Melbourne

Tonight is our fifth and last night in Melbourne. We are sorry to be leaving this attractive, well organized, prosperous, sophisticated, and congenial city that prides itself justifiably on its excellent food and wine. In addition to doing what tourists do when they are trying to learn a new city, we hired a driver to take us on the Great Ocean Road southwest of Melbourne until it turns inland from the coast line; at which point, we flew in a small, single-engine plane along the shore past the famous rock formations known as the Twelve Apostles (now eroded to the “Nine-and-a-Half-Apostles”).

Up to a point, we were lucky again with the weather: The rain that was forecast for each of the last four days did not materialize beyond about a half hour of showers on the fourth day. This morning, the sun was shining, and the temperature moderate: perfect weather for “Super Saturday,” the big day of racing at Flemington, the impressive racecourse on the outskirts of Melbourne. Suddenly, following the sixth of the nine races carded for the day, the skies darkened, winds tumbled lawn furniture, a diagonal wall of water cut off vision, to be replaced with hailstones bouncing off the earth, then coating the ground white while emitting a low-lying fog. Several horses broke free of their handlers and injured themselves. The lights in the racetrack flickered on and off, and the tote board in the infield went blank. The stewards cancelled the remaining races, but the crowd could not depart: the surrounding roads were flooded; the roof of a rail station had collapsed, and rail service was suspended.

The patrons took their dilemma calmly, continuing to eat and drink and chat with one another while betting on races at other tracks. A local bloodstock agent, Vin Cox, had very kindly organized a table for Susan and me in the track’s Terrace Room, a restaurant that turned out to be not only pleasant, but also quite formal by American standards: I wore the most formal clothes I had with me—a double-breasted blue blazer, charcoal-grey slacks, white shirt, conservative tie—and felt uncomfortably underdressed. With no way to go anywhere, we settled in for high tea, and I found a Group One race in Sydney on which to bet. As luck would have it, my selection, Theseo, won by a nose, at 8.5-to-one odds: which put me ahead on the day, just as our driver called to say that he had gotten through and was waiting for us at the entrance with an umbrella.

When abroad, it is difficult to know whether a phenomenon is out of the ordinary while it is unfolding: During the storm, I thought that the weather in Melbourne must be a bit volatile. According to the press, the storm was the most violent in Melbourne in nearly forty years. Similarly, in 1970, Susan and I were in a park alongside Lake Geneva when a sudden storm started capsizing sailboats: We thought that coping with such winds must be a normal hazard of sailing in the lake, until we read the next morning that eight people had drowned.

I just heard on BBC television news that more storms are expected tonight and tomorrow morning. Our flight to Sydney is scheduled to depart at 11 a.m.

The Lizard

“Are you off to the Lizard?”

The pilot introduced himself in the lounge of the Hinterlands air charter service in Cairns and gave us safety instructions. We lifted off the tarmac with heavy rain pounding the windscreen in front of the pilot and no visibility out of the windows to our sides. Twenty minutes later, we emerged into clear skies. The lapis lazuli of the sea below was punctuated by the mottled green, brown, and blue turquoises of the Great Barrier Reef.

An hour after departure, the pilot banked the plane around the largest, tallest island that we had seen on the flight, then landed it on an incongruous asphalt runway running through the tropical landscape. For the next four days, various weather forecasts came and went, but the weather remained ideal for our purposes: no rain and smooth seas.

We snorkeled, boated in small skiffs, and hiked as our mood directed. One afternoon, we were taken to a stretch of the outer reef for our snorkeling; on another, we trolled with lures for fish, landing three. One of the catches turned out to be as much of a battle as I could handle after part of the butt of the rod snapped; after which, I had to push down and pull back simultaneously with my left forearm to stabilize the rod while maintaining pressure on the fish, a giant traville. The next morning, I found bruises along my left forearm from internal hemorrhaging of muscle (I bleed more easily now that I have to inject myself each day with a blood thinner, Fragmin, as a prophylactic measure against formation of blood clots).

Our room (no. 3) was set on the highest point of the resort. Its open balcony’s view of the resort’s anchorage had just about every element other than snow-capped mountains that one could put on a wish list: elevation; a view through tropical foliage swaying in the breeze; a small island; a few boats at anchor; a crescent of white beach; a rocky promontory at the far end of the beach. Lying in a hammock, I was so tranquilized by this view and its associated sounds—rustling leaves, splashing surf, bird calls and echoes of bird calls—that ambition and restlessness left me: I would hold a book in my hand without raising it to my eyes for minutes on end.

The resort on Lizard Island accommodates up to 80 guests; during our stay, there were, including us, between four and 14. The quality of the food and wine was excellent, and the level of service, given the ratio of staff to guests, extraordinary. So we experienced one of the wonders of the world, the Great Barrier Reef, under idyllic circumstances. Lizard Island was a very good place to celebrate Susan’s birthday, on one of four of the best days of our lives.

Happy Birthday, Susan

(Picture courtesy of Dee Tichy)

Island Hopping

Yesterday (Thursday, February 25, 2010, Auckland, New Zealand, time; which is currently 18 hours ahead of New York time), we spent much of the day on Waiheke Island, as Sally Peters and Hal Davidson, friends who had recently been there, had recommended. We took the public ferry from the center of Auckland, a 35-minute trip. Thanks to rainsqualls and vigorous winds, we were the only passengers dumb enough to brave the open roof-deck of the ferry.

The weather cleared magically and conveniently as we reached the island. We walked up a gradually inclining road for 25 minutes to reach our luncheon destination, the Cable Bay Winery’s restaurant; which is located on the eastern edge of the site of a Maori fortification, on a commanding hilltop now decorated with modern sculptures. Both the lightly oaked Cable Bay Chardonnay and the food were top quality, judging from the bread, greens, crème brulee, and local oysters. The view west through the elegant, modern restaurant’s open doors and expanse of plate glass is unforgettable-- through clear air, over hilly harvest-time vineyards, brown and green pastures, and open sea, to the skyline of Auckland, under bright blue skies decorated with wisps of white clouds. After a leisurely lunch, we toured the rest of the island by taxi. Waiheke’s coastline is a series of protected coves, with pockets of shark- and coral-free, pleasant beaches, with white sands on the beaches on the north side of the island. As measured by fractals, Waiheke’s coastline must be unusually long, not only in relation to its landmass, but also to a smoothed outline of its coast. Waiheke is now being gentrified with vineyards (some of the most steeply pitched that I have ever seen), a few fine residential properties, and by commuters to jobs in Auckland. The island was largely a hippie colony some 40 years ago; throughout the world, hippies were pioneers in finding great places to live!

This morning, we left Mollies, our delightful little hotel in Auckland, at about 4:30 to catch a five-and-a-half hour flight to Cairns, Australia. I am writing this blog entry from the lounge in Cairns of a charter air service that will fly us, in a twin-propeller, Cessna 402, about a hundred miles north to Lizard Island, in the midst of the Great Barrier Reef. The local time is 21 hours ahead of New York’s. It is monsoon season in this region, and it is currently raining hard. But we are told that our flight will not be delayed by the weather and that conditions at the moment are perfect on Lizard Island. As it is off-season, and Americans are not traveling to Australia as much as we did before the recession and the decline of our currency, there will be only about a half dozen other couples on the island when we arrive—versus a capacity of about eighty guests. The resort shares the island with a National Park research station. The island is out of range of satellite service for cell phones: Undoubtedly, inaccessibility is one of its charms.

Maybe we’ll get lucky with the weather while we’re there!

Down Under

On Monday, February 22, Susan and I are heading Down Under. We are scheduled to arrive back in New York on March 22. 

Although we have long wanted a sojourn in Australia (or Oz, as we are learning to refer to it) and New Zealand, we thought that Australasia was too far away, too many time zones away, and too vast to visit while I was still working. Now we think: If not now, when?

I confess to some anxiety about taking this trip: perhaps because of my sudden decline a year ago while we were in South America; perhaps because of the increased risk of developing blood clots on long flights (I've had two blood clots since I was diagnosed with cancer, and stroke is one of my greatest fears); perhaps because of the logistics of getting the airlines to permit me to take into their main cabins the syringes of Fragmin, a fragile blood-thinner that cannot be exposed to the temperatures of their luggage compartments; perhaps out of concern that we may have scheduled an itinerary that will outpace my stamina; perhaps because, by taking this trip, I am almost certainly foreclosing the opportunity to go other exotic places that are in season and that we also postponed visiting while I was working, such as Egypt, South Africa, Patagonia, and Costa Rica. But any trepidation is overridden by my awareness of how lucky I am to have this unexpected opportunity for extended travel. 

As the trip nears, my anticipation grows. We plan to swim, snorkle, and go boating and deep-sea fishing in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef; walk in parks, gardens, cities, and villages; visit museums and art galleries (I especially like Aboriginal art); go to the opera in Sydney; go racing in Flemington for the second most important day of racing in Australia each year; drive the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne; visit zoos and otherwise view exotic flora and fauna; visit stud farms and wineries; play golf (my balky right shoulder permitting) at the Royal Sydney Golf Club, as guests of a friend; climb a glacier; go boating in fiords; fly in helicopters and small planes over spectacular scenery; stay in good hotels and resorts; eat well; and drink the local wine and beer. Of course, Australasia--  particularly Oz-- is so vast that we will not get to do many things that we would very much like to do, including visit the bush and the outback, as well as Tasmania and coastal cities that are not on our itinerary. 

Our strategy for Australasia is to change hotels as infrequently as possible, sallying forth for day trips by car, plane, or helicopter. For those of you who have been down under, our itinerary is as follows:

February 24- 26, Auckland, New Zealand (staying at Mollies).

February 26- March 2, Lizard Island, Australia.

March 2-7, Melbourne (staying at the Park Hyatt).

March 7-12, Sydney (staying at the Park Hyatt).

March 12-15, Christchurch, New Zealand (staying at the George Hotel).

March 15-19, Queenstown, New Zealand (staying at Eichardt's Hotel).

March 19-22, Taupo, New Zealand (staying at Huka Lodge).

For the long flight down under, I am taking along to reread: Robert Hughes's epic of Australia's founding, The Fatal Shore; and Bruce Chatwin's  account of Aboriginals' Dreamtime creation myths, The Songlines. I haven't figured out yet what to read on the flight back to New York: Maybe I'll just try to catch up on the news! 

Progress

It seems to me that there are grounds for optimism about human progress. Science gives us better understanding. Science spawns technology that produces tools to do better science. Technology enables wealth-creating productivity improvements and advances in education, information technology, communications, transportation, commerce, entertainment, medicine, and energy production and conservation. Global interdependence makes warfare between trading partners more self-destructive and irrational. Increasing prosperity gives us, mankind, the luxury of expanding the catalog of human rights.

There are of course great risks to human progress as well, such as natural disasters, nuclear arms proliferation, religious fanaticism, terrorism, catastrophic environmental changes, destructive uses of science and technology, and such societal follies as the growing indebtedness of many of the more mature democracies. But one can choose to be an optimist and try to do one's part to advance human progress.

While one can point to many instances of our becoming less inhumane and perhaps making the world safer for mankind, I cannot think of any way in which we humans have improved the world for other forms of life. Since our brains and intelligence grew to the point that we were able to subjugate all other forms of life and to exploit natural resources, and we emigrated out of Africa and populated the globe, we have unbalanced nature. We have exterminated species; depleted resources; and despoiled the earth, the bodies of water, and the air. 

Although we can at best mitigate some of the damage that we have done to the world in which we live, our collective consciousness of the consequences of our activities is growing: Increasing prosperity gives us the luxury of worrying about such niceties. One reason that I devoted the last years of my career to investing in nanotechnology is nanotechnology's potential for enabling sustainable development. For me, such investment was a way of expressing optimism.

A Rainbow's Arch

On Sunday, February 14, in a simple ceremony, my family interred my father's ashes in the little garden on the grounds of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Jacksonville. Dad and Mother donated the gate to the garden, as well as one of the church's windows. Dad attended St. Mark's for decades, until he and Mother moved to Vicar's Landing, a retirement community in Ponte Vedra Beach. The land on which Dad's father's house stood, and in which Dad had lived for a short time, is now part of St. Mark's campus. Dad also did some of the architectural work at St. Mark's, including designing the rectory.

On the way to St. Mark's, Susan and I drove past the turnoff to Lakeshore Junior High School, which my brother and sister and I attended, and which Dad designed. After the ceremony, we drove two blocks from St. Mark's to pass by Ortega Elementary School, where Dad designed the building additions in which my brother and sister attended their first and second-grade classes, and-- having skipped first grade (a bad decision, by the way)-- I attended second-grade classes. We then drove by the 1939 vintage home on Ortega Boulevard in which my brother and sister and I were raised, and which Dad designed, to a lunch hosted by Mother at Timuquana Country Club; which, as I have noted previously, Dad also designed.

Yesterday, in Ponte Vedra Beach, we held the church service in memory of Dad, and the reception afterwards, at Christ Episcopal Church. Dad attended that church for the many summers that he spent at Ponte Vedra Beach; where, in the mid-nineteen thirties, he designed most of the original houses and, over the ensuing six decades, many others, including the two that he designed for us. Christ Church itself was designed by Wellington Cummer II, a friend and colleague of Dad's, and the father of my roommate at the Hill School; when Mr. Cummer left the practice of architecture to enter his family's business, Dad drafted the architectural plans for Christ Church based on Mr. Cummer's design.

The memorial service was entitled:

                                   

 A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE OF

Clyde Eugene Harris

April 4, 1910 - January 17, 2010

Because Dad outlived almost all of his contemporaries, it was gratifying that the memorial was very well attended. While the service was traditional and poignant, it was beautifully executed and was indeed a celebration of Dad's life. As my brother pointed out in his remembrance, Dad always greeted each day with optimism.  In late March or early April, 1513, Don Juan Ponce de Leon may have landed on the shore that we now call Ponte Vedra Beach, in search of the Fountain of Youth. Although Ponce de Leon never found it, I believe that Dad did.

Afterwards, at the reception, Mother insisted on standing, for as long as she could, to thank Dad's and her friends for their presence. After the reception, as I walked outside the church into a gentle rain, one of the clergy hurried over to me and pointed upwards: A rainbow's arch spanned the sky.