Ladies and gentlemen, all of the photos and negatives of my
last three months in
Australia are gone. My dream of returning home with a thousand
pictures of
every beautiful landmark I saw and every friend I made is no more.
There
will be no heavy scrapbook to show friends, family, and grandchildren.
Over a month ago, I packed a box with three months worth of
photos,
souvenirs, gifts, and memories and shipped it home. Last week,
my Mom
received the box totally empty. Efforts to locate the contents
have been
fruitless. I sent the negatives with the prints, and yes, I feel
stupid.
When I went into the post office to bitch, I was filling out
a form when the
guy behind the counter looked at me and asked "So are you
going to the
Aberdeen (a dance club down the street) again this weekend?"
Best I can tell, I lost all my pictures of Ayers Rock, Alice
Springs,
Devil's Marbles, Adelaide, Kangaroo Island, Great Ocean Road,
Melbourne,
Tasmania, southwestern Australia, and the Pinnacles. To those
travelers I
may have met up with in those places, consider this an appeal
for duplicates
of your own pictures, particularly any with me in them.
In a strange twist of fate, I received this e-mail a couple
of days after
losing my box:
> Dear Jeff,
> My name is Carolyn and I am writing from Peter Liks Wilderness
Gallery. We
> were very pleased to read on your web site about your travels
and your
> encounter here at our Gallery. Our Gallery Manager, Renae
Helps, has asked me
> to pass onto you one of our open edition coffee table books
in appreciation of
> the words you wrote.
> Once again, thank you and we hope you enjoy Peter's beautiful
coffee table
> book.
> I await your response.
>
> Kind regards and happy travels,
> Carolyn
> Peter Lik Wilderness Gallery
Peter Lik, an Australian landscape photographer, found my leters
home and
read that I had visited his gallery in Cairns. Learn more about
Peter at:
Other than that, life rolls on here in Perth. The job is a
breeze. I've
streamlined my operations and I know finish my six hours worth
of work in just
under two hours. If you'd like to see my handiwork, check out:
After I finish my work, I kill time by playing games or exploring
the Net.
Yesterday, I grabbed "ASP in a Nutshell" from a stack
of books on top of the
filing cabinet and actually started reading it.
When I'm at home, I usually veg out in front of my computer.
I amaze Frida
and Michelle with how long I can sit here without getting up.
I've tried to
get them involved by playing games and mucking around on the Internet
with
them, but they just don't get it.
I've been hanging out with Frida when I can, but she's always
working. Last
week, we went to a footy game and had a great time. It was a
lot of fun
except for the pubic hair in my cheeseburger (no joke).
A few days ago, Frida told me that every time she walks by
my room, the
smell makes her want to vomit. Undoubtedly, the smell is coming
from the
hopelessly soiled socks I used to cross crocodile-infested streams,
climb
Tasmanian mountains, and hop over rocky outcroppings and which,
despite
several good washings, continue to radiate stench. So I cleaned
my room up
a bit and went to K-Mart to get some new socks. Problem solved.
Frida gives me the same look that my Mom gives me after I clean
my room.
She smiles and says, "Isn't that better? Don't you feel
better with a clean
room?"
Michelle is an endless source of amusement. At the moment,
she is blasting
her Italian music and cleaning the house like a lunatic. She's
got a lot of
weird habits, like putting a towel over wet dishes while they
dry, propping
open doors when they don't need propping open, and she's got the
most acute
senses of smell or hearing I've ever seen on a human specimen.
She smelled
and had an allergic reaction to the dust on a portable heater
I was using in
the kitchen the second she came through the door on the other
side of the
house. And she hears when I get up for a drink in the middle
of the night
and gently lay ice cubes in my glass. She goes apeshit when anyone
leaves a
crumb on the toaster or uses a particular dishtowel for the wrong
purpose,
and she gets paranoid when someone opens a window and there's
a draft in the
house. She takes all the furniture out of her room to clean it.
She's
weird.
Living here in Perth has become an exercise in sociology.
Some observations
and hypotheses:
- Because television and the Internet have not swept the country
and unified
the masses like back home, Australians are socially isolated from
one
another. Australians tend to talk to each other about what they've
been
doing and never really discuss media events or larger political
issues.
There's almost no sense of community here, and people seem to
prefer it that
way.
- Australians tend to do just enough to be happy and support
themselves.
There's no compulsion to be the best, biggest, or richest, and
no obsession
with fame and glory like there is back home. People have a refreshingly
laid-back attitude and lifestyle.
- Australians have more moles than anyone else. I don't know
if it's their descended-from-the-English fair skin, the world's
highest UV
readings, the fact that their not as paranoid about covering up
their
blemishes, or all three.
- There are no tough Australian guys (except maybe Russell
Crowe). Even the
biggest, meanest-looking guys sound dainty with that accent.
- Music plays through the phone when you're on hold. This
is a free service,
even if the local call you made to get put on hold costs 22 cents.
No Regrets.
Jeff