Australia – Immigration

7/24/19 to 7/27/19 – Sydney, Australia

Crew – Solo! I crashed a friend of a family friend’s house`

For the twentieth time in fifteen minutes, I nodded, smiled and muttered: “yeah that’s a huge issue and it’s important to me for a lot of reasons.” The sixty-year-old personal chef on the other side of counter continued lecturing while cheerily making dinner and probably ignoring what I said every time. I would normally be ok with important social justice issues if the fifteen-minute lecture was not on why you should be a vegetarian and I was being given said lecture by a meat-eater. Part of crashing houses I suppose. Vegetarian evangelists are not fun to listen to.

So first things first I apologize to everyone I’ve lectured on this topic. However, the woman telling me this was amazingly sweet plus had traveled the world extensively and favored exotic food so we would talk for hours each night about countries to visit and strange people we’ve met before. The positive side of traveling. Also, in her defense, she was a huge fan of cooking vegetarian and with milk alternates and whatnot which was great for me. If you’ve followed the rambling so far you deserve some context so let’s start at the beginning.

Australia and Fiji are the final legs of my travels for my summer and Australia itself was a side trip before Fiji, a two-week slugfest. After all, if I was paying the money to come to Oceania I might try and see another country and pay a few hundred more for an extra ticket. Even better when I emailed Sally Aldridge asking for help finding things to do she hooked me up with one of her old friends. A few emails later and I had a place to stay for free! With that out of the way, I jumped on a 15-hour nighttime flight, paid $20 for a visa (which only applies to Australia?), and landed at 6:30 am at Sydney International airport and took a train to the Gray’s house. Upon arrival, I met Emma, the mother, who can best be described as “driven” and showed me my room (by far the nicest place I stayed the entire summer) and gave me a run-down of what to see the first day and what time dinner was. The trade I had worked out with her over email beforehand was crashing in return for helping her daughter with prospective engineering schools in the United States. More on that later. It was 9 am and I only had three days in Sydney so time to get moving. Going above and beyond what I could reasonably ask for Emma gave me four used Opal cards, their Clipper Cards, and said whatever money left was mine to use.

By get a move on I mean find a nice coffee shop, buy a fire pastry and wait for the ferry to arrive to take me to Circular Quay, the transportation and cultural hub of the city. Which was where I found my first attraction, the opera house. I wasn’t even looking for it, I just glanced to my left on the deck of the ferry and saw the honest to god iconic building right next to me. The opera house is part of most locals’ commutes. Not to mention that the ferry boats used for commutes are comfortable, beautiful and spacious. Everything a commute should be but never is.

It was easy to figure out what to do first because I landed next to the Opera house, so I went inside. While to go inside the actual Opera room you have to buy a $75 ticket for either a tour or a show I got to see the rest of it. The building which I did not realize was only built in the 1980s has tens of thousands of small ceramic tiles that make up the building and are beautiful up close. The Opera house once a year also does a lights show called Vivid that I missed by two days and I’m damn angry about it but you can’t win everything so I failed at self-timers for about five minutes before a Japanese woman took pity on me and asked me if I wanted a photo in front of the Opera house.

With that out of the way, I headed over to the national botanical gardens which follow the coastline next to the Opera House and features the wide variety of endemic plants to Australia plus plenty of native birds and small furballs. To get through the garden easily took two hours and was a great anti-jetlag activity. Even better the weather was gorgeous with no clouds, a comfortable 68 degrees, and the crowds non-existent. The other side of the gardens booted me into a more urban section of Sydney and I decided to go with the tried and true process of wandering around until I found food and seeing anything I could until then.

First thing I found was their national library which had a pile of High Schoolers studying inside plus a few free exhibitions upstairs. I blew an hour walking through an archeological dig exhibit on how the Serrated Quay rail line went through the largest graveyard in 1905 in town and a married couple miraculously recorded near every gravestone in the area and preserved their stories until the present day. The construction crew was told to use pickaxes to smash the gravestones of poorer people to save on transport costs after all.

Post library I found a historical court to look at and promptly just wandered in. I was casually exploring the hallways and open courtrooms while passing multiple people in legal clothing and not getting the hint. Eventually, a barrister judging from her nametag and fancy shoulder pads asked me if I was looking for someone. I briefly mentioned that I was just looking around to which she smiled and said I can see everything but active trial rooms and the offices. “Active trial rooms” to me implied not really an abandoned court and she laughed and welcomed me to the Supreme Court of Australia. Cool cool. That was a first.

Now I was starving so got an hour of food after defiling a Supreme Court and saw Hyde Park, modeled after the original in England. Hyde Park also contained the ANZAC memorial which documented the various sacrifices of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and had veterans volunteering at the site. Worthwhile to see and a beautiful memorial overall.

Hyde Park itself was also gorgeous. But I was beat at this point, so I headed home and fulfilled my end of the bargain. I met the husband and talked to Emma and him for three hours about American university and what to expect there and the application process. If nothing else, they were thorough in their questioning and I helped them with nearly every part of the process. At least I hope so, they seemed happy with my impromptu counseling. After that: sleep.

The second day in Sydney I met Scarlet at 7 am. Some folks have more accurate biological clocks than others and I happen to be one of them. To be clear that was not a brag or a flex because said clock exists when a body produces drastic amounts of a stress hormone. But on the bright side, I don’t get jet lag and I was able to meet someone my age! Sadly, it was a Thursday and since Australia’s description of “down under” refers to the geographical location on the planet she had to go to school because it was their winter. She’s a 2nd semester senior but unlike the US which has a lot of relaxing she has a lot of final exams that determine 50% of her official high school GPA. The previous four years of grades are equal to one week of exams. Also, her mom had already left for work.

The second day the Gray’s suggested that I visit Manly point, a district in Northern city. A beautiful half-hour ferry ride later and I landed in a historic district of Sydney. The British architecture still stood in the town center and the district boasted fantastic beaches, a wildlife reserve, an abandoned army base, and an abandoned quarantine harbor.

Anyone who knows me decently well should know where I chose to go. The two abandoned bases were 45 min away on foot so time to hike and see the area. The truly cool parts of the army base (read: underground artillery emplacements) were off-limits and after my half-hearted attempt to break into the Vatican’s underground, I gave the idea of sneaking in a rest. I still got to walk around anti-aircraft batteries/ There was a nice memorial though which detailed the history of the ANZAC’s from the colonial war up to the Iraq war. Afterward, I grabbed a coffee at a coffee shop that overlooked the ocean and figured out how to reach the quarantine point. I should also note for context that the coffeeshop was the first time I had seen another person in two hours. The entire place was abandoned. The stuff of nightmares at night but I loved the quiet during the day. I was also thankful that I wasn’t born into that era.

When it comes to early 20th century creepiness the quarantine point puts Alcatraz to shame. Due to fear of disease entering Australia any ship that got close to a harbor had a health and safety officer board the ship. If the health officer saw a single sick person (read: someone coughed in front of the dude) the entire ship was required to spent anytime from a few days to a few months at the quarantine area Point P until every person was cleared to enter the mainland.

During your stay at Point P everyone got a free and mandatory shower every single day. The best part was instead of shampoo they put calcium carbonate into the water which creates a distilled down hydrochloric acid solution that was damn efficient at killing germs. All the belongings were sent through autoclaves the size of rooms. Mr. Huffaker would be proud of the system they had set up. That was for the healthy-looking passengers, the unhealthy ones were sent to a hospital. Of course, not all passengers are created equal and the system was created for it. I got to see the first-class showers made of individual galvanized iron stalls and a dining hall with China before your nightly movie and private hotel room. The second class got private rooms albeit no China and sports instead of movies. The third class was given hostels and cards to entertain themselves. Finally, Asiatic class, the literal “Asian class”, was given tents and the leftover food. Australia has a superiority complex problem when it comes to the whole race thing….

The quarantine idea really came in handy though because the world after the area’s founding was promptly hit with a smallpox epidemic, Spanish flu endemic (that killed 35 million people) and a variety of other diseases. The point kept the disease from exploding in Australia and while people did die, Australia was one of the only questions to weather it. Time for a horror story of the day. 3,000 ANZAC soldiers were returning from WWI with miraculously light losses when the health inspector deemed that some had brought the Spanish Flu home. Terrified officials made the necessary but harsh call that the boat wasn’t even allowed to enter Point P and instead had to anchor off the coast of Manly until the boat had run its course. The boys on the boat (most were my actual age) could see their homes but were trapped on a diseased deathtrap for three weeks in a nightmare far worse than the actual war for them. Four weeks later officials boarded the ship and to their utter shock failed to find a survivor on the ship. 3,200 onboard including staff and 3,200 dead.

After reading that story and seeing pictures I decided to call it a day and thank god instead of walking an hour home I found a dozen other tourists who were flagging a ferry to stop at the Point and I hopped on it home. That night I talked to Scarlett and her mom about college for about three hours and gave a run-down on what immigrating to the US looks like. Yes, we have good engineering schools, no we don’t we have good healthcare. Yes, we enjoy our college sports, no our criminal justice system has not been fixed. The usual.

The third and final day I walked 45 minutes to Bondi Beach, a classic tourist location but one with magnificent ocean views and sounds. Even the most touristy locations in Sydney were sparse on the actual number of tourists and the sounds and views of the ocean were stunning. I climbed around on the tidal rocks for a while and caught a bus to the center of the town for a short K-Mart trip before Fiji and lunch. Falafel was disappointing but I got other battles to fight and I wandered around the business district of Sydney for about an hour. Nothing special. Just a bunch of folks on a Friday lunch break and crowded streets. With that done I strolled through Centennial Park, another city park, and caught a bus to Serrated Query to see some art museums and find a ride home.

The art museums have the classic modern art and western art exhibits that I both promptly skipped. Nothing against them but I was tired/strapped for time and there was a famous First People art exhibit I wanted to see. Most of the art was carved from wood and then dyed and the attention to detail alongside the use of native dyes was fantastic to look at. Even better there was an incredibly wide variety of art that showcased cultures from across the continent. I’m not even an art nerd and I loved exploring the bottom floor of the museums until the staff politely but firmly told me to leave because they wanted to go home. Can’t fault them for that.

Now standing outside I hopped on over to a delicious pastry shop and bought a coffee while watching the sunset. Even better when walking back to the ferry a construction worker whipped out a piano and was playing an assortment of tunes like “Hallelujah”. Listening for five minutes I tipped him and took a video of the sheer insanity of it all. I was standing halfway across the world in spitting distance of the Opera house that was in front of a beautiful sunset and I even have soothing tunes in the background. I understand why Sophia Butler derives her happiness from these kinds of things now.

All good things must come to an end though and I had to take the ferry back home for dinner. Well, I think pizza will always be around but besides the point. The parents were out so I was able to talk to Scarlett for a few hours and we chatted and laughed about what normal nervous confused teenagers discuss. Tests, relationships, party memories and all sorts of things in between. Travel truly does have its moments.

At 11 pm I called it because I had a 6:15 flight to catch to Fiji and judging by the email updates my team leader was sending me, I wanted all the sleep I could get.

Sam’s Sermon Scales:

West Oakland BART similarities? – 10/10. Single nicest commute system I’ve ever taken hands down. They use scenic ferry rides to get everywhere. I can’t ask for more for $3. When the ferry couldn’t be used the bus and train were both efficient and easy to use. Looking at the city, in general, it was very clean and spacious due to Australia having a whole lot of real estate and not a lot of people with well-kept parks scattered all over the city. Overall just a pleasant city to walk around in. A benefit when I spent 30 hours walking around it.

“I could make this better!” – 10/10. For the first time I can say that I’ve found a country with better coffee than the USA. Australia if anything has an unhealthy obsession with it. What other country has bike shops with espresso machines and a car wash that offers free coffee if you get a touch-up. It makes more sense once I realized how standup the coffee was. The downside to this was that they were the absolute worst coffee snobs on the planet. I was continuously told how US coffee was so terrible that it was undrinkable to their refined pallets. Stuck-ups.

Folks of Culture? – 6/10. I loved the sights and attractions in Australia but the modern-day country of Australia was founded after the United States. Being an incredibly young country means that Australia lacks the cultural glory of the host of ancient countries I’ve visited. The sights were still interesting, even if not cultural. The sole cultural thing I saw was the First People artwork exhibits in the national museums which were stunning in how much they managed to create with so little and the telling of a complex story in a single frame. Plus the exhibits were free which made it even more tempting.

Golden Hour Opportunities? – 9/10. The average commute was cover photo-worthy and it pretty much only got better from there. The ancient beaches, quaint towns, and parks, point, and sunsets at the Sydney Opera House were gorgeous. I barely got to sample the nature of Australia but that sample was phenomenal. If you want a novel aesthetic the creepiness of quarantine point stands as a testament to the urgency of countries to stop disease and was even better solo.

Did the vegetarian starve? – 8/10. Australia was quite similar to NorCal had plenty of vegetarian options and food was easily accessible at any time. The downside to this was that the food was standard for me and nothing that makes it stand out from Lakeshore Ave in Oakland. On the other hand, their pastry shops are horrifically expensive but absolutely worth it. Every pastry I had was astounding.

“Hey boss, can I work more hours?” – 8/10. Australia normally has around the same travel prices as the EU. Meaning pricy travel fees but manageable if you play your cards correct. Because Engineers Without Borders covered 90% of my flight costs and I stayed with a friend of a family friend costs was very small. Even better Emma provided me with public transportation (Opal) cards and two meals a day for free. The icing on the cake was that nearly everything worth seeing in the city was free! I spent less than $100 in the country in three days and saw nearly every attraction in the city. Tempting offer for any broke student.

Cooler than Middle Earth? – 6/10. One of the few downsides of Sydney was a striking similarity and a slight obsession with England. A rather… unfantastical country. I like England don’t get me wrong but England’s culture remains so tied to the US that Australia trying to copy England means that the city feels somewhat like home. The wildlife though was novel and I saw many birds and plants that were flat out unknown in the northern hemisphere.

At the moment I’m looking to live somewhere different from California when I get the chance. Moreover, the lines of work I’m considering have you traveling in the field for the vast majority of the year and in reality, where you live doesn’t particularly matter. Point being I’m currently on the lookout for places to live after school and before the trip, I was considering Kyoto, Berlin, and Anchorage. After this trip, I added Sydney to the list. I flat out love the city and highly recommend to anyone interested in travel in the slightest.

Photos credits go to some helpful locals and me.

Best,

Sam