Tortoise Coitus

Sunday:

Day 2 in Sydney started with a bit of a hangover. Take a peek at Saturday’s post for rundown on where it came from. This was my Australian birthday, since it was still Saturday in the states. To celebrate, we headed down to the beach for brunch at a spot called porch. Apparently, Will Smith had Instagrammed his meal that he got here last week. That’s how you know it’s good.

We did have to wait a good bit for a table, as other people had apparently seen the Will Smith ‘gram. One group of five sat with just waters left on our their table for like 15 mins. Rude. When they finally got up, we were seated. The food was, in a word, Instagrammable. The bloody mary hit the spot as well. It was lacking a bit of Old Bay, but fortunately I had my travel supply with me.

After brunch, it was time for our trip to Taronga. The Sydney zoo is built into a hillside on the northern side of the harbo(u)r. We hopped on an express bus to circular quay, the main harbo(u)r ferry terminal for the CBD. We got there just in time to catch the ferry leaving for Taronga. This afforded us another opportunity for close up views of the famous opera house, and we used the opportunity to snap many photos. It was a beautiful day on the water, and we enjoyed our short cruise across the way.

The main goal for Taronga was to see as many types of animals that we don’t have in North America. More specifically, animals that only exist in Australia or one of the islands nearby. Taronga is cool because your visit starts off with a ride up to the top of the zoo in a gondola. You get to see a bird-eye view of the whole zoo before you descend down into it to explore. The gondola ride stopped at one point, which at first reminded me of many ski trips where somebody blows it getting off the lift. But as we hung there, a darker thought washed over me.

"I told you we needed to put locking mechanisms on the vehicle doors!"

This was clearly Jurassic Park happening all over again. We were definitely about to get our asses eaten up by some dinosaurs. Adding to the feeling was the fact that Aussie flora is quite ancient, dominated by the kinds of ferns and early conifers that went extinct tens of millions of years ago elsewhere in the world.

Eventually, our gondola resumed its ascent and we made it to the summit. We reviewed the big map on the wall and made a general plan. We entered the park gates and were greeted by a zoo employee, who gave us some bits of advice on how to best carpe our diem at the zoo. She told us to visit the big animals first, since they get access to their indoor holding areas at 4 and we might have trouble seeing them then. We were advised to save the reptiles for last, since they would always be out.

We walked for a bit down the path, and the first thing we saw was the reptile house. We proceeded in here first, directly against the advice of counsel. The weirdest Aussie reptile is by far the long-necked turtle. Imagine a normal turtle. Then stretch its neck out until its nearly as long as the rest of his body. Yes, with a name like that, this is about what you’d expect. But they still looked really weird, sticking their long-ass necks out and looking around the place.

Besides the turtles, the rest of the reptiles were pretty typical. I did miss my chance at YouTube gold when I cut out the video recording at the critically wrong moment. I was getting some good iguana b-roll for the epic Australia adventure DVD box set when I pressed the shutter to stop recording. Just then, the iguana unleashed a torrent of urine down from the branch he was perched upon, behind the glass but only inches in front of the face of an adorable little backwards-hat clad Aussie boy who had been staring at it, enraptured.

"it's weeing! Mom, mom, look, it's weeing, it just did a wee!"

I clicked the shutter again to start recording, but the moment had passed. I could just picture all the "skip this add in 5 seconds" YouTube revenue that had just slipped through my fingertips. Move aside, "Charlie bit me," there's a new funny accent star in town. Moving on from taking this huge L, I determined to be more vigilant with the video recording. It was a determination that would pay dividends as the day went on.

We saw many interesting Aussie animals that day: wallys, kangas, quock-o's, tazzy's. Those may or may not be the actual nicknames that Australians use for those animals, but I do know that Australians never call anything by its actual name. We saw a pelican that was well over half my height. We saw a land mullet, which apparently is one of the largest skinks in the world. We saw a salty, which is the actual affectionate nickname Australians gave to saltwater crocodiles. Apparently there is a beach in Queensland where they can be seen bodysurfing. People are advised not to go swimming there.

Wombats

Some sort of mouse den

Quokka. Definitely not trying to take a selfie with me

Can't have an Aussie zoo without alpacas

 Towards the end of our visit, we decided to make one last loop and take a stroll through the "rainforest trail." this is where we encountered the giant tortoise exhibit and experienced what was, without a doubt, the highlight of the trip so far.

We spotted the giant tortoise in the enclosure, sitting around just generally being a giant tortoise, with all that entails. Then he started high-tailing it, as much as a giant tortoise can high-tail.

"wow, that sucker is moving!" Tyler shouted.

I started the camera rolling. This was the kind of action I had envisioned when I purchased the GoPro. That's when we spotted the impetus for this sudden burst of activity: another giant tortoise, sitting across the way, looking fine as hell, as far as tortoises go. His pace quickened to the tortoise equivalent of a gallop.


[warning: the following passages and videos contain graphic depictions of animal fornication (in case you couldn't discern that from the title of the post). Depending on the mores of your particular workplace, consider the remainder of this post as possibly NSFW]

He approached her from the rear. I'm guessing missionary style is not popular in the giant tortoise community, as rolling back over can prove difficult. Mustering all of his strength, he climbed aboard and stretched his arms and neck over her shell. Loud, guttural moans ensued, all from him. For her part, it looked like she would have appreciated having a magazine to read during the event.
At first I attempted to record this with both my phone and the GoPro, but I was giggling far too hard to keep either steady. I handed the GoPro to Tyler, and told him to look for additional angles. They would go far for the DVD release. He ran around the side, and launched into full crocodile hunter imitation. "during the mating season here in Australia, you can see two turtles going at it in the zoo." the English-speaking crowd gathered around erupted in laughter. The Chinese tourists just looked a bit confused.



When it was all over, she slinked off to a cave as he slowly slid off of her. No doubt she was looking to make a getaway before he got a mind to try again. Our day at the zoo having reached a satisfying conclusion (albeit not as satisfying as Mr. Tortoise's), we decided that we had seen more than enough and headed back to the ferry. On the bus on the way back to Bondi after the ferry, Bella leaned over across the aisle and said to me, "Congrats to your sister!" Uh, what? Bella didn't even know my sister, as far as I knew. Tyler then asked, "Mate, have you been checking your sister's story today?" No, I didn't have internet access all day. Tyler handed over his phone to show me. Apparently my sister had gotten engaged, with all the Instagram posts to prove it. So congrats, Sarah and George! With that, we headed back to the flat and had another sausage sizzle for dinner. A day quite well spent.

Touristy Tuesday

Tuesday was the first day that Mike and I were on our own without our local guides Tyler and Bella. Tyler had taken off on Monday to celebrate American president's day and my American birthday. We started our day with eggs and more thick-cut strip and Canadian bacon hybrid. We then set off for the CBD to see the sights by land that we had previously only taken in from the harbo(u)r.

Sydney has a delightful public transportation system. Perhaps it was just the contrast with DC's transit system, which has deteriorated in the last decade to the point that trips will randomly yet repeatedly take four times the normal length, trains only come every 25-30 minutes outside of rush hour (when they would routinely run every 6-8 minutes between the hours of 5 am and midnight or later in the early 2000s), and occasionally kills people with incompetence.

We were able to take a short bus ride to Bondi junction, where we caught a punctual, clean, and new-looking train a few stops to the CBD. Our destination for the morning was the Sydney Botanic Garden, situated on the site of the first garden planted by the convicts and crew of the "first fleet" that sought to colonize Australia some 200 years ago.

The garden offers a free walking tour at 10:30 every day. It turned out to be more of a moseying tour, as our guide and a few of our fellow tourists looked to be around 80 years old. Still, he had accumulated a vast amount of historical and horticultural knowledge during those decades, which he eagerly shared with us. We saw many plants and animals that are known only in Australia, as well as many that were brought over by Europeans for aesthetic or agricultural reasons. One of the most intriguing species to me was the strangling fig. This tree had developed an evolutionary hack to deal with the thick canopies of the Aussie forests, which blocked most of the light making it to the forest floor. To get around this, the fig produced seeds that were attractive to local birds, who would then deposit the seeds higher up in the canopy. The fig tree had the ability to start growing in open air, and send leaves up from the host tree top to collect sunlight. It would then send roots downward until it reached the ground, essentially standing on the original tree's shoulders to get some sunlight in its early days. It continues to send down roots around the host tree until it has completely smothered it, and eventually the host dies. It creates intriguing visuals where you can see the trunk of a dead or dying tree surrounded by the tentacle-like roots of the strangling fig.

Strangling Fig

I am familiar with these types of initiation rituals

Our intrepid guide

Interesting factoid: when the stone cutters would cut their stones at the quarry, they would mark it with their personal insignia to ensure they received the proper credit

Along the walk he pointed out a web with some kind of horrible-looking spider in the center of it, about the size of the palm of my hand. I missed the name of it, but I’m pretty sure this was my first up-close encounter with one of the many species of flora and fauna in this country that could kill me.

Deadly Fauna

The largest vertical garden in the southern hemisphere

Outside the Opera House

After the tour, we left the garden to head into the CBD and meet Tyler for lunch. He took us to a nice Vietnamese joint and then a coffee shop. He also gave us a quick tour of his office. He works at a startup fintech company, and his office very much had that internet startup vibe to it. Huge Apple monitors at the workstations in an open-floor layout. Giant bean-bag chairs for the meeting room. Cool artwork on the walls.

After our office tour we set out to explore the Rocks, which was the sight of the earliest white settlements in Australia. There were some cool pubs and restaurants, but overall we didn't find much to do or see here. We stumbled upon "the big dig," which is an archaeological excavation display sight that preserves some of the foundations of the original stone houses built in Sydney. This was cool in theory, but just seeing the vague outline of what used to be a wall and a few informational signs about what random former convict and family that lived there was not all that exciting.

We moved on to the Opera House, and took a lap around the structure to check it out from close-up. The only way to get inside was via a $35 tour, which we decided to forgo, as it was getting late in the day and the line looked to be mobbed by Chinese tourists wielding video cameras. We cut back through the botanic gardens to our next destination, the parliament house of New South Wales.

Celebrating the Year of the Dog

CNY Sydney 2018

After a very limited screening procedure, we were allowed to enter and headed right onto the floor of the upper house chamber. Parliament was not currently in session, so we were able to have a look around on our own. We also checked out the Jubilee Reading Room, which was decked out with old books and large globes. 

In the upper house

Sweet globe in the Jubilee Reading Room

We then headed to the lower house chamber, and had to wait to enter until a German tour group had left. Once they had, we were treated to a private tour by one of the guard/guides. Learning that we were Americans, after joking that we wouldn't be allowed in because of this, he handed us an informational sheet breaking down the differences between the government systems of our two countries. Australia has a federal system of state and national governments, like the United States. But the structure of each of those governments is more akin to the British parliamentary system, with a prime minister at the head. The states do have governors, but they are representatives of the British monarchy and are largely ceremonial in purpose now.

In the seat of power

Power Sharing

The lower house. Akin to our House of Representatives

After we concluded at the parliament house, we caught the train back and met Tyler at his flat. We quickly cooked up dinner and headed to the Bondi Bowls Club for some lawn bowling.

Lawn bowling is very similar to bocce, which is why I was so intrigued. I majored in bocce at the University of Miami, with a minor in business administration. I continue to play in a weekly bocce league 3 seasons out of the year in DC. Suffice it to say, I’m a fan of the sport. For those who aren't familiar with the game, bocce is played by throwing a golf-ball sized "palina" down a roughly shuffleboard-sized court, which then becomes the target. The teams then take turns tossing heavy, quarter-bowling-ball-sized balls at the target ball. Closest to the palina wins the round. If you’ve been watching curling in the winter Olympics, it’s basically the same thing except on grass, and with a moving target.

Lawn bowls works the same way, but has the added twist that the balls are weighted on one side. This gives their path a curvature once tossed, adding a whole new element to the game. It definitely took some getting used to, but eventually I felt like I got the hang of it. The biggest hurdle for me was not the unbalanced weighting of the balls, but the unbalanced weighting of the bowler (i.e. me). Lawn bowling is required to be played barefoot, which I fancied, as I much prefer that to any other foot-state. To protect player's feet, there was a rule against bringing glass onto the court with you. Why they chose to serve beers in glass drinkware with this rule in place is beyond me, but the net result is that you had to bowl with your left hand unnaturally empty. Drinking and bowling in bocce is such an inseparable aspect of sport that I had no idea what to do with my idle hand. Bowling without tipping over due to the lack of an anchor-beer took some practice to get a feel for.

Shooters shoot

Once it got dark we headed inside, where bar trivia was underway. We had already missed the first round, but upon hearing the questions and answers, we decided we needed to school these fools. We entered the "comp," as Aussies call a competition, and managed to climb our way to a 3rd-place finish, despite not having garnered any points in the first round. Granted, there were only 5 other teams competing, but the finish was good enough to win thirty dollars worth of vouchers for our next visit to the Bondi Bowls Club. Elated by our domination of the later rounds, we split a couple more pitchers between us and called it a night.

Coogee Strolling

[Editor’s note: these posts are going to start going up out of order in the interest of time. The post from Sunday requires some care and crafting to strike the literary notes that the subject matter deserves]

Monday:

the day started, as many days often do here, with a dip in the drink at Bondi. Actually, it started with breakfast at Tyler’s place. I’m fascinated by the bacon they have here. It really is the best of both worlds. They've got the strip bacon that we commonly know in America, but attached to that still is the leaner ham portion, what we generally call "Canadian bacon" in the states. They get both! And the strip portion is particularly hardy, definitely in "thick cut" territory by US standards. It's great.

Moving on from breakfast, we spent the morning at the beach. Being a weekday, it was decidedly less crowded than we had seen it all weekend. The surf was pretty tame, and we spent a while in the chilly water tossing a football around. Tyler explained that the surf was "dumping out" and thus wasn't ideal for surfing. The waves were breaking all at once along the line so there wasn't much of a roll to ride on.

After a while on the beach, we went to grab some beers at speedos, a nearby cafe. After all, it was past 5 o'clock back home, and we were still a bit on east coast time. We ordered a bucket of 4 coronas for $20, which was a pretty good price. Beer in Australia is crazy expensive. You can easily spend more than that for a six-pack at the grocery store. Restaurant prices here often gave me a bit of sticker shock, but it was unjustified. What needs to be kept in mind was that the exchange rate cuts 20% off the price when comparing it to us prices. You also don’t tip in Australia (at least, Tyler assured us this was the case but mike and I continued to worry that we were earning a spot alongside him in the "these guys never leave a tip" blacklist that we suspected gets circulated amongst the Bondi service workers). On top of the no tipping, there's no sales tax, vs. 10% in DC. So if you add up the 20% tip on top of the 10% sales tax, then factor in the .80 AUD/ 1 USD exchange rate, that's a substantial difference. You'd need to perform some form of advanced calculus to get the actual conversion ratio, but it's significant.

When the waitress looked a little stunned that we were only ordering a bucket of coronas at 11 am on a Monday, she explained that we would need to order food with the beer. This was not a restaurant policy, but apparently a requirement to comply with the responsible service laws (RSL). Similar laws are on the books in the states, but most places don't feel the need to rigorously enforce them. We asked the waitress for a few minutes to contemplate the food options.

A different waitress came back later to take our order. Mike, who wasn't drinking with us at the moment, ordered a side of hash browns and side sausage, for a total of $3, the cheapest food options on the menu. When our original waitress returned a few minutes after our order had arrived, she laughed at us, "that's the food you ordered with your beers?" looking down at mike's tiny plate of side dishes, while Tyler and I indulged in our coronas. We were indeed complying with the letter but certainly not the spirit of the law. We each took a bite of the hash browns to make sure we were in full compliance. She laughed again while pretending to smack Tyler for his smart-assity. In an important cultural note, they served the coronas with lemons rather than limes. Weird, but not altogether unrefreshing.

After that, we strolled about Bondi for a bit to get a feel for the neighbo(u)rhood. We eventually settled on "little l" for some chicken sandwiches. They were quite good.

With lunch concluded, we headed back to the flat to shower up and prepare ourselves for "the walk." the Bondi to Coogee beach walk is, as the name implies, a marked walk along the coast from Bondi beach to Coogee (pronounced like huggies but with a k and a slightly more boogie g sound). I was excited to finally put my camelback that I had purchased for this trip to good use. We donned our walking shoes and filled up our waters, as it was well hot out there.

Tyler lives on the northern end of Bondi beach, so the walk began by traversing the boardwalk above the beach to the southern end. At that end there's an establishment called Bondi Icebergs, which sports a saltwater pool that's so near to the water's edge that some of the larger waves would wash over the deck and mingle with the pool water. It looked like a cool place to do a few laps. We continued on along the coastline towards Bronte beach.

The Australian coastline is heaps different from, say, the Atlantic seaboard. On the east coast of the us you've essentially got miles and miles of nearly unbroken sandy beaches. At many places, you can look north or south and see nothing but more beach all the way to the horizon. This is not the case for the eastern shore of Australia, at least not the coast of new south wales where we were. The beaches are all in coves, surrounded on both sides by imposing cliff faces. This makes for dramatic views as the waves crash along the rocks or cruise in to the beach inlet. It also makes for a very taxing walk, as we would climb seemingly endless staircases or steep inclines, only to crest a hill and see a similar decline down to the next beach and hill to climb.


We stopped for photos at many of the cliff peaks, as the views were spectacular. Tyler played the tour guide along the way, breaking down the different vibes for each of the beaches we passed. This one has a small beach but great waves, so it's big for surfers. This one is so far in that it has a calm surf, so it's big for families with little kids. We passed one that had an underwater nature trail, the first of its kind. It consists of a heavy chain anchored in to the seafloor with concrete, forming a loop that goes past interesting marine habitats. It is intended to be enjoyed by snorkelers or scuba divers. I thought it was a pretty cool idea.

Finally, our legs wobbly from the exertion, our backs soaked with sweat, we spied our final destination: the Coogee pav (pavilion, for those who prefer using entire words). This was a pretty sweet bar with a relaxing rooftop overlooking the beach. The ground floor walls were bedecked with oversized games: tic-tac-toe, connect four, checkers, even a scrabble board. It definitely seemed like my kind of place. We had ourselves a couple of pints of local pale ale, and headed back to Bondi in an uber once the sun began to set.

To wrap up the night, we went to a Thai restaurant called Bangkok on Bondi’s main drag. The place was hopping, but we were able to get seated right away. This was a byob establishment (or byog- bring your own grog, according to the Australian language and culture book my sister got for me for the trip. Although I have yet to find an aussie or ex-pat that had ever heard the phrase or confirm its usage). They kept our beers refrigerated for us and brought them out as we needed, which was a very nice touch. A good time was had by all. We walked back to Tyler’s flat, and all slept soundly that night.