Australia part 2

After spending part of Monday strolling the beach to the south, I could think of no better way to begin a beautiful Tuesday morning than strolling the beach to the north. According to science, sunlight is absorbed by darker colors while lighter colors, Arctic ice for instance, tend to reflect sunlight away. Fully confident that my alabaster sheen would serve the same function as a white t-shirt, I elected to take this stroll in full view of the sun, enjoying the warm breeze and comforting myself with how jealous everyone in the northern hemisphere would be when they found out how I spent my afternoon (and how gloriously bronze I would be soon). Now before you write me off as an idiot, keep in mind that the previous day I had walked the beach and "tested the waters" as it were, cautiously allowing parts of my body to become gradually exposed to the sunshine, which yielded no apparent color change by evening. And while you may be thinking to yourself that YOU would have tested this theory several times before flinging yourself before the mercy of the elements, remember that the 85 degrees and warm southerly breeze would be enticing you to remove your clothing as quickly as possible (especially after the snow and ice endured up north). By midafternoon I had a mild inclination that I could be getting a sunburn, but it felt surprisingly refreshing at the time, like the first blast of heat upon entering a sauna. Come evening it was clear that something was horribly wrong...the heat of the afternoon was subsiding outside, while my skin remained in the sauna. I couldn't understand where I had gone wrong, that is until Jill and Mary, both native to the southern hemisphere and familiar with my predicament, explained the fault in my logic. The culprit? Ozone. Unbeknowst to me, it has a tendency to come and go in this part of the world, so while one day may yield little (or at least normal) radiation, the next can be quite different. Not only that, but the malicious southern sun is especially good at picking out the most awkward parts to burn, leaving me with burned spots on the forearms (farmer tan), feet (teva tan), ears (dumbo tan), back of neck (redneck tan), nose (rudolph tan), and the patches of forehead on either side of my receding hair line (baldy tan). Put them together and you've got the honky American hopeless asshole tan (HAHA tan). The forehead burn was by far the worst, perhaps because my forehead has been more or less covered since the last time I had my hair this short...leaving for summer camp about 13 years ago. Perhaps I should have used sunblock you say? Perhaps you shouldn't have used aerosol...jerk.

Deciding I was no longer fit to be left to my own devices, Colin and Mary took the next couple of days from work to show me around the Mornington Peninsula. The first stop was Cape Shank, a national park along the southern tip of the peninsula with tide pools, really cool rock formations, and a lighthouse. Out to prove that they could not suppress my idiot tourist instincts, I insisted on crossing an active tide pool to have my picture taking with the waves violently crashing on shore. On a rock. Upon which the waves were violently crashing. In retrospect there were many things that could have gone wrong (rogue wave, bad balance, earthquake, acrobatic shark), but what a picture!

Upon leaving, we discovered that the gate at the exit required financial incentive to move, and spent about 20 minutes scouring the depth of Luke (the Renault) for change. Feeling humbled and poor, we went wine tasting.

Mornington really does has some fantastic wineries, producing some interesting and really refreshing reds and whites unlike many regions I've tasted. Some of my favorites included Main Ridge (great pinot), Paringa (really bright chardonnay and stinky, funky shiraz...in a good way), and Eldrige. David and Wendy Lloyd are a husband (winemaker) and wife (everything else) team behind Eldrige, and were also the ones who got me the pouring gig at the Mornington IPNC. They were both teachers until the 90's, and decided to take a chance and delve into the wine business, mortgaging everything they owned (several times) to plant a few acres and build a winery, which doubles as their house. Today, they managed to pay back everything they owed and are now living the dream, proof positive that it is possible to live the good life making wine even if you don't have millions to start with. Some times all you need is good credit, a little bit of patience, passion, dedication, and a dash of luck. They are some of the nicest people I have met (even by wine industry standards), and I happily traded them some help setting bird nets for the chance to taste through their cellar. Great stuff.

Later in the week Dave and Steph, some old college friends of Colin and Mary, came down for a visit, stopping down on their way to vintage in the Barossa valley. As we discovered over a few beers that afternoon, I had met Dave and Steph before. Dave had been thinking about working a vintage at Cristom two years ago, and had stopped by for a visit. Steve, the winemaker at Cristom, had been out of town that day so I had ended up giving them a tour of the facilities. Both Dave and Steph remembered the tour, and while he had decided to do vintage elsewhere, I was assured the tour wasn't what made his decision. It really is a small world.

I wouldn't be able to close the Australian chapter without saying a bit about the bush fires, which are the worst national disaster in Austalia's history. For those of you who haven't seen the international news in awhile, last Saturday while southern Australia was experiencing record heat (115 degrees) several fires broke out across the area north of Melbourne, an area of bush country with a few small communities just outside the suburban boundary of the city. Some of these fires were natural, began by a thunderstorm the previous evening, others were lit by arsonists. The heat, high winds, and months of drought combined into the perfect storm, and literally wiped towns off the map. The fires were hot enough to be deadly from 400 meters away, and moved at speeds of 110km an hour. People were caught in their cars trying to flee, chased down by the flames, while those that stayed and fought never had a chance. It was nothing short of hell on earth. The only good news to come out of this is how the country has reacted, within days $30 million in donations had poured in, even during the recession, and the government was telling fire victims to notify their local member of Parliament should insurance companies give any evidence of dragging their feet. While the scale is quite different, I found myself comparing the Australian reaction to the American reaction to Hurricane Katrina. I can only hope that it won't take years for the refugees to move out of the emergency tents and that the Australian Prime Minister never appears on the cover of Time magazine have to apologize for how he behaved in the recovery. Given what I've seen and heard from the media and talking to people, somehow I don't think either will happen.

Having tasted some great wines, eaten bbq kangaroo, and obtained a ridiculous sunburn (now peeling), the time had arrived for me to return to New Zealand and begin the next leg of my adventure. I thanked Colin and Mary and bid them farewell, hoped a train and a bus to the airport, and departed the land down under.

The real Australian experience

There are two types of travellers. The first are the postcard travellers, the ones that are out to cross as many cities and countries off the map as they can just to say that they've been there, like a family hopping out of their RV to take a picture of the Grand Canyon before rushing off to the next natural wonder (thanks Abbey). Then there are the more detail oriented travellers, the ones that pick one place and spend a significant amount of time there, days or even weeks, really trying to get to know a city and the people there intimately. In my life I have done both types of travelling, but found the later to be far more memorable. Thus, even though it was only an hour away and even though I still had a week left in Australia and even though I could afford it (sort of), I opted not to fly to Tasmania, or really anywhere else in Australia (I had briefly thrown around the idea of visiting Alice Springs or Broome). Instead, I decided to take that money and that time and really get to know where I was, and to find a real Australian experience.

Both Colin and Mary had to work on Monday, so I set out on foot to look for Australia, even though I wasn't sure what I was looking for. It didn't take long to realize that a beach town may not be the best place to find it, given that they are usually full of tourists. Still, I maintained a slim hope that the relative size and isolation of Dromana would mean that at the very least it would be full of Australian tourists, and while they may not be tossing boomerangs to dingos at least there might be a bit of local flavor. I elected to wander the beach for a bit first, relishing that I was somewhere with turquoise waters and 80 degree temperatures in the middle of February. Just off the beach were a series of colorful beach shacks, many of which had rather interesting (and sometimes creepy) paintings on their doors. Every now and then I would pass a small gelatinous blob which at first appeared to be some kind of jellyfish, but after employing the scientific method (vigorous stick poking) they appeared to be nothing but a roll of jelly. Curious, but not distinctly Australian. I wandered the beach for awhile longer, keeping my eyes peeled for spontaneous rugby scrums or a discarded jar of Vegemite, but found only sunburnt Irishmen. Time to venture into town.

Dromana is really just one main street with a few shops and houses running parallel to the beach, with the city limits marked on either end with a gas station. It quickly became evident there wasn't much Australia here either. I passed up on schnitzel (german) and instead sat down to a meat pie (english) and gelato (italian) before being chased out of the cafe so they could close at 3pm (spanish..or the entire Mediterranean really). Feeling distraught, I wandered into the local butcher shop. There, sitting next to cuts of lamb and still more schnitzel, I finally found what I was looking for. Kangaroo! Hard to get more Australian than that. Buying enough steaks for the house, I may have even tossed the butcher a "cheers mate" on my way out the door. After swinging by the grocery store to pick up some veggies and (ridiculously expensive) Australian beer, I headed back to throw some roo on the barbi.

Australia part 1

I had met Colin and Mary this past fall while working harvest in Oregon. Colin and I both worked at Cristom Vineyards (http://www.cristomwines.com/) while Mary worked up at Chehalem, although she spent a fair amount of time at Cristom as well (the harvest lunches at Cristom are legendary, especially in comparison to the standard lunch fare other wineries serve during harvest, usually a combination of hot pizza and cold pizza). Colin grew up in the bay area of California and was an artist before delving into wine, and he met Mary (a native Kiwi) while obtaining wine training at Lincoln University in New Zealand last year. They had left shortly after the Oregon harvest ended in November, having found impossibly cheap tickets to Australia and spontaneously deciding to do the spring vintage there. They both ended up finding work in the Mornington Peninsula, an up and coming Pinot Noir producing area south of Melbourne and invited me to come down and visit should I have some extra time before harvest. A few weeks ago I got an email from Colin saying that they had managed to land jobs pouring wine at the Mornington IPNC (http://mpva.com.au/), a wine festival that would feature many of the top pinot noirs being produced in Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand (with a few pinots from Burgundy, Oregon, and even Chile thrown in as well), and that they could get me a pouring gig as well. Great wine with beaches nearby and the chance to eat kangaroo? I'm there.

I booked a plane ticket on Pacific Blue (one of two no frills discount airlines in Oceania) to Melbourne, leaving the day after I arrived in Auckland. Despite having unburdened myself of some wine the previous day, I had kept a few bottles with me to give as gifts to wineries I planned to visit along the way (a trick I had learned in Italy a few years ago). The trouble was that wine bottles are rather heavy and classified as a terror-inducing prohibited carry-on item, so all of my clothing now became a carry-on item instead. God help us if some idiot figures out how to make a bomb out of cotton.

I passed the time in the airport figuring out rugby (the US even won a game, nevermind that they beat Fiji) and feeding the birds (yes, there are birds flying around in the international terminal of the Auckland airport). Turns out Pacific Blue is owned by Virgin Airlines, and both Virgin and Pacific Blue had the same curious habit of playing music during takeoff and landing. At first I thought this was to distract nervous fliers, but as it turns out the purpose is much more practical; the music choices reflect the culture of the place where they are played. On my Virgin flight from Seattle to LA for example, indie rock was played during takeoff and pop rock as we touched down. Taking off from Auckland indie rock was also the music of choice (albeit with a New Zealand twist), while touching down in Melbourne was the sort of mixture of 80's rock and techno that we all hoped died in Germany 10 years ago.

This wasn't the only thing wrong with Australia. The southern half of the country is going through one of the worst droughts and heat waves in recorded history, while the northern half is under water from flash floods. The vineyards here have already suffered crop losses of 30-50% due to sun damage, with the possibility of additional losses in the next few weeks before harvest. Things are so dry that brush fires have started breaking out all over the areas north and west of the city, and several vineyards and even a small town have literally been wiped off the map. Fortunately the place I was going was south along a peninsula with more of a marine influence, but things are clearly not going well for much of the area.

Passing through customs proved a rather annoying experience. While New Zealand took no time at all and even included humorous anecdotes about preserved vegetables, Australia was much more intense, demanding to sift through my camping gear and checking to make sure that I hadn't surpassed my wine allowance. They even made me pull out my unopened pack of trail mix to determine whether I had devised a new way to introduce invasive species via dried cranberries and nuts. It was around 7pm by the time I finally made it through, and I still had to find my way to Dromana, a tiny beach suburb about 40k south of Melbourne where Colin and Mary lived. I had instructions to get there via train to Frankston, which departed regularly from downtown Melbourne. I shouldered my backpack, found a shuttle downtown, and settled back to take in the city.

The city is quite large and modern, with a river knifing through skyscrapers reminiscent of the loop in downtown Chicago. Its the second largest city in the country (after Sydney) with just under 4 million people in the city proper. It is relatively young, having only been founded around 1850, but still retains some pretty interesting stone architecture and green spaces that seem to be lacking in a lot other modern cities of similar size. Although at the moment I had other places to be, Melbourne is a place where I could see myself spending a bit of time. Maybe I will.

The bus station was still sweltering despite the late hour, but I managed to track down the train station without too much trouble. On the train ride south I observed that Australians certainly have their own style, some of it borrowed (the women seemed to have just figured out the little black dress) and some of it entirely their own (the men still wear the same flashy t-shirts made famous by the extras in Crocodile Dundee). Colin and Mary met me in Frankston, and we drove the 15 minutes south to their place in an ancient Renault that looked like it had been on the losing end of a chase scene with Inspector Clouseau.

Colin and Mary had found accommodations for the harvest with an Australian artist named Jill, who was in her early 50's and had two children (one around my age and the other still finishing college in Perth). The house itself was fantastic, full of eclectic pieces of artwork and very comfortable, with a back porch that had a distant view of the ocean. There was a second building in the backyard with two rooms, one that Colin and Mary were staying in and another that housed Jill's studio. They had set me up with a mattress in the studio, which was a welcome surprise from the camping mattress on hardwood floor I had expected. The studio had a window near the ceiling that faced west, and around midnight the full moon shown through it and filled the room with soft light. Awesome.

We headed to bed rather early, having to get up around 7 to make it to the wine festival the next morning. The festival itself was at the Lindenderry Resort (which also had its own vineyard), and featured about 35 different wineries, mostly from the Mornington Peninsula (it was their festival after all). Turns out that one of these wineries just so happened to be Escarpment, the vineyard where I'll be working harvest in New Zealand next month (http://www.escarpment.co.nz/). And Larry McKenna, the winemaker I'll be working for, just so happened to be the guy that was showing their wines. I met him for the first time that morning, and was pleased to note that we shared a similar taste in footwear (teva sandals). He may not look like a winemaker (more of a rugby coach or a retired army drill sergeant), but the man makes some damn good wine. He was very pleased that I wasn't a scrawny hipster from the NW, although he did comment that he planned on putting more meat on my bones. Given his reputation for drinking and eating well, I couldn't be happier.

The keynote speaker for the festival was Jancis Robinson, who among her other accolades is the editor for the Oxford Companion to Wine, my bible during the early days of working in the tasting room at Cristom. She is, quite simply, a legend. We spent the day polishing glassware and pouring wine for the morning and afternoon tasting sessions, trying our best to stay in the air conditioned places and escape the 114 degree blasting everything outside (a new record!). After the glasses were set and the wine poured, we would retire to a back room and press our ears against the wall, listening to the same lectures and sipping the same wine that the attendees had paid $900 for. Granted we were working for free, but a few hours of polishing and pouring in exchange for musing over which vintage of grand cru burgundy is showing better sounds like a good deal to me. And while we didn't get to attend the posh banquet that night, we were allowed to take home any of open wine that was left over (it gets dumped anyway). I daresay we had a far better time that evening eating pizza and conducting our own private tasting (featuring 24 different pinots from 5 countries) than we ever could have in some decadent hotel full of largely pretentious and stuffy people. Life is good.

The festival ended Sunday afternoon, and we spent the remainder of the day lounging around with Jill before enjoying a fantastic dinner. The only thing I really had planned for this part of the trip was the wine festival, and as my flight doesn't leave until the afternoon of the 14th, I have some time to kill. I have a feeling the beach will factor largely into this equation, although Tasmania is only about an hour away by plane...