photos, and retell anecdotes — to remember in this public format. But I want to give the final places and people I encountered on this trip the same respect they offered me, and so I’m inspired finish the stories…
Sydney was the first Australian port, and although I was more than eager to run off the gangway onto the continent to explore, that morning and the evening before, I had had to say goodbye to a number of good friends from the ship who were scheduled to disembark there. While sad to part ways, we all kind of knew they were fortunate to be heading home while planes, trains, and automobiles were still functioning. The trip wouldn’t be the same after that, having lost these mates and wondering when and how the rest of us would get home, too.
But, Sydney immediately grabbed me with its aliveness and I wanted to feel that in full, especially as COVID encroached, so I set off to walk as much of the city as I could. “Sydneysiders” seemed to be living so well here — do they die well, too? Do they even want to think about it? In urban areas all over the world, people are often further removed from the rituals, experiences, and often harsh realities of death. People mostly die in hospitals rather than at home. And cemeteries are being pushed farther and farther outside of cities.
In my limited hours in Sydney, I was truthfully much more interested in the celebrated lifestyle than in end of life. But on my walkabout, I did plan my route in order to pass by a couple of monuments, to see how they stood out or blended in to the lively surrounding environment.
The Anzac Memorial, dedicated to the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) in World War I, stands prominently and proudly in Hyde Park. It was a peaceful scene at the reflecting pool: people lounging under the flanking fig trees, and some Jurassic-looking birds drinking the water. (I later learned these birds are affectionately(?) called “bin chickens” thanks to their ubiquity and fondness for rummaging through city trash cans.) A docent encouraged me to tour the inside of the monument, and while I appreciated the invite, I had much-too-much else to explore that day. Anzac felt a lot like other pleasant, historic memorials you might stroll by in a city park. It added to the tranquil atmosphere without interrupting your experience, which on the average day likely isn’t seeking to contemplate war and death.
But on my way out of Hyde Park, still within sight of Anzac, my attention was arrested by a wholly different type of memorial. Four giant upright bullets and three fallen shells formed a sculpture that you couldn’t ignore — speaking for people who shouldn’t be ignored, but often have been throughout history. YININMADYEMI Thou didst let fall is the work of Tony Albert to acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women who served in the nation’s military. It’s symbolic of Albert’s grandfather’s experience during World War II: Eddie Albert was an Aboriginal soldier and escaped prisoner of war who was then re-captured with six others — three were killed, but four, including Eddie, lived. When Eddie returned home to Australia, he didn’t receive any land like his fellow White service members did. And at that time, Aboriginal lands were still being stolen away.
This most impactful kind of memorial both enhances the experience of site it occupies, as well as your experience of being human.
“I envisage this memorial in Hyde Park to be a special and powerful place for contemplation and remembrance, a space for all our stories to be heard and recognised.” – Tony Albert, 2014
As my time in Sydney ticked by faster and my feet moved slower, I hopped in an Uber to go check out a more residential neighborhood, wanting to get a glimpse of daily life. My driver was a man named Atta, who, after nearly dying several years ago, was more alive than almost anyone I’ve ever met...
I’m not sure how we reached the subject, but Atta shared that he had been a colonel in the Afghan army created by the Americans and NATO. During his service, he was shot in the head and, in his words, “died,” slipping into a coma for six months. His wife was the only one who believed he would come back, and didn’t let the doctors dissuade her. Atta said he woke up in heaven — that’s how he sees his life now since he’s made a full recovery and is “even better” than he was before. He and his wife have 9 children, 3 already going into medicine and a baby on the way. In total, they want 15 daughters and 5 sons (though he already has an 18-seater bus, so acknowledged that more than 16 kids would be problematic for transportation!)
As his story kept unfolding, I felt increasingly in awe. Being an only child, it was nearly impossible for me to imagine his experience being one of 29. I shared almost nothing in common with Atta except that we spent the same 10 minutes together in the same car in the same city. And we’re both humans who want to live until we actually die. I can’t think of anything that makes you feel more appreciative of your own life than an encounter with someone bursting with gratitude for theirs, no matter how different it might seem.
Airlie Beach was the stop after Sydney. We sailed up the east coast of Australia into the Coral Sea, landing at the mainland hub of the famed Whitsunday Islands and Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Since watching the documentary “Chasing Coral” a couple years ago, I’ve felt more intimately aware of the effects of climate change on our oceans. While one feels instantly saddened when watching footage of struggling polar bears on the melting sea ice, coral doesn’t have that same animated, cuddly effect, so feeling connected is more effortful. The emotional nature of the film and the scientists featured in it depict the bleaching of coral reefs as a death, and make you feel a true sense of grief over what is being lost. It brought what is under the sea and out of sight back in to my mind, and I wanted to get a first-hand view from above.
More travel challenges held us up getting into port, but I managed to get the last seat on a fixed-wing plane flight over the GBR. Apparently it was the first clear day in about three weeks, allowing them to take to the sky. And, that ticket I snagged ended up being the co-pilot seat! (Don’t. Touch. Anything.)
The colors, shapes, and patterns of the reef from up in the air were as otherworldly as the environment beneath the water. It stretched out endlessly, which helped me visualize how detrimental the destruction of that vast ecosystem is to the oceans at large, much as the deforestation of the Amazon is to our land and air.
I wished our pilot had provided more information about the current state of the reef, what can be done to help save it, etc. But for that one quick hour above the Earth, I was happy he was focused on flying, making me feel safe enough to take my eyes off of the hundreds of flight instruments in front of me and marvel at the view below me, instead. We don’t grieve anything we don’t love — if everyone were fortunate enough to experience the GBR firsthand, we’d guard it with our lives.
Back on the ground in Airlie Beach, I went to put my feet in the water I had just seen from the sky. My apparently impressive stray-Frisbee return (thanks, Carleton College!) got me into a conversation with a man who is every American’s mental image of an Australian brought to life.
Kim had lived in Airlie Beach before, but was just visiting this time while traveling around and living out of his car. When it’s clear that it’s not a desperate situation, I always want to ask people how they can orient their lives and afford to do that?
Before I could, Kim forthcomingly said that his aunt, who he wasn’t close to, had recently died, and so he had more funds to keep going. He continued, explaining that ultimately his dream was to drive through South America. His favorite auntie died when we was just 10 years old — her name was Jan Moran (sp?) and she had written a travel guide called “From Peru to Bolivia” back in the 1970s. Kim wanted to take her route, honoring her memory and adventurous, nomadic spirit. I told him about the meaning of my own trip, and that I hoped he got to continue his travels and live out his aunt’s legacy (a bit naive still to how COVID was going to shatter all of our plans).
The clear skies and crystal waters in Sydney and Airlie Beach almost made me forget that when we embarked in January, the fires in Australia were raging, and we had been hyper-conscious of the devastation to the land, citizens, and wildlife. Then, as the flames cooled, coronavirus flared — we were still traveling, but got hit with the second major revision to our itinerary, canceling all of our original ports in Asia, which was a massive segment of the trip. To complete our time in Australia, we would continue along the east coast to our scheduled port in Yorkeys Knob, and then add the city of Darwin in the Northern Territory.
Yorkeys Knob switched my focus from ocean life to the terrestrial. There, the hilltop village of Kurunda was purposely built for visitors, and though much of it now feels like a tourist trap, back in the 1970s, artists and musicians set up shop in a “rainforest market” that retains much of the original oddball authenticity (and tie-die). I spent my time here trying to better get to know the indigenous people and animals — treasures of Australia that make this country uniquely important, fascinating, and endearing, and are always at risk of being lost.
I was in the right place at the right time, and got to experience a dance performance by the Mayi Wunba intergenerational cultural group, who are all descendants from the Mona Mona Aboriginal community near Kuranda. They storytell through movement, capturing and passing down their ancestral history and traditions, like hunting and gathering wild honey. At the end, I got to talk to the dancers and ask them about their distinctive body paint, which they still make themselves out of natural materials. This group reminded me of the one I met in Fiji, where the littlest boys were looking up to the teenagers, and the young men learning from their elders. It feels like such a valuable way to keep communal memories alive, and so different from how the generations typically interact in our Western society.
Preserving cultural heritage is inextricable from conserving natural resources. I felt privileged to get to interact with two symbols of Australian biodiversity that exist nowhere else in the world— creatures so ingrained in our imaginations that I could hardly believe they were real, even when I was holding and feeding them!
Ecologists estimate that nearly a BILLION wild animals were killed in the bushfires. And populations are still struggling to survive with so much of their territory burned and little to no food and water available. Koalas are already considered “vulnerable,” with some pushing for them to be labeled “endangered.” Their numbers may have dropped by as much as two-thirds in less than 20 years, and they could be come extinct in the next 30 years at the current rate of habitat destruction, both natural and man-inflicted.
Similarly, the fires left threatened wallaby species on the brink of starvation.
I can only hope that this recent disaster lights a metaphorical fire under the world’s bum to stand up and start treating climate change like the true threat it is to life as we know it.
There was one more classically Australian animal — and one almost comically Australian man — I wanted to honor before I left the country…
Darwin, our last port in Australia, luckily was an ideal spot to go hunting for crocodiles, just like the late Steve Irwin. From the outfit to the enthusiasm, I’ve always adored The Croc Hunter (as evidenced by a supremely unsexy Halloween costume I wore in college). His passing is among only a couple of celebrity deaths that truly affected me, and still do.
The open-air boat trip was led by impressively professional guides who represented my Irwin-ized vision of Australia perfectly. And we were greeted almost immediately by an enormous freshwater crocodile called Stumpy (crikey!) I felt my adrenaline surge being so vulnerably close to such a powerful beast. The guides knew all the crocs we encountered on the river — their individual personalities, preferences, histories, relationships, etc. They exercised them by making them jump for the snacks, careful not to overfeed so that they would continue natural hunting behaviors. The whole time, all I could think about was how much more I respected Steve Irwin. Crazy as he was for leaping into croc-infested waters, he put his life on the line for these animals he loved so much, hoping the rest of the world could learn to love, respect, and protect them, too.
Back in town in Darwin, we saw signs (literally) of coronavirus getting closer and closer. There were huge printed notices in the grocery store informing customers of the exact date and time that a person known to have been infected with COVID-19 shopped there. I met a public health nurse fresh out of quarantine just hours earlier, who had been dispatched to work on the Diamond Princess — the cruise ship rife with the virus that was held for weeks off coast of Japan. The nurse told me that I’d “definitely get coronavirus,” but that I’d be fine because I’m “young and healthy.” She then touched my arm, I was surprised by my intense visceral reaction to find the nearest place to wash my hands.
When we sailed away from Australia, while wishing we could carry on with the trip, we felt it probably needed to come to an end. The news was scarier. Friends and family more worried. And being on land becoming more stressful in ways than being safely at sea. People kept hopeful hearts and brave faces, but especially for the many older folks on the ship, carrying on could actually become a matter of life and death.
