Whittoons

Our retreat for the next three days and nights is a study in contrast with the Port Douglas Motel.  For one thing, you can not drive to your room.  At this eco-lodge, your car is parked for you, bags delivered to your bungalow and you walk everywhere.  Our package deal gets us a lower elevation bungalow in the woods.  The lodge sits atop the coastal promontory, and the most costly rooms sit up high.  But hey,  we have easy access to the beach and the nature walk.

From the tree house-like dining room, you can view visiting birds landing at a mini-watering hole up in a tree.

The beaches here are nearly empty, partly due to the season and the 25 knot winds yet this offers a magical space to share together.  The wind rocks you in your hammock.

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We drove onto the ferry to cross into an ancient forest – the oldest tropical forest in the world.  We felt a little under-prepared given the trucks around us with roo bars and exhaust pipes extending above the cabs. I expected to see Mad Max behind the wheel of one of these monsters.

Winding our way along curvy, narrow roads into the hills, the vegetation grew taller and thicker with each kilometer.  Layers of species of various hues and textures created a tapestry of foliage.

Yet danger lurks in the heart of darkness and along the bright lagoons:

So despite the idyllic conditions you need to stay on the alert or some creature from a deep lagoon may snatch you for lunch.

During our lunch break at Whet Cafe Bar [Lot 1 Cape Tribulation Rd, Cape Tribulation], a cassowary walked by. From out front row seats on the porch, I thought it was a pet trained to entertain the tourists.  But no, this was a wild critter moving quickly out of ancient times.  Known to be dangerous with a killer talon, she was given a respectable distance as I grabbed what shots I dared to on the go.

The food was amazing also.  Order Chicken curry if you head this way.

Sydney Opera House

Sydney Opera House

No visit would be complete without a shot of the Opera House. Though beautiful, the story of its construction is sad.  The Danish architect Jorn Utzon, who was forced in 1966 to withdraw as chief architect before completing the interior.  He left Australia with his family and never returned to see his masterpiece.  Jorn Utzon was awarded the Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 2003.

We covered a lot of territory walking through the botanical gardens, out from King’s Cross to Paddington (no bears, oh my!) , past the Rugby and football stadiums and beyond.  (We did not pay $388 to walk up over the bridge superstructure at sunset.)

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The building with the mural was across from one of several cafe stops, @ Cafe Con Leche.     In the Rock neighborhood where we stayed, many of the two story houses with iron balcony railings are being renovated and low income housing lost.  Gentrification hits again.

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Wendy’s Garden in North Sydney is lush and crammed with plants and highlighted with some comic characters. They stand as sentinels along the harbor walk.  The City wanted to reclaim the land from the guerrilla gardeners…but the City lost.

Wendy Whiteley lives in a tower (or rather a large house with a tower) above the community garden. Brett Whiteley painted the harbor scene below before he separated from Wendy after 40 years of marriage.  Though he died, he left a legacy of work that Wendy has managed. His surreal work remains in his Surrey Hills studio along with photos documenting his friendships with Warhol, Bob Dylan and Francis Bacon.

For an entirely different dreamscape experience, at the New South Wales Museum has a large collection of Aboriginal works.  The Spinifex Arts Project Men’s Collaborative piece Watiku Nguru Pulkana stood out since the artists are from the Great Sandy Desert where I worked on a geophysical crew in the early 70’s.   The sharp leaf spinifex was everywhere from dune to dune.  On one vacation I opted out of the flight to Perth, and chose a week by myself camping near some caves.  Along the walls of one cave were several song-lines that included the circular images and dots along wavy lines that this art uses.   Outside the caves were piles of sharpened, flaked scrapers.  As I walked from the caves to my tent, I remember a bird following me, alighting on each tree I passed until I settled into my site.  My crew came for a brief visit (driving several hours on desert tracks) to check up on their crazy crew boss and to make sure I was still alive.

Eubena Nampitjin often collaborated with her husband, Wimmitji Tjapangarti until his eyesight failed.

Check out the difference in her work before and after this collaborative period.

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Luna Park is ablaze across Sydney harbor drawing us like moths to a flame.  To avoid the carny chaos we walked through in daylight on our way to Wendy’s Garden. Even in broad daylight the place is just a bit creepy bringing to mind all the horror movies of old.

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Strolling through Paddington, we find bizarre treasures that exploit Australian icons from Down Under.

….to jet lag.

Waiting for Hotel Palisade to open up…and the grass was so inviting.

We plan to go Walk About in Australia.   It has been a few years (1973) since I landed in Sydney as a supernumerary steward on the Manutea, and later worked as a crew boss for a geophysical company in the Great Sandy Desert.   Now we expect to cover from east to west coasts with stops in the middle, as well as a couple of islands including Tasmania..where I hope to finally see a platypus in the wild.

Until then, I will leave you with a sample of an old comic strip of mine that never made it into the newspapers. The star is a platypus.

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Sipping juice and savoring fresh pastries at our hotel lobby, we slowly watched the quiet street open up…scooters and motorcycles are banned in the morning (and 2 other times during the day in this old historic part of town). As an elder man slowly placed bird cages on outdoor hooks, and begins sweeping the front steps, a canine orgy is taking place in the narrow street. One poor wretched critter is locked in coitus with no exit plan. Other dogs join the conga line and the elder man tries kicking the two headed beast…to no avail. Only after washing down the steps does he twist the hose and spray the two dogs, and “Houston, we have separation”.

It dawned on us as we strolled the village streets that we were in a Vietnamese Disney World with stage settings that created a retreat from history and war, from poverty and disease, greed and envy, from autocracy. This was becoming, not a workers paradise, but a tourist fantasyland where only the workers were in on the illusion. Oh hell, it was relaxing. Give in to the plan, Man. The dogs had to be real. Let’s hope they don’t end up on the menu. And the birds were singing a sweet song from captivity.

Go to The Grand SE Asia DeTour page for the rest of the story….