Cairns

A three-hour flight north, and suddenly it's a different country.

If I had to describe the land around Melbourne in one word, it would be brown. My first glimpse of Australia was all clouds, tinged with pink sunrise, with odd dark shadows the color of smoke. As we descended, I realized that what I’d thought were shadows were actually glimpses of the land below, which appeared to be entirely brown. It reminded me a little of flying into Iran, except that Iran has mountains, and this country was flat. Brown and flat.

You can’t judge a country from 30,000 feet, but after a fifteen hour night, chasing the sun across the dark Pacific, it didn't appear especially welcoming. And when I flew out of Melbourne yesterday, in full daylight, I realized that my initial impression was entirely correct. The land was brown, overwhelmingly, unrelievedly, brown. Even where there were patches of green – fields, lawns – it was obvious that they were just veneer, and I could still see the essential ancient brownness of this place under and through them.

My seatmate closed the window shades so she could work on her laptop, and I didn't see anything until we were landing in Cairns. A different universe: mountains, thick greens, and the creamy blue of the sea beyond.

This is the tropics -- Cairns is at the same latitude as Tahiti and Fiji, and the trees are full of little green parrots that shriek like metal gears desperately in need of an oiling, and the thick hot air gives you the sensation that Mother Nature is trying to smother you with a wet pillow.

(The trees are called foxtail palms, for obvious reasons.)

And we have a winner

Okay, this is the most disturbing thing I saw in Melbourne. I was on my way to the airport, so I'm willing to overlook it this time, Melbourne.

Random things I saw in Melbourne

The Victorian Block Arcade, rowers on the Yarra River, signage on a downtown street, the train station.

Pathfinder

This statue was probably the second most disturbing thing in the botanical gardens, after the tree-climbing ducks.

It's called The Pathfinder, and Google tells me it was installed in 1974 and depicts an Olympic hammer thrower. I love the arc of the body, and appreciate the skill required to balance it on the toes of one foot, but the muscles look more like a Batman suit than a human, even a highly idealized one, to me.

The myna sitting on his arm is a nice touch though.

Only God can make a tree

That combination of the familiar and the exotic in the gardens kept me a little off-balance. It had the familiar lines of English parks, but it was filled with trees and flowers I'd never seen before.

I have no idea what kind of tree this is, but I love the chalice shape, the way the branches seem to be raised in pride. Or prayer.

Royal Botanical Gardens

This is a series of gardens just across the river, and I spent a couple of hours here, wandering around, taking pictures, sitting on a bench reading, and eating most of a cauliflower and leek pie I bought at a stand near the National Gallery.

It was simultaneously very English and very not. There were terrible statues of various bigwigs and a floral clock (English) mixed in with palm trees and tree-climbing ducks (not English.)

Urban poetry

Self explanatory.

More Hosier Lane

Hosier Lane

Across the street from the ACMI, I wandered into an alley full of graffiti, and learned (from a photography group doing a tour) that Melbourne is famous for its street art -- at least to those who travel in circles where the comparative street art of various cities is discussed and evaluated -- and that this particular group of streets, Hosier Lane, is considered one of the best.

If you were going to start hallucinating, this would definitely be the place to do it.

Further proof that I did not hallucinate Melbourne

I walked down the street from my hotel, which was a fairly ordinary row of modern office buildings typical for the business district of any large city, turned the corner and got slammed with this: the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

This was neither typical nor expected. I'm not sure I even like it, but it certainly caught my eye.

Sunday bird blogging

This lovely creature is an Australian wood duck, one of dozens I saw in the botanical gardens while I was wandering around Melbourne. I am glad that I do have photos, so I can reassure myself that the fact that they were climbing the trees wasn't a jet-lag fueled delusion.

Melbourne

After thirty hours in transit and that whole business of the missing Saturday, I am relieved to find myself more or less intact and on the correct continent. I am mostly going to be on a tour, as it's the simplest way to see as much as possible of this part of the world, but I am in Melbourne because it isn't part of the tour and even one jet-lagged day here seemed better than no Melbourne at all.

Or that was the theory anyway. I did walk around for hours while I waited for a call that my hotel room was ready, but I'm not sure I will remember much about it tomorrow, as the haze of jet lag is setting in on top of the bone-deep exhaustion from the long trip. Fortunately, I took a lot of pictures.