HOME

Almost 11 months, and several 12-hour flights later.

Things change when one is absent...but some things are constant...

 

And now, along with a mountain of 'life administration', it's time to get ready for Christmas.
'

NUKU'ALOFA, TONGATAPU, TONGA

 Tonga is exactly the kind of place you've seen in every South Seas Island vacation brochure. 

(Correctly pronounced with a soft 'g', as in schlonga or chaise longa) It is the kind of unspoiled, undeveloped island paradise that tickles our fantasies of tropical get-aways on the darkest days of our bleak mid-winter. The warm sun, the warm water, and the warm smile of the people.

The kind of place where kids run out to the road as you drive by on your scooter and yell out, "Bye Bye", or they climb a palm tree for you to get you a fresh coconut. The kind of place where, within minutes, you'll be having a converstation with a local and they'll treat you like a long lost friend. The people are so friendly that James Cook called Tonga 'the friendly islands'. It's a name that stuck and still holds true. Tell a Tongan your name once, and they'll remember it and use it from that point on. The girls in the coffee shop I frequented daily would always yell out when I arrived, "Malo e lelei Patrick, how are you today?" or, "Patrick in the house!" Where there are Tongans, there is laughter and smiles.

Tonga is miles of this...

...and miles of this

 Tonga:
-is one nation of one hundred and seventy-six islnads
-is the same latitude as Rio di Janero
-has the most PhD's per capita in the world
-has one of the worlds' highest literacy rates
-is the last existing Polynesian Kingdom. It's royal lineage can be traced back to 950 A.D.
-is home to The Ha'amonga a Maui triathalon on Tongatapu, which has been running continuously for about 800 years.
-sits on the International Dateline, so is the first nation to see the sun every morning
-has some of the deepest oceans in the world
-has the oldest constitution in the world (1875) and has never been colonised (though clearly the missionaries spun their web at some point 'cause it's a veeeery christian country) 

 

 

Tongan one-stop-shopping viewed from my veranda.

Fresh fruit and veggeies in foreground

Catch of the day across the road

Driving yourself anywhere on the island of Tongatapu is an adventure.
1)  When driving in town, all intersections are uncontrolled. It is expected that the drivers on the bigger, busier road (be it north/south or east/west) have the right of way. It's up to you to decide if you are on the busier road or not.
2)  Tongans are not always particulalry detailed when giving directions. When looking for the pharmacy, I was told, "Just there. Up the road", which actually turned out to be two streets over and up the back alley behind the office supply store.
3)  Though there are island maps available, they are wildly out of scale. Pretty to look at, but out of scale. I've put almost 300 kms on my little scooter in four days.

4)  The roads on the map have names, but the actual roads have no signs, except for a few right in town, so you have to guess which road you're actually on.
5)  Here's where it really gets interesting, the maps do not differentiate between major, paved roads, smaller, secondary roads, or parallel dirt tracks leading off through a coconut grove. Many times, I've come around a corner to be faced with a narrow road, so full of potholes that it looks like it's been under mortar fire (and the holes are sometimes so big they could swallow the scooter whole) and I've thought to myself, "This can't actually be the road I'm supposed to be on". It alway is. 

 A Tongan 'must see'

The 'road' leading to it

6)  And just to add to the fun, the "must see" sights that are marked on the map, are not necessarily marked by any signs on the road. (Tourism not being very developed here) Through trial and error and a whole lot of following my nose, I did manage to find my way to most of the things I wanted to see, but a few remain a hidden mystery.

Case in point:
I wanted to see something on the map marked as "Flying Fox Sanctuary". (Flying Fox is a pretty name for a Fruit Bat). After driving around for a while, stumbling onto some other sites that I wasn't particularly interested in, I stopped for a refreshment at an out-of-the-way beach 'resort'. I asked the bartender for help.

Me: I'm trying to find the Flying Fox Sanctuary but I think it's back down the road, right?
Her: You passed it. It's back down the road. In Kolovai.
Me: That's what the map says, but I couldn't see anything. Is there a sign?
Her: Oh no. There's no sign.
Me: No sign?
Her: Oh no.
Me: So.....
Her: It's just a big tree where they all hang out.
Me: (Dripping sarcasm) So if I go back down the road to Kolovai and look for a big tree full of bats, I've found the Flying Fox Sanctuary?
Her: (Unsure about the sarcasm) Do you want another beer?

I never did find the 'sanctuary'. I did, however, on my way back into town, miles down the road from the actual, supposed 'sanctuary', look up into the sky to see a huge flock of winged shapes circling above me. The shapes were so big I thought they were ravens or some kind of sea eagle. Fruit bats. Hundreds of them. Big, mothah-fuckin' bats, all screeching like banshees. Almost as big as some of the spiders I saw.

If and when you do arrive at a "must see" site,  there are no ticket booths, no guides, no explanatory signs. Sometimes a pig rooting around, or perhaps the odd local selling carvings or weaving, or just sitting in the shade eating,  but generally, the sites I went to were deserted.

On my last night, sitting in a seafood place down the road from my hotel, gazing at the open ocean, watching the barefoot kids climb palm trees for coconuts, the live band struck up a meloncholic, Hawaiian guitar rendition of "White Christmas". Surreal, but fittingly appropriate to the pace of island life...

Malo, Tonga. Malo.

VERY HIGH IN AUCKLAND

Things I did in Auckland:

-Saw a production of Moliere's Tartuffe. Most outrageous, over the top adaptation EVER! (Imagine it with a kiwi accent!)

-Drank delicious New Zealand wine and ate spectacular New Zealand cheese.

-Saw a beautiful, elegant production of The Pitmen Painters, by Lee Hall who wrote the screenplay for Billy Elliot. Not only is the play hilarious, but it contains some of the best discussion about the purpose of art and who gets to decide what's good and what isn't that I've ever heard.

-Met up with Paul, a Brit friend of Kiwi Tim's, who used to live in Singapore. Got roaringly drunk.

-Met Santa

-Saw Wim Wenders tribute film to choreographer Pina Bausch.....in 3D!

-Helped "Occupy Auckland"

-Jumped off of a ridiculously high building.

Feel the fear and do it anyway...

WINDED IN WELLINGTON

Wellington has hills.

And wind. Hills and wind. OMG, the wind. I guess that's why they call it Windy Wellington.

The sunny spring weather would be lovely and warm, if it weren't for the wind. And the rain. Because of the not-so-welcoming weather, I did a lot of indoor activities. Fortunately, the city has some excellent museums, art galleries, restaurants and bars. 

(And please take note, governments,....the museums are FREE !!!)

The Te Papa National Museum is one of the best I've ever seen. Six floors of amazing, intriguing, hands-on exhibits housed in a stunning new building on the waterfront. You can even go down to the basement and get a close-up look at their Quake Breaker system, the pads that the building glides on during a quake.

The fourth floor is devoted to the history and culture of the Maori people and I spent most of my time there. I was blown away by Maori creation stories and their ideas of divinity and the supreme being. The symbol below is a representation of what they call Tekore - 

the place where all things began, where all things are beginning, where all things end, are ending. It is the great, unknowable void, the ultimate, unanswerable question. For the Maori, it IS The Supreme Being, so unknowable that one needn't waste one's time trying to figure it out but rather focus on Mother Earth and Father Sky. I love this idea. No wonder New Zealand has such a powerful green movement.

I did manage to take advantage of a sunny (though windy) afternoon, by taking the cable car up the hillside for some stunning (though windy) views of Wellington harbour and surrounding neighborhoods.

I was struck by the fact that many of the stories in the museums were personal accounts of historical events, a couple of them involving animals that became icons of the city. There was a dolphin at the turn of the century that would welcome every single ship into the harbour by performing acrobatics alongside it. For twenty years or so, people came just to be welcomed by the dolphin. I also found the story of Paddy, below, very bittersweet.You'll have to clic the pic to enlarge and read.

I wonder, would this happen in 2011?

In an effort to stay indoors, and see as much theatre as possible, I went to a sort-of-a-performance-art-thing called "Wakeless". The advertising promised a mutli-media escape from the every day world. *sigh*. Alas, what I got was part improv, part comedy, part mask tragedy, part performance art, part clown show, part wank-fest that mostly just left me bored and wishing I could sneak out for a pee. I'll admit that I had a few good laughs, but so did the soldiers in the trenches of WWI.

SHAKEYTOWN - CHRISTCHURCH, NZ

The media, with it's insatiable appetite for the disaster-du-jour, has moved on, but nine months later, the people of Christchurch are still struggling to put their city and their lives back together. The epicentre of the quake that struck in February was directly under the CBD. To this day, the downtown area is still closed.

The museum, the art gallery, the live theatres, the big chain hotels, town hall, office towers....all closed. The casino, of course, is open.

The areas surrounding the CBD are faring slightly better, but the signs of devastation and desertion are everywhere.

The buildings that fared the worst are the older ones, churches and heritage homes mostly. Those homes that are not a pile of rubble or a vacant lot now are propped up to keep them standing.

It is estimated that upward of twenty-thousand people are moving away from Christchurch because they've lost their homes and their jobs in one fell swoop. Still, there is an optimism on the streets. There are people in the shops and restaurants that survived. The bar down the road from me always seems busy. Cars are coming and going, as are planes and trains. The line I keep hearing is, "It was a beautiful city once. It will be again". They're a determined lot who have all been brought closer together by a common enemy. (And, yes, things still shake a little now and then)

Outside the city, the various eco-tourist sites are gearing up for their season, hopeful that 'they will come'. There are still mountains to be photographed, dolphins to swim with, and "Lord Of The Rings"  movie locations to visit. I did my bit to contribute to the local economy by visiting an open-range park to go on something called 'a lion encounter'. What this means is that they put you in a big cage on the back of a pickup truck and drive you into the lion paddock. The lions know that the handlers will be feeding them meat through the cage, so you are immediately swarmed by the glorious beasts who only get fed every other day.

Seeing them stand up and demand attention is unnerving enough, but when they jump up on top, it's easy to feel very small.

 How to feel insignificant in one easy lesson...

SYDNEY

I feel compelled to admit that Australia/New Zealand were never very high on my list of places to go in the world. But, having spent nearly a year in Asia, I felt like I needed to travel outside of the realm of that cultural paradigm before returning home. And since I was so close to 'the bottom of the world' I decided to go for it. I now find myself thinking, "Why did I wait so long?". As much as I enjoyed Melbourne, Sydney blew me away and I had a fantastic time. This is due, in part, to the fact that Aussies are all so bloody friendly, but also because I was wined and dined by various people throughout my stay. This is not to take away from the city itself which is shiny, vibrant and pulsing with a kind of energy that makes you want to dive right into it. And dive I did...

The Jacaranda trees are in bloom

I wish this was in smell-o-vision

Quintessentially Aussie

Affectionate Spotted Python at Darling Harbour

My hotel was in Kings Cross, a neighborhood that is in mid-transition from grimy to fabulous so the mix of people there is a show in itself. Execs, backpackers, hookers, twenty-something-party-animals, junkies, tourists,...all rubbing shoulders on the sidewalks.

Across the street from my hotel

 After years of trying and never quite making it for one reason or another, I finally went whale watching. This is just the very end of the season for whales here, but from our tiny little boat, a few kms off the coast, I was lucky enough to spend about an hour watching a mama Humpback and her calf. Unforgettable. (No pics though. The sea was a bit rough and gray, making the whales almost impossible to see in a photo.)

I also took myself to see the Australian production of "Mary Poppins" which turned out to be one of the best feel-good musicals I've seen in years. Brilliantly designed and executed with a top-notch company that didn't give anything less than 100% through the entire show. 

-

On a blazing hot spring afternoon, Kate's sister Danielle and her husband took me to Bondi for an annual event called Sculpture By The Sea. Hundreds of sculptures of all shapes, sizes and mediums dot the coastal walk from Tamarama beach to Bondi beach. So many, in fact, that we couldn't see them all before the heat took it's toll and we all staggered down to Bronte beach for a refreshing swim in the Tasman Sea. Below are some of my favourites...

Lions...seems to be a theme these days...

On another afternoon, Kate's ex-girlfriend, Deb, took me to Opera Bar at The Sydney Opera house where we lounged about drinking champagne.

On my last night in Sydney, I had dinner with Lou (from Hair & Make-up dept. in LK Singapore) who was visiting her brother who lives just a few blocks from my hotel.

Lou in the kitchen making her specialty...

a phone call for Indian take-away

It was only when I was staggering home afterward that I realized that getting up at 6 a.m. the next morning was going to be unwelcome and particularly unpleasant. Damned champagne !

As someone who has grown up having 'white Christmas', even after the years I spent in Bermuda, it's still hard for me to wrap my head around Christmas without snow, or at least enough cold to require hats, parkas and gloves. The fact that the stores all have the holiday decorations out continues to play with my mind, particularly when I see the lavish, animated displays in the big department store windows.

Ten points if you can name this Christmas Carol

(Mom, you know this one!)

KING ISLAND, TAS, AUS

People have asked me again and again, "Why King Island?". The simple answer? The cheese. The multi-award-winning King Island Dairy makes my favourite blue cheese, "Roaring Forties Blue", 

named for the incessant, perilous winds that blow across the 40th parallel on which the island sits.

 So, I thought, "Why not? Seems as good a reason as any to visit a place, even one as  isolated as this".

Welcome to King Island. Population, 1,600 people.....and approximately 1,000,000 wallabies.

 

I came for the cheese, I got side-swiped by the beauty. 

The view from my room.

This is a lush, wild place, rich with history, agriculture and wildlife. Driving around the island, in the course of one day, I experienced multiple sightings of the following: wallabies, echidnas, pademelons, fairy penguins, huge wild turkeys, ring-neck pheasants, peacocks, white geese, sea eagles, gulls, terns, dozens of exotic and colourful birds, like the electric-blue wren,  and more than one or two types of lizard (Some so large I thought they were tree branches on the road). And of course, cows, cows, cows dotting the green pastures that are everywhere. King Island is also a migratory stop for the extremely rare Orange Bellied Parrot (only 150 left) but it was not their visiting time. 

Wallaby close encounter

The people are like the island itself: rugged, uncomplicated, welcoming and evolving slowly. Things move at a much slower pace here, to the rhythm of a more relaxed time, driven by the tide and the demands of the land. A simple "Where can I find.....?" conversation can take 15 minutes. No one locks their houses or cars and everyone knows everyone.(I was told to leave my rental car at the airport, unlocked, with the keys in the ignition). You are greeted by strangers many times in a day. A perfect example of the relaxed, friendly nature of the place is the fact that everyone, EVERYONE you drive past on the narrow country roads gives you  either the full 'hi-how-you-goin?'-wave, or the finger lifted from the steering wheel as a stoic,but friendly 'G'day'. The people are intensely proud of their island, offering (in their words) some of the finest beef and dairy products and freshest seafood in the hemisphere. (I had some K.I. oysters that were almost the size of my hand but still melted like butter in my mouth). There's nothing "fancy" here. No lounges, bistros or Starbucks. No resorts, boutiques or dress-codes. There is, in fact, only one place on the entire Island to check email. But all of the trappings of urban life seem useless and easily forgotten when sitting on a rocky cliff, gazing at the ocean that reaches to the horizon and inhaling the intoxicating mix of tea tree blossoms and sea salt while the Roaring Forties blow your hair around. 

 Disappointment Bay

which was anything but.

 Penny's Lagoon

one of the worlds few 'suspended' fresh water lakes

The calcified forest

Pretty much any site I went to, I was the only person there.

It would sometimes be hours before I'd see another car or person

From now on, when I use the term

'rugged beauty'

this is what I'll be thinking of

It's only just the beginning of tourist season, but rooms (and cars) were hard to come by because The Cape Wyckham Lighthouse was celebrating it's 150th birthday the weekend I was there and the island version of excitement was in the air.  The Governor-General was flying in for the event and happened to be staying at the same place that I was. So, the morning I left, the place was getting the spit-and-polish of it's life. Lawns mowed, windows washed, dogs groomed and flowers fluffed, all under the watchful eye of the Governor's aides. The Gov-Gen's Air Force jet landed just a few minutes before my flight took off, so I was lucky enough to meet her and be a part of the hoop-la at the airport. Me, and the other 20 people that were there.

 The old girl that's causing all the fuss

Australia's tallest lighthouse

Hand-hewn, stone by stone

 And this is the old girl that was the guest of honor

Australia's first female Governor-General

Quentin Bryce

 photo credit Andrew Meares

Her plane

My plane

Next stop, the sparkling metropolis of Sydney...

Oh, and p.s....

I did buy some cheese at King Island Dairy (after eating my way through everything in the tasting room).  

I may never get the smell out of my luggage