Random Australia Observations

Just got back from 2+ weeks in Australia. Some random observations:

- Australia has tons of camels. Seriously. In fact, Australia has the biggest wild camel population in the world. So naturally, being tourists, we had to go on a camel ride. Our guide was quite quick to correct me when I asked if the camel I was riding on was a spitter. Camels don't spit. They "hiss when they have water in their mouths." (Apparently, the Australian Bill Clinton works for the Frontier Camel Farm.) Anyway, he did confirm that camels did bite but ours seemed nice enough. They all had camel toes, though.

- We did not see a single wild kangaroo, despite being told by the fiancee and her parents that they were everywhere. We did see one whilst feeding wallabies, which are the Mini-Me equivalent of regular kangaroos. I can only regard that one as being semi-wild since it was at the tourist feeding station.

- Everything in the Outback is deadly. Lizards, snakes, crocodiles, plants, the weather, the lack of water, spiders. Even the rocks are poisonous.

- You walk into any restaurant in Australia and you are likely to get excellent food. Every meal we had in Australia featured great food, even in the middle of nowhere. Alice Springs was especially surprising. If I went to a city of 23,000 in the US, I would not expect much quality or variety from the restaurants. But Australia knows how to cook.

The service, on the other hand, was below average at best. Part of it probably had to do with the European style: slow meals to be enjoyed with wine and inattentive wait staff. Part of it seemed to be just disinterest in the customers. One cook asked us how we wanted our eggs and then told us that scrambling them would take too long. Another waiter told us that a special on the board was not available because she couldn't pronounce the Indian name (or at least that what we suspected). Still, given the quality of the food, the service thing was pretty minor.

- When we were in Alice Springs, nearly every 50 feet there was an Aboriginal sacred site. According to our hosts, it's OK to go on sacred sites (given that 2 or 3 were in the middle of their neighborhood) but it's not OK to die on them. I was given a boomerang on Christmas and my first throw ended up in one of the sites. I have no idea what that means.

- We visited Uluru (Ayer's Rock), which is Australia's most recognizable natural landmark (on land, at least). It was pretty cool to see in person, but the walk to the summit was closed while we were there. Owing to the fact that it is a sacred site, my understanding was originally that it was OK to climb the rock just not to die on it. Immediately next to instructions and rules about climbing Uluru is a plea by the Aboriginal tribe who own the park for visitors not to climb. So what they really are saying is: "Please don't climb, but we recognize that you have spent thousands of dollars to come here and we want to continue to take your money so it's OK if you really want to climb."

- De juris segregation lives in the Northern Territory. While we were in Alice, there was a grog ban in effect which prohibited the sale of alcohol to the Aboriginal communities (bush towns populated by the Aborigines). But in town, the Aborigines are welcome to drink at Todd's Tavern, so long as they don't go into the Whites Only room. I kid you not. They might not have the signs up, but they are channeling the Jim Crow South in many respects. Also, our cousins to the south, due to not having a constitution, can set up roadblocks to catch grog-runners, the Dukes of Hazard of the NT, without having to worry about a silly thing like the Fourth Amendment. Must be Dick Cheney's idea of heaven.

Life for indigenous Australians seems pretty bleak from what I saw of it. European Australians generally have a lot of hostility towards them, alcoholism and sexual abuse appear to be rampant, poverty and malnutrition are widespread, and there is little employment in the communities themselves.