Sydney Opera House, without the crowds.

The Sydney Opera House really is all that! I had not realized how extraordinary it really is until we got inside, before it was opened to the public for the day. It started as a truly abstract drawing of a feeling, a drawing of how one should feel inside. Yes the shells were evident in the drawing, but the liveliness an verve of the strokes spoke of the soaring music and the soaring views across the harbor. Wherever you are in the opera house, you will have a vista and an uplifting experience os space. When you wander the opera house you feel that you in a place suspended out of time. The use of the volume and the use of the materials is transcendent. The opera house took over 20 years to build because of the shell forms. The science had not caught up with the concept. Finally it was determined that the forms could be made by segmenting a sphere. Brilliant!

In the Studio and in the house

I just got the dress pieces back from a show and decided to hang them rather than disassemble and roll them. When I hung them, I discovered that the collar pieces and the hanging dresses with fleece and yarn are a continuation. Cool. Now I will dye a few collars red and see what happens;-) Desert Yam Dreaming, purchased in Alice Springs, is now stretched and hung. Hooray!

Sydney Aquarium

The Dugong

I was not particularly looking forward to the Sydney Aquarium...You know, seen one seen them all. And I suppose it was not that unusual as aquariums go. BUT we got to see it with no strollers, no screaming kids, no cranky parents! The most exciting thing was seeing 2 real platypus! The were quite small, swimming far to quickly for my camera to catch them in the dark water. Holly is a woman from Florida who wears fine jewelry and always arrives fashionably and creatively dressed. Except for the Florida connection, I would never have dreamed of her special talent. Holly can talk to the sea creatures, even through the glass, and they appear to listen. Holly's normal voice is quite loud, brash, carrying far. When she talks to the sea creatures, she speaks with the tone of a new lover, sweet & inviting. The leopard ray came right to the glass and seemed to reach out to her. The dugong stopped sleeping, and swam to her. sleeping dugong.

Sydney at Night

What can I say? Even with my crappy camera, you can see that it was beautiful! The group had an adequate Italian diner down at the harborfront. After dinner, we took a water taxi under the Sydney Harbor Bridge over to the Sydney Aquarium where we had an after hours tour. NO screaming children! It was wonderful to see the bridge from a different viewpoint. The harbor lights looked like Coney Island.

Bondi Beach, where surfers practice

Part of our interminable bus tour of Sydney took us out to Bondi Beach (pronounced BOND-EYE), full of surfers and dreams of surfers. Actually, it was full of surfer schools! But it WAS fun! The wind was very brisk, the waves not too scary. We had time to walk the beach and get ourselves lunch. I had a cup of Australia's Best Coffee...or so the sign said! It was very good.

It is a pretty beach and a pretty beach town. But then, a squall came screaming around the point that leads into the bay! It was a wild little tempest! We all huddled under available awnings and the beach emptied as fast as the squall was moving. It made for an ONTIME departure! No late boarders on our bus that day. This was the squall that delayed the Bridge climbers we talked to.

Walking the Sydney Harbor Bridge

It was a beautiful afternoon, overcast, windy, but perfect for a long walk! A small group of us buzzed through the Rocks Market, where we saw high end giftware, craft, new fashion designers, all under tents reminiscent of the Ann Arbor Art Fair. We got out the other side with most of our money intact and some chocolate fore fuel and scrambled up to the bridge. Some people paid lots of money to strap on flight suits and safety gear to climb OVER the arch of the bridge. Not us! But we talked to people who did it. For them, it was a peak experience. The arch has steps that you climb. There is a channel next to the steps into which you slide your safety cable, making it impossible to jump! All of your belongings are put in a locker and you wear nothing that can blow off of you, as the winds are always pretty high.Their bridge climb was delayed by the squall that we had experienced at Bondi Beach. Our bridge stroll was far less strenuous. Four of our group continued onto the other side in search of dinner. Dick, Angeline and I back tracked and joined the rest of our tour-mates for the Sydney by Night tour.

So now we are in Sydney

Sydney is BIG. That was my first, and typical response. I thought it was just another big damn city. But it was more than that. The harborfront was beautiful. After a seemingly interminable bus tour of the sights, we had a behind the scenes tour of the Opera House, a group photo and then drove onto to Bondi Beach to eat lunch and watch the surfers.

Spinning: learning stories & politics

I don't know why, but I am shy about taking people's photos. Actually, despite what my blog might seem to imply, I am shy about having my own picture taken. All the photos of me in the blog are compliments of tourmates offering to take my picture.

In the Cairns airport, waiting for our flight to Sydney, I got out my beautiful Golding spindle to spin a little merino silk. My son gave me this spindle for Christmas last year and it quickly became my favorite.

I have found that spinning in public creates opportunities for most amazing conversations.

The woman next to me was waiting for a plane to Brisbane. Her name was Melba and I was too shy to ask to take her photo. She was a very pretty woman who looked quite Polynesian. She had been in Cairns for an Indigenous Rights Conference. Her family, on her mother's side, descended from slaves, stolen from islands (perhaps in the Fiji chain), stolen to work in the cane fields of northeastern Australia.

Melba told me about one of the papers she heard at the conference, given by an Arizona anthropologist who had lived 30 years with one Aboriginal group on the Bay of Carpentaria, in Northern Australia. He learned the language and the customs, the history and the beliefs. His paper was on the subject of preserving the strong, successful, original ways of living on the land while still participating in the modern world.

Melba said that the "Sorry" was a start. Many people we talked to referred to the "Sorry", the official apology of the AUstralian government to the "stolen generation: of Aboriginals made in February of 2008.

"Between 1920 and 1970, the government took Aboriginal babies away from their parents on a large scale, and re-housed many of them with white families. Many of these children were abused, though for some it meant the chance of a better life. At the time, it was official Australian policy to give Aboriginal children a ‘white' upbringing, as the government was convinced that the Aboriginal culture would die out.

Already in 1997, the distress of the "stolen generations" was recognized by an investigation commission that advised the Australian government to offer its apologies. The previous Prime Minister, liberal John Howard, refused on the grounds that it was not his government's responsibility." (read more here.)

She and I taked at length about how does a people manage when t heir land specific culture has been broken? How does one transition to something t hat works better in the larger colonial culture? She went on to talk about some of the similarities with the Navaho people. Hunting & gathering skills and beliefs...about there being some universality. Melba stated that while the "Sorry" was, indeed, a start...it is not believed that the prime minister has made sufficient effort to understand the indigenous beliefs and way of living.

I believed her. The all consuming nature of Western culture is so at odds with the slower, considered, efficient conservation of the aboriginal way. Melba talked of the importance of the dances, telling stories, mimicking animals...it keeps the land alive.

The day before we also had a lecture from Ernest, a representative from Tjakupi, about northeastern indigenous groups: the rainforest people are shorter and lighter skinned than the desert groups. His description of traditional social structure sounded somewhat different that the structure I heard about in the Red Center. Doug, at Desert Park, stressed the relative gender equality in the Arrende people. Men and women had different but equally important and respected roles in the survival of the group. Ernest described a more uneven power structure in Tjakupi, saying that men's hunting was the most important activity. Both stressed a respect for elders.

The comparisons of the expression of the tribal LAW, were different as well. If marriage laws were broken, Arrende would banish the couple, and they would wander alone, no other group likely to take them in. Tjakupi would physically attack the couple : women were raped, men were speared.

The Tjakupi group was described as a clan structure, rather than as language or skin groups as in the desert. The clans were classified as wet or dry groups and membership in the clans determined your marriage possibilities, protecting the genetics in the same way as the desert groups. Rainforest aboriginals were traditionally promised in marriage almost at birth, older men promised to much younger women. Earnest had been promised to twins! But, as is increasingly common, he married for love.

I was too shy to take Earnest's picture as well.

Birds, birds, birds

At Birdworld in Kuranda, an Indian Blue Ringneck. A star finch and Chestnut Mannikins Cassowary Cassowary Some kind of dove doing some kind of display. There were 3 of them in a row, spreading their wing feathers, cocking their tails, contorting their forms. They did not appear to be distressed, did not appear to be performing a diversionary display nor a mating display. It was more like quiet sunbathing. Extended Senegal Dove sex. This pair was blocking the sidewalk for quite a while. Made me sing the old Beatles song "Why don't we do it in the road!" a rather large parrot. Smaller parrots...maybe .