Australia2023

 We went out and Did Things today. First, let me mention that there is no shortage of fish & chips in Perth, or of battered and fried fish generally. After a light breakfast in the room, we got on a free CAT (Central Area Transit) bus and went to King's Park (the same location in it that we had been to before), and had fish sandwiches for lunch. Later we had fish sandwiches at the place across the street from the Adina. Regarding fish sandwiches, we aren't talking about fish hamburger made into small square patties, a la McDonald's. We're talking fish & chips on a bun instead of with chips. Really good. Fishburger at King's Park At King's Park we went into the Botanical Gardens and saw many strange plants, some of which aren't eucalyptus. Australia, like every continent in the world, has flowering plants; but it seems as though many of them haven't yet invented flower petals. Eucalyptus rhodantha Adenanthos sericeus (very fuzzy) Grevillea bipinna...

Tried the free CAT buses, which work very well with the scooter.   Visited king's Park and botanical gardens and saw a lot of strange flora, most of it eucalyptus.  Apparently if you don't know want a bush or tree in western Australia is, eucalyptus of some kind is a good guess.  Finished at Elizabeth Quay, booking a ferry to Rottnest Island and seeing a unique bell tower.  And also unique pedestrian bridge And later had a fish sandwich  at the fish and chips place across from the hotel.  Fish and chips seems to be Perth's canonical dish  -- even the Asian restaurants around here have it.  Maybe what you get when you colonize someplace with the British, from the ocean?  Perth definitely has a lot of fish on menus.   And now back at the hotel, doing laundry and blogging 🙂

We took a walk towards King's Park today. We didn't get there. We took a wrong turn and had to double back, and the weather has been very Seattle-ish. We turned around and got back to the hotel just as it was starting to really dump. Today was Anzac Day, their version of Memorial Day for Australia and New Zealand. Practically everything was closed. There was a parade in the morning, which we skipped. We ate in our rooms. Paula is hopefully nearing the end of her bad cold. We bought some expectorant which, in addition to having guaifenesin, has some other expectorant which is unknown in the US but apparently common here and in Europe. After some online research, she decided it was safe for her to take. I did some programming, with help from Beck (thank you!) to get a program installed and working, and we both took some serious naps. Most of the pictures below are from yesterday, some from today. Types of bananas Last store of this type in Australia Information booth Air conditio...

We have been shopping primarily at Woolworths, which is a large Australian grocery chain. There are actually two of them within walking distance of our hotel, about a block apart, both good-sized, both within pedestrian malls.  Some things we have noticed: Whole roast chickens, which are common, are usually stuffed. I think they are roasted rather than rotisserie spitted. There is very little selection of frozen veggies. Most of the bread we have found is fluffy. Rather like Wonder bread, which they sell, by the way.  This holds true even for things like a multigrain sourdough. Stone fruits are in season. We got some really delicious plums. It seems late for that, since we are well past the fall equinox here. Individual coffee tubes, complete with some kind of creamer and sugar or artificial sweetener, are common. They are very good. Plain coffee in tubes is not common, although some of our hotels have had it.  Also, every hotel we have stayed at that offers a coffee serv...

 Paula has a bad cold, and is doing her best to sleep through it. My body is still on an early schedule, so I woke up at 7:30am, and she woke up at 10. We went to the Woolworth's (major chain grocery store) yesterday and stocked up. We're in another Adina apartment-style hotel, and once again Paula has done a superb job in finding a location. She was a little worried yesterday because we're directly across the street from the Pink Pussycat, but those fears were unfounded. We're very close to two pedestrian malls--or maybe one big mall on two parallel streets with passageways in between, and very long blocks. There are two Woolworth's here. Today we went to the other one to get some additional provisions. On the way back we had fish and chips for lunch. Lunch, across the street Woolworth's will be closed on Tuesday for Anzac Day, which is sort of like Veteran's Day for Australia and New Zealand. A couple of days ago I had an Aussie burger. Here, the fancy bur...

Just wandering, mostly.  It's a gorgeous day, Sunday and cool.  We are near a couple of pedestrian malls, which made for good gentle browsing around.  Now having "genuine fish and chips".  Perth is an interesting combination of older buildings, mostly, we are told, built by convicts, and shiny new skyscrapers.

 Yesterday we attended a coupl of good talks; one on Stonehenge, and one on what Australia is doing to support NASA. The talk about Australia and NASA We had to have our luggage packed up and in the hallway by 8 last night, and had to leave the room by 7:30 this morning. So I get rather less than my 9 hours sleep, and I'm feeling it. We went to the Pantry (the food court) for breakfast; as expected, it was even more crowded than usual. I don't know if I've mentioned this earlier, but the scooter is exactly as wide as the doorway. If the room did not also have a door, that would have been fine. As it was, going anywhere from the room or returning from the room meant a complete scooter disassembly. Annoying at first, but after a day or so it became just part of the routine. Getting off the ship went smoothly. After that, however, we waited in a long taxi line for about an hour. We got email from our hotel (Adina) saying that the street was blocked off Friday and Saturday (tod...

Everything went perfectly! Diamond ring  Because the moon was about as far away from the Earth as it could be and still result in a total eclipse, the path of totality was very narrow, 25km or 40 miles, and totality lasted only 60 seconds. This also meant it didn't get totally dark, because the Earth was outside totality 20 miles on each side of us. The further away the moon is, the smaller it looks, so there is about a 6% variance in the apparent size. Because the Earth is spherical, and we saw the eclipse at very close to noon, we were about as close to the moon as we could be, so we got to see a total eclipse. Further away around the Earth it's farther from the moon, so they got to see only an annular eclipse. So this eclipse is "hybrid"--total in some places, annular in others. The ship put down anchor in the cove, so the water was as still as it gets. The skies were clear. We were even asked not to move around during totality, so not even footsteps would disturb ...

We are heading south into Exmouth Gulf. It lies between the North West Cape, a sort of skinny peninsula that extends into the Indian Ocean, and the mainland.. Exmouth itself is the only town of any size in Australia which is in the eclipse total path. One of our tour guides, Greg Redfern, has been an extensive discussions with the captain about exactly where to go. This should be in the longest path of totality, with clear skies. The Gulf itself is shallow enough that we can anchor and turn the engines off. That will make the ship more stable, quieter, and less smokey.  It won't make a lot of difference to our eyes, but for the people trying to take pictures it will make it a lot easier. More after the eclipse itself.  In the meantime we will be busy!

Australians don't drink much coffee. Except in the food court, where there are two dispensing machines (and a couple hundred customers, but very little waiting, if any, to get to one of the dispensers), you have to ask for it and then wait. Terminology is different. The important ones for us are: Flat white = coffee with milk Long/short black = black coffee, milk on the side I have twice gotten things called "cheesecake." They not only had no resemblance to what we call cheesecake, they didn't even resemble each other. The most recent was a layer of green jello with black seeds(?) in it, on top of what I think was whipped jello, on a very thin cracker crust. Marginally edible. Confused order of English adjectives Paula got handed a pair of purple ears The Pacific Explorer Some excellent talks Just before dawn Waiting for dawn Also a possibility of shadow bands The talks have been generally very good, but both of us have been taking micro-naps during them. We just got ...

Assorted Paula comments, collected as wifi showed up. We flew from Sydney to Tamworth on a prop plane, tiny. The flight was only about 40 minutes, but the time in the airport stretched it to about 2 and 1/2 hours. Then we drove toward the siding springs observatory, another two and a half hours.  Fortunately it was a nice comfortable touring bus. Unfortunately it did not include a restroom, which caused some problems and delays.   The countryside is very rural, with the Great Dividing range on one side and a lot of flat farming land on the other. It is basically a two-lane road, with no real shoulder. Also very little traffic, although it is apparently a major highway. We are driving through a scale model of the solar system. Is approximately 200 km across. The first planet coming from the Tamworth airport is supposedly pluto but we missed it.   After about an hour, we were stopped at  a red light. Which says "stop here on red signal."  There was at fi...

 Monday (yesterday) we got up early enough to repack (5am). Our tour group was blessed with a late (1pm) checkout--thank you again, Tim and Elise! Then a fairly late breakfast, then Tim and Elise had to do something with us all until 4:30, so it was a bus tour of Perth; quite good, actually, but I'm very tired of bus rides. They weren't able to score a restaurant for the 40 of us, so Elise had the bus stop at a grocery store (more like a 7-11, we all went in and picked up stuff for lunch, with Elise paying the one tab for all of us. Then we went to a big park (King's park?), hung around, bought ourselves some pistachio gelato. Then to the ship. Usual long lines, huge waiting room, etc. They required (along with photo id and tickets) a photograph containing (1) a negative covid test, (2) a photo id, and (3) a timepiece showing the date and time. And yes, they did check that. Then late dinner and bed. We were both fried--I hit a wall about 9 but somehow managed to function un...