TOAL-Trip of a Lifetime

Our tour group visited an aboriginal group in the outback, to learn about their way of life. Photos of some of their foods. Please note the desert hats we were wearing. Australian flies in the outback are considered very “friendly.” That is kangaroo tail we are eating.

We tried our skills with native tools, including boomerangs.

 

 

The Aussie salute or Bush salute is the waving of one’s hand in front of the face at regular intervals in order to prevent bush flies from landing on it, or entering one’s nose or mouth. These flies are plentiful in the outback and “very friendly.”

The Australian box jellyfish AKA Deadly Sea Wasp (Chironex Fleckeri) is the most venomous marine animal. The stings are extremely painful, and are often fatal to humans, causing death within 2 to 5 minutes. Fully grown, they can measure 8 inches long with 9 to 10 foot tentacles. They are commonly found in the coastal waters off North Australia, which includes the Great Barrier Reef.

Many swimmers wear lycra full body suits for protection.  Australian lifeguards used to wear their wives pantyhose to protect them from the stingers, before the lycra suits.  It was quite humorous to see these big bronzed Aussie lifeguards wearing pantyhose.

 

 

 

 

The Bluebottle or Portuguese Man-of-War is not a jellyfish but a colony of four kinds of animals which are dependent on one another for survival.

Short documentary here   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2msRyMR2R08

The gas filled bladder allows it to float on the water, tentacles are used to capture and to the drag the prey up towards the mouth. On the east coast of Australia 10,000 to 30,000 stings per year are reported. In summer they are often found on beaches and coastal waters of Australia.

• A bluebottle sting usually causes an immediate and severe pain, which generally fades over about an hour.
• You can usually see where on the body the sting has occurred because there will be a red line where the tentacle has touched.
• Sometimes this line has a ‘beaded’ appearance, and is swollen and itchy.
• Occasionally blisters can develop at the site of the sting, and very rarely the sting will later cause scarring.

We were fishing in Darwin Harbor. Our fishing guide pulled in the anchor rope with a tentacle attached from a Bluebottle. He had a very painful sting that lasted about half an hour, as well as a welt that lasted all day. He said it was Very painful. We were careful touching our fishing lines after that.

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“Bondi” or “Boondi” is an Aboriginal word meaning the sound of water breaking over rocks. Bondi Beach is in a suburb of Sydney, a very popular area for locals and tourists.   The beach is about one mile long, beautiful white sand. The northern part of the beach is best for swimming, rated 4 on a one to ten scale for surfing while the southern part of the beach has dangerous rip tides making it a 7 for surfing. There are shark nets underwater but sharks are still sometimes seen in the area. There are many cool shops.

The Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club is officially recognized as the first surf lifesaving club in Australia, established in 1907. The primary objective of surf lifesaving  is to protect the bathers who frequent beaches through manned patrols and associated services.  Bondi surf lifesaving became famous on Sunday 6th February 1938. They performed over 300 rescues after hundreds of swimmers were swept out to sea by a series of large waves. At the end of the day five lives were lost and the occasion was forever etched into Australian history as ‘Black Sunday’.

The Bondi lifeguards perform around five thousand rescues over the summer period. They also deal with lost children, shark scares and  bluebottle stings. Bluebottles are also known as Portugese man o’ war.I will post more on these later.

There is a popular TV show in Australia called Bondi Beach Rescue.  Link here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKEHQ-FYxaQ.

 

 

 

 

 

Broken Hill is an isolated mining town in the outback of New South Wales Australia. It has a hot desert climate, averages 9 inches of rain per year, population of 17814 people. In 1883, silver ore was discovered in this area.

There are currently three active mines, lead zinc and silver owned by BHP Broken Hill Proprietary. When a miner was told to go to the “Kremlin” that meant he had been summoned to the BHP headquarters, Kremlin being the miners nickname for the headquarters.

Broken Hill played a major influence on the labour unions in Australia. Some of the most bitter labour disputes have been fought in Broken Hill.

Australia is a leading producer of gold. During WWII, many feared the Japanese would invade Australia.  Gold from the capital cities where it had been stored was moved to Broken Hill for safekeeping.  The first transfer of gold was from Sydney in February 1942, by special train under a combined military and bank guard under great secrecy.  The  soldiers believed that they were bound for a secret mission overseas. They were very surprised to find themselves escorting a number of very heavy boxes to Broken Hill. More surprised still was one of the Bank’s employees.  He had been informed that he was required for a secret mission and was told that it was in the nature of a fishing trip. Among his luggage, therefore, was a fishing rod!

A special strongroom was built within the jail to house the gold. An elaborate system of alarms provided a security check at least every fifteen minutes. Building this strongroom called for large quantities of cement and other materials.  The rumor around town was that the jail was being reinforced to house Rudolf Hess and other German prisoners.

Besides mining, there are now many Merino sheep farmers in this area.  Merino wool is highly valued.  Merino has very fine fibers, making it the softest wool available with high elasticity so it will keep its shape.

Broken Hill has a huge solar farm (plant) nearby. It has a Royal Flying Doctor Service and a School of the Air base. There are several artists and art galleries, many in the aboriginal style. Broken Hill also claims to originate cheeseslaw.  Cheeseslaw is made from cheese, usually cheddar, carrots, mayonnaise and sometimes cabbage. All the streets in the city are named after elements.

 

 

Trades Hall

Solar Farm

Miners memorial is at the very top

Aboriginal Style art

View of town from Miners Memorial

Miners Memorial

 

Kiwis love extreme sports. Near Rotorua, there is a Zorb track.  Zorbing  is the sport of rolling downhill inside an orb, generally made of transparent plastic.  Zorbing is generally performed on a gentle slope.  Zorbing can also be carried out on water, when the orb is sealed once the rider is inside

A popular big game fishing spot, Bay of Islands is 144 islands in the northern part of New Zealand. We fished there. Harold caught a large shark, many other fish as well. The photos are of the Bay of Islands and bottlenose dolphins that often visited the fishing boat.

Many New Zealand and Australian towns have something to make them unique. Taihape is the Gumboot Capital of the World. A Gumboot is a wellington or mud boot. The annual gumboot throwing contest attracts a lot of people to this town. It is a beautiful place with a temperate climate, average yearly temperatures 50 to 71 degrees. Pronounced tie happy.

Raymond Burr, best known as Perry Mason and Ironsides on TV, owned two houses and several acres of land near Lautoka, Fiji.  He and his partner developed the garden, which contains more than 2000 varieties of Asian orchids and Cattleya hybrids. They hybridized around 1500 orchids in their nursery.

When Burr died, he deeded the gardens to the Government of Figi, to be used as a tourist attraction.

When Aborigines in Australia die, they are taken by a mystical canoe, Larrpan, to the spirit land in the sky. You can see their campfires burning along the edge of the great river of the Milky Way. The canoe is sent back to earth as a shooting star, to let their family on Earth know that they have arrived safely in the spirit land. The milky way is an important part of their culture. Another word used by many Aborigines for the canoe is God.

There are many tribes of Aborigines, not all tribes have the same beliefs.

 

 

The southern sky is amazing. You can almost touch the milky way, it is so close.