I’ve always wanted to visit Australia, both to see a new continent, and to better understand the market for audio, video, lighting and show control products, there. So when I heard that our Australian distributor, EAV Technology, would be exhibiting at the SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) Convention in July, and that David Geoghegan, our Director of Sales had a conflict with another trade show, I decided to make the trip and check things out. Researching airfares on the web, I stumbled upon a promotion that seemed unbelievable. For less than the normal price of a round trip airfare, Qantas was offering two weeks in Australia, including airfare between Los Angeles and Sydney and connections to Cairns and Melbourne, plus four nights of accommodations in each. Although they called it the Australia Stop Dreaming “Tour”, it wasn’t really a tour because we could leave any day that we wanted. But it was certainly priced like a tour — lower, even. Just $1599 complete. This is less than the US to Australia airfare alone. A $400 upgrade to the deluxe hotel category also seemed a bargain. So that’s how Linda, Danielle and I came to be heading for Australia in July.
Tuesday, July 3, 2001
Los Angeles
With Linda busy on projects at Disney, Danielle and I took advantage of our first stop being Los Angeles to spend some time with her grandparents. We caught the afternoon non-stop from Orlando, and arrived in time to meet them for dinner at El Cholo.
But first we checked in to our hotel, the St. Regis in Century City. In keeping with the bargain theme of this trip, I’d found a deal on Expedia that offered this hotel at about $200 a night — a bit of a discount from their normal $500-$5000 a night room rates.
The St. Regis is one of the nicest hotels I’ve stayed in, and has some of the best staff. It’s the top of the line for the Starwood Resort company, and is positioned above their Westin chain. There’s butler service, the valets remember your name, and the touchscreen telephone controls the entire room, including the lighting.
Expedia also found us a deal on a rental car — my first experience with Thrifty, and overall a good one.
So by 9:00 pm we were settled in for Nachos and a Combination Number One at El Cholo. Danielle lasted pretty well considering it was past midnight our time, but by the end of the meal she was ready to sleepwalk back to the hotel.
Wednesday, July 4, 2001
Our Independence Day started with room service breakfast on our balcony overlooking the construction site next to the Century Plaza. Then Danielle exercised some genes that she didn’t get from either parent by shopping for jeans at Macy’s, across the street. They were on sale!
Actually the shopping served two purposes. It got Danielle some red jeans to complete her red, white and blue Fourth of July outfit, and killed a couple of hours until noon, when Grandpa and Grandma are up and around. I brought them lunch from El Pollo Loco — the second in a long line of west-coast-only foods that we had on our agenda.
In the afternoon I left Danielle to play with Marjorie and Dean and headed out to the San Fernando Valley to Frye’s Electronics to pick up a 128MB Smart Media Card that they had on sale for an absurdly low price. I was expecting them to be “just out”, but to my surprise, they had plenty, at less than half the going rate, and with a free USB reader. Frye’s is huge. No, it’s HUGE. I honestly found it somewhat overwhelming, with row after row of everything from PCB making supplies to motherboards to books to chips to stereos to adult DVDs to vacuum cleaners (these last two were in separate sections). Note to Grace: we should check into Frye’s as a wholesale source of PC-Card media.
On the way back to the McBrides’ house I stopped at several stores and picked up a cooler, thermos, and food for a picnic dinner. Then we all headed to the Hollywood Bowl, for an evening Pops concert in box seats that Linda had bought for us.
It was a shame that Linda couldn’t join us. It’s always special being under the stars on a balmy night, enjoying great music and the magic of this historical venue. The fireworks that capped off the performance were truly spectacular, the best-synchronized performance I’ve seen.
Thursday, July 5, 2001
More west-coast foods checked off the list. We made a breakfast stop at Stan’s corner doughnut shop in Westwood for the world’s best blueberry buttermilk doughnuts, then hit Shakey’s Pizza for Mojo potatoes. The latter we catered to the McBride’s for lunch, then headed out for a short day at Knott’s Berry Farm, arriving about 3pm.
Mystery Lodge, the world’s best Pepper’s Ghost effect, was the highlight of the visit. The show, designed by BRC Imagination Arts, and using Alcorn McBride control and audio equipment, is based upon a show that Linda helped them do for the GM pavilion at Expo 86 in Vancouver. In this improved version, a live-action Native American wanders about a long house, summoning up images out of the smoking firepit, and disappearing and reappearing at will. At the end of the show he slowly fades from view, leaving only his walking stick, which finally falls to the ground. Neat.
At Knott’s Danielle got to pan for gold, we rode the old but still fun Calico Mine train, and the log flume. We also lost money on many redemption games.
Fortunately the chicken dinner restaurant was very crowded, so afterward we headed up the freeway to Burbank, and The Smokehouse Restaurant. Located directly across from the Burbank Studios, for fifty years this otherwise average restaurant has been packing them in with the world’s best garlic cheese bread. I grew up going with my folks to their now-defunct location in Encino almost every weekend. It’s still as good as ever.
Friday, July 6, 2001
A morning drive through Hollywood, and breakfast at Jack-in-the-Box (another one of those west-coast places). Danielle was amazed at the Hollywood Jack-in-the-Box, with its bullet-proof barrier between the employees and the guests, and a double-doored box to pass the food between. Welcome to Hollywood.
We spent a quiet day at the McBrides’. I think everyone was tired after their outing to Knotts’. Lunch was from Carl’s Junior (you guessed it, another one of those you-know-what). In the early evening Danielle and Marjorie baked brownies while I went to the airport to pick up Linda. After a brief stop at our hotel we all headed to Lawry’s, the time-honored prime rib Mecca of Restaurant Row.
Lawry’s has moved across La Cienega Boulevard from its location of many years. What’s really disconcerting is that the new building, inside, anyway, is virtually identical to the old one — floor plan, decor, everything. Weird. Prime rib is still served from what Ruth Riechl, the restaurant critic, once described as “silver-plated rolling coffins”. It’s still as good as ever, although I found the portions a bit skimpy.
Danielle spent the night at the McBrides’, her last chance for a sleep-over this trip.
Saturday, July 7, 2001
Linda and I stopped by El Cholo for lunch, since she’d missed her opportunity for the world’s best Mexican food on Tuesday night. Then we spent a quiet afternoon at the McBrides’. Very quiet for me, as I fell asleep on the floor of the living room. It’s not that I hadn’t been getting enough sleep, but the weather this trip was so hot and humid — even more so than in Florida — that I found it really took the wind out of my sails. I guess I’m just used to living in air-conditioning.
In the late afternoon we headed up the coast to Malibu, and Duke’s restaurant. Now named after a Hawaiian surfer, the place started out in the 1930s as The Sea Lion. In fact, at one time there was a pool in front with live sea lions. When I was a child we used to drive up the coast on Saturday afternoons for dinner. I remember watching the waves crash against the plate glass windows, especially in the bar. A few winters ago they did a bit too much crashing, and broke all the windows. So now there’s a rocky barrier, and no more splashing.
Sunday, July 8, 2001
This will be a long day. Up early, packed, checked out, breakfast at McDonald’s (certainly not a west-coast-only thing, but I can’t imagine a large chorizo breakfast burrito with HOT jalapeno sauce in Florida) and we’re off to the airport for our Qantas flight. Departing at 1:00 pm aboard a 747 (in the fourth row from the rear, center, but not as bad as it sounds) we spent fourteen and a half hours reading, doing word jumbles, watching FIVE movies, and eating many meals. A few of them were called lunch and dinner, I’m not sure about the rest. Danielle spent much of the flight listening to the Bill Bryson tapes, “In A Sunburned Country”, his wonderful tour of Australia. One thing’s certain: all future plane flights will seem short! But Danielle held up well, and she and Linda both got some sleep. There was a beautiful view of Sydney and its harbor as we landed about 9pm. . . Monday night.
Monday, July 9, 2001
Hey, what happened to Monday? Eaten by the international date line. We’ll get it back in two weeks.
Tuesday, July 10, 2001
Sydney
We were supposed to be at the Sofitel, but the travel agent waited so long to reserve it that it was full. Then they put us at the Rydges Wentworth, a 5-star that looked like it had potential. Somehow it got booked up, too. So at the last minute we ended up at the Premier Menzies, four steps below the Sofitel in the Accor chain, and a 3-star at best. But the rooms are clean, if small.
Breakfast buffet in the Clarrington Restaurant (why is there spaghetti?) and then off to the Sydney Aquarium at Darling Harbor. At first the aquarium seemed somewhat run-down and modest, but the very first exhibit — the platypus — captured our hearts, and everything else was great, too. The pair of platypi(?) were like otters, in constant motion, and we could see them above and below the water. If these things were in a Sci-Fi movie you wouldn’t believe them. They look like otters wearing fake duck beaks and paddle wheel flippers.
We had lunch in the rotating restaurant atop the Centrepoint Tower, the tallest structure in New South Wales — in fact, the tallest in the Southern hemisphere. I’ve been to the top of the CN Tower in Toronto, and the Stratosphere in Las Vegas, both of which are taller, but they can’t come close to the view from Centrepont.
Syndney is simply the most beautiful city I’ve been in. Not necessarily the neatest, funnest, or most intriguing, but from a pure photogenic standpoint, it puts even Paris and San Francisco to shame. located on a spur surrounded by harbors, inlets islands and mountains, there’s something interesting to look at in every direction. And from Centrepoint there’s there’s nothing to block your view.
We walked back to the hotel, which afforded Danielle the opportunity to add to her stuffed animal collection in the shops along the way — wombats, koalas, echidnas, kangaroos and wallabies — the choices are a bit different here.
We had a quiet afternoon, and a tasty dinner — chicken tandoori and Thai chicken — in the hotel dining room.
Wednesday, July 11, 2001
Another buffet breakfast (what the hell is it with this spaghetti, anyway?) and then a visit to the Australia Museum, where they have a fabulous collection of rocks and minerals, an interesting room full of skeletons, and the good taste to use our audio/video equipment.
I skipped lunch and headed over to the SMPTE show for the afternoon, while Linda and Danielle went to Xerts, a space-themed restaurant where you order from a touchscreen at your table and watch cartoons while you wait. Then they toured the Sydney Opera House, which they enjoyed.
At the show I had some productive conversations with Clive O’Brien and Tony Hambling of EAV, and several customers from around Australia. The show is very small, as is the market, and I’m not sure it’s worth the expense of sending someone to Australia for it. I do think that if we had a product that could displace some AMX equipment — and the key here is touchscreen interfaces — that we could wedge our way into this market in a bigger way. On the video player side, it’s cost-per-channel that’s the key to selling against DVD players, as always.
For dinner we caught a cab up to The Rocks, the historic area where Sydney was founded. It was reminiscent of Ghirardelli square in San Francisco. In fact everything here in Sydney seems much more similar to America than to England. Only the money, the side of the street they drive on, and the accents are reminders that we’re not somewhere in the U. S.
We had dinner at Shiki Japanese Restaurant — there’s a strong Asian influence here — where Danielle enjoyed the Tepanyaka (table-top grilling of your own seafood) but not being spattered by hot butter.
Thursday, July 12, 2001
We were up early today for a three-part tour. A bus picked us up at the hotel and took us to Star City, near the big new casino, where we transferred to a different bus for a 45-minute trip to Featherdale Animal Park. Sydney is a city of four million people and five million vehicles, and it shows in the traffic.
At Featherdale got to stroll among kangaroos and emus, and pet koalas, wombats and even an Echidna (careful of which direction you stroke those!) It was quite wonderful. There were also hundreds of bird species, a dingo, and some nasty looking crocs. Mingling with the kangaroos was a real highlight of the trip.
The return bus ride dropped us off at Circular Quay where we caught the Captain Cook luncheon cruise. In retrospect it would have been better to take a different cruise, as the one before ours had 13 passengers, and ours was packed. The views of Sydney from the water were pleasant, including the classic view of the Opera House.
This whole part of the tour was very disorganized, and reconnecting with our bus — or any other — after lunch seemed almost impossible. We decided to skip the third part — a driving tour of the city — altogether and instead took a walk through the shopping areas in The Rocks, then a cab back to the hotel.
Internet connections here have been very difficult, but after many attempts I finally managed to get online and process some email this afternoon.
For dinner we went to The Summit, yet another rotating restaurant atop a nearby building where the food was pretty good, and the service pretty absent.
Friday, July 13, 2001
Cairns
There seemed to be plenty of people willing to fly on Friday the Thirteenth, but the weather wasn’t very cooperative. We were up at 5:30am and at the airport by 7:15 for the flight to Cairns. The only problem was that we couldn’t see the runway for the fog. With no planes coming in, even once the fog lifted, there was no way to get out, so we spent six hours waiting for our flight. This wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounds, though, since we had a nice table by the window, and plenty of things left over from our previous flight to keep us occupied. Danielle made productive use of the time by doing math problems in one of her workbooks, for which she earned almost aus$60.
Speaking of money, Australia seems a real bargain at current exchange rates. The ratio is almost two to one, and things here seem inexpensive anyway (except for gas, which is close to US$4 a gallon).
Take wines, for example. Australian wines are really excellent, but only the really big producers make it to the States; so I’ve been trying to order wines that we can’t get at home. We’ve had some fabulous, intense Cabernets at very nice restaurants, and paid only about US$20 for them.
Anyway, at about 2:00pm we finally took off for Cairns. Helped along by our previous fourteen hour experience, and the very entertaining “Emperor’s New Groove”, the flight seemed extremely quick, and by 6:00pm our cab was pulling up to the Sofitel Reef Casino in Cairns.
What a difference from our previous hotel: marble bathroom, rare wood furniture, and louvered sliding doors dividing up the tropical-style room.
Cairns is unlike any place I’ve been before (perhaps San Juan was like this before they paved it). Lush mountains surround a tropical beach, with a small grid of city streets lined with shops and hotels. The water is that same intense blue as in the Caribbean, but since it’s winter here the breeze is pleasant, but not hot and sticky.
Our balcony is on the south side of the building — the shady side(!) — and affords us a 180 degree view from rainforest to reef. There is a casino at the other end of the building. It is circular, ornate, and reminiscent of a small Vegas casino. There are a few gaming tables which seem to be completely ignored, and hundreds of slot machines. The machines play a peculiar game called Poki. The stakes are very low — in some cases as low as an Australian penny a point. Linda took a crack at it for a few minutes, but never did figure out how it worked.
We dined downstairs at Anthias. Consistent with Australian attitudes, the dress was fairly casual, even though it’s the hotel’s nicest restaurant. The food was superb, and Danielle polished off both her own scallop appetizer and my scallop entree. I inherited her stuffed quail, which was also excellent, and a terrific match to the Rouge Homme Cabernet Sauvignon (aus$41).
Saturday, July 14, 2001
I spent this morning creating this journal, getting caught up on almost two weeks of traveling. We’ve done a lot. Linda has researched tour options here in Cairns while Danielle has worked on her own journal. Room service breakfast was excellent, and included a Mango-Peach Yogurt that Danielle loved. They also made her pancakes, although that sort of food isn’t on their breakfast menu (but baked beans are!) The pancakes were great. Now we’re off to explore.
We spent the afternoon browsing Cairns, having lunch on the Pier. I seems obligatory for visitors to Australia to buy an opal, so I did, but preferred mine “on the hoof”: I bought a rock paper weight.
At the local mall Danielle added to her international collection of Harry Potter books, buying the Australian edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Dinner was across the street, at a small sushi restaurant called Kamome. The Toro sashimi was very fresh.
Wandering around town today we passed a number of Aborigines. A small group of men were very drunk, and laughing among themselves, but most wandered the streets somewhat aimlessly. It’s quite strange; almost as if they were ghost people, no one pays any attention to them. In turn, they seem almost oblivious to their surroundings. It’s almost as if they are looking beyond the buildings and traffic, to the land that was here before. It’s eerie.
Sunday, July 15, 2001
Wow. Today we went to the rainforest. A van picked us up at the hotel at 8:30am and drove us north about 20km to Tjapukai, an aboriginal cultural park. Tjapukai has won the award for best attraction from the Australian Tourism Commission several years running, with good reason. After a preshow of historic artifacts, we saw a live and video production that details some of the aboriginal creation myths, what they call their dream time. The presentation was similar to Mystery Lodge, although the script wasn’t as strong. This was followed by a show in a second theater, with large screen video history of the exploitation of the aborigines, and the Tjapukai in particular. This film was excellent. Then we went outside, and had the unique opportunity to try throwing spears using a primitive spearthrower — what we would call an “atlatl”. We also got to try our hand at boomerang throwing; they really do come back!
After a snack at the snack bar (where it was funny to see the native dancers queueing at the coke machine) we went next door to the Skyrail station.
The Skyrail is a 4. 7 mile gondola ride — the world’s longest — that carries you over the mountain range, just above the treetops of the rainforest. The 36 towers — up to 133 feet tall — were lifted into place by helicopter to avoid disturbing the rainforest. It’s breathtaking as you rise over 1700 feet, nearly kissing the top of the canopy. Temperate breezes wafted through the gondola as we ascended, and the sound of birds was everywhere.
There are two stations along the way, where you disembark and explore. At the first, we went on a ranger-guided walk among the trees. The giant tree pictured at the left was one of the few with no clinging vines, due to its unique defense mechanism: it bark falls off at the slightest provocation. One stinging bush was particularly impressive. If you rub against it, you will itch and burn for months — possibly years — whenever the area gets wet. Its fruit is edible, but who would pick it? At the second stop, we got a spectacular view of Barron Falls, and visited the interpretive center.
At the end of the Skyrail is Kuranda Village, where we shopped for opals and had a late lunch in an open air cafe. Then we boarded the Kuranda Scenic Railway, which wound its way down Barron Gorge, through fifteen tunnels and across many bridges until we reached the alluvial plain. At the end of the 90-minuite trip we were back in Cairns at the railway station just a few blocks from our hotel.
Of the many scenic tours we’ve taken, this was unquestionably the most dramatic and beautiful. It’s not to be missed.
We had dinner on the lawn outside the Hilton, overlooking the pier. While we waited we watched the stars circle the Southern Cross. It seemed strange to not recognize any constellations. The night was gorgeous, warm and balmy. At one point two very large bats briefly perched upside-down in a nearby palm tree. When they swooped away, their wing spans were easily two feet.
Monday, July 16, 2001
Another spectacular day. After an early room service breakfast we walked to the pier and caught the Quicksilver 5, a high speed catamaran. We went up the coast about an hour, first to Port Douglas and then out to Agincourt Reef, one of the 2900 individual reefs that comprise the 2300 km-long Great Barrier Reef. The Quicksilver is appropriately named: it does 60 km/hr. By noon we were tied up along a giant “pontoon”, a multi-level structure with picnic tables, sun bathing area, undersea viewing windows, snorkeling deck, and a dock for a semi-submersible. We violated everything your mother taught you by having a buffet lunch and then snorkeling — well, Danielle and I did, anyway. But Linda got to ride the semi-submersible while we went looking for great white sharks.
Actually, despite Australia’s reputation for things that can kill you, it was the easiest — and easily the most spectacular — snorkeling trip we’ve been on. The snorkeling deck, a grating submerged about a half meter and lined with benches, made it trivial to don our gear and get in and out of the water. And the presence of the reef all around us completely broke up what would otherwise have been two-foot swells; the surface was almost completely calm.
The coral was beyond anything we’d imagined — a bit less colorful than on TV (since we didn’t have bright lights to illuminate it) but infinitely varied. There were hundreds of different kinds on every surface. Myriad colorful fish darted in and out of the crannies, or schooled together in groups of a thousand or more. One fascinating behavior that we observed was that of “cleaner fish” who perform a dance to advertise their availability to the larger fish. These larger fish then literally queue up and wait their turn to be cleaned. They open their mouths and gills, and let the smaller fish remove all of the algae and leftover bits of dinner. Amazing.
After snorkeling, Danielle and I caught the 20-minute ride in the sem-submersible, where picture windows give you a very close view — two feet, at times — of more distant sections of reef. We saw a Whitetip Reef Shark (harmless) sleeping on the bottom. There was also a ray, and dozens of vibrant green parrot fish.
At 3pm we headed back to Port Douglas. The staff was fabulous the entire trip, even handing out cool, lemony towels on the way back. At the Port Douglas Marina we boarded a bus back to Cairns. Port Douglas is a very charming town, with many small bistros and open-air cafes. We wished we’d had time to explore.
The drive down the coast was spectacular, reminiscent of Big Sur. The road hugs the rocky shoreline, squeezed between the rainforest and the narrow, meandering beach. In places it’s barely above sea-level. In the first ten miles we saw only two people. Heaven.
Further along, we passed through a crocodile farm where we crossed a river positively crowded with crocodiles. Later I saw a solitary kangaroo grazing in a clearing. At one turnout two hang-gliders using parasails slowly circled at eye-level just above the rocky coast. This part of Queensland is definitely worth a return trip.
Tuesday, July 17, 2001
This morning I rose early and strolled down the Esplanade to drop off the underwater camera for processing of the reef photos. While I waited I had breakfast and espresso at one of the many sidewalk cafes that line the street. The morning was still quiet, as the shop keepers were still cleaning their facades, and the tourists hadn’t arrived yet. The tide was ebbing, and hundreds of shore birds swooped over the mud flats. The soft reggae music of the cafe was the perfect accompaniment.
After I picked up the photos I went back to pack, and we had lunch on the lawn outside the Hilton, overlooking the pier. They have a great menu: fajitas, curries, and Thai salads.
Then it was off to the airport, where Danielle spent the time earning extra spending money by solving math problems in one of her workbooks, and I continued working my way through the 97-cent jumble book Linda gave me on the first leg of the trip. It’s been a great way to occupy myself in the airports and on the long plane flights, but I don’t care if I ever see another jumble!
We had two flights of about two hours each, with a one-hour layover in Brisbane. I’m afraid it will have to remain one of those cities where I’ve only seen the airport. We arrived in Melbourne a bit after 9:00 pm and by 10:00 pm were settled into our room on the 42nd floor of the lovely Melbourne Sofitel.
Wednesday, July 18, 2001
Melbourne
We all slept soundly after our long travel day, and awoke to a beautiful view of Fitzroy Gardens from our 42nd floor room. While Linda and Danielle slept in, I spent the morning transferring this journal and photos to the web using the hotel’s T1 line (they call it E1).
Here’s a bit of business advice: If, like Royal Doulton, you make a luxury product — for example, fine porcelain — you might want to resist the temptation to put your name on other porcelain products — for example, hotel toilets.
In the afternoon I visited with Clive and Tony at EAV’s new office. It was quite productive. I demonstrated WinScript 2. 0, talked about some selling opportunities against AMX and Crestron equipment, and detailed plans for upcoming products. There was a lot of interest in all four major products we have in development. They each clearly represent good opportunities here in Australia, fitting in better than our existing products.
While I was at EAV, Linda and Danielle walked down to the river, had some sushi at a Japanese restaurant, and did some shopping.
For dinner we went across Flinders Lane to Langston’s Restaurant and Wine Bar, where we had French and English cheeses and an absolutely stunning 1999 Jasper Hill Shiraz that was brimming with flavors — in part due to its amazing 15. 5% alcohol content — including plums, wood smoke and vanilla. My opinion of Shiraz has definitely gone up.
Thursday, July 19, 2001
Today we rose early to catch a tour to the area surrounding Melbourne, including the Yarra Valley wine region.
While we waited for the luxurious Mercedes Benz tour bus we had a chance to examine some of the unusual flowers at the flower market near the hotel. Some of them were strange, to say the least.
Our tour started by climbing the foothills of the Dandenong Range. A hundred varieties of Eucalyptus (“gum”) and other trees strethed high above, forming a dense canopy. The landscape was like what one might imagine Southern California being like if the climate were more tropical. The giants ferns sprouting from the forest floor reached above our heads in some places.
We stopped at a small teahouse in Ferntree Gully where we had great fun feeding King Parrots, Gullahs and Crimson Rosellas that flew out of the thick Eucalyptus forest and landed on our hands and heads.
Our next stop was a short way up the road in Belgrave. This is the departure point for the historic Puffing Billy steam train which was used to move logs from the forest starting in 1900, and became a tourist attraction soon after. The train and 24 km of track have been completely restored, and are operated entirely by volunteers from all over the world. We took the thirty minute (10 km) ride through the forest to Menzies Creek, where we caught up with our bus for the drive to the Yarra Valley.
Lunch was at Fergusson’s Winery. Danielle had their specialty, the spit roast, but Linda and I selected main courses that didn’t involve any spit.
We stopped for wine tasting at Yering Station, and then a snack and sparkling wine tasting at Domaine Chandon. Linda and I both liked the still wines that Domaine Chandon was selling under the Green Hill label better than their sparklers.
Our final stop was at Eyton (pronounced Eye-ton) on Yarra, where we tasted a range of wines and toured the cellar.
At each of the wineries we visited, we saw magpies, large black and white birds with an elaborate melody. There were also sheep grazing on the cuttings lying between the rows of just pruned vines.
At all three stops, most of the wines were quite good, and a few were excellent. We bought six to bring back with us. I’d love to visit Clive’s wine shop and track down some of the really fabulous Connawara wines we’ve had with dinners, but we just can’t carry any more. I guess we’ll just have to come back on a wine tasting expedition to some of the many other Autralian viticultural regions.
Today’s tour was the best of all the day tours we’ve taken. This was due in large part to our driver, Nemo, who was very friendly, interesting and well-informed. Also, we dropped most of the group off at an animal park for the entire afternoon, so the three of us and one other fellow had a nearly private wine-tasting tour on our lovely tour bus!
We had dinner at Kenzan, the Japanese restaurant in the bottom of the hotel, where we sat in a Tatami room with paper walls and a sliding door.
Friday, July 20, 2001
Today we had a relatively quiet last day in Australia. We walked through Chinatown and then on up to Queen Victoria Market, passing through many blocks of interconnected department stores and malls on the way. We had lunch on the patio of an old brick building (with a sign on its tower saying “Shot Factory”) that has been completely absorbed into the mall, with a conical glass structure enclosing its entire six-story tower.
Queen Victoria Market was a bit of a disappointment. Originally an open-air produce market next to a cemetery, it became so popular that they dug up the cemetery and expanded into it. Now it’s little more than a flea market.
We walked back past the hotel to the tiny opal shop that Linda and Danielle discovered on Wednesday. The German couple that owns it is charming. He is a true enthusiast, who spends most of his time carefully polishing opal sections out of the raw boulders. He showed us one piece that was about 1. 5 inches by 3 inches that looked like trees and ferns when you held it one way, and dancing women wearing white when you held it upside down. The colors and depths of that one and other special stones he showed us were phenomenal — and phenomenally priced, at about $60,000 Aus. We bought a few small pieces that can only be considered trinkets in comparison.
Back at the hotel we relaxed for a while. Danielle finally finished “Curse of Monkey Island”. And I bought some candies for the crew at Alcorn McBride which should prove amusing.
For dinner we went to the restaurant complex on the other side of the river, called Southgate. We had a lovely dinner at Blake’s, a place that serves “New Australian” cuisine. The service was great, and we had an excellent Wynn’s “Michael” Shiraz. It was very noisy though, due in large part to the table seated next to us: ten 16-year-old girls dressed like Britney Spears — in other words, like hookers. Worst of all, they were behind me.
We were originally going to pack Friday night, but when we got back to the hotel there was quite a good singer/pianist playing in the lounge of the atrium that the hotel surrounds, so Linda and I decided to spend a quiet hour enjoying the music. As Bill Bryson noted in his wildly entertaining “In A Sunburned Country”, music in Australia seems to be caught in a time warp. But it was fine with us that all of the songs were thirty years old.
Danielle went to bed, but stayed up late reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. This is a t least her fifth time through it, but the first time with the English edition, which she bought on the trip. She’s enjoying spotting all of the differences in the text: jumpers for sweaters, and no “bloody” noses.
Saturday, July 21, 2001
Up early, lots of packing, then off to the airport and a quick bit ebefore the flight. We’re getting to be old hands at these long flights. Five movies, three meals, and a very short night, and we were touching down in L. A. The sunset in the vicinity of Hawaii was the most beautiful I’ve ever seen — layers of streaky white clouds, pierced by roiling thunderheads far, far below us, and the whole horizon turning orange, then green, then indigo.
Saturday, July 21, 2001
Los Angeles
Yes, there are two July 21sts this month. In fact we landed three hours before we took off! Our room at the Westin wasn’t quite ready, so we had another breakfast while we waited — our fifth meal for Saturday, but not our last. Then we settled in for a nap — six hours worth — before renting a car downstairs and meeting Grampa and Grandma for dinner. We went to Cafe del Rey at Marina del Rey. When Linda made the reservation, she didn’t realize that it’s part of the California Cafe chain, which we like a lot. Dinner was superb — frankly, the best meal of the trip — and we had two terrific wines: Gainey Reserve Unfiltered Chardonnay, and Morgan Reserve Unfiltered Pinot Noir. We settled into bed at about 11:00 pm, and were, of course, wide awake at 3:00 am.
Have I mentioned that Westins suck? For a supposedly high-end hotel, the service seems consistently abysmal. It took two calls to get our bags delivered, two more to get them picked up, and they couldn’t even manage to print an invoice when we checked out. Next time we’ll go back to the Marriott, or Embassy Suites.
Sunday, July 22, 2001
Orlando
Our take-off was slightly delayed because the heating and AC unit failed when the disconnected from the terminal power, but we got off before 8:00 AM, and touched down in Orlando shortly before the start of our quarterly Wine Syndicate dinner, on the other side of town. A quick stop at home, and then Danielle was off to spend the night with Nicole, and Linda and I headed out to meet the group at Emeril’s in City Walk.
In retrospect, Australia was probably our best trip ever. The package we got was certainly the best deal ever. The bottom line for all three of us for two weeks was $5800 — not including food and side tours — a terrific bargain. We had excellent flights and a nice leisurely schedule; it was great to have a day to relax after each travel day. Even the long overseas flights weren’t that bad.
Most of the accommodations were also top-notch, especially in Cairns. The people couldn’t have been friendlier, nor the scenery more beautiful. I highly recommend this trip to everyone. Go while the exchange rate is still two for one!