And because it has the likeness of the Great Pope John Paul.

So, Grandmother, if you are reading this from above, you would be proud of me.

Aunt Martha, if you are reading this from above, the weather on this  Good Friday is quite glorious here in Sydney. You’d love it. But you just missed Oprah’s tour. She left a couple of months ago

Mom, if you are reading this from the couch, please take good care of my record collection, or I’ll send him after you:

Pope John Paul the Great outside of St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney

Happy Easter Everyone!!!

My heart goes out to New Zeland and the people of Christchurch. I’ve been to New Zealand three times now, and it is one of my favorite places in the world. I plan on going back to visit many times in the future. Hopefully I can soon make my first trip to Christchurch to volunteer in some capacity.

I realize Australia relatively recently has had several natural disasters that have claimed many lives and destroyed homes and land (such as the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria and the recent Queensland floods). My heart goes out to the people of my nearly-adopted land as well.

But New Zealand somehow reminds me of home far away (in West Virginia). It has something to do with the mountains, the air, the wildlife and the simplicity of living in New Zealand that makes it really special to me.

One only has to look at two recent mining disasters that may signify a special cosmic relationship between New Zealand and West Virginia.

On April 5, 2010 an explosion rocked the Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia. It was such a monumental disaster that President Barack Obama gave the eulogy for the 29 miners killed.

Just more than seven months later, on November 19, 2010, an eerily similar explosion tore through the Pike River Mine on the South Island of New Zealand. The number of casualties in this accident?

Also 29.

Now I’m no numerologist, but could this be more than a coincidence? Who knows.

All I know is that these disasters will always be a part of life. Hell, developing and third world countries experience disasters many times the size of the ones described above.

I’m not happy about having to write about such incidents, but I think they can somehow help us recognize the fleeting nature of life and the importance of fervently embracing the people and places we love every day.

Who knows when we might no longer have the chance.

As always, I was amazed by the tranquil nature of the New Zeland; I was so tranquil by it all (and completely spent from weeks of work), that I spent some days sleeping in my completely dark(good) and equally sweltering(bad) small hostel room.

Wasting a lot of my time snoozing and rambling around the hostel turned out to be a good idea because I had the pleasure of meeting and hanging out with an exciting mix of people.

One of the most memorable trips for me was a jaunt by ferry to Waiheke Island with a couple of Canadian friends. Together we enjoyed a breezy sunny day on a small still beach against the backdrop of a colorful Pacific Island-like community. My two Canadian travel partners from Calgary had just met each other that day. I had met one of them the day before.

Another cool group of people were the Japanese who really had a good sized contingent at the hostel.  They were all young, friendly and outgoing types who indeed helped me learn a little bit of Japanese. If you are reading my blog for the first time, then I say Hajimemashite readers. 

I spent the rest of my time reading, learning new recipes, and having a drink or two.

Now, two months after the trip, I am finally getting around to posting some of my pictures (thanks to one of the Canadian friends who was pestering me into getting the pics up). This led me to consider a new blog post. In preparation for this post, I decided to learn once and for all if I could finally tell the world that I was one of the first to see New Year 1-1-11. The best source of information I found was an online article from the Samoa Observer. The report admited that its nation was not, in fact, the first to experience New Year.

Neither was New Zealand’s.

You will learn from the article that Kiribati is the “first nation to party”! 

Read the highly informative article here.

Last year about this time, I visited one of Sydney’s most accessible National Parks. It is the Royal National Park, which is about a 45 minute drive from the city. Being transportationless, I took the train there – also a 45 minute ride.

I met up with a guide from the Sydney YHA, an outdoors/social organization. No one else showed up but him and me, and he was nice enough to show me one of the more popular walks.

Some highlights of the day included seeing a blue-tongued skink (a large lizard-like creature, the sight of which is apparently not that common); the Australian national flower (also rare); a tall, moderately gushing waterfall; a swimming hole in the creek at the bottom of the trail; and a faint, grey Sydney skyline visibile in the distance beyond the ridges of the park’s hills (it looked like a strange, straight-angled ridge itself).

The 2nd oldest National Park behind Yellowstone, the Royal is south of Sydney and located on the coast. I didn’t see the coast on this first trip, but I have since been back – and let me tell you, it is amazing (I have some photos from my first trip, but unfortunately, I don’t have any costal photos. Don’t fear though, I will be going back).

There are several beaches that line the coast, and the forest provides a serene backdrop against the choppy Australian surf.

The park also offers canoe rentals that you can take down a meandering river that cuts through the park, and the park is the home of one of the few nude beaches in the Sydney area. Don’t expect any photos of that though; I’m keeping those to myself

One thing I want to do before I leave Sydney is to take one of the park’s most famous hikes, adequately called the Costal Walk. It is a 26 kilometer, two day hike that follows the coast down the entire length of the park, passing all of the cool beaches along the way.

I’m very excited to partake in one of my favorite activities, hiking, and also to have the opportunity to take a break and relax on a beach or two (or three, or four).

Australia definitely offers something new to the outdoor enthusiast, and I am certainly going to soak it all up.

I only have the basic Flickr account, so I am limited to 100 MB of uploads a month. So you won’t see all of my photos, but I’ve uploaded the select few that I think you will enjoy. You probably don’t want to flip through 100′s of photos anyway.

I hope you like looking at the photos. I know I enjoyed taking them!

My alarm woke me up the other morning at 6:30. Looking out the window, I noticed that the entire world was orange, and I said “That’s nice, but I’m going back to bed.”

Luckily, I thought better of it. So, I grabbed my camera and walked out into the streets of Bondi. There I noticed that the world was, in fact, orange. Everything was orange – the air, the sky, and the objects on the street all were a different shade of the same color.

It was like the Twilight Zone on Tang.

Apparently a rare dust storm had blown into Sydney from the Outback. The dust caught the refelction of the rising sun, and it cast everything in an orange hue. Those who were awake a little earlier than me reported that thieir world was a fire red.

Perhaps it was an homage to the late, great Patrick Swayze, that Sydney experienced a Red Dawn.

Anyway, the pictures above were not taken with some wierd film/setting, nor were they edited in Photoshop. They were taken as is.

I just wish I would have walked the extra 5 minutes to the beach to take some pictures there. Oh well, next time.

Details about my India trip coming soon!

CVA Van

Lately I’ve been giving back.

You see, although Australia was once rather isolated from the rest of the world, it no longer is. And as part of an ever shrinking global humanity, it has experienced some of the pitfalls that occur when old footsteps reach new shores.

In this case, those footsteps brought with them mud from explorers’ boots, and the mud brought with it seeds from foreign lands.

These foreign seeds were able to sprout upon Australian land and establish a stranglehold on certain tracts of land, including some of the National Parks I wrote about in my last post.

That’s where the Conservation Volunteers of Australia (CVA) comes in.

The Conservation Volunteers works closely with the National Parks Service to, among other things, eradicate these “invasive species,” and replace them with native ones.

At the suggestion of a friend, I raised my hand and offered to volunteer for this worthy cause.  So far, I have helped to eradicate such icky species as the Privut, the African Olive and the Bitou Bush.

The picture below shows an exanse of land that was completely blanketed by the Bitou Bush before we came in and cleared it away; as you can see, it took almost complete control over a large tract of land.

Bitou-Free Bushland

The next step is that the National Parks Service will come in and plant native species, such as the iconic gum tree (eucalyptus).

I guess the next question is “What is wrong with a new species being introduced to a new place? If it is not a problem in its native country, why is it a problem here? Can it not provide adequate shelter and nutrition to native wildlife?”

Well, according to Michael, our fearless CVA leader on the Bitou Bush project, native flora and native fauna have adapted to each other over thousands and tens of thousands of years. This cohabitation has led to a complex ritual in which the various species are caught up in a pattern of give and take; this mutually benefits each species and perpetuates the survival of all involved. (OK, I know that last sentence was cheesy – I’m no to biologist. But check back, I may try to get a quote from Michael himself!)

Michael’s example was this: The gum tree is prone to losing large branches – they just fall right off the tree. This leaves a cavity which provides good protection for native possums. The invasive trees, though beneficial to the ecosystems from which they came, do not lose their branches in the same manner as the gum trees. Therefore, possums located in infested areas have an inadequate supply of shelter.

For the benefit of these possums and other native species, The CVA operates all over Australia. This offers volunteers the chance to explore new regions and lend a helping hand. Though I have only volunteered in Sydney so far, I am currently eying a trip to Tasmania.

I feel excited about this worthy cause. It gives me the opportunity to give back to nature, meet like-minded people, keep active and generally feel like a working part of this wonderful planet.

View from Coastal Walk - Sydney Harbour National Park

I don’t even have to leave Sydney to enjoy nature and to hike some of the most beautiful trails I have ever seen. According to one website, there are 60 National Parks in and around Sydney.

One of these parks is Sydney Harbour National park, and it is a short ferry ride from downtown. This park comprises several “heads,” which jut out from the mainland and sort of encirculate a small harbour. The park is located on the tips of these peninsula-like “heads” and are is not connected via the mainland.

I went to Sydney Harbour National Park with the first of my new friends – Janelle from Seattle. I met Janelle on Christmas day at the beach. She was traveling in Sydney by herself, and we spent the remainder of her six-day vacation exploring Sydney and the surrounds (I basically accompanied her on her whirlwind tour of Sydney, doing all of the touristy stuff I should have done ages ago!).

So, we caught the ferry to the Sydney suburb of Manly, and took the Manly-to-Spit-Bridge Scenic Walkway through the Sydney Harbour National park. The walk was outstanding. It takes you through some dense bush, along several beaches and along beautiful rugged coastline.

I have also visited the Blue Mountains National Park, the Royal National Park and Botany Bay National Park, the latter two of which also have outstanding coastal bushwalks.

What I like about these coastal walks is that the coast offers a new dimension to the whole hiking thing. Though I have always loved nature, I never felt that the ocean gave me that sense of natural wonder quite like the way the mountains always have.

That has now changed.

There is nothing like the feeling of coming out of some dense bush to a rocky outcropping and seeing a tree-lined harbour open out into a vast sea. It is exhilarating to watch the waves hitting the rocks, sending a fine mist into the air.

Though I do miss the rustic West Virginia mountains, I think I have found a another new friend in the Australian coastline.

Two new friends in two days – you can’t beat that!

Thanks Janelle.

This post, however, is not about the outdoors. It is about the absurd story behind a particular video I found on YouTube. You might be wondering what a YouTube video has to do with my introduction to this post or with my life in Australia.

Let’s start from the beginning…

My first real adventure away from home led me to Cincinnati, Ohio, where I spent three years of my life (2005-2008). Upon moving to Cincinnati, and still feeling a longing for home, I quickly discovered a place where fellow West Virginians met to watch West Virginia University sports and talk the motherland.

Cincinnati is not a big city, so suffice it to say, there was not a huge contingent of West Virginians – but it was nice to retreat to a place where I could find at least one person with the familiar love for home. Similarly, my friends in Washington D.C. found a place where they too can enjoy a nice friendly conversation with some Wild and Wonderful natives of the Mountain State (i.e. West Virginia).

I thought to myself “If Cincinnati and D.C. have W.V. hangouts, then why can’t Sydney?” So on a whim, I Googled “West Virginia Sydney.” I was surprised by one of the first results. It was an article about a singer named Neil Sedaka who apparently had a number one hit in Australia called “Wheeling, West Virginia.” Sedaka, a Brooklyn-born singer, apparently wrote the song while in staying in Sydney, and it became a huge hit for him here – though it didn’t do so well in the US.

Of all the years I spent growing up in the Wheeling area, I had no idea such a song existed. Neither did any of my friends. Maybe it was because it was overshadowed by John Denver’s Take Me Home Country Roads. Or maybe it was because the song was never a hit in the US. (Or maybe it is because the song absolutely sucks, as you will soon find out.)

Whatever the reason, I forgot all about my search for West Virginia hangouts, and my new project became to find out more about this song. A trip to YouTube quickly led me to a recording of Neil Sedaka’s “Wheeling, West Virginia.” Here it is (Dad, turn on your speakers and click on the video screen):

If you listen closely to the lyrics you will find out that the story is told from the point of view of an actor living in Hollywood (“racing his MG down to MGM“) who is troubled by the fast-paced and fictitious lifestyle of acting. We find out that this man is originally from Wheeling, West Virginia where he left his previous (and presumably less-worldly) self behind. On  the way to the movie set he asks himself “Where is the guy from Wheelin’ West Virgineeeea? Thousands of miles from hooooome.”

The big-time actor misses his small-town self.

I bet you are wondering, why am I listening to this song? Why do I really care? Why are you wasting my time with this nonsense, Brad?

Just think back to everything I’ve told you so far about this song and its singer. Does anything sound a little strange? Let me just tell you how my brother put it after I played the song for him. He posited…

“So its a song written in Australia by a guy from Brooklyn about a guy in L.A. reminiscing about his life in Wheeling, WV?”

So, there you have it folks. A wonder of a song. A song that inexplicably defies all rules of geography and physics.

Kind of like when John Denver said West Virginia’s most famous landmarks are the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenendoah River.