When the plane landed in November at Melbourne International Airport, I walked into the ninty degree heat and was instantly warned – just wait until summer gets here!  This is only spring!

Once the temperatures broke and the highs each day broke into the high seventies and low eighties – and the nightly lows only fell into the sixties, the echo kept on coming through – just wait, this is onlys spring!

When Christmas Eve broke with heat near one hundred and humidity, I was warned – this is just the end of spring – wait until January and February!  That night, thunderstorms swept through and the next five days, the highs barely broke through seventy and the lows only near sixty.

New Years Eve we had a bump up to over one hundred – a real scorcher – “This is only a taste!” I was told, “Just wait – this will go on for weeks in January!”

New Years Eve ended with the clash of thunder, and New Years Day dawned with tempertures in the sixties…and a bit of a hang over….

All through January – I kept on being told – just wait, the heat is coming.  The rain is going to stop.  This is dry and hot land.

Right on up until the end.

Then February hit.

“February is our worst month.  I mean our worst month.  This is when you are going to just melt.”

There were a couple of days I should have broken out the jacket.  Oh, and they set some rainfall records.

And now, now it is fall here in Melbourne.  The highs are in the seventies and eighties…the lows in the sixties.

“Ah, you can sense fall in the air.” Some one said to me.

“Really? Really!  REALLY??!?” I replied.  “This seems a lot like spring and summer to me.

I don’t think they appreciated the sacasm.

 The trip from Chicago to Pittsburgh was under the darkness of the Midwestern sky.  The train would snake its way across northern Indiana – West Bend and Elkhart – and on into the northern streatch of Ohio, places like Toledo and Sandusky, just shirting south of Lake Erie, on through the night until we had our six am arrival across the Pennsylvania line into Pittsiburgh.

In theory, it was going to be an easy trip.  As a graduate student, my budget was far, far, far, far away from affording a first class or sleeping cabin, so we would be in the coach cabins, sleeping in our seats.

Dad slept in his recliner at home all the time anyway.  This should be easy for him – he would be missing the television, but the rocking of the train should be almost identical to the shivering of rocking chair under his gutteral snores.

As for me, I was an indestructable college student.  I could sleep anywhere – and I mean anywhere, cars, scuzzy hotel rooms – a host of places that normally would be deemed unsleepable.

In theory an easy trip, but two things were combined to make this decidedly less then perfect:

• 1) My father’s previously mentioned gutteral snores.
• 2) Other passengers that were slightly mentally unbalanced

It took my father about an hour to fall to sleep, me, not when there was so much to see, hear, and try to protect him from.

The car was filled with a wide range of people – college students, families, couples, and one middle aged man that was most decidely drunk when he got on the train.  While I’m not sure what he was drinking out of the brown paper bag in his hand, I doubt it was kool-aid.

It took about two good hours of him getting warmed up from quietly drinking out of the paper bag, to mumbling to himself, to getting vocally hostile with the people sitting around him.  While we were safely out of harms way, the man was loud and very crude and while entertaining on the one level, it was a little scary on another.  In my mind, these are the things that they make television movies about – scary man takes train hostage and goes beserk when he realizes that he can’t get out of the country and onto a small tropical island via the railroad.

In reality, one of the reasons that you hear about these things so often is that they happen fairly frequently – and the conducter, a man nearing retirement, handled it brilliantly.  I’m not sure what was said or what happened, but with a little whispering from the conductor, the man was on his feet and out of the car – not to be seen the rest of the trip.

We gave the conductor a little round of applause when he came back in to our car on his rounds.

Not that any of this bothered Dad – he slept right through it.

With the drunkard now gone, the passengers settled down to some serious sleep, and despite people getting on and off at the stops through the night, I think everyone was fully ready for a good nights sleep.

Except for the woman who couldn’t stand snoring.

 I don’t encourage packages from home.  First of all, they are expensive to send – packages over sent overseas are not cheap and being the frugal guy that I am, I’m not wanting to waste.  Second, my fear has been that those boxes from home sometimes only remind a person of what they have left behind – and sometimes, that is a blessing, sometimes that is a curse.

Aside from the weekly mail calls that come in from my good friends in Minneapolis who are gathering my mail for me and sending over, I’ve only gotten one package – and much welcomed and well timed Christmas package from DeWitz clan in Claremont, Minnesota.

Normally once a week, the package of mail comes in and I get the call from the receptionist, “There is a package at the desk for you.”

Last week when the call came, it wasn’t the normal oversized envelope…it was a whole box!

Taking it back to my desk like a man that won the lottery or struck gold, I cradled it in my arms.

“What do you have there?” One of the other managers in the office inquired.

“It’s a package from the states!  Isn’t it great!  This is great!  Isn’t this great!  Don’t touch it.” I replied.

Carrying back to my desk, I read the label – “fake snow, books, card.”  It was from my good friends Geoff and Amber.  Thinking fondly on the snow of home and old friends for a second, I then moved to the task at hand and proceeded to destroy the box.

That is when I discovered…the contraband!

Out of the box came the small package of fake snow, the book, the card…the wild rice, the corn nuts, the candy, and the fortune cookies!

“Ah, can you really get that stuff into the country?” another manager asked.

“Shut up and try a corn nut.” I ordered.

I will admit, I passed the corn nuts around the office and all that tried them were duly impressed.  The fortune cookies on the other hand…those, I horded for myself, for they weren’t ordinary fortuen cookies, they were Ole and Lena fortune cookie with an Ole and Lena joke packed inside of everyone.

Each one of those cookies were carefully cracked open.  Each joke was dutifully read outloud to no one in particular.  Each joke was met with my own jolly laugh, echoing across the open office.  Each one of those jokes was explained, and explained, and further explained to the Australians who just didn’t see the humor in them.

And now, in there entirety, the full treasure from those great morsels….

Ole and Lena are the “Honeydew” stage of marriage.  “Honey, dew dis; Honey dew dat.”

The waiter rushed to Lena’s table and said, “Your husband just slid under the table.”  Lena replied, “No, my husband’s yust coming in the door.”

Ole said, “I could care less if the price of gas goes up, I just buy five dollars’ worth anyway.”

Ole finally talked Lena into playing the flute instead of the piano.  Lars asked, “Why did you do that?” Ole replied, “You can’t sing while playing the flute.”

Lena said, “Ole, why are your pants soaking wet?”  Ole replied, “Vell, the tag said ‘vash and vear’.”

Lena told Ole, “My two specialties are meatballs and peach pie.”  “I see,” said Ole, “And which one is this?”

When Lena wanted to diet, the doctor said she should ride her horse an hour a day.  The first week her horse lost 15 pounds.

Lena got a job in a dress shop.  One day a lady asked if she could try on the dress in the window.  Lena said, “No, I’d really prefer if you use the dressing room like everybody else.”

And the last, and maybe my favorite….

Ole asked Lena to get him a pair of loafers…Lena came back an hour later with two Swedes.

 Making our way down the St. Kilda pier, the interesting crowd was left behind for the families and teenagers enjoying a nice summer day along the seashore.  Families were fishing.  Boys were trying to impress girls with flying feats off of the shelters at the edge of the piers.  The resturant at the end of pier was filled with families eating ice cream.  Old men sat with fishing poles in hand, trying to land their evening supper.  Walking out onto the jetty, the youth continued to congregate and do the mating rituals, the boys playing in the water, the girls giggling on the rocks.

As we walked to very end of the road, we looked out to see a speed boat zooming by with it skis and a tube on top.  As it zipped past, one of the tubes came flying off the top of the canopy and into the water – we frantically waved to them, they waved back, we pointed, they looked confused (we were pointing with the correct fingers thank you very much), finally, one of them looked back to see their inner tube bouncing on the waves and the boat spun around – with waves of gratitude, they plucked it from the water and proceeded on their way.

Our good deed done for the day, we made our way to the café on the pier and ordered up a good glass of wine and looked out over the sky line of Melbourne from the end of St. Kilda Pier.

Refreshed, we made our way back down the pier and on past the beach.

“Dude, you didn’t tell me this was a topless beach!” my friend said excitedly.

“It’s not!” I replied – but soon realized that it, in fact, at least a partially was in fact a topless beach.  Looking at the women with more showing then polite company can allow me to describe, I was showing him much more of Melbourne then I ever intended.

Catching the tram back to the city with the last of the ralliers still in full festive moods was a bit ackward as well.  Some of them were very, well, outgoing in their lifestyles with some public displays of affection that are best left in the bars and off of the public trams.  There are times when you say you really want to be a fly on the wall for this type of thing.

Let me reassure you, no, you do not.

We grabbed supper and a beer at the oldest bar in Melbourne, Young and Jackson’s.  Before we parted ways, my American friend said simply, “You sure know the sights to see in Melbourne!”

 The beginning of February, our office added another American on staff on a temporary basis.  Melvin is older and married, but has a spirit of adventure and from the same type of rural background and values that I was raised with, so that meant a traveling partner on some of the trips through Australia.  This was good on several fronts, first, it meant someone else to help pay for gas, second, it meant someone else to plan the routes and experiences, finally, Melvin is not only a fantastic story teller, but also a keen observer to wildlife and someone that shares a lot of the same interests, which meant the long drives to the far reaches of Australia, suddenly got much more interesting.

Both of us are also big guys.  Melvin was a Big Ten football player through his college years and is still in good shape.  I’m just a big old country boy.

Someone said in the office that if we traveled together, someone might mistake us for the proverbial “brute squad.”

Sunday after I got home from church, we met for dinner.  For those of you from a farm in the midwest, you know what I’m talking about.  For the rest of you, this means lunch.  Luckily, we also speak the same country boy language.

Walking through the Docklands and through the boat show, looking at the multi-million dollar boats and the people who probably couldn’t afford them, we made our way to the end of the shopping area to the famous James Squire brew pub.

James Squire was the first brewer in Australia and got his start in Sydney in the very early 1800′s.  Actually, he got his start as a theif in England prior to his start in Australia, but that is another story.  He worked hard, earned his freedom, and promptly moved into his original profession of brewing which was looked upon favorably by the thousands of other convicts that were living in Sydney, but not so kindly by the officials trying to keep them under control.

One thing is certain, James Squire made good beer.

We grabbed a bit to eat and a beer or two and proceeded to walk to the heart of the city.  Catching a tram, I was planning on taking him to St. Kilda to view the beach, have a beer in the sun, and enjoy the sights.

Catching the tram, I was a bit perplexed when the people directing us on board told us that all the trams would take us to St. Kilda today – I knew that couldn’t be the case.  I grew even more alarmed when I noticed everyone getting off about a mile before the normal St. Kilda stop – and we, staying on the tram, proceeded in the opposite direction.

Checking the tram numbers – this was the right tram – what could possibly be the trouble.  We caught the next tram going the other way about ten minutes later and hopped off the tram about a mile from the famous St. Kilda beach.

We would need to proceed on foot and the streets were packed.

But something seemed, well, different.

Suddenly, I noticed a sign…we were walking into the middle of gay rights march.

I think we both realized it at the same time – and while we both laughed, we gave each other that friendly face that seemed to say, “you so much as touch my hand and I’m going to deck you.”

“Can’t wait to tell the guys back in the States where you decided to take me.” Melvin stated matter-of-factly.

For the record – I had no idea that there was any type of rally taking place in St. Kilda.  Let alone a gay rights rally.  But it made for some interesting viewing.

 When I had done the full trolley tour, I hoped off and headed to the Chicago River – for the next couple of hours, I zig-zagged across the city – following the Chicago River through the city – the only river to run back wards, as they were worried about the pollution that may float downstream into the Mississippi…ah yes, Chicago, the city that works.

Then it was off to Union Station to meet my father who was making it way through the wilds of Minnesota and Wisconsin on the famed Empire Builder.  Or as I liked to say, it was one of the four good things to come out of Wisconsin…the others being I-90, I-94, and I-39….my Wisconsin fans hate that one.

There are some sights that stick with you in life.  Images that get locked into your memory like an etching on the window panes of the mind.  Visions that represent in ways, large or small the intricacies of life.

Watching my father get off that train in Chicago was one of those moments.

Through most of our lives, we see our parents in front of us, in the present time and place, and usually very near.  They seem larger then life, for in our minds, they are that very thing.  They are people that, for most of us, and for better or for worse, made us who we are.

For me, the vision in my mind was the man standing out in the field of alfalfa, or kneeling next to one of his cows, changing the milkers, or taking care of his wife of thrity plus years, my mother, as she lay dying of cancer.

Watching him get off that train in Chicago, far down on the platform, in the mass of nameless, faceless people, he seemed smaller then my mind would have had me believe.  For one of the first times, his age, at seventy years old, seemed more pronounced then my mind would have me believe.  In the teeming mass of strangers, on the uneven ground of the train platform and mass of strangers – he seemed, for lack of a better word, out of his element.

But so much of him hadn’t changed.  He walked straight and sure.  He didn’t push the crowd, and the crowd didn’t seem to push him.  As other people seemed to get jostled and pushed, somehow, he kept this air of purposeful serenity about him.  Wearing his leather driving coat and carrying his tan suitcase, he seemed in some ways a piece out of time, and yet more real, and more relavant, then any of the flitting masses around him.

“Hello.” He said with a smile as he walked up to the end of the platform. “Busy place.”

Managing to find a quiet bench in the beehive of Union Station was a small miracle – but find one we did.  We had about four hours to spare before the “Capitol Limited” left from Chicago for its midnight run to Pittsburgh…where we would wait for the “Pennsyvanian” to take us the rest of the way into Harrisburg.

For the next four hours, we read, talked, add a little supper at a hamburger place, talked a little more…and waited….

Finally, we saw the the “Capitol Limited” had pulled into the station, so we made our way to the platform.

“Elderly and disabled passengers first please and anyone traveling with them!”  The conductor bellowed.

Dad started making his way across the platform and to the waiting cars with me following on his heels.

“Wait a minute – I said disabled and elderly – get back in line!” The conductor snarled.

“No problem.” I replied. “Hey Dad – save me a seat!” I hollared to Dad as he moved down the platform.

“Oh.  Oh s***.”  The conductor said. “Well, go ahead then.”

This was already starting out to be a great trip. 

 Walking of the Chicago Board of Trade building, below the Gothic façade that featured Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture looking stoicly down on the traffic below, I felt a certain level of freedom in the crisp morning air.

And a little bit of fear.

Here I was, a country boy, alone in the big city for a whole day.

I had gotten lost in Fargo before.

So I did what any self respecting tourist would do alone in a big city.  I grabbed a tourist tram.

Like most major cities, Chicago has the tourist bus, or in their case, the motorized tram, that would haul people around the city to allow them the obligatory photo and a respectable amount of oohhing and ahhhhing.

And they hit all of the sights – Water Tower Place, Sears Tower, Chicago Board of Trade, Miracle Mile, Merchadise Mart, Navy Peir, Grant Park, Buckingham Fountain, Chicago Public Library, and the Field Museum.

The sights were great – but was even better was the tour guide.  He knew his stuff.  So as the bus driver fought to get the rickety old trolley/bus through the gnarled Chicago traffic, the guide regalled the crowd (sometimes just me as people were constantly getting on and off at each stop) with tales of Chicago’s history and mayhem.

Tales of the mobsters, moonshiners, and riots.  Tales of hope and dispair.  Tales of people.  There is a lot of hope in Chicago history – the fire, the start of the Republican Party, the place of immigrates and the gateway to the west.  There is also a lot of dispair…ie the Cubs.

Some of them are intertwined.

The story of Marshall Field, founder of the famed department store is almost a true Horatio Alger story – moving from a store clerk to the owner of one of wealthiest men in America.  There is also the dispair – the world famous Field Museum was named after his son who died a natural death at the age of twenty five.

Natural death at the age of twenty-five?

Yes, the tour guide said, natural death at the age of twenty-five.  Naturally, if you go into a brothel in Chicago, and spend the weekend – then refuse to pay the madam, naturally, she is going to stab you twenty times in the back, and naturally you will die.

Then naturally, if your father has all kinds of money, he will offer to build a world class museum…and naturally, the death certificate will say that it was a natural death at the age of twenty-five.

Ah yes, Chicago – the city that works….

When I had done the full trolley tour, I hoped off and headed to the Chicago River – for the next couple of hours, I zig-zagged across the city – following the Chicago River through the city – the only river to run back wards, as they were worried about the pollution that may float downstream into the Mississippi…ah yes, Chicago, the city that works.

Then it was off to Union Station to meet my father who was making it way through the wilds of Minnesota and Wisconsin on the famed Empire Builder.  Or as I liked to say, it was one of the four good things to come out of Wisconsin…the others being I-90, I-94, and I-39….my Wisconsin fans hate that one.

 Being a graduate student in commodity markets, visiting the Chicago Board of Trade was almost a pilgrimage of sorts to the heart of the action.  Rushing down to LaSalle street, wanting to make sure that I had a good seat to watch the opening bell, my mouth dropped when I saw the iconic building sitting before me, with Ceres, the Roman goddess of Agriculture firmly planted at the top of the iconic building that screams capitalism and commerce around the world.  This was, this is, the heart of the worlds grain trade and it has held that title for over a century.  This is where fortunes are gained and lost.  This is where billions, no, trillions of dollars in commerce happen, pricing grains from Minot to Muscat.

Walking into the building and pushing the button to the viewing room and museum, I am hoping that I beat the crowds – it was about eight-thirty in the morning.

The museum had stories of the old bucket shops, one of the early bells and other paraphenalia.  I was enngrossed.  Walking into the viewing room, I was prepared to elbow myway to the front of the pack of people….

There were four of us that day to watch the opening.

Apparently, the heart of capitalism isn’t that fun for most people to watch, but I’m not most people.

I swear I could see the runners and traders streatching and running in place, some wearing boxing gloves to and going to town on their sparing partners, getting ready for the day.

OK, that was all a lie – but you could sense the building anticipation as more and more traders arrived and worked the phones, shuffled through paper, and looked at their screens.  There was also a fair number of them casually visiting on the floor – like kids at school at recess.

As nine-thirty approached, you could sense the tension mount down below.  More and more eyes turned to the clock.  People started filling the pits, reading through their orders, reading their hand held computers (novelties in 1999), taking the last minute phone calls from the edge of the pit.

“Ding! Ding! Ding!”

The opening bell sounded and it seemed like all hell broke loose.  There was screaming and shouting, hands were flying through the air, people were jockeying for position within the pits, the day traders (those trading for their own accounts and trying to get a ¼ of a cent on each trade) and the floor brokers trading millions of bushels for the big trading firms each jostling for spots on the floor.

It was choas.

But it was organized choas.  Like ants in a very organized colony, you could see the movements made sense.  You had the people around the corners taking phone calls, and strategizing, you had the people in the pit trading back and forth, you had the runners taking orders from the people on the phone and getting them to the people in the pits, you had people resting on the outside of the pit – drinking their Diet Cokes and coffees, getting ready to head back into the mealstrom.  On a raised platform, there were the spotters and the regulators, checking to report on prices and making sure that things worked fairly and accurately.

Somehow, this system just worked.  And it worked very, very well.

This is the heart beat of the world grain trade, and I watched for an hour as the board ticked higher and lower.

But the city still beckoned.

 Torque may not ring a bell with many people…bell, bell, bell…hmmm – oh yes, it is the closest town to the famous Bell’s Beach – site of the World Championship Surfing Championship Easter Weekend.

Still not familiar?

Ever heard of Quicksilver?  Billabong?  Rip Curl?  Those iconic surfer brands that today are globally known – all started in the little surf side town of Torque.

In my mind, I pictured a fancy resort town sitting on the edge of the sand.

In reality, driving into town was a bit of a shock.  It was a ecleptic little beach town, complete with VW buses and surfer dudes and dudettes of all shapes and sizes walking the sidewalks and all seemingly towards the beach.

Small hotels, motels, and caravan parks with small surf shops and cottages and resturants lined the main street.  It was far from commercial.  It was, well, darn near quaint.

And the sea took center stage.

But this was no city perched on the sand, it was in fact perched high upon a cliff that was perched on the sand.  The beach was a good drop off the rocks (or down the stairs), and curved around a rocky point known as “Point Danger.”  On one side of “Point Danger” lay the family beach, the beach were kids played in the sand, families frolicked, and windsurfers…well, windsurfed.

Around “Point Danger” – people surfed.  And played cricket on the beach.  And swam.  And lounged on the beach.  None-the-less, “Point Danger” did seem dangerous (don’t taunt “Point Danger).

Standing at the tip of Point Danger, you truly felt like you were at the edge of the world.  Peering far beyond the horizon into the depth of the Southern Ocean, one feels small and insignificant, like one of the tiny specs of sand far on the beach below.  The wind swept trees, pruned by the sand and salt of the ocean breezes give an ominous touch as they are twisted and gnarled, leaning away from the sea.  Dispite the warmth of the day, Point Danger had a chilly, lonesome feel to it.

Moving farther down the cliff side, I moved to the stairs that lead down to the beach.  Making my way down the combination of stairs, ramps, and dirt paths to the sand and coral shore, I picked my way among the roughness to make it to the wide, flat surf beach.

And it was amazing.

The crash of the waves, the salt air, the sound of the people enjoying the day.  Taking my my flip flops, I let the waves wash over my toes and up to my ankles, the coolness of the water stinging at first, then feeling refreshingly cool on the skin.

All the way along the surf beach, past the crowds and other people walking through the surf I made my way almost down to the next sharpe point.  There I stood, watching the vastness of the waves.

Turning back to the car and washing the sand in a small lagoon, I turned one last glance to the mighty sea and headed back to my car, back through the bushland of the western edge of Phillips Bay, back through Geelong, and back into Melbourne.

Three months on the ground, this was the first time getting my feet wet in Australia, but I determined it would not be the last.

 It struck me the first weekend in February – I had been in Australia for almost three months and I had yet to get my feet wet.

This was a situation that needed to be cured.

Getting up at the crack of dawn one Saturday morning, I got in my car and headed down the road to the western head of Phillip’s Bay – the large body of water where Melbourne rests.

From Melbourne, I went via the Prince’s Highway to the M 1 (Motorway #1) all the way to Geelong (Ja-Long, Not ‘G’ long – don’t make this mistake, and certianly not in front of you boss.  Trust me.).

The landscape was generally flat, with gum trees and open range on the west side of the highway.  On the east, most of the way from Melbourne to Geelong was covered in ports and warehouses and industrial sites.  Geelong and Melbourne are both busy ports – and they really aren’t that far apart.

From Geelong, I took the road that veered back to east and towards the seaside town of Queenscliff.

I had read the brochures and taken the advice of locals – Queenscliff is a beautiful little town.  As I traveled along the coast road with the sea playing peak-a-boo beyond the grass and trees, every once in a while, I’d catch a glipse of the mud flats.

All of a sudden, I pulled into the little town of Queenscliff, and my reaction was a sudden one.

“Is this all there is?”

Don’t get me wrong, it is a nice little town, but really – it was a quaint little town.

But looks can be decieving.

Walking up and down the mainstreet showed some of the charms, the old hotel, grand and formal.  The little museum, proud yet dimunitive.  The shops and resturants.  It is a great little town, but geared towards a single American.

Walking around the corner of mainstreet along the water front, the first I saw was a farmers shop – filled with cheeses, breads, preserves, and honey.  Farther down, a good pub with good grub.  The pier jutted out into the water – massive compared the little town that it serves.  Then there was the fort – this was the town that stood on one side of one of the most important ports in the British Empire – in an era when Japan, Russia, Germany, Italy, and a host of other states and principalities were a threat, there must be protection.  So a battery of cannon turned into two, then three, then a fort and a lighthouse…the fort even had a block house.  A block house!  And while the museum was closed, it had the canons out front – a block house AND canons!

So after some pictures, admiring the canons, having some grub at the pub and grabbing some honey for my money (along with some preserves in reserve), I hopped back in my car for a futher drive by the mar (Spanish for the sea if you follow me), and left Queenscliff and headed down the coast for Torque (Tor-key).

Sorry, no more rhymes…I’m outta time…

Queenscliff Hotel

Park at Queenscliff

The covered pier at Queenscliff 

View of the Queenscliff Lighthouse

The Queenscliff Blockhouse

Cannon!