Hardwired

Australia

Down Under Wrap-up

Happy New Year and the best of everything in 2018—Darcy, Bullet, and Pat.

Cruising Milford Sound.

Today I’m wrapping up my Down Under blog series and want to share a few parting photos that I hope you will enjoy. As I’ve mentioned on several occasions, I am not writing a travel blog per se. I only post about locations that will appear in future Darcy and Bullet thrillers. So yes, I do plan to set a novel Down Under, and many of the countries in my current posts will be settings for forthcoming books. 

Cruising the Milford Sound

a glimpse into my 2018 blog posts: in the coming months I will post about my Canadian trip and my St. Barth’s visit, also settings for new Darcy and Bullet novels. After these travel posts, I will do a series on art and architecture. Why, you might ask, would I write about these? Because both subjects are dear to Darcy’s heart and mine. Watching a talented person create a work of art, design a structure, or write a book is inspiring unto itself, and art and architecture play a part in my thriller series.

KEAS

Let’s start with those cheeky keas, heralded as the world’s most intelligent birds. Dubbed “the clown of the alps,” and the only alpine parrot in the world, the kea is native to the forested and mountainous regions of New Zealand’s South Island. The screeching cries of “keeeaa” alert you to the presence of these highly social and inquisitive birds.

Although I haven’t had the privilege, I’ve been told that if you see a kea in flight you will never forget it. The birds transform from olive green to brilliant flashes of orange, scarlet, yellow, blue, and turquoise.

Keas are hardy birds that tolerate a range of temperatures, and they thrive on everything from berries, fruits, roots, and leaves to even carrion. They also loiter around picnic sites—an easy source of junk food. Insatiably curious, charismatic, and mischievous, these natural sleuths are bold, relentless, and downright destructive, but so cute. Easy for me to say when I haven’t experienced their fondness for rubber—destroying car door seals or chewing through wiper blades. I did get a kick out of seeing several board a bus during our tramping tour.

According to a British tourist, he had his passport stolen by a kea. The passport was stored in a brightly colored bag in the luggage compartment of a bus headed for a boat tour of Milford Sound. The kea struck when the bus stopped and the driver was busy in the luggage compartment. The driver startled the kea, which flew away with the passport.

Years ago, when a kea was spotted attacking a live sheep, the birds were branded as killers and a bounty was placed on their little green heads. Tens of thousands were killed, but today they are a protected species.

But why all the signs warning people not to feed them? Besides the bounty, their love for high-fat junk food very nearly killed them off. So for their sake and ours, do not feed the keas.

MELALEUCA

In the wilderness of Tasmania’s Southwest National Park, the history of its first inhabitants, and later its mining explorers, is being preserved at Melaleuca—renowned for its world heritage area and also for its mining history. A small mining settlement was established in the region in 1930s, where high-grade alluvial cassiterite (tin oxide) was mined. 

While digging deeper into the history of tin mining during my research on Sir Henry Jones, I discovered the life and accomplishments of Charles Denison “Deny” King, an Australian naturalist, ornithologist, environmentalist, painter, and the first tin miner in Melaleuca. To read more about him and the Deny King Heritage Museum,  http://tasminerals.com.au/news/news/about-deny-king-and-the-deny-king-heritage-museum,-melaleuca/

I also discovered during a conversation with one of the “birdies” from our tour of Melaleuca that they were not in search of “simply a green parrot” but were on a heated search to catch a glimpse of “the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot that breeds only around Melaleuca.”

The Melaleuca was originally part of the homelands of the Needwonnee Aboriginal people, and the Needwonnee Walk shares the stories of these original custodians of the land. Photo left: On the Needwonnee Walk.

Black swans at Melaleuca

Today’s Melaleuca is still virtually untouched, with only six thousand visitors each year. Due to the remoteness of the region and limited accessibility—by foot, plane, or boat—the area has maintained its wildness. Visitors’ facilities are intentionally rugged, catering to trampers, bushwalkers, day-trippers, and bird-watchers. As I wrote in a previous post, we flew into the small airstrip and then traveled on foot and by boat to tour the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Sadly, this wilderness area suffered a bad bushfire in 2016.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3429623/Tasmanian-World-Heritage-area-devastated-bushfire.html  

SIR HENRY JONES

The infamous staircase at The Henry Jones Art Hotel

A last word on Sir Henry Jones. While Jones had a reputation for frugality, he was a very generous man who simply disliked spending money on “fripperies.” Rather than use first-grade timber to panel the Top Room at the Henry Jones hotel, Sir Henry preferred to reserve the high-quality wood for the crates that would be used to export his IXL jams around the world.

This grand staircase, also in the Henry Jones Hotel, has four carved newel posts, which support the handrail. Three have been decorated with stippling. When Jones walked by and saw a young lad from the factory floor working on the last post, he sent him back to work packing crates—an example of Jones’s abhorrence for needless expense.

LOVE LOCKS

From the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris to bridges in Melbourne and Sydney, love locks have been cut off footbridges, melted, recasted, and refiled. In some cases, they have become works of art with the proceeds donated to charity. From a previous post of mine: https://patkrapf.com//2015/06/18/europe-2013-the-notre-dame-bells/

My last shot of Australia as we flew back to the Unites States from Sydney.

For now, I will say a fond farewell to the land Down Under, but I will see you soon, Aotearoa—the Maori name for New Zealand, which translates as “the land of the long white cloud”—for we are already planning a repeat visit.

Writers Walk in Sydney.

You will notice I use famous quotes in all of my Darcy McClain and Bullet thrillers and I’ll leave you with one now from Eleanor Dark. “Silence ruled this land. Out of silence mystery comes, and magic, and the delicate awareness of unreasoning things.” The Timeless Land (1941).

 

 

 

 

 

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Australia 2014: Sydney – Part 2

After our guided tour of the Sydney Opera House, we broke tradition with all the tramping we had done and ate dessert for lunch at Guylian Belgian Chocolate Café near the opera house. We ordered slices of chocolate cheesecake and washed it down with hot chocolate while we people-watched on the outdoor patio.

Now that we had packed on the calories, we again played tourist for the afternoon, sightseeing and shopping, adding to the Kathmandu bag we had purchased in Christchurch—a smart luggage addition certain to come in handy for future travels.

Back at the Marriott, we changed for dinner at Tetsuya’s. The food and the service can be summed up in one word: exceptional. As for the ambience, it’s an architectural oasis in the heart of the city. Please excuse the rumpled menu (shown at the end of this post). It didn’t survive the flight home as well as we did.

Sammie

On our last morning in Sydney, we paid a visit to Sammie to say goodbye to the sea lion who had become a famous fixture on the dock steps near the opera house. From there, we walked to Dawes Point, the site of Australia’s first fortified position, constructed in 1788 to protect the cove from foreign invaders. All that remains of the former Dawes Point Battery, which was manned until 1916, are five cannons. The fort was removed during construction of Sydney Harbour Bridge, which passes above the park.

The week before our scheduled departure from Sydney to the DFW International Airport, Quantas/American Airlines had put into operation its first Airbus A380, and this would be our first flight on the transatlantic, long-reach jet. As we settled in for the seventeen-hour flight, I wondered why someone couldn’t bring back the Concorde, and of course speed it up for an even faster ride.

Boarding our first Airbus A380.

In an earlier blog post I mention that The Henry Jones Art Hotel was purchased by the Federal Group. Every time I left the hotel, I wondered with great curiosity what might be housed in the giant warehouse sitting on the waterfront adjacent to the Henry Jones. And I was still wondering when I began to dig into Hobart’s convict past for these series of blog posts. “It’s just a giant shipping shed,” the concierge told me. But what a great location—right on the River Derwent with a fabulous view of Mount Wellington—the perfect site for restaurants, shops, or art galleries. So I was delighted to come across this article during my recent research: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-4723752/Review-Macq01-hotel- Now my interest in Tasmania’s compelling convict history has been piqued again. Perhaps it is time to delve deeper into the past of Elizabeth “Ma Dwyer,” the landlady and madam of “The Blue House?” 

Until next week. “G’day.”

 

 

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Australia 2014: Sydney

The Sydney Opera House

Sunrise in Hobart, and David and I walked the Franklin Wharf, the Castray Esplanade, and the surrounding streets, ending up at the Rendezvous Lounge Cafe in Salamanca Square. The eatery’s ratings were “fair,” but it opened shortly after 7:00 a.m. and we were hungry. Our poached eggs topped with wilted spinach and a side of tomato relish was delicious. I sipped hot tea while David surfed the Net to answer his question of why the square was called Salamanca.

Named after the 1812 victory of the Duke of Wellington in the Battle of Salamanca, in the Spanish province of Salamanca, Salamanca Place was built during the whaling industry boom in the early- to mid-nineteenth century. The area consists of rows of sandstone buildings, which were formerly warehouses for the port of Hobart Town. In the mid-1990s, Salamanca Square was built, and the old warehouses now house shops, galleries, cafés, and restaurants.

Every Saturday the Salamanca Market, a community market popular with locals and tourists, is held between 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. at Salamanca Place. There is also a grocery store nearby called Salamanca Fresh. They sell fresh local produce, as well as conventional items found in any grocery store.

We still had several hours before we had to catch the airport bus, so we browsed the art galleries and bought a few souvenirs for family and friends, and a stuffed animal for me—“Diego,” a Tasmanian devil. I really liked the island, but sadly, our Down Under holiday was drawing to a close. That afternoon we caught a flight to Sydney.

Sydney Skyline

Sydney. We checked into the Marriott Circular Quay, grabbed our daypacks, and played tourist, wandering the streets for hours, taking in the sights and shopping. We could have walked to our restaurant that night, but we had already spent hours touring the city and our feet needed a break, so we flagged a cab to the Woolloomooloo Wharf to dine at China Doll. We sat outdoors, the balmy evening inviting, and feasted on crispy shrimp dumplings and pork san choy to start, followed by a sashimi platter and tamarind-crusted duck. Our first evening in Sydney ended with an excellent wine from Australia’s McLaren Vale region.

Day two in Sydney. Now, I could finally strike off my list the second architectural wonder I had longed to see. I had already visited the Guggenheim Bilbao, and today we had arranged for a guided tour of the Sydney Opera House.

In 1954, Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, as well as the director of the New South Wales (NSW) Conservatorium for Music, met with NSW premier Joseph Cahill, and they agreed that Australia needed an opera house.

In December 1955, Mr. Cahill announced an international design competition for the opera house, with Sydney’s Bennelong Point the approved site. The competition required a design for two performance halls—one for opera and the other for symphony concerts.

On January 19, 1957, Danish architect Jørn Utzon was announced as the winner and awarded 5,000 British pounds. Utzon was initially rejected by three judges in the 1956 competition, but his entry was picked by a fourth, renowned Finnish American architect Eero Saarinen, who declared it outstanding. Utzon beat 232 other entrants.

Work on the opera house started in 1959, with ten thousand builders employed, and it opened in October 1973. The estimated cost was around £7 million, but the actual cost grew to £102 million. In 1966, Utzon quit the project after a new state Liberal government was elected and problems arose between him and the new works minister. Utzon left Sydney, never seeing his vision for the interior realized, and never seeing his masterpiece completed. He was not invited to the opening ceremony; nor was his name mentioned.

In 1999, the Opera House Trust and NSW government “re-engaged” Utzon as the design consultant for future work on the opera house, and he developed a set of principles as a basis for all future changes to the building. Utzon said his renewed contact with Sydney felt like a “wonderful welcome back to Australia, a hand extended in the spirit of reconciliation, a hand I shake with warmth and gratitude.”

Of the opera house he said, “I like to think the Sydney Opera House is like a musical instrument, and like any fine instrument, it needs a little maintenance and fine tuning from time to time if it is to keep on performing at the highest level.”

The architectural style is Expressionist Modernism, and the building’s site is close to 15 acres. The opera house itself is over 606 feet long and over 410 wide, and rises 220 feet above sea level, around the height of a 22-story building. The roof is made of 2,194 precast concrete sections, weighing up to 15 tons each and held together by 218 miles of tensioned steel cable. The roof is covered in more than 1 million tiles, and has over 20,000 feet of glass, made to order in France and unique to the Sydney Opera House. The largest of the seven venues, the Concert Hall, has 2,679 seats, and the total number of rooms in the opera house is 1,000.

In an earlier post, I wrote about my visit to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain. There I discuss the Bilbao Effect. Every struggling post-industrial city has the same idea: hire a star architect (like Frank Gehry) to design a branch of a famous museum (like the Guggenheim), and watch your city blossom with culture. After all, it worked for Bilbao.

The Bilbao Effect pumped millions into the city’s economy with up to a hundred thousand visitors each month patronizing the hotels, restaurants, and shops. And Bilbao generated about $100 million in taxes in the first three years of operation. Today, over a million people visit the museum per year.

Alexandra Gardens, St. Kilda Road

The Sydney Effect? According to a report by Deloitte, the Sydney Opera House is one of Australia’s key assets, contributing $775 million to the Australian economy every year. And it has a cultural and iconic value of $4.6 billion.

 

 

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