Day 1 & 2: Arriving Down Under

Okay, the good news is that I finished scanning a lot of my Australia pictures several days ago. The bad news is that, although I only scanned a considerable fraction of them, there are still 143 of them, and I so far have managed to transfer about 60 of them to this computer. It involves a whole bunch of complicated stuff concerning lack of time and I didn't know that Craig would take his lap top with him to Rhode Island, etc, etc. Anyway, I've decided to start posting a few pictures (only a few mind you!), mostly in order, but since the thumb drive randomly chose the pictures I have, I'm going to have to later go back and fill in some holes chronologically that it left out.

So without further ado, here are the first of the first:

And as a side thing, here's something I wrote in my journal while on the plane:

If I were at home, it would be about quarter to three in the morning. So in case you haven't guessed, I'm a bit tired right now, but I am going to partially try Kendra's theory of avoiding jet lag. Basically she believes that as soon as you're on the plane, you should pretend to be in the same time zone as your destination: Melbourne. This includes staying awake the first six hours of our nightly flight, and sleeping the rest of it. I think her plan is a good one, but personally I think it is also wise to sleep when you can, so we'll see what I do.

. . . As for our plane, it is huge! Well, I suppose there are larger ones somewhere (like in Flightplan), but this is a 747 [I must also add that my outlook on the size of the plane may have been a little rosy-colored in my excitement].

. . . There is a danger in travelling on such a long flight. Chad helpfully reminded Kendra that on flights like these you can get blood clots and die. Talk about comforting.

. . . I've also noticed the friendly service. . . [later] They served us a yummy supper of chicken. . . . However, when Amanda opened her package, there was no chicken! She mentioned it to another steward, and he started asking her really funny questions like, "You're sure you didn't take it and stuff it in your pockets?" I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy Australian humor.

As for the report on the rest of my flight, we progressed to Aukland, New Zealand swimmingly, and fortunately I mean that figuratively, not literally.

(we landed in New Zealand, and after a couple hours of layover. . . . )

As we waited to board at about 6:15 am, NZ time, the sky turned from black to deep blue, and by the time we took off, the sun had risen, and I snapped some of my only glimpses of New Zealand from the plane.

As we climbed above the clouds, I wanted to make the sky look bluer for my picture, so I twisted my polarizer onto my lens. Then I discovered that my polarizer wouldn't make the sky any bluer. Instead, it divided the light into gorgeous almost pastel-like colors! It was a neat discovery, and I took the picture.


Then eventually we landed in Melbourne, had a great day and blah, blah, blah (I didn't write this in my journal, but I figured that I wouldn't bother weighing you down with lots of details). The next day we took the train into Melbourne and arrived a Flinders' Street Station, a big, yellow building with a dome at one end and a clock tower at the other, and teeming with activity. This was a very photogenic building in my opinion, but unfortunately I only had time to take this next photo almost a week later from the car.

We started walking down fairly busy streets (maybe took a tram) through the somewhat elegant city of Melbourne until we arrived shortly at the Victoria State Library, where Kendra and I spent quite awhile trying to find a newspaper article from 1908 when the Coronet visited Melbourne. We found the right section in the microfilm archives of The Herald, and then we took awhile trying to figure out the machine to read it and to wind it to the proper date. Finally we found it, headlined something like "The Mysterious Yacht--the Coronet.". . . The article mentioned how the people from the Coronet said that the people from Melbourne were more civil than its rival Sydney, and Amanda, a staunch Melbournian, said that some things never change. The State Library
And now I bid you good night; if I'm ambitious enough I'll post more tomorrow!