Reunion in Sydney!

Finally! After months of heart-wrenching separation anxiety, I finally got to meet up with Elliot and Stephanie and their friend Jay in Sydney! The entire blogosphere must be rejoicing as all the blogkeepers I've linked to on my blog and I have actually met up in the flesh! :-)

Immediately upon meeting up, the five of us went to see the film "300" in IMAX in Darling Harbour. (Apparently, Elliot and Jay had already seen it twice, and Stephanie once, but you just can't enough of ridiculously well-developed Greek bodies in tiny leather codpieces and maroon capes!) It was an amazing film, but I can't help but be a bit disappointed at the continuing "queerification" of villains in movies (in this case, Xerxes) and the undercurrent of homophobia (e.g., King Leonidas of Sparta deriding Athenians as "boy lovers," which is ironic since what he is presumably referring to was, in fact, an integral component of Spartan military training), especially since this movie's target audience is most likely young straight men. But even these misgivings couldn't take away from the sheer spectacle of it. Sydney claims to have the largest IMAX screen in the world, and I guess I didn't really appreciate how an eight-story tall screen could truly showcase hundred of male torsos, thighs and the aforementioned codpieces until now. What would we do without modern technology??? :-)

After the movie, we caught a drink overlooking Darling Harbour, then some dinner at an Irish pub, then visited the great variety of nightlife on offer here in Sydney. In keeping with the randomness of the evening, we somehow wound up at the Taxi Club along the way, which I can only describe as a tranny pokie bar. (Pokies are what they call slot machines here, and to say the Aussies are infatuated with pokies is an understatement. Every bar seems to have a "pokie room" full of entranced patrons robotically feeding these festive and voracious machines.) Here's a photo of Jay, Elliot and me with Melissa, a new friend we made visiting from Kuala Lumpur.



I'm slightly worried about the fact that we have another 4 nights here together -- I'm not sure I can handle this much fun... ;-)

Next up, Christine and I are about to take a ferry over to Manly, so I'll be reporting back soon...

Sydney!

Ohmigosh!!! I'm in Sydney! Christine and I saved the crowning jewel in the Australian crown for the end of our trip. (Well, end of my trip anyway; Christine is continuing on to Perth after I desert her to fly back to New York on May 3.) Here I am catching my very first glimpse of the Sydney Opera House, which even more visually stunning in person than in all the photos you see of it before you arrive.


Frankly, everything about this city is visually stunning, as perhaps you can tell from some of the following photos. I think Sydney benefits from one of the most beautiful natural settings for any city in the world, perhaps second only to Rio de Janeiro...


Like the lemmings we are, Christine and I arrived and made a beeline for the Opera House, the #1 tourist destination in the city. We took an awesome tour of this architectural wonder (which sorta made me feel guilty, since I spent the last 3 years living a stone's throw from Lincoln Center, walking past it every day, and stopped in perhaps once in that whole time--but really, there's no comparison, right??).



The Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House's largest and most impressive venue. Its acoustics are amazing, it seats 2,676 and that organ in the back goes another 27 feet or so in the wall behind it -- that's a huge organ!




View of part of the Sydney Opera House from another part of the Sydney Opera House.




View of the Sydney Harbour Bridge from inside the Sydney Opera House (the bridge isn't actually rippling apart -- I took this photo through thick panes of glass...)



Sydney Opera House Veranda



Another view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge



View of Circular Quay and Sydney Cove from Sydney Opera House



Christine in the gorgeous Victorian-era Strand Arcade, opened in 1892 :-)




Christine and me in the lobby of the 4 Seasons Hotel. We're not staying here, but Patty and Stacy did. And we wanted to feel close to them. And we needed to tinkle.


Nighttime view of the Sydney Opera House



Nighttime view of the Sydney skyline



Nighttime view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. (If you look really closely under the bridge towards the right, you can see Sydney's Luna Park on the opposite shore.)



On Thursday night, Christine and I caught a drag show by Varla Jean Merman at the most intimate (i.e., smallest) of the Sydney Opera House's 5 performance spaces. It was fabulously bawdy -- I loved it, and was really excited to see Varla Jean again after only having seen her once before (in Provinctown with Miguel, back in 2001). Be sure to catch this show if you love hearing popular songs rewritten with new lyrics about various parts of the human anatomy!

Litchfield Park!

After finishing up with our Croc Cruise, we continued on our tour to Litchfield Park, about 130km south of Darwin. (The rest of the pics in this post are from within the park.)


Massive termite mound. Thousands of termites work together for decades to build mounds like this. They gather up nearby sand, mix it with their saliva and just keep building upwards. The finished product is hard as cement (or at least seems that way to the touch) and is impervious to rain, etc. This particular style is called a "cathedral mound." (Sorta looks like a cathedral Antoni Gaudi might design, no?)


Another view of the termite mound.


Christine and me in front of the cathedral mound, so you can get a sense of scale.


This sort of looks like a graveyard, but it's really a huge number of magnetic termite mounds, all perfectly aligned towards magnetic north. (No one knows how the termites are able to do this.)


Wangi Falls. Gorgeous, but closed for swimming on account of the crocs.


Florence Falls. Open for swimming, but required quite a trek down into the gorge.


Here I am swimming at Florence Falls. I'm not skippy dipping, I swear! My swimsuit (or bathers, as they call them here) just didn't make it into the picture frame...


Christine at Florence Falls

My foot. I can't believe I'm sharing this, but... I've pretty much inherited my mother's extremely delicate Irish skin, which means that I'm doing constant battle with eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, etc. (Thanks, Mom!) And oftentimes, when I'm subjected to a sudden and extreme change in temperature or humidity, my skin peels a little bit. Just a little. Sometimes on my foot. A tiny bit. Maybe you can see in this photo. Anywhoosie, the point of the story is that I stepped into the water near Florence Falls, where a bunch of other folks all seemed to be blissfully enjoying a refreshing dip, and within seconds, I felt a bite on my foot. Then another. Then another. I tried everything: shrieking like a schoolgirl, flapping my hands around in the water like a schoolgirl, batting my eyes coquettishly at all the handsome, well-built Aussie studs nearby like a schoolgirl. Nothing would make the incessant biting stop. I was then informed by our helpful tourguide that the checkered rainbowfish had taken a liking to me, and that I probably had a bit of dry skin on my feet. How mortifyingly embarrassing! Apparently, these little fish make it their life's work to groom other fish by biting off dead skin, etc. They get a meal and the other fish gets cleaned. Everyone's happy. Apparently, they saw me enter the water and summoned the troops for a massive concerted effort at cleaning me up. I was really touched by their effort, but it still totally freaked me out -- I didn't stay in the water at Florence Falls very long.

Me at the next swimming opportunity: Buley Rock Hole. No checkered rainbowfish here. And I swear I'm wearing a swimsuit.

Christine at Buley Rock Hole.

Me diving into the river at Buley Rock Hole -- excuse the horrendous form, please.

Christine getting washed down the falls at Buley Rock Hole


Back in Darwin after a long day of crocs, termites and rainbowfish! Our tour group toasted the sunset at Fannie Bay with sparkling wine and prawns.

Another gorgeous Darwin sunset.

Next up, Sydney! (My last stop in Australia -- *sniff*)

Crocodiles on the Adelaide River!

On Monday, Christine and I took a day excursion with Wallaroo EcoTours (highly recommended, btw!) south of Darwin to Litchfield Park. The first part of our tour was a boat ride down the crocodile-infested waters of the Adelaide River.


Here I am holding Snappy, a saltwater crocodile. He's not nearly as cute as Harvey was. :-(


Christine settling in for some serious crocodile feeding.


Me on the boat. Not sure why I'm leaning back like this -- I must have been practicing my defensive maneuver in anticipation of crocodiles lashing out of the water at me...


The banks of the river were just littered with these guys. How creepy is that?


In order to lure the crocs to our boat, our tourguides tempted them with chunks of meet suspended by a piece of twine from a tree branch. It was a highly scientific procedure. Flop the meat on the surface of the water a few times, and once a croc approached, flop the meat on the croc's head if necessary. Things did not look so promising in the beginning, as several crocs simply didn't seem particularly hungry:





And then others made a little bit of an effort, but apparently didn't want to play our game so they gave up:





But then others actually came back for seconds:





Here's a still photo of a croc taking the chunk of meat from us. (This was pretty hard to capture, because it all happens so fast!)


Here's another video of a croc who doesn't wind up getting fed, but it gives you an idea of the macabre commentary we were all subjected to for hours on the cruise:





Another croc did get the food, and was quite energetic about it, as you can see in these photos:


But then he sort of lurched for the front of our boat. This video can't quite capture how it actually transpired, but it was pretty scary for us croc novices:





Afterwards, the croc glared at us menancingly (as you can see in this photo), while we hightailed it out of there.


This cute little guy came along for the ride. As I've said before, this being Australia and all, I can only assume he's deadly if he touches you, spits or tinkles on you, or if you stare at him too long.

But the highlight of the whole Croc Cruise was feeding Hannibal, the king of the river, so named in honor of the character from "Silence of the Lambs." Hannibal is the biggest croc in this section of the Adelaide River, and he really is huge: about 18 feet in length. Here are 3 videoclips showing Hannibal, but again, it's really hard to capture what it feels like to see this massive primal killing machine circling your boat, then disappearing under muddy water, only to reappear somewhere you don't expect him.







Next up, the rest of the Litchfield Park tour!

Darwin!

We arrived in Darwin, in Australia's "Top End," around 1:00am Thursday night. We got to town, checked into one motel, slept a few hours, checked out, checked into another hotel and then went out for breakfast, all by around 10:00am. (We bounced from one hotel to another to save money -- it's a long story. We have to switch hotels one more time before we leave Darwin late Wednesday night.) :-)

The crazy thing about arriving in Darwin, by the way, was having to set our watches back half an hour. Isn't that wild?! I had never heard of time zones differing by 30 minutes before.


Having breakfast at Ducks Nuts on downtown Darwin's main thoroughfare, Mitchell Street.

Darwin is hot. It's been well into the 90's the entire time we've been here. This makes it a little difficult to do much stuff outdoors. Nevertheless, we rented bikes and rode through the Botanic Gardens to the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. This was a great little museum, with a cool exhibit on Cyclone Tracy, which essentially destroyed the entire city of Darwin on Christmas Day 1974. The museum also featured the preserved 17-foot body of Sweetheart, a large saltwater crocodile who attacked several boats in the 1970's and was eventually captured but was accidentally drowned when the captors were trying to pull the massive croc out of the water. (Apparently, the capture was not particularly well thought-out: the team didn't realize that the sedative they planned to use would shut down all of Sweetheart's involuntary life functions, such as breathing, nor did they have a plan for how 4 men were going to lift a crocodile weighing nearly 1,800 pounds out of a river and into a boat.) In addition, the museum had a whole room of stuff found all over Australia that can kill you: box jellyfish, cane toads, snakes, plants, sharks, rays, etc. It was awesome, but since no photography was permitted, I don't have any pictures to show you. :-(



Another fun thing we did in Darwin was take a dinner cruise in Darwin Harbour aboard a 100-foot schooner, the Alfred Nobel. The dinner was great, but the sunset was totally spectacular. So much so, that I sort of went crazy taking photos. You'll have to indulge me here -- it was one of the most picturesque sunsets I've ever seen!

Christine and me at our table on the Alfred Nobel.

Me posing on the back of the boat -- I don't think a human foot is supposed to twist that way...

Christine at the back of the Alfred Nobel.

A view of the Darwin "skyline" from our cruise. All the way to the right, you can see the Parliament House, a really beautiful example of "tropical architecture" (I didn't even realize that was a design category) and the home of both the Northern Territory legislature and the public library. (The library, incidentally, offers free internet access and has views over the harbor. I've spent a good amount of time there, and am, in fact, sitting in that building right now, updating my blog.)

Me on the dinner cruise.

All of the remaining photos were taken during the Harbour Cruise. I wouldn't ordinarily include so many pictures of a single sunset, but I just couldn't help myself...

Not a shabby view for the chef, huh? This is what he gets to stare at each evening while he cooks up dinner.

View from the prow of the boat just after sunset.

Me on the prow of the boat.

Snapshot of the other diners. Is that a crazy sky or what?!?!

As we returned to the pier, a gorgeous crescent moon was rising in the sky. Of course, my crappy little digital camera couldn't quite do it justice, but I included it anyway...

Next up, a day excursion to Litchfield Park!