George and Barbara Perkins

BOOKS ON CHINA

Readers contemplating a visit will want one or more guidebooks, a phrase book, and some prior acquaintance with Chinese history and culture. In addition to these essential tools of the traveler, we particularly recommend:

Pearl Buck, THE GOOD EARTH, 1931, a novel.

André Malraux, MAN’S FATE (LA CONDITION HUMAINE), 1933, a compelling novel of the Shanghai insurrection of 1927.

Jung Chang, WILD SWANS: THREE DAUGHTERS OF CHINA, 1991, a memoir and history that provides a wide sweep of Chinese history from the 1920s, when the author’s grandmother became a concubine to a warlord general, until 1978, when she, the granddaughter, became one of the first Chinese nationals to leave China for graduate study in the West after the death of Mao. We picked up our copy in Hong Kong, and are not sure whether it is still banned on the mainland.

Ha Jin, WAITING, 1999, a justly celebrated novel of anguished love during the Cultural Revolution, and WAR TRASH, 2004, an altogether more ambitious novel of the Korean War, set largely in a prison camp run by Americans, where the complex loyalties of Chinese Communists, Chinese Nationalists, and neutral Chinese conscripts play out against a background of North and South Korean ambitions and the United Nations’ attempts to find a solution acceptable to all factions.

Douglas Galbraith, A WINTER IN CHINA, 2005, a fine historical romance of the 1937 Rape of Nanking, in which an adventurous British girl finds herself trapped in that doomed city after the evacuation of most of the Western diplomatic community.

CHINESE AMERICAN LITERATURE

In addition to Pearl Buck, some of the most interesting authors and books are:

Edith Maud Eaton (Sui Sin Far), MRS. SPRING FRAGRANCE, 1912, short stories.

Lin Yutang, CHINATOWN FAMILY, 1948, a novel.

Louis Chu, EAT A BOWL OF TEA, 1961, a novel set in New York’s Chinatown.

Maxine Hong Kingston, CHINA MEN, 1980, a novel of 19th century experiences of the men who worked on the railways and in other ways contributed America’s growth in a time when Chinese women were generally denied entry.

Cathy Song, PICTURE BRIDE, 1983, poems.

Amy Tan, THE JOY LUCK CLUB, 1989, a hugely popular set of intertwined stories told by mothers born in China and their American-born daughters.

Frank Chin, DONALD DUK, 1991, a novel.

Bei Dao, OLD SNOW, 1991, poems.

Gail Tsukiyama, THE SAMURAI’S GARDEN, 1995, a novel. Daughter of a Chinese mother and Japanese father Tsukiyama tells the story of an uncle from Hong Kong recovering from tuberculosis near a leper colony in Japan when World War II breaks out.

Li-Young Lee, THE BOOK OF MY NIGHTS, 2001, poems.

Lan Samantha Chang, INHERITANCE, 2004, a novel. Narrated by a Chinese American woman, it focuses on the lives of her mother and aunt in 1930’s China, during the Japanese invasion of 1937, the further chaos of World War II, the adjustments of postwar Shanghai and Taiwan, and finally in the United States. The author was last year appointed to head the Creative Writing program at the University of Iowa.

Gish Jen, THE LOVE WIFE, 2004, a novel. A young woman newly arrived from China disrupts the lives of a half and half (Chinese and WASP) family.

Yiyun Li, A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS, 2005, short stories.

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QE II WORLD CRUISE, 2008

Copyright George and Barbara Perkins, 2008

The following notes are taken from a series of e-mails sent earlier this year to friends and relatives. The ship has been sold and in the fall of 2008 will be delivered to Dubai to become a hotel or museum. A new QE goes on line in 2010. Meanwhile, we are using these and other notes for the basis of a book on traveling by ship around the world. We welcome comments and suggestions.

To begin the trip, the Cunard big three—the QE II, the Queen Mary, and Queen Victoria—met together in New York Harbor (for the first time in history). On Sunday we sailed out of the harbor in a parade past the Statue of Liberty (with a splendid fireworks display) and then under the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge to the Atlantic Ocean.

In New York, Cunard had put us up at the Waldorf Astoria. We were able to walk from there to the Lyceum Theatre to see Mark Twain’s new play “Is He Dead?” Yes, it is a new play. Twain wrote it around 1900, but it was never produced in his lifetime and only now revised for Broadway. It’s not a great play, but it is a very funny farce, done well, especially by the main character.

We sailed side by side with the Queen Victoria to Fort Lauderdale—an eerie, otherworldly feeling, like a ghost ship always next to us day and night for several days. We hope to lose her soon. In Fort Lauderdale, we went ashore to take an airboat ride through the Everglades, where we saw endless birds and quite a few alligators. We learned that there are also crocodiles in Florida, but as salt water animals they don’t get to the Everglades.

Next stop Barbados. Then stops in Brazil, the Falklands, Chile, Easter Island, Tahiti, Tonga, New Zealand, and Australia. In Australia we lecture on American Literature and on George’s new book, STONES STAND. Then back to the U.S. on St. Patrick’s Day.

Barbados, it turns out, is a very interesting island. It’s the easternmost of the West Indies, an entirely coral island (not volcanic like most or all of the others). Hence the beaches are either white or pinkish sand, ground up bits of coral. Mostly it’s quite flat. Columbus somehow missed it, and it was discovered a few years later by a Portuguese explorers. The British took over in the early 17th century. It turned out be an excellent place to raise sugar cane, but there were no natives on it to create a labor force, and so the slave trade began. It was basically a triangle: slaves from Africa (and of course some of these went on to America), cane to Boston to be manufactured into sugar and rum, the finished goods to England, and then more slaves from Africa sent westward to the New World.

By the end of the 17th century, the island was guarded by 26 forts, for this was pirate territory. Indeed, one of the wealthiest landowners was himself a kind of pirate. In stormy weather, Sam Lord hanged lanterns from palm trees on the shore to mimic ship’s lights so that when confused ships at sea were driven ashore he could send his slaves to loot the wrecks. That’s the story, anyway, and it’s basically the same tale told about Nag’s Head on North Carolina’s Outer Banks (lantern on a horse’s head on the dunes), about Cape Cod, and presumably other places.

Whatever the history, Barbados has prospered. The British granted it independence within the Commonwealth a few decades ago and since then, the government seems to be run wholly by the descendents of slaves (and, of course, the early white plantation owners, who fathered many mixed-race children). Cricket is the national game, but it is losing some of its younger players, who, thanks to TV, would rather set their sights on baseball or basketball.

Tiger Woods, you may remember was married in Barbados, taking over an entire hotel (a luxury hotel where rooms are $1,500 a night) for the ceremony. Most of the beaches on the west end of the island have become playgrounds for the wealthy. There is much building of homes and condos that sell for prices in the millions of dollars. Our ship was only one of six grand luxury cruise ships docked at the same time when we were there. Approximately 10,000 visitors went ashore that day.

The boost to the economy is real. Schooling is mandatory through age 16, and free through high school and college. The economy depends less on sugar cane than it used to. Some cane is being harvested for ethanol, and oil has recently been discovered. They are growing cotton now, too, but are having trouble finding pickers.

We thoroughly enjoyed our stay. It’s a beautiful country that seems to have a bright future.

* * *

It’s a long way from Barbados to our first Brazilian stop at Salvador da Bahia. The ship has been moving along at a pretty steady 28 knots for four days (cruise ships make about 17 or 18 at full speed, but the QE II is the last of the ocean liners, designed for speed and can make 32 or so with all four engines in play; when she goes to Dubai, the replacement Queen will probably be a cruise ship, with no more speed than the others, but we are not sure).

One of the distractions during the four days was the “crossing the line” ceremony, where passengers and crew who have never crossed the Equator are turned from “pollywogs” to “shellbacks” by edict of King Neptune (in a formula said to date to the late 14th century). The “King,” in all his green glory and escorted by mermaids, commands each initiate to “kiss the fish,” a real, and very large fish, and the pollywog is then anointed with spaghetti, eggs and various colors of goop before being allowed to jump into the swimming pool. Since there were more than 100 passengers to be so treated (and we were not among them, having crossed the line before) it took a lot of eggs and spaghetti, which crewmembers spent the afternoon scooping out of the pool before it could be refilled.

Yesterday, we passed close to the shore at Recife, on the bulge of Brazil, and entertained ourselves watching Blue-faced Boobies swooping close to the ship to pick up the flying fish that play in the wake from the bow. They are very large, graceful birds, with wingspans of five feet and bodies perhaps three feet long, related to gannets. They were quite near the deck where we watched them, but since we were thirty or forty feet above the surface of the ocean we couldn’t see the much smaller flying fish, only the diving swoop of the boobies and the snatch at the water, or, sometimes, the dive into the water to follow the fish in their own element.

We came into the harbor at Salvador early this morning. For some three centuries (from the 16th into 19th centuries), it was Brazil’s most important city, its port second only to Lisbon in the Portuguese empire. Most of the people seen on the streets are dark skinned, since 80% of the population is descended from African slaves. There is a lot of interesting graffiti on every available wall. It’s not Banksy, but some is quite artful.

There is still a lot of shipping in port. Tourists visit mostly the older parts of the city, narrow streets, picturesque squares, a 17th century cathedral. Most of this stands on a high hill that makes an imposing skyline as you come into port. The squares in the upper city have food and trinket stalls, martial arts dancers, and ladies in the traditional costume: a turban on the head and a hugely enlarged short skirt, extending some two feet from the body in all directions. One of them offered to take George’s picture hugging her, but he declined.

Below is the lower city, less interesting. There is actually a giant public elevator that makes it possible for pedestrians to get from one level to the other. Most people seem to take a taxi or bus. We actually got up and back by way of a shuttle bus that was running between the ship and the local H. Stern jewelry store. Brazil is doing a great business now in many kinds of precious stones. We looked, were tempted, but didn’t buy. We’ll have another chance in Rio de Janeiro.

Last night the Grand Lounge was a whirl of bright reds, oranges, browns, and greens in beads and wispy fabrics that waved in the breeze alongside exotic feathers of astonishing hues and textures. Drums beat and feet stomped as young dancers leaped into the audience and viewers wondered with expectation and alarm what it was the kept the flimsy loin straps and skimpy bras of young and beautiful women from snapping under the strain and taking wing over the bald heads and smartly coiffed hairdos of the audience. It is Carnival time in Rio, and the same groups will soon be parading in the streets.

Every night is show time in the Grand Lounge of the QE II. There is a constant parade of singers, musicians, magicians, comedians and dancers, professional entertainers who come aboard at one port, perform a show or two, and leave at another port a few days later to fly home or transfer to another ship to continue their careers. Always the show is accompanied by an admonition that no photography or video or sound recording is allowed, a restriction perhaps written into the entertainers’ contracts and explained in part by the danger to performers moving about a small stage and descending into the audience while blinded by flashbulbs.

This time there was no such prohibition on the program and flashbulbs were popping everywhere while those of us who had left cameras behind wished we had not. The costumes were spectacular. At least one combination of feathers and fabric extended nine or ten feet from the floor (that is to say four or five feet above the head of the fairly short woman who was wearing it) and spread for an equal distance from side to side. This stayed generally in the background of the eight or so scantily dressed women who cavorted at the front of the stage and descended into the audience to plant kisses on bald heads and entice aging men and women to join them in the onstage dancing. There were no other musical instruments, only the heavy beat of the drums that went on and on in a jungle rhythm, fast and furious, until you began to wonder which member of the audience would be first to collapse in an exhausted stroke or heart attack.

Earlier, we spent the day going into and out of Rio, by bus first to the headquarters of the H. Stern jewelry company, where we were shown exhibits of the many precious stones mined in Brazil, many found in geodes, to our surprise. There were models of the mines and exhibits of gem cutting and mounting. The bus to and from passed through an astonishing number of decaying and empty warehouses and apartment buildings near the docks, with the better neighborhoods and streets beginning quite a long way into the city. Graffiti was everywhere, much simply crude in execution, but some very fine in color and artistic expression. We saw no signs that attempts are made to remove it, but there is little in the better portions of the city, so there may be efforts taken there. Back on the ship we ran into a bit of a comedy as to how and where we would get the buses for the afternoon tour, but when that was sorted out, we left on a tour of the Botanic Gardens and the National Park that lie within the city’s spacious limits. It was an overcast and rainy day. Although we could see the Christ the Redeemer statue from the ship, the mist hardly lifted enough to get a good picture. We fared slightly better in the Botanic Gardens, where the statue kept looming into view from a number of places. The best viewpoint proved to be a Chinese pagoda, donated to the city by Chinese immigrants in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. It is a concrete structure that overlooks the Christ the Redeemer statue, Sugarloaf Mountain (another of the city’s landmarks), and much of the bay below.

Three days later we anchored at Montevideo, Uruguay. In Rio, they speak Portuguese, in Uruguay, Spanish. There are interesting historical reasons for this and for other differences, such as the long influence of the British in Uruguay (they built the railways there) which led to a World War II split that after the war made Argentina a haven for Nazis, while Uruguay wanted nothing to do with them after the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled in the River Plate after a losing battle in 1939. The Plate is not so much a river as one of the largest estuaries in the world. It makes a very large port for many container ships and the QE II to sail into and dock at Montevideo. From the dock, it is an easy walk into the city.

We may walk in tomorrow. Today we boarded a tour bus that took us into the city to view various historic buildings and stopped to provide us a chance to tour the national assembly building, which we were able to do because the houses were not in session. Soldiers with rifles and bayonets stand at attention at all doors for two hours at a time without moving a muscle or cracking a smile until they are replaced. They are so carefully picked for height, weight, and facial features that the impression given is of a country that is way out ahead of the rest of the world in the art of human cloning. You want to poke them to see if they are real, but the bayonets serve as a deterrent. The building that houses the assembly stands at the top of many steps and is built on the classical model favored by nineteenth-century governmental architects, all columns and pediments. Inside, is spacious, lighted by multi-colored leaded glass skylights and windows, and on a heroic scale featuring more fluted columns and paintings of heroes on horseback at famous battles.

We drove into the countryside to visit a nineteenth-century country estate that has been turned into a gaucho theme park. Here, as elsewhere in South America, we were impressed by the size and opulence supported by colonial economies and wondered at the power such families (this one with the non-Spanish name of Jackson) must have wielded. The bus entered a long lane bordered by palm trees, where we were met by eight or ten gauchos on horseback carrying multicolored flags—blue and white stripes, with a bright yellow sun in the corner, for Uruguay, and one emblazoned with the Jackson name. At the end of the lane stood a nineteenth-century stone church with a steeple, looking as though it had been lifted from a British parish. Men in frock coats and women in fancy dress with parasols outside the church on lawns shaded by plane trees where we picnicked with endless glasses of wine and hors d’oeuvres while entertained by tango music and dancing. But that was only the beginning. Dinner was in a spacious hall with a view of a field where gauchos briefly cavorted while lamb, beef and chicken were prepared on an outdoor grill, the endless wine continued, and so did the music and dancing. The whole was thoroughly enjoyable and we returned to the ship to find more tangos waiting in the Grand Lounge.

* * *

Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea. If that quote doesn’t bring sharp enough memories, you may want to get out your copy of Coleridge’s RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. We’ve had a lot of wide, wide seas in the last several days, with not much to look at except the boobies that attend the ship whenever it gets within thirty miles or so of land, trying to scoop up flying fish. We spent a couple of days getting to the Falkland Islands only to discover that the seas were too rough for us to anchor offshore, as we had intended, and go in by tenders. So we missed the town and the trip overland into the country to see the gentoo penguins. The disappointment must have been at least as great for the people of Port Stanley, who lost the tourist dollars of over a thousand visitors that day. Instead of stopping we sailed onward for another couple of days toward Cape Horn. Once in a while a giant bird that may very well have been Coleridge’s albatross swooped by on its twelve-foot wings. We are not certain whether there are other birds that big in these latitudes.

Again the passage to Cape Horn was on mostly empty seas, but when we arrived there we found quite a different land then we had expected. We had thought Cape Horn to be a point at the tip of South America, but it turns out that a detailed map shows many islands and apparently different passages in and around the cape. It must have been difficult for the first ships, under sail, to discover which of a number of possibilities would lead them through to the Pacific and which might be dead ends. Again, we had fears that the seas would disappoint us. On the first day of our trip, the seas ahead were reported with fifty foot waves and exceedingly high winds, but when we actually arrived the seas had calmed, the winds were not bad, and the temperature was in the fifties. Most people had taken Dramamine or other seasick remedies and there were barf bags next to the elevators (very like the bags on airliners), but we had no problems and it seems likely that most other passengers fared as well. We stood on a sunny deck, feeling quite warm, for most of the time while we circumnavigated the islands that make up the horn, one of which actually has the name Horn Island. We passed from east to west north of Horn Island, sailed south to get to the end, and then turned east for the trip back so we could head north to Punta Arenas, Chile. We had expected the Horn to be ice and snow covered, but it was not. Instead the islands are rocky and forbidding, with some greenery, but no trees. There is a lonely weather station with a small crew and a Chilean flag.

We are docked this morning at Punta Arenas, Chile, another long voyage north from Cape Horn. We had intended to go on shore here, but have just been told that the winds are at 25 knots now, and expected to be 60 knots in a few hours. Again this is a tender port, and in those conditions we cannot go ashore, for the tenders are small boats that are unsafe in that kind of weather. Chilean port authorities have told the Captain that it is even unsafe for a ship of this size to be anchored in such winds, so we are due to leave and head for the west coast of Chile within the hour.

Nobody seems particularly disappointed. Instead the mood is tinged with regret that this is the last long voyage for the QE II. Many passengers have been aboard for numerous past voyages and those who have tried other ships insist there are none they like as well.

* * *

Tuesday, February 5. Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras). We celebrated the day with a pancake race pitting various groups from the ship’s crew against one another. Our crew consisted of the waiters from the Queen’s Grill (where we eat) against half a dozen other crews from other restaurants and employee groups. The event is a series of relay races around the pool, with each member of the crew required to flip a pancake a dozen times from one end of the course to the other. The teams choose names and costumes (our team, the Happy Feet, was dressed as penguins, with tail coats, penguin masks, and flippers—costumes that they shed when they ran). It was a charity event, with money pledged in support and probably more a few thousand dollars raised (final figures are not in).

Unfortunately, our team came in second, and so the members will not have their names embossed on the plaque that will occupy a prominent place on a wall for the next year. We were especially rooting for Milosz, our Polish waiter, who leaves the ship tomorrow at Valparaiso, to fly home to Gdansk. It’s about a twenty-six hour flight, in two or three stages. He’ll probably be back in a month or so, but perhaps not, since the ship will be in service only a few more months.

Most of the employees seem to love the ship and a way of life that takes them around the world, perhaps many times, and gives them generous vacations at home before they return again. Our maitre d’ has served in this way for forty years, his assistant for forty-two. Long service seems to be the rule, rather than the exception, and some people acquire homes in two or three countries, or in other respects do much better than they might have done in other careers. Our British waiter, Kim, is much younger (eight or ten years service) and plans to leave the ship in Hong Kong with her brother, who serves drinks in the lounge. Together they will fly to their parents’ home in Blackpool, spend five weeks vacationing, and then return. When the QE II goes to Dubai, such people will probably transfer to another cruise ship.

A note on professional entertainment: we have just come from an excellent concert by Nicholas Durcan and Miriam Kramer, pianist and violinist, mostly classical. This was the fourth in four nights. They came aboard a few days ago, gave these four concerts, and are leaving tomorrow.

Today we sailed in such thick fog that for a while the ship’s foghorns were sounding repeatedly. Consequently we passed but were unable to see Isle de Mocha, named for Mocha Dick, a whale who hung out there and became a model for Melville’s Moby Dick. If memory serves, this is more or less the part of the world where Ahab’s search for the white whale begins to become serious.

Leaving Punta Arenas, we found ourselves in the Straits of Magellan and spent the rest of the day sailing through, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We hadn’t known this route existed and wondered why ships found it necessary to round the Horn. Possibly this was a difficult passage for sailing ships, or can it be that this passage was not explored until after the earliest days? In any case, it is a beautiful voyage, the Andes mountains rising almost sheerly out of the water on both sides. We plead ignorance, will check later.

* * *

We woke up this morning in the midst of the Armada de Chile in Valparaiso, where the Chilean navy is headquartered. Out our starboard window we can see eight to ten destroyer to cruiser class ships in the navy gray paint used all over the world. The Chilean Navy is very crucial to this port, and perhaps because of the Army coup engineered by General Pinochet, to the whole country. We were shown the parliament building erected after the overthrow of Pinochet and it was explained that the legislative branch is in this city and the executive branch in Santiago. Also we were told that the Presidential office is limited to one four-year term, and the same person cannot be elected to another term consecutively. The present president is a single mother who is continually shocking people by passing legislation that upsets this mostly Catholic country.

The second major building we were shown was the Naval headquarters in a 19th century building reminiscent of the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House, except that this building is painted bright blue with white trim. It adjoins a square, guarded by naval personnel, with a monument to the “Martyrs” of the Pacific War of the 19th century where Chile fought with Peru and Ecuador over minerals and boundaries. The result is that Chile controls copper, silver and gold deposits of great value.

Valparaiso is one of those South American cities built on two levels. Here there are cable cars to take you from the port area to the upper town, which is very hilly and where houses seem to be hanging on by their fingernails to the steep slopes. We could see the QE2 down below surrounded by a forest of containers, for this is a very busy port and you must be taken by bus from the ship to the port gates. Pablo Neruda apparently had one of his three houses in this upper town neighborhood, but we did not see it.

The neighboring seaside resort of Vina del Mar has a publicly owned Casino and several five star hotels facing the Pacific Ocean. We drove by all these attractions on the way to the Fonck Museum, which judging from the name and the contents of the collections represents the private holdings of a 19th century German immigrant, of which there were many. The museum has an Easter Island sculpture out in front, and an idiosyncratic mixture of pre-Columbian pottery, mummies, and stuffed birds and animals inside. There are also seashells and corals, but it is apparently a converted mansion and thus the rooms are relatively small and with three buses of passengers from our ship, viewing was pretty difficult. Vina del Mar is a rich seaside resort, where people come from all over the world to enjoy nearly endless summer. For example, we were told, it has quite a colony of Arabs from the Middle East and a state-owned casino that charges a five dollar entrance fee, to discourages the indigent. For there are poor people, here, too, and (as everywhere in South America) we were warned continually about pickpockets and muggers. Neighboring Valparaiso appears much more shabby (though it has some obviously well-to-do neighborhoods). In the country as a whole, we were told, twenty percent of the people live below the poverty line, and twenty percent are unemployed.

* * *
Easter Island. Sunday, February 10th. In the days since Valparaiso, we have been wondering whether or not we would get to see Easter Island. There is no docking there for a ship as big as the QE II. In the best of circumstances, it is necessary to anchor a couple miles offshore and go in by small tenders (motorboats that hold about 50 people each, as compared with the 1500 or so we that we have on board). The seas are notoriously rough, and the best we could get as a forecast was that we would have a 50/50 chance. As it turned out, the weather was beautiful and the seas calm, with only mild swells. The tenders took about 15 minutes each way for the trip, and though some were late returning everybody got on shore.

It is a splendidly beautiful island, with or without the famous Moai, the giant statues. Although the island belongs to Chile, we had to sail 2,500 miles from Valparaiso to get to it, and it will be another 1,200 miles to Pitcairn Island. The Easter islanders are not Chilean, but Polynesian. We were told that only Polynesians are allowed to own property on it (our guide, Chilean, is married to a Polynesian woman, so his children can own property, but not he himself). The whole is only about 64 square miles, or 8 miles from end to end. A century ago the population had dwindled to a few hundred natives, and now it is home to perhaps 4,000 people. Much of it is a national park.

Athough there are many Moai on it, they are far from dominating the landscape. Mostly what you see is a rolling landscape of brown and green hills, with almost no trees and very little agriculture. Captain Cook considered it a desert when he visited it. Nevertheless, with the blue sea beyond, it can be spectacularly beautiful. The people have horses, but not much else (the volcanic soil does not support much growth). The few trees that are here now have been imported, and a good many of them are eucalypts, which sounds like a good idea at first—-they have been transplanted here because they will grow almost anywhere, but, as in Australia, they regularly burst into flame. There were several fires burning while we were on shore, nobody seemed to care, and you could see the smoke from the ship.

Our tour took us first to a stand of seven giant figures, facing the sea, unlike most of the others, which face inland. All is mystery concerning why they were built, how they were moved from the quarries miles from their standing places, and what happened to the people who built them. At another stop, we saw figures deliberately toppled, broken, and lying face down, the “why” still a mystery. Mostly they are men, but we saw one woman, though the indications of gender were so faint they may not show up well in the photos we took. At this place also, there was a wall of stones cut and fitted like those of an Inca temple, the joints so tight it was hard to see how they were shaped and fitted together with such accuracy. We didn’t get to the quarry where most of the Moai came from, but did see into the water-filled pit of a giant volcano that, with others, spewed forth the rock that formed the island. Since some of the figures are as tall as eighteen feet and weigh several tons, the making and the moving invites a lot of speculation.

Then we came to the bird-men, rock carvings of men with bird-like heads near a weird city of mounded stone houses that each held a very low door (it would be necessary for the inhabitants to crawl into them) and barely room for sleeping. Apparently most of the living was done outdoors. These may have been a later people.

It seems likely that Easter Island was first inhabited by Incas or other similar South American Indians, and later by the Polynesians who built the stone figures. Our guide supplied this amount of likely history and also, of course, the Aliens from Outer Space theories.

Indeed, if Aliens from Outer Space came today, they would find a convenient landing place. The airport on the island was constructed by NASA for space shuttle landing, should that ever be necessary. It has a long runway and can and does accommodate Chilean Air jet planes. In some ways it is easier to fly in than it is to get in from a ship.

The Captain has announced that he has made arrangements for us to circumnavigate Pitcairn Island, the site of the landing by Fletcher Christian and others of the HMS Bounty mutineers. Their descendants still live there and are anxious to make connections with the outside world, so they will come out to the ship in their outrigger canoes to sell postcards and souvenirs. That will happen on Tuesday, since Pitcairn lies midway between Easter Island and Tahiti.

* * *

In a day and a half we steamed 1200 miles from Easter Island to Pitcairn Island, traveling much of the time at 28 knots, then slowed to six or eight knots or less to circumnavigate the island two or three times so we could get a good look at it. Meanwhile the islanders (British and Polynesian in descent) came out in an aluminum boat to board the ship and set up souvenir booths. There were no natives with outrigger canoes (that expectation was founded on rumor).

The island, a British overseas territory, could hardly be smaller, more difficult of access or more isolated. Its nearest large neighbors are Peru and New Zealand and it lies 3,300 miles from each of them. Easter Island is about 64 square miles in size. Pitcairn encompasses 2 (that’s right, two) square miles. Between the surf and the steep cliffs, it is almost impossible to get a boat to shore or land men who can climb the cliffs. Was, at least. Today in Bounty Bay there is a small landing place where, after waiting for the right wave conditions, a boat can be brought in. The islanders have built a boat shed at seaside where they keep their two or three small craft within corrugated walls and a roof that will give them some protection from heavy surf. When the Bounty’s crew landed in this place they had to scramble up a nearly perpendicular cliff for several hundred feet before they could find level ground (it is nearly 1,100 feet to the mountainous top of the island). Today there is a very steep, winding road to get to the small valleys where there are a few houses. If a boat is caught out in very rough weather, it can go to the other side of the island, where it might manage an emergency landing in one place, but then will find no road to help the crew to climb the steep sides or get around to the Bounty Bay town.

About fifty people live on the island today. About thirty of them came out to greet us and sell souvenirs: carvings, post cards, tee shirts, beads, and Easter Island postage stamps. We bought a small whale carving from a descendent of Fletcher Christian. Thomas Christian, the great, great, great, great grandson of Fletcher Christian presented an interesting slide show of the island and its people and showed some underwater photos of the ruins of the Bounty (which he had helped a National Geographic team to discover not so many years ago).

H.M.S. Bounty, most of you will remember, was sent to the Pacific to bring back a cargo of breadfruit to feed British slaves, but in 1790, after a terrible trip around the Horn fed the men’s hatred of Captain Bligh, nine of them mutinied and chose to stay on Pitcairn, scuttling the ship and sending Bligh and the remaining 18 or so sailors in a longboat on an epic trip of more than three thousand miles before they found a safe haven. Fletcher Christian was the leader of the mutineers.

By the mid-nineteenth century, the 193 people who then lived on the island petitioned the British Government for permission to leave. They were offered Norfolk Island, which had been (and still may have been at that time) a penal colony. All went, but quite a few soon returned, deciding they liked Pitcairn better. One result is that lone Norfolk Island pines top at least three of the peaks of Pitcairn—-curious reminders of another time.

We didn’t get ashore, but found the visit entirely worthwhile. The founding story is masterfully told in Nordhoff and Hall’s Bounty Trilogy. MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY is a fine film we may want to revisit when we return.

After an eventful morning revisiting mutiny, we were treated to an afternoon performance on ship of an abbreviated version of the murders and treachery of Shakespeare’s Richard III performed by four actors from the Royal Academy of Performing Arts, RADA. One actor took the title role and the other three played all the other parts. They used only three backdrops, two benches and a chair, and less than an hour’s time, but the result was truly amazing.

* * *

Moorea. Returning from Australia with our daughters in 1989, we stopped in Tahiti, toured the island and took an overnight ferry to Bora Bora, where we stayed for a few days on a floating bungalow at the Bora Bora Yacht Club. We didn’t get to Moorea that year, so this time we chose a tour that would take us there.

Briefly, Easter Island, Pitcairn Island, Tahiti, and Moorea, are all volcanic masses rising steeply out of the sea. Human settlement favors the lower edges, leaving a similar beauty of height and scale rising out of the middle of each of them. The changes that civilization has brought to each, however, differ a lot.

When our ship docked at Tahiti this time, it was apparent that the island has changed considerably within the last two decades. Papeete, the major city, was before a relatively small place, with a main street near water’s edge and a few hotels, homes, and shops rising only slightly up the mountain. At that time, we walked through a lot of it, rented a small car and toured the island on the uncrowded road that ran around the perimeter. There were a few ships in the harbor, but not many. Today the harbor facilities have been much expanded, with the harbor crowded with many docks, large cruise ships and container ships, and ferries. With more time, we might possibly have left the ship and walked into the town, but that looked like quite a long walk indeed. Besides, we had booked an all-day tour of Moorea, which lifts its jagged profile in tantalizing beauty in the distance, a forty-five minute ferry ride from Papeete.

In Moorea, we boarded a tour bus with a driver and tour guide named Willem, with a marked Germanic accent. He was a native of Moorea, because his grandparents had emigrated there from Switzerland long before his birth and his father had founded the tour company that now runs most of the buses. Willem grew up on the island, attended school there, and married a native Polynesian woman. Not long into the tour, he stopped at a shop featuring the black pearls from the nearby waters (the shop coincidently owned by Willem’s wife—there is a small town atmosphere on the whole island) and a fair number of people found things they wanted there. Then we drove on perilously winding roads to various overlooks, visited James Cook Bay, where much of the Mel Gibson version of MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY was filmed. The island is heavily wooded, so that much of what you see from any viewpoint is tropical forest, with mahogany, coconut and other palm trees. Most of the homes are modest in size, there are a few horses, cows, and chickens, and only two or three small towns. Stone remains of ancient peoples have been unearthed and are now protected, but they amount to little more than small ritual platforms, with hints of the walls that once hid human sacrifices.
For the highlight of the tour, we were taken by catamaran to a motu (coral island) near the outer reef that encloses most the island. There we were treated to an outdoor barbecue luncheon, before we changed to bathing suits to swim in the incredibly blue and transparent waters. The beaches in such places are a mixed blessing. The sand is incredibly white, but it is generally interspersed with volcanic rocks that make wading and swimming sometimes difficult. The white, of course, is grains of coral: no problem under foot in the water or on the beach, but no fun if you get them in your shoes and have to walk very far on their sharp little points.

And this place had another attraction: petting stingrays. You are not encouraged to pet them on your own (and, as a matter of fact, although they will come quite close to you, they show little interest in strangers). But there was a Polynesian man there who lectured on their habits, told us that they won’t hurt us (Steve Irwin, he said, had been careless—-they don’t like their tales touched), and then brought numbers of them to him with bits of food and encouraged them to come up to individual tourists to be petted and photographed. Without his help, I (George) managed to get several to come close enough to be petted on their noses and faces, which they extended out of the water for me, much like slippery puppies, and they were curious enough to swim around Barbara’s legs as she stood nearby. These were not small animals. Their bodies measured three feet or more from side to side, and their tails, which they switched about with abandon, were six feet or so in length. They were not impounded, but were swimming freely in the lagoon, a dozen or so females that frequented this particular place. Perhaps females don’t sting? We didn’t know and didn’t get a chance to ask.

If you’ re looking to move to a tropical paradise, you might want to consider Moorea, and you’d better hurry. The island seems like a wilderness compared to Tahiti, but although the majority of its inhabitants are Polynesian, it already has significant numbers of Chinese, a few Brits, and a few Americans. Considerable building is underway. There are already a couple of big hotels (Polynesian styled) with thatched roof, over-the water extensions, and a large number of similar complexes underway. Home prices, as Willem described them, are not yet outrageous.

We are now approaching the 180th degree of longitude, or the International Date Line. As a consequence, we will “lose” a day, and the Captain has selected tomorrow, Saturday the 16th to be that day. Tonight, Friday, we will go to bed and wake up on Sunday morning. We will regain the day on our trip home from Sydney on St. Patrick’s Day when we will leave Australia in the morning and arrive in Detroit on the evening of the same day.

* * *

Nuku’Alofa, Tonga. Unlike the other Polynesian Islands we have visited, Tonga does not rise abruptly out of the sea to end in craggy mountaintops in the clouds. It seems perfectly flat, only a few yards above sea level from side to side and end to end. Legend has it that after it was formed, one of the gods stepped on it, squashing it, for a reason that remains unclear. In some other ways it resembles the others, surrounded by a coral ring and smaller island motus. It is heavily planted with banana, pineapple, and coconut trees.

Since the QE II is much too large to come to shore, we anchored in the bay and came in by way of the tender boats carried on board, arriving at Queen Salota Wharf and boarding our tour bus there. Our driver and tour guide were Polynesian, as are the great majority of the inhabitants, all speaking nearly impeccable English. The island, in fact IS in large part English. As one of the smallest sovereign nations in the world, it governs itself, but is member of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

After Captain Cook discovered Tonga, the British presence remained strong. The Bounty mutiny actually happened here. From here, Bligh and his officers set off in their long boat, while the mutineers picked up Polynesian wives and sailed to Pitcairn, scuttling the ship there so they wouldn’t be found. After that episode, by mid-nineteenth century Tonga had become so British that a Victorian home in England was dismantled and brought to Nuku’ Alofa to serve as a royal palace. Rulers named King George I, King George II, and Queen Salote are buried together in the midst of spacious grounds near the palace. Elsewhere in the port town, many of the homes look more British than Polynesian, and there seems to be no attempt to create Polynesian hotels and villas with thatched-roofs to bring in the tourists. The royal tradition here involves also a hereditary nobility. Royals may marry only other royals, even if they must go far from the island to find them. Nobles must marry other nobles. Royals and nobles rule the land. The commoners who make up the vast majority of the population have no say in governmental decisions, and enjoy very little of the small wealth that the island apparently possesses.

If you see a large estate with an ornate gate and acres of property, it almost certainly belongs to a noble family. You see few of these, however. The village and roadside homes are mostly sad affairs of wood, corrugated iron, or pitted concrete, with unemployed men sitting on the shaded steps, and a chicken or perhaps hog not far away. On a slightly brighter note, education is free (our guide was a girl of eighteen or nineteen who is hoping to complete her college course of study in two years—-if she needs longer, she will need to go off-island). Unlike the nobles and royals, however, she said she will have some choice in her marriage partner. The economy is supported first by the tourist industry, second by produce exports, and third (apparently quite heavily) by young people who go abroad, get jobs, and send money home. In recent years there has been some agitation to change the system, but so far to little avail.

The Stonehenge of the South Seas is on Tonga. It is a pair of nineteen-foot high coral blocks with a lintel, also of coral set into notches in the standing stones. This monument apparently dates from 1200 AD. Because of the dimples left by coral formation, small plants grow all over the surface of the monument. A young boy, with a very sweet voice, was singing to his own guitar accompaniment and collecting dollars on the grounds of the monument, but he was soon given competition by the school children from the primary school across the street. They clustered on the fence next to the road in their red jumpers and sang enthusiastically (including a rendition of “The More We Get Together, the Happier We’ll Be” in English) while their teacher sold coconuts she claimed the children had picked for us. She would score the top with a machete and stick in a straw, so we could drink the coconut milk. That was also a dollar contribution for the school, but the singing was free. Back in the town, we saw the scholars from other primary and secondary schools in similar jumpers of blue or green on their lunch break. The high school girls walked in groups sharing brightly colored umbrellas as protection from the sun. And it was hot, the hottest weather we have experienced and very little breeze to temper the heat.

Despite the heat, Tongans share a Victorian modesty. Both men and women wear ankle length skirts, and women wear some hair-like overskirts and blouses that fully cover them. Women’s hair is commonly worn long, but pulled away from the face in a single braid. Tradition does not allow for bathing wear or shorts except at the beach. A carved mermaid we saw had a coconut shell brassiere and a cloth overskirt to preserve her modesty. Even the dancers are fully covered and the women do not do any hula-like motions. The male dancers wear grass skirts over shorts and do war-like dance steps.

* * *
Auckland, New Zealand. First impressions suggest a thoroughly modern city, prosperous, spic and span, and thoroughly up to date. The ship docked next to an apartment complex of glass, polished steel, and aluminum, with balconies facing us where the inhabitants can sit and watch the ships come in not more than twenty or thirty feet from where they sit. Next to the apartment building is a Hilton hotel built of the same steel and glass and again so close that you might almost think you could jump across and walk in to register. These buildings form only a small part of a very large complex, all with the same straight lines of steel and glass, much as though they had been designed by a futuristic kitchen designer gone wild with ambition. At least one other cruise ship was berthed near us within the same complex, the Black Watch, from Great Britain. One of the biggest ships is a car ferry that brings used Japanese cars for sale here. We were told that since the law was passed allowing the importation of used Japanese cars, some 80% of the cars on the road in Auckland are in that category. Container ships come in also, and some of the steel and glass fronted buildings are vast storage areas, these often with shops on the bottom floors. This area, we were told is all filled land, the original port and older buildings of the city beginning a few blocks after you leave the ship. Here, a short walk from the ship, are fancy shops and government buildings of brick of stone, attractively laid out along wide avenues that take you away from the city center and into the neighborhoods and smaller towns.

Everywhere we went we found Aukland and surroundings among the most beautiful places we have been. Luxuriant natural surroundings, beautiful homes, wonderful views. It’s clearly not cheap, however. A relatively small house costs $400,000 dollars, and the luxury homes on the hillsides range from a couple of million up. One house, we were told, is currently for sale at twenty million dollars. For that you could buy a pretty nice yacht. And New Zealanders do love yachts. Their harbors are some of the best in the world. Marinas that cater to ordinary people have slips for a thousand boats or more. Most families own a boat and children are taught sailing.

We walked to a yachting basin where we had booked a tour around the harbor. We saw America’s Cup yachts at anchor, as well as old and new sailing ships, including many sleek giants that sell for millions of dollars. Our yacht was more modest, with room for twelve passengers and the skipper and his female assistant. She served coffee and muffins while the skipper ran with the motor around the basin showing off the other ships. Then they took us out into the bay, raised the mainsail and the jib and cut the engine and we spent an hour or so cruising around the harbor, with passengers taking turns at the wheel and scaring the others as the boat heeled to one side or the other though very little water came in over the gunwale . The captain and assistant were very good at grabbing the wheel when the waves got too choppy or a huge ferry or another sailboat cut across our bow. I (George) took the wheel for a while and would not have wanted to continue much longer than I did, for it turned out to be very strenuous and a bit nerve-wracking. Other passengers did and did not take the challenge, and one became so frightened just sitting at the side that she hid her face in her hands and wouldn’t look up for most of the trip. We sailed under the Harbor Bridge, built as a two-lane bridge in the 1950’s. It now has two additional lanes cantilevered off the sides. Because they were built by a Japanese construction company, the locals call them Nippon Clip-ons. While we were sailing under with our 22ft high sail that looked as though it barely cleared the underpinnings of the span, we saw a bungee jumper take off from a platform under one of the side spans and, it seemed, barely clear the water before bounding back up. All told, it was a very exhilarating tour of a beautiful harbor.

After the sail we boarded a bus and drove through lovely residential areas, stopping at Mission Bay Beach, and up to the top of one of the many dormant volcanoes that dot the city skyline. This one is Mount Eden, and beside the grassed-in crater there are several viewing platforms that give you a 360 degree view of the city, the harbor, and the ocean on both sides, since this is the narrowest point on the North Island.

We made it back to the ship with barely time for a late lunch and a change of clothes for the afternoon and evening tour, which we were being treated to as members of the World Cruise Club. It was described as “Informal” in dress, but our friend Greg discovered that on a Cunard liner even informal involves a jacket for men. He rushed back down to his cabin and, in the dark closet, grabbed his tuxedo jacket so had to rush back down again for his blazer. In any case, it was well worth the effort.

We were driven to Ellerslie Racetrack and Conference Center where we were served wine and kiwi martinis in a clubhouse overlooking the track. We also had a brief dance performed by Maori men and women to guitar accompaniment. Then it was down to the ground floor for a lavish dinner. George’s salmon was so beautifully presented with what was called New Zealand scampi, but looked like an immature lobster, for garnish that he took a photograph of it. There was also venison, scallops, rack of lamb, and endless refills of local wine. But it was the entertainment that was really striking. It began with what was described as a “children’s choir” but was really 10 Maori adolescents in full tribal dress singing in Polynesian. They were followed by a baritone, a tenor and two sopranos who sang some operatic arias and popular music very beautifully. All this was rounded off with a group of adult Maori who sang and danced, first on the stage and then outside, where the buses were waiting. Here they put on an even more extensive show, with scantily clad “hula” dancers, a fire dancer and male war dancers. It was so great we were reluctant to go back to the ship, but we did, escorted by Nadine, a delightfully patriotic kiwi who kept the pro-New Zealand patter going all the way back.
Seeing the ship slip smoothly backwards past the Hilton while hotel guests snapped photos of us from their balconies was the almost surreal ending to a perfect day in Auckland.

* * *

Sydney. We have arrived at Sydney and tomorrow we leave the ship to go by train to Newcastle, where we will stay about a week with old friends, John and Pam Burrows, touring a little, before we begin our university lectures.

The passage from Auckland was fairly rough, as is common in this area. We did a lot of rolling and pitching, while the barf bags appeared again by the elevators. Few people seemed to need them. Sydney, as our girls will remember, is a very attractive city, with one of the most beautiful harbors to be found anywhere. The Opera House is now officially a World Heritage Site, along with the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal and a few other places. We toured some of the inside and were greatly impressed by the concert hall, which must be pretty nearly unique in size and splendor. We didn’t see the opera theater, which is another section within the structure. There are also separate venues for drama and dance. The large symphony hall we saw seats 3000 and has a pipe organ with over ten thousand pipes. Because of its unique ceiling structure no amplification is needed for musicians who play here. Tonight it will be the American jazz artist Ornette Coleman.

We also made a hurried visit to Bondi Beach, which is famous for its sand, waves (of course, since Aussies are great surfers), and view out to the ocean. It seems much too crowded, though, when compared with some of the other beaches we know—-in Newcastle, Seal Rocks, and Byron Bay. The general city tour told us almost nothing we didn’t know about the layout, but it is clear that the traffic is much more of a problem than it used to be. Also, Darling Harbor (on the other side of the bridge) seems to have grown in its attractions, which were already many when last we were here. Tonight we may go into the city for dinner. We’ll be back a couple of times before we leave Australia to come home.

The QE 2 is docked for today at Garden Island, near the Naval Station, because the Queen Victoria is using the dock space at Circular Quay. At around 6 P.M., there will be a game of “musical ships” as the Victoria takes off up the coast to Brisbane and we take her spot at the center city location.

* * * More Australia. We are sorry about the break in communication. After we left the ship, we found it nearly impossible to continue the newsletter because of the difficulty of keeping our laptop charged and finding places where we could connect to the Internet. Now we are back in Ann Arbor. So, briefly, here is Australia.

The maneuvers of the QE II and the Queen Victoria in Sydney Harbor was headlined in the Sydney Morning Herald as “The Dancing Queens.” The Victoria backed out of the Circular Quay, turned under the Sydney Harbor Bridge as the QE II maneuvered so that the two could pass by the Opera House and we could take the Victoria’s berth. The QE II, by the way, is the length of three football fields and the Victoria probably about the same. Meanwhile the Harbor was filled with hundreds of smaller boats all crowding one another to get the best view—-small kayaks, small to gigantic sailboats, motorboats of all sizes, and at least one large ferry that had charged $60 apiece to take people out to see the ships pass. Thousands lined the shores and a good many climbed to the top of the Harbor Bridge to see the sight from there. As we passed, we got a camera shot of the Opera House with the QE II reflected in its ship-like windows. That night we found a fine Indian restaurant in the Quay area, and the next morning we were off by train to Newcastle.
Old friends from our visit in 1989 had offered to put us up, so for the first couple of weeks we had no housing costs. John and Pam Burrows were first. We stayed with them about a week and spent most of the time touring areas of Australia we hadn’t seen before. Because John and Pam can do only very little driving, George took the wheel of their car and learned again how it feels to drive on the left side of the road, this time complicated by the fact that John, who sat next to him and served as the guide, is afflicted with macular degeneration. The territory we drove through, however, is familiar to both of them. Pam grew up in the area and they used to picnic there with their children. Basically, it began with the wine district of the Hunter Valley and stretched south and west of there to the Great Dividing Range. Kurri Kurri, Cessnock, Orange, Mudgee, Gulgong, and Cowra are some of the place names in a country of extraordinary beauty. A mostly brown landscape of rolling hills and mountains (with some green, for Australia is coming out of winter and into the drier spring and summer) is made up mostly of grasslands interspersed with clumps of eucalyptus and very few forests. There are vineyards, too, mostly of white grapes that were just then coming into the harvesting season, but these were relatively few in the vastness of the landscape.

John served as navigator, sitting in the front passenger seat and telling George from memory when to expect crossroads and turns and how much further it would be to the next town. In this way we drove eight hundred or a thousand miles in four or five days, over Australia’s winding country roads, up and down over steep hills, seldom more than one lane in each direction, where the speed limit goes as high as 100 kph and motorists try for 110 or better. This is isolated country, however, so there were times with no traffic in sight for many miles. The hotels we chose were places from John’s and Pam’s past, all very pleasant. We picnicked in forested areas where they had picnicked in earlier years, found rest stops when we needed them, but in any case we could always find a patch of gums.

On one memorable day we drove to Coolah Tops for the view of the distant mountain ranges. The road was unpaved, long and steep, and heavy machinery was working on it with an attempt to smooth it. Unfortunately, as there was no other way to go, we chose to pass the grading equipment, which brought us into an incredibly rough patch where partial grading had thrown up sharp volcanic rocks. A blown tire (“shriveled” would be a better word) taught us humility as we strained to replace it with the spare from the trunk. We managed that feat and decided to press on to the picnic place and the view from the top. After talking with a ranger there, we found out what time the last ranger would be leaving and timed our descent to give the grading crews time to complete their work for the day, but get us to the rough place before the last man down, who could carry a message forward if we blew another tire. Fortunately, we didn’t, and we reached a service station in the town at the bottom about a quarter of an hour before closing and replaced the shredded spare.

On the next day we went to Gulgong, a gold rush town in the nineteenth century, and visited the Henry Lawson Center, a very interesting museum. Lawson’s mother Louisa was postmistress in Gulgong and a great feminist in her day. Henry is one of Australia’s finest early writers. Try the story “The Drover’s Wife” if you can find it, or the collection “While the Billy Boils,” which contains that story and others.
We went to Cowra mostly for the Japanese Garden built there three decades ago as a reconciliation gesture between the two countries. It stands near the site of a 1944 prison break involving a thousand Japanese P.O.W.s, three hundred of whom lost their lives, as did three or four of the Australian soldier guards.

Back in Newcastle, we were picked up by Dianne Osland, who, with her husband Grant, served as our hosts for our talks at the University of Newcastle. Dianne had taught at the Uni when we were there in 1989 and had visited us a few years ago in Ann Arbor. They now live in a compound of former BHP company houses, theirs a lovely early twentieth-century home of a metallurgist for the mining company, with much fine woodwork and interesting leaded glass windows. They have turned the garage into a guesthouse where we had our separate quarters. With Dianne we toured the new waterfront area, heavily damaged by the earthquake of 1992 or ‘93 and the more recent cyclone that left a huge cargo ship stranded on the beach by the lighthouse. The area is much changed from the BHP days, when from our hilltop home we watched the coal ships leaving for China, and has been much gentrified, with expensive restaurants and condominiums, as Sydneysiders have finally discovered the lovely beaches. The pubs where our girls participated in Newcastle University student pub crawls seem mostly gone. Later we took the Oslands to dinner in Hamilton at an Italian restaurant with the inevitable B.Y.O.B. license, so Grant walked down the street and came back with wine and beer. Hamilton, also heavily damaged in the earthquake, now looks much as it did before.

* * *

Australia continued. At Newcastle University, George talked to a writing class about the phenomenon of Print on Demand Publishing and read from his memoir, STONES STAND, WATERS FALL. Much interest and many questions. Two students asked about his willingness to mentor them as they write their own books about emigration to Australia, one from Scotland, the other from the Philippines. In the evening Karen and David Boyd (he originally a Canadian) came to dinner at the Oslands and we talked over old times. David is retired from Newcastle now, but continues to teach an occasional class on film.

The next day was Barbara’s turn. She conducted a staff seminar on immigrant literature in the United States, a subject of much interest in Australia because of their own rapidly changing literary landscape. One student, doing a dissertation on what Aussie’s call migrant literature, took her paper off to be copied for use in her research. Like ours, Australian literature includes not only new arrivals, especially from Asia, but also a new awareness of others from the past, in their case the aborigines who are now contributing much more than they did only a few years ago.

We took the train to Orimbah and were met by Robert Mackie and Marea Mitchell at the station. Their home lies near the top of a lonely road with a wonderful bush feeling—-dense eucalyptus trees as far the eye can see—-some of the land theirs, some national park. Kookaburras cry overhead (John and Pam have a semi-tamed one that comes regularly to be fed) and there are gullahs and sulphur-crested cockatoos. Below their deck is a swimming pool inhabited by a water dragon, a kind of frilled lizard, eight or ten inches long, who comes and goes. To the side, a green snake, three or four feet long, climbs regularly up the drainpipe and onto the roof. We didn’t actually witness this feat, nor did we see the wallabies that abound in the vicinity (we had seen many of these while we were driving with John and Pam, but mostly those were lying dead by the side of the road).

For the Conference on American Culture, we took the train with Marea to Epping and then switched to a bus to get to Macquarie University. The trip is an hour and a half each way, but Marea survives it regularly. Barbara had chipped a tooth the night before, but we managed to find a pharmacist to repair it before the conference. Our paper on “Immigrant Literature and Nativity in the U.S.” was followed by a MacQuarie professor speaking on “Boys’ Books and the Masculine Identity in the 1930s,” both engendering much fine discussion. Then there was lunch at the Staff Club, and we found time to see an exhibit on Sydney Harbor at the University Art Museum before heading back to Marea and Robert’s house for dinner with Lena and Peter Searle, she a Singaporean Chinese, he a retired Australian Foreign Service Agent whose postings had been mostly in Africa and the Far East.

Getting to Sydney again was an adventure. Robert dropped us off at the train station on his way to spending his day as an umpire at a tournament at his Lawn Bowling Club. Because the tracks were being repaired, however, we had to take a bus to Sydney’s Central Station and a cab to the Airport hotel. This makeshift travel worked well, however, and gave us a new appreciation of how much Sydney has grown and how crowded it has become.

We then flew to Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef and the nearby rain forests. And of course it rained. And it rained. We took a historical railroad, built to carry miners into the gold area during the Northern Territory gold rush, and visited a small town bursting with Aboriginal art from the neighboring settlements. We returned to Cairns by an aerial tramway that took us a couple of hundred feet into the air over mountains and forests, brushing at times the near tops of the trees that extended into impenetrable blackness below. It was difficult to imagine how the first explorers had gotten through, or how the railroad, with its many switchbacks and innumerable tunnels was ever completed.

The reef would have been better without the rain, but we did see a good deal of underwater coral (bleaching now because of changing sea conditions) and many colorful fish. Cairns exists almost entirely as a tourist city, and if you are not interested in touring there is not much to attract you. Our first hotel, the Cairns Lakes Hotel, was a gated community of attractive condos and rental apartments with lakes, waterfalls, and restaurants. We stayed a couple of days and then moved to the Shangri La Hotel on the harbor side, one of the finest hotels we have ever found, with splendid views of the marina filled with pleasure boats and the mountains rising into the clouds on the other side. In a drawer in our room, next to a Gideon Bible, was a copy of James Hilton’s LOST HORIZON, an indicator of the hotel’s aspirations.

* * *
Back in Sydney, we visited Alison and Jason’s friends Murray and Samantha Woodman and met their new baby, Jemima. Murray and Jason and Alison have met and traveled together in various places in Africa and the Near East and in London. We first met him and Sam at Jason and Alison’s when they were living in Kentish Town in London, so now we have extended the Cohen, Perkins, Woodman connection to another continent. The next day we flew home.