Time Traveling

Through a Distant Land

The street was dark, almost pitch black as my wife and I trudged along in the chill. The small tree-lined residential street was a small one, closed off at one end for road repair.

The homes were old, some of the oldest homes built in town, and the trees were old growth, the roots buckling the sidewalk, causing some foot trouble as you hit macadam-patched areas that rose and fell with the shape of the roots.

Strangers to this place, my wife and I huddled arm-in-arm, and being from South Florida, the cooler temperatures added to a sense of unease, strange dark streets in a foreign town, inky-black, tripping over the uneven sidewalk, glimpsing lights blocks ahead and yearning to reach the brighter path.

At the first corner a sudden streak rushed right by, then another, standing us upright and stopped completely. A final streak went by, children all, tykes on scooters, their laughter and squeals trailing after. They paused long enough to check traffic on the empty side streets, and moved on. Their chitter-chattering as they disappeared into the gloom a jolt of joy in an ominous setting. The sight of three five year olds, two girls and a boy, passing in the pitch black of night, was my first introduction that I surely wasn’t in an American city any longer.

On the next block, more children, more scooters. Small children, out alone, not a parent in sight, riding motorized scooters, a foot thumping down periodically to assist in propulsion, easily navigating the uneven sidewalk, as well as the two of us.

This was a stark reminder to me of what we’ve lost here in America, fear of crime gripping us all, and worries about some unseen, unknown, who could grab up our toddlers at any time and place, the idea of allowing our five year olds out on the darkened residential streets one left far in our past.

Yes, it is true, in the “old days” here, we used to get home from school, throw down a quick snack, and go out in the dark and play with neighborhood friends until we got the call to come back in for dinner. We had no way to communicate with parents back then once out, they had no way of knowing if we were out playing hide-and-seek amidst the clapboard homes on the next block, or if we wandered into the darkness of the ball fields at the nearby high school. Our parents had no idea where we were, only that we’d return home for dinner at the appointed hour. Life back when.

As the wife and I trudged along, adjusting to the extreme time change on that first evening, adjusting to the weather change, the season change, our first night in town, I was struck by the laughter of small children out alone on the streets at night.

At the end of the next block were a pair of pubs on the competing corners. People sat outside in the sixty-five degree coolness, drinking pints, conversing, and also laughing.

We were in Australia to visit one of our daughters who just had a baby, for my wife to help her out in those first few trying weeks of tending to a newborn, as well as cater to the five year old, older brother.

My daughter and son-in-law live in a tertiary city a few hours from Sydney, large enough to offer all the amenities life has to offer, small enough to feel like one big neighborhood town.

Visiting them was as if going back in time, to a simpler 1950’s America, a place where the children can play in the streets after dark, neighbors meeting at the corner pub to catch up over a cocktail or pint, and life moves a bit slower. And more importantly safer.

They all live in a homogeneous society where everyone appears to have the same shared values, where a visit to the quieter coffee shop a few blocks from the Main Street in town means listening in on the conversations, greetings, and friendship of people who value each other. An owner making inquiries into how a home repair is going with this neighbor, and asking the next customer how their visit to Hunter’s Valley went this past weekend. The owner how this little coffee shop greeting everyone by name, even the passers-by who weren’t stopping in at all, a yelp of “G’day Mate shared in passing.

There is no air of fear of crime, no one at odds over politics, a complete lack of tension in the air. Dare I say it, there is an element of hope and good cheer in the air.

I quickly adjusted to some cultural differences, of course I fell instantly in love with the whole pub culture. The very idea of being able to walk to the end of the block, wander into a place that had drink, a full menu, and, wait for it, gambling everywhere, was as if heaven waited just down the street.

Every pub might have had the inconvenience of having to go to a counter to order your fare, no table service, but that was far outweighed by the fact they had, get this, slot machines tucked away inside a small room off the back, as well as a full gaming room full of televisions showing dog races, horse racing, rugby matches, and soccer games, with the ability to bet on it all. Two of my three favorite things in life, gambling and alcohol, all available a short distance in every direction.

And incredibly, every pub there has these gaming rooms and slot machines. And these pubs are legion. They are everywhere. All with comparable menus featuring the same “Schnitzy”, a chicken schnitzel meal that appears to this foreigner to be a food staple the average Australian cannot live without.

We were in Australia for near three weeks and perhaps my favorite part, except for seeing our two wonderful grandchildren and spending time with family, was a visit to the pub with my Aussie son-in-law. Chatting over a beer with him, catching up on his life since the moved back to Australia from Los Angeles, and just taking stock of his settling down to raise a family in this small community, eased my mind for the future of our grandchildren. They will grow up in a safe, family oriented, community, surrounded by the love of two parents who are extremely close.

Australia, to me, has the feel of America’s little brother, they’ve adopted our television, our fast foods, and so many facets of our culture that you just cannot enumerate all the ways Australia is America in miniature. America, but stuck somewhere back in time. Advanced past the 1950’s maybe, trapped somewhere in the 1980’s, in style, custom, and feel.

My only struggle in this strange and foreign land so far away was in dealing with ordering a coffee. I am a simple man. I enjoy two cups of coffee each morning ladled with cream.

Ordering a coffee in Australia is as if you are trapped in one big Starbucks. “Hello, can I get a cup of coffee with cream”? “Oh, then mate, what’ll you have, a long black?

“Uh, I have never wanted anything long and black in my life, so, uh, absolutely not”.

“Ah, then mate, a flat white”?

“Wait, what”? “Blacks get to be long and sound strong, but the whites are flat”?

“I just want a Goddamned coffee with cream”.

“We’ve no cream here, mate, just milk”.

Good Holy God, what kind of culture can’t offer you cream for your coffee? And how can a society ever be successful when it takes forever just to make a single cup of coffee for a customer? It takes forever to foam the milk for each drink. No wonder they live a slower lifestyle.

I want a coffee, and I want it now, with a dollop of cream. Save the foam, save the chatter. But somehow each and every encounter to get this morning ritual results in a word salad I can’t understand, a cup of something foamy and coffee flavored in there somewhere, and a wait. We may share the same language, but that is questionable if you’ve tried to communicate, everything they say is abbreviated there.

The pub down the street, the “Oriental”, favored for their home-made pizza, is the “Ori”. The omnipresent city workers clad in day-glo vests are in “Flouro”, short for fluorescent describing their vests. They don’t go to college there, they go to “Uni”. chicken schnitzel is never referred to as chicken Schnitzel, but “Schnitty”. the lawn bowling club that seems to be in every neighborhood is the “Bolo”.

You have to visit Australia for weeks for two reasons, first to get over the huge time change, and second to adjust to the language.

We had a great visit with the daughter and her growing family, she married just the best father you could find for your children, and he makes a great pub companion. He is of Irish heritage originally, so we get along great. And he has my sense of foul humor, so we bond immediately. He is a great family man, and I am happy seeing him advance through life with my daughter and growing a family.

The beaches in their small town are pristine and beautiful, and they are just an hour from “Hunter’s Valley” a beautiful and even mountainous region where they grow grapes for wine, that did have the feel of Napa, or Sonoma. To look out amongst the vineyards and seeing a family of Kangaroo hopping amongst the vines is a vision I won’t soon forget.

We finished the trip in Sydney. More specifically Bondi Beach. I’m happy to have had the opportunity to see in person the Opera House area of downtown Sydney, which I’ve seen for years each New Year’s Day with fireworks bringing in the New Year first, a day ahead of the United States, being over the International Date Line. Harbor bridge hangs over the modern city majestically, and the city architecture is stunning.

As the season is changing in Australia from Winter to Spring, people there were breaking out of the house and into this near seventy degree weather with a vibrancy and appreciation for getting outdoors for the first time in a while. Being from warm weather South Florida we lacked an appreciation for that “get out of the house” feeling you get in Spring after a long, cold Winter. But we understood their joy.

I loved Bondi and Sydney proper, except for the San Francisco style hills. At my advanced age it was difficult to navigate the sloping hill back to the AirBnB. We enjoy single story living here in America, so an added challenge was staying in a new and modern style home in Bondi Beach, with twelve foot ceilings and a second floor. The higher ceilings add many steps to the staircase, and just looking up toward the area where the bedroom lies can have you thinking of sleeping on the living room couch to avoid the trip up, and back down in the morning.

There was also the added advantage of the currency exchange, the US dollar currently having a thirty some percentage benefit against the Australian dollar. Grabbing out a hundred dollars at the pub from the ATM to wager with, and purchase a few Guinness yielded only a sixty-nine dollar bank charge back home. Purchasing things felt like a bargain.

Regular readers who know I am supposed to be on alcohol restriction with the recent heart surgery can save their admonitions about my drinking a Guinness there. Hey, first I was on vacation, and second, Guinness is beer food, a glass of wheat in a glass. But then again, don’t tell my heart doctor I was ignoring his orders.

We are no strangers to International travel, I’d been to Mainland China on that side of the globe before, and we’ve been all through Europe. But Australia was different. Maybe it is the dateline change, and living “backwards” to our Eastern Standard Time. Life back home being all night, while we are spending our days out, and about, as everyone home slept. Maybe it was the seasonal change, going from the extremes of Summer here, to their entrance into the Spring Season. Perhaps it was the culture, similar but distinctly different. Slower, homogenous, calmer.

As the globe gets smaller with instant worldwide communication, and cultural influences melding, the inclusion of burgers on every menu, the familiar fast food signs, the shared language makes a visit to Australia familiar. As if you’ve left the big city in America and gone to the small Southern country town. They lack the big city amenities of the famous art museum, the pro football team, the latest styles. But they make up for all that with the comfort of safety that is palpable, the feeling of community normally lost in the big city, and the friendly nature of the people. I realize Sydney has all that, but that is one expensive city in which to reside. Besides, I’m American, I can’t just easily adapt from pro-football to Rugby or Cricket.

And now I find myself back in the land of the automatic drip coffee maker, and Half-and-Half. Feeling a bit sad I cannot talk my daughter and son-in-law into moving here to Jupiter, Florida where my son lives and thrives, but happy knowing they live in a very nice environment free from the constant worries of crime, school shootings, and political warfare. I’d love to have them all closer, to see them a great deal more, but I do wonder how the experiment of growing part of the family in that different culture and environment will impact future family members, compared to their home grown cousins.

I could live in Bondi Beach, the place is just beautiful. On a random Thursday the waves were filled with surf boards, and there was an organized beach rugby tournament, complete with uniforms, a DJ, and stands. Families wandered the promenade, and tourists sat drinking flat whites by the sea. Bondi Beach felt like a young person’s town, the place to be in your mid-20’s. A youthful excitement, where you start the day with beach Yoga very early on, and sit with friends in the pub after work.

For all those MAGA enthusiasts who want a return to America back in the day and age where the community felt safe, where neighbors knew neighbors, and where you could meet friends for a pint after work right there in the neighborhood just two blocks from home, that place does exist, it is called Australia.

I guess I could learn to live without Half-and-Half if the trade off is to live in a homogenous culture of shared values, safety, security, great beaches, and an inherent optimism.

If it wasn’t for the long flight, and huge time change, I think we’d visit more.

I can’t believe it, but I have a taste for wanting a “Schnitzy” right now. And maybe the chance to put down a ten dollar exacta waiting on that long Guiness pour.