It's the fourth Thursday in November today. I thought about completely ignoring Thanksgiving this year. It seemed to be the easiest thing to do at this busy time of year. Instead, we enjoyed a mini feast last Saturday night, and now there is a twenty pound turkey sitting in my refrigerator. More on that later. Today's post is about something for which I have become increasingly grateful: Fitness in the park.
For years I have avoided the word fitness. I have produced a variety of excuses over the years, managing to convince myself that the following year would be a better one to pursue a more rigorous course of exercise. By the time I hit forty, shortly after we moved to Melbourne, I realized that I had spent two decades procrastinating. Enough was enough.
Surely it helped that everywhere I looked people were biking, kitesurfing, running or going to the gym. I decided to stick with walking, and even wrote an entire post that argued that walking was superior to running. Then, about this time last year, I lost my walking companion. All of the sudden walking was not quite so much fun. I missed the companionship more than anything. I decided I was finally ready to take the plunge and try something new in my quest to get fit.
Enter the local mums' outdoor fitness group (with one or two dads thrown in), led by Greg.
While Gillian, the girls and I traipsed about Perth last October, the male members of our family headed off to David's hometown, Dunedin, New Zealand. What would you expect with two dads in charge of a holiday? McDonad's three times in one day? But of course. Leaving a seven-year-old behind at security to fend for himself? No dramas. James was fine with it, world traveler that he is. The security guard, on the other hand, decided there should be a responsible adult accompanying him. Or how about visiting a supermarket late at night when James should have been asleep just to check out shelf positioning of certain products? Bet you didn't guess that one ...
All of these incidents, and many, many more details are included in the following article. Read on and you will learn about the intimidating Maori war dance. The Australian/New Zealand rivalry is also a theme that runs throughout. Special thanks to David for writing the following post.
While the girls flew three hours west of Melbourne to Perth WA, the boys flew three hours in the opposite direction to Dunedin, NZ. so with five hours time difference, a currency, an accent and a whole heap of attitude between the two destinations, the boys discovered the passionate spectacle of Bledisloe Cup Rugby and the Maori war dance called the Haka.
New Zealand and Australia have been living side by side from the beginning, but like Canada and the United States, the "cousins" harbour a raft of keenly felt rivalries that appear trivial to the outsider, but to the locals are the very life blood of their identity.
Rugby for the New Zealanders is just such a defining force and since 1884 when the All Blacks won their first ever game (against Australians), the "inter-Dominion" rivalry between the two countries, has never ceased. Lord Bledisloe, the Governor-General of New Zealand formalised the competition with a cup to fight for and since its inception in 1931, the "All Blacks", New Zealand's national team, have enjoyed a 77% success rate including a period of 28 consecutive years from 1951 to 1978.
To give an idea of how immense an achievement this is from a small country of only 4 million people and 70 million sheep[1]. In the Occasionally United States of Australia, winter sports differ from state to state, Rugby (Union) is a private school boys game in Sydney and Brisbane while "Rugby League", a related but quite different game, is the working man's sport. In the rest of Australia, Australian Rules football reigns supreme in their hearts. However, while Rugby Union is played largely in the two north eastern states of Australia, this nevertheless translates to double the number of registered players that a small country like New Zealand can muster. For New Zealand however, Rugby Union is preeminent and universal in its popularity, spanning all regions and classes. The game has become a truly national interest and frequent calls are made to replace the national flag with a silver fern on a black background; the All Black playing strip..!
Performing the Haka
And yet, small population notwithstanding, perhaps New Zealand's prevailing success can be put down to the secret weapon of the Haka. For over a century of tradition, once the two opponents' national anthems have been played, the All Blacks interject with a traditional Maori war dance. Used by the Maori, the Polynesian natives of New Zealand, in their highly ritualised warfare for centuries before the Europeans arrived, the Haka is designed to intimidate. Watch the Haka here.
Few New Zealand men (or women) would not instinctively know the words learned from childhood. Stomping, pounding aggressively, gesticulating while opening wide your eyes and rolling them back to expose the whites, the Maori kids in the playground always did it best and they seem to go someplace the rest of us couldn't get. It's scary but impressive and it speaks to the shared and integrated coexistence of the Maori and pakeha (non-Maori NZers).
So to witness all this raw emotion, we had to travel to the heartland of provincial New Zealand, the sleepy University town of Dunedin, the capital of Otago Province and the home of the most partisan crowds ever heard. In a town of around 100,000 people, 40,000 turned up for games before the authorities clamped down on safety rules.
At 46 degrees South, Dunedin is equivalent to Fredericton NB and the Washington-Oregon border. It's nestled on the shores of a flooded extinct volcano surrounded by steep hills and is laid out with street names taken from Edinburgh, Scotland. Presbyterians settled Dunedin making it more than usually Scottish in a country that has more than its fair share of auld Caledonia's sons. Once the largest city in NZ, it's faded Victorian opulence shows through slightly flakey paint. It's a city of fine churches, sturdy public buildings, giddy steep streets and howling gales straight off the Antarctic Ocean, Dunedin is known for its warm student-filled hostelries and quirky humour.
Difficult as it was to get tickets to a sell-out game, flights into Dunedin were hardest of all so our journey started with a three hour flight to Christchurch, and a four hour drive south. Not accustomed to having kids in tow, Ross and I simply marched on through security at Melbourne airport, leaving James behind and Gus having his bag searched by transport authority guards. Not to worry, they soon caught up.
The Perth crew quickly tired of hearing about the amazing fush and chups in New Zealan
After three hours of nothing but the Tasman sea below, suddenly in the last 15 minutes of flight we crossed the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand - only to land at Christchurch on the east coast. The 12,000 foot Southern Alps and Mt Cook whipped up a bumpy descent. Soon we were fIve hungry boys in a car, speeding down the Canterbury plains; snow-capped Southern Alps on our right and alternating rain and sun sweeping in from the sea to the east.
Two MacDonalds stops later and the best "Fush & Chups" (as the NZ accent pronounces it) we have ever tasted, (sitting on a beach as the sun set), and we were descending the steep hills into Dunedin city. As the lights of the city twinkled far below, we almost forgot the trials of the day. But all that was far behind us as we made our way straight to a supermarket to check the shelf positioning of Ross's products. Ever on duty, he pointed out local variations. Then off to out B&B at a wild beach ten minutes south of town.
Cargills Castle
The morning dawned with crystal-clear blue southern skies and breakfast at St. Clair beach. The road took us high along the cliffs past spring blooms of yellow gorse, and past Cargill's castle, a ruined Victorian mansion, then descending again to the beach with the city spread out below.
Before lunch, we frightened the kids with a trip along the razor-back Road out to the seal and albatross colonies about 20 mins from town. Some frightening sights as the road winds along the ridge with ocean on one side and harbour on the other, both several hundred feet below, then out along salt flats to a deserted beach to try to see penguins.
Unfortunately too much to see and not enough time - but we were all in high spirits as we caught the free shuttle bus to the stadium. A hush came over the boys as they realised there were almost no Australian supporters in the crowd. A brooding ocean of people wearing black with silver ferns, this was a homage to the idea of dogged determination to win. A tough, thudding, grinding game that saw the home side drive a few humiliating nails in the Australians' box to send them home.
Dunedin, City of Views
David's childhood home
Well - we were tired and the last we saw of Dunedin was a dawn drive through the city centre to our drive-in McDonalds breakfast and we steamed up and out over the hills as we headed home. A quick look at the earthquake devastation and rebuilding of Christchurch on our way to the airport. Shocking how much of the city centre has had to be demolished, and road works everywhere. Enough of five boys in a car, Ross and I had a quick detour to the frequent flyers club - well you can only take one guest and the boys seemed happy enough sitting by the departure gate.... A few minutes of peace and quiet... Priceless.
All in all a perfect spring weekend to introduce the dramatic scenery of NZ to the Pittsburgh crew. My highlight was texting Gillian in Perth when Ross pronounced that the NZ food and coffee and scenery and ridiculously cheery people were " ...in many ways better than Australia..." He may have been polite or giddy from the fresh kiwi air, but I wasted no time in gently prodding the Aussie's pride to perpetuate the rivalry. Like the other 4 million kiwis, maybe I was born that way. Thanks Ross.
[1] According to stats.gov.nz the figure is now only 31 million. The 70 million figure dates from its peak in 1982.
One problem with writing about anything the past is that it is pretty much impossible to tell the complete truth. Some details must be eliminated, while other ones are highlighted to turn what happened into a story. Then there is the problem of memory. When I write a post about our travels, for example, I do my best to accurately portray what has happened, but I can't fully trust my memory. Sometimes I wonder if I can trust it at all.
The issue of retelling is compounded when others are involved, each with their own memories of what happened. Siblings can have wildly different accounts of childhood. My brothers and I each feel very differently about which child was the favored one in our family. We still get pleasure out of rehashing this disagreement when we get together.
It is therefore not surprising that after I put up a couple of posts about our trip to Perth, my friend and fellow traveller Gillian felt I had left out some important details. Her protests were done in good humor, of course, but eventually I felt that I must write a follow up post that included her input.
It's a cloudy Saturday here in Melbourne. Last night at cricket I heard that so far November has been a cold month--the coldest in twenty years in fact. Meanwhile, Sydney has experienced a heat wave and surrounding areas have been threatened by bush fires. It's a reminder that Australia is a continent of extremes. Given a choice between extreme heat and cold, rainy weather, I opt for the latter, which is just as well given where we live at the moment.
Perth treated us to cool weather as well when the girls and I visited a few weeks ago. I wrote about our exciting trip to the Pinnacles immediately afterward, but today I thought I would fill in a few more details about our weekend in the world's most isolated capital city. After a very late arrival on a Thursday evening, we were still up bright and early on Friday. We were again reminded that even a three hour time difference can create lots of disruption to the human body clock.
Recently I have made an attempt to become more knowledgable about how my blog works, and to increase my competency and presence in the online world. So far I have encountered mainly frustration and failure. It took me five days of fiddling, for example, plus one telephone conversation and an ongoing online discussion to figure out how to point the domain name that I purchased to my blog. Now I can (happily?) report that if you type the letters plungedownunder.com into your browser, you will find my blog. But I didn't manage to do it without lots of help. I think I need a manual titled Blogging and html for Super Dummies.
In all of my fiddling, I somehow managed to turn off the comment feature on my blog by typing in a custom css code into part of my blog's design where, to my knowledge, I have never entered. I don't even know exactly what custom css code is, although occasionally I cut and paste strange looking characters into certain fields in my blog, and end up with an icon, or actual words that make sense in the right hand column.
It seems appropriate to write about our recent visit to the Australian War Memorial on the 11th of November. It has been 95 years since the guns on the Western Front fell silent. We observed a moment of silence in church yesterday morning after the names of fifty fallen young men were read out from both world wars. Thirty eight of the names were from WWI, and it is incredible to think of the loss that this particular congregation, just one of many in Melbourne alone, suffered.
The girls agreed that the War Memorial was their favorite destination in Canberra. Katie, in fact, begged for more time to spend reading the exhibits pertaining to WWI, particularly the Anzac landing at Gallipoli that began on the 25th of April 1915. Three years ago, the word Gallipoli meant very little, if anything, to us. We are still learning about this disastrous campaign of the Allies that led to thousands of casualties before ending in defeat, but we have realized it plays a large part in the national identity of both Australians and New Zealanders. (See the article below for a summary of former prime minister Keating's address this morning in Canberra).
'You're going to Canberra?’ asked a dad at netball. ‘That’s a city best seen from 36,000 feet.’
Whenever we are planning a trip within Australia, I make a point of telling friends and acquaintances. It’s a good conversation starter, and we have found that most Australians love to talk about their country. They are eager to offer advice to ensure that we see it in its best light, for one thing, plus they are invariably opinionated. For every person who advised me to skip over Australia’s national capital, two more told me it would be a fantastic place to take the family.
Complaints about Canberra (pronounced Can-bra, with the accent on the first syllable) have existed since it took over from Melbourne as the seat of national government in 1927. It’s boring, too-well planned out, has no spirit. ‘Why would you ever go there?’ Ross heard more than once at work.
If you ask our next door neighbor Pinky, it's a crying shame that trick or treating has started to gain popularity in Australia. 'There's absolutely nothing Australian about it,' she declared when we were comparing notes the day after Halloween. 'Next year I'm going to play Bah Humbug. I won't be handing out any treats.'
Pinky's view is hardly representative. For one thing, she's an American expat. She has managed to live in Melbourne for more than forty years without picking up the slightest trace of an Australian accent.
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