Islands have been fairly formative in my life. I grew up on Staten Island, which both bemoaned and exploited its isolation from the rest of New York City. I spent the best summer of my young adult life living with my closest friend out on Nantucket, where we learned a lot about self sufficiency (we still laugh about the mac-and-cheese incident). I now live in Rhode Island, but not in the island part (the official state name is "Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations", which is thankfully truncated for practical purposes. But it is culturally a bit of an island even in the mainland parts, so I'll count it).

For all that, I never thought much about islands until this trip. Our route to Australia took us via Honolulu, where we had an overnight layover. There's something about the little inflight display showing the progress of the plane to a little green spot in the midst of a _lot_ of water that really drives home the association between islands and isolation. And then you go to Australia, which both does and does not feel cut off from the rest of the world. It does not in that Sydney initially looks like other western cities (different chain-store names, but the same types of stores). It actually reminded me a lot of Scotland, in that the turns of phrase from service staff are overflowing with "no worries" in both places, though Scotland lacks "mates". The similarity was frankly a bit disappointing and disorienting. For all that flying, shouldn't I feel like I'm on the other side of the world?

The difference hits in the public parks. The trees and bushes are all wrong, more tropical and sprawling in a spindly sense. The botanical garden has all sorts of things I've never heard of, let alone seen. And don't even get me started on the bugs. Australia has some really cool insect life (I particularly liked the green ants). In short, the natural world knows exactly how isolated Australia is. And the human world has since developed huge concern for protecting that diversity. Even among states within Australia, there are restrictions on transporting plants and animals. It was as if someone introduced a sense of pending disaster into the Australian psyche: for all the lack of worries (and it is the most laid-back western place I've ever been), there is increasing worry that they'll have to start worrying if something threatens their isolation. We read articles reflecting concern that Australian life is under pressure to be more frenetic as in the US and Europe. They certainly have enough coffee shops to sustain that sort of lifestyle.

All in all, I suspect they're pretty lucky to live among constant reminders that they are different, just so they don't take it for granted and lose it unexpectedly. It'll be interesting to see how their cultural evolution occurs over time. Hawaii felt confident in retaining its differences; Nantucket seems to retain its detachment from the Massachusetts mainland, a mere 30 miles away; Rhode Island has certainly kept a certain cultural distance from its neighbors, and Staten Island keeps rumbling about seccession from NYC. So why is it that Australia, by far the most remote and naturally diverse, feels under the greatest danger of succumbing to homogeneity, at least in terms of human culture? I wish we'd had time on this trip to get out to aperth, the city isolated on the west coast of Australia. Surely isolation within isolation offers some protection, but I'm curious about how it would manifest itself within the overarching structure of western urbanism.

We're not beach people. We live in the Ocean State and rarely go to the Rhode Island beaches. We've walked on them a couple of times, but mostly in the early spring when the beaches are more moody and less populated. Sunbathing, for example, is something we never do.

So how should avid non-beach people approach the legendary beaches of Eastern Australia? Bondi beach lies just outside Sydney, accessible by a combination of train and city bus. Figuring we should at least see what all the fuss is about (and it was too early in the morning for much else to be open anyway), we headed out one weekend morning. Two smoothies and a patch of sand later, we were entranced. We spent several hours on that beach, walking or sitting, and it only takes about 20 minutes to walk it end to end. There's a nice ocean-side walk that extends south of the beach for a few miles towards some of the quieter beaches. We did a bit of that, then turned back to just sit on Bondi again and to wander a bit of the adjacent town.

I still can't put my finger on what drew us in. I spent a lot of time watching the surfers and was tempted to try surfing for the first time in my life (but not being beach people, we hadn't brought swimsuits with us). Bondi managed to feel like a real town and community, rather than just a beach with a lot of tourists. Even as the beach filled up during the day, the atmosphere remained communal on some level. I'm guessing that was part of what grabbed us (well, that and the fact that the beach didn't smell at all fishy, which often puts us off as vegetarians). We found our latent beach-sides out there, and at a beach traditionally known as a hot party scene, no less! Maybe things really are a bit upside-down down under.

During our month in Edinburgh earlier this year, I gained new respect for the sandwich. Edinburgh is full of small design-your-own sandwich shops. Each has a deli-case with dozens of veggies, spreads, cheeses, meats, and condiments. You pick whatever you want and pay accordingly. They're a whole level beyond the standard American chain sandwich stores in terms of creative ingredients. And they're quite inexpensive. Designing the sandwich dujour was a lovely part of my workday ritual in Edinburgh.

Australia shares the Scottish respect for the sandwich. The sandwich bars aren't as numerous, and are a bit less of the do-it-yourself style, but we found lots of delis and small shops sporting unusual and interesting sandwich combinations. The one constant across them? Pumpkin as the star of a vegetarian sandwich.

Okay, so I'm American and tend to view pumpkin as something that either gets painted or mashed into pie. Pumpkin in a stew? I've done it, but tend to prefer squash, as it something feels wrong about treating pumpkin as just another veggie. Slabs of raw pumpkin in a sandwich? Never been there. But it was more interesting than hummus, so I gave it a whirl. What a winner! I had it combined with all sorts of things, from spinach to goat cheese to sundried tomatoes. I don't ever recall seeing pumpkin as a sandwich ingredient, much less the main ingredient, in the states. Are we all trapped in a reverence for Halloween and Thanksgiving tradition that blinds us from thinking creatively about the pumpkin? That doesn't explain why the Scottish sandwich masters don't exploit it. Or why American sandwiches don't experiment with the cousin squashes beyond grilled zucchini. But the pervasiveness of pumpkin in Aussie sandwiches clearly comes from something, and it isn't clear what vast isolation would have to do with it. In any event, I return from these months of travel with a whole new appreciation of sandwiches, and a nagging feeling that if I ever get out of the academic world entirely, perhaps I should open a DIY sandwich bar.

I also couldn't help notice that our trips sandwiched one resolutely non-sandwich culture (India) between two exemplars (Scotland and Australia). I have no intention of offering dosa as a sandwich filling in my shop, but it's a fun meta-structural observation on the food of this year's travels.

Certain cliches hit you the moment you arrive in Australia, few stronger than kangaroos as the national icon. Souvenir shops are full of kangaroo kitsch, from stuffed animals of various sizes to those little yellow road signs about kangaroo crossings for the next 5km. We were comforted to actually see such road signs along real roads -- at least there was some truth in advertising -- but what about the actual kangaroos?

Our guidebook recommended kangaroo spotting at a particular picnic area (called Euroka) in a national park in Glenbrook, just into the Blue Mountains from Sydney. Even though we'd done the Blue Mountains by train during our first weekend in Sydney, Shriram was captivated by the idea of seeing a live kangaroo, so we rented a car and drove back out to Glenbrook later in the week. The guide at the visitor center said that the kangaroos were usually out late afternoon after the worst of the heat. It was the height of afternoon (and rather hot), but we drove on undeterred to the picnic area. Sure enough, nothing was moving about. Then Shriram turned around and saw a kangaroo standing along the road. Then we found a group of three resting in a clump of trees. We were able to get pretty close, just watching them nap and nibble.

Appetites whetted, we headed back to town to cool off in a cafe for a couple of hours, before going back to the picnic area to try another sighting. There were about a dozen of them milling around by the time we returned. They weren't hopping, but they were walking around. Kangaroos walk using their tails as a fifth leg (it makes tremendous sense once you consider the length difference between their front arms and back legs). It's a very graceful motion, especially with the curvature of the tail highlighting its tremendous strength (we saw photos of them standing solely on their tails, a posture that comes in handy for fighting). We watched them for some time, with mild interruptions to watch a flurry of cockadoos that swooped in and a guana taking an afternoon tree-nap and subsequent ramble.

These kangaroos seem quite accustomed to human visitors. At least 3 adventure tour groups came through while we were there, and people were walking up to take close photos and often to touch them. Shriram wondered how often some tourist tries to chase the kangaroos into hopping around instead. As if on cue, a woman ran at the group while her companion stood with ready camera. The kangaroos duly started hopping around, which admittedly was pretty neat to watch. Their back legs have a terrific springy action. But after the chasing camera crew had left and the kangaroos were left to their own rhythms, it was neater still to watch as more and more came out of the woods and into the clearing to join the others. Euroka has a handful of campsites, and it was very tempting to find a tent and spend the evening watching the wildlife just do their thing.

We saw live kangaroos one other time, as we drove past a city park just outside of Cairns. The park was perhaps a city block or two in size, but there was a group of kangaroos just munching away on the grass among the seesaws and slides. Our first reaction was to be awestruck and jealous that Australians get to see this sight fairly easily. Then we recalled that while in India, I had a similar reaction to seeing uncaged monkeys sitting in a public park, while Shriram didn't get what was so unusual. I wonder if any of the Providence wildlife (is there any?) might seem strange to an Australian, but I somehow think they have an edge on us in this department.

And yes, we did come back with a stuffed toy kangaroo, feeling justified having actually seen them in person. It is amazingly hard to find a realistic looking one though. We must have visited a dozen souvenir shops in Cairns and only found one that even approximated the personality of the genuine article.

American sports fans often defend their favorites with articles such as "10 reasons why baseball is better than football". In my experience, cricket fans are above such promotional nonsense because it is simply obvious that their game is superior to the alternatives. My introduction to cricket has admittedly been skewed, overseen by a displaced and starved fan (my spouse) who has hungered for cricket more than dosa (a prioritization which makes no sense to me). My cricket knowledge has come from the taped matches we've been able to rent from Indian grocery stores over the years, the bit of internet coverage we got during the world cup many years ago, and a delightful book called "How to bluff your way in cricket" which I got as a wedding gift from an American friend who'd married a Brit.

Cricket has a very sanitized look from this view. The players stand in the fields in wide-brimmed hats, often wearing white. The commentators wear bowties. The official rules mandate a tea break. A tea break! Surely this is not organized sport akin to baseball and football, as displaced cricket fans will remind you in the lament that lasts through the fall and early winter American sports seasons. My one prior encounter with live cricket confirmed all opinions that it was genteel and refined. We visited London in 2004, took the pilgrimage to Lords (the mother ship of cricket stadia), and sat amongst a few dozen other fans wielding newspapers and picnic baskets on a rainy Sunday morning. The tea break fit perfectly.

And then there was cricket in Sydney.

Not surprisingly, one of Shriram's first web searches when we planned the Australia trip was for live cricket matches. We were heading to Australia towards the end of the Ashes (the annual tournament between Australia and England, famous for its symbolism and history--where else do two nations go nuts over who gets to claim a small urn of burnt wood?). Lo, an evening 20/20 match during the week of the conference! The format is a big deal because a standard match lasts up to 5 days, with the short format about 6 hours. This newer, super-short format (a 20/20 match) lasts about 2.5 hours and is designed for an evening out. Oh, the ecstasy! Until we realized that only members of the Australian Cricket Club could buy tickets online. So our first order of business after dumping our bags in our room in Sydney was to search for a ticket office in hopes of getting seats. Luck on our side, there were still some available.

While I knew Australians were (a) sports fanatics and (b) very different from the English, I expected the Aussie cricket fans to consist of displaced asians and calmer people of my parents' generation. Instead, the place was full of 30,000 beer-chugging, face-painted, slogan-shouting young people. Breaks in the action were filled with the same brisk and snappy music designed to get an audience clapping that they use at American baseball games. The comments hurled at the opposing team could have come from my native New York. The audience manipulation wasn't quite as cheeky as at American baseball games: there were no little video games and trivia quizzes to entertain the fans between innings, but cricket only has a couple of breaks in the action, unlike the frequent inning-breaks of baseball. We did the wave, and tossed beach balls around in the stands. Tea break?!? No sane teacup would risk its life in this atmosphere. This wasn't the exalted cricket, it felt more like baseball with funny rules.

It would be going too far to say that the experience ruined the game for me, but some of the majesty is gone. Certainly, it does have an elegance and interesting nuances compared to baseball (yes, dear, I know there is really no comparison). But the tea break is no longer about tea either. It's a sad loss.

Contrast the Outback and the Tropical Rainforest of North Queensland. One offers an abundance of light with restricted water. The other an abundance of water with restricted light. One is flaming orange and red; the other is in complementary greens. It's hard not to consider survival and adaptation seeing one of these ecologies. Seeing them back to back is mind boggling.

The Outback around Uluru actually has a fair bit of vegetation in the form of low shrubs and sand grasses. It isn't the unrelenting blanket of reddish sand that I'd expected. In some ways, it makes you even more aware of survival because you are staring at clearly living plants in a very dry area. The plants themselves were dry and cloaked in dingy brownish green. Then it hits that _people_ live out there, and have for millennia. The plants aren't hearty enough to be a primary food supply and we saw no animals. The plants do harbor lots of small insects and grubs that form the basis of local cuisine. I got a real appreciation for traditional wisdom about the natural world. I couldn't have survived two days out there -- I just didn't see any signs of where one would look for food (much less water). We saw some interesting films about Aboriginal culture in the park visitor center that discussed the signs used to determine whether a shrub will contain mature grubs in the roots for eating. The meeting of Aboriginal experience and western science forms a fascinating juxtaposition in the park (and the visitor center makes a real point of how they try to integrate the two forms of knowledge in modern park management).

Out in the rainforest, my unease was not with how one would find things to eat, but with how one would avoid being eaten (or at least nibbled on). The rainforest suggested that death could be imminent; the outback suggested that it could be very prolonged. At least, that's how I saw it in human terms. Then I looked at the rainforest from the perspective of the plants and trees. What's a plant to do if it can't grow tall enough on its own to get to the light up on the (very high) canopy? Find a way to exploit some tree that can. I was fascinated by the strangler fig tree. It gets it seeds up to the top of a tree that has reached the canopy, then drops roots back to the forest floor. Lots of vines seem to do that, but the strangler goes farther. It slowly (very slowly) encases its scaffolding host tree until the host dies, at which point the fig has become a large sturdy tree in its own right; its separate roots merge into a single, richly textured trunk. The patterns of the individual roots emote predatory behavior. It's eerie, especially in a dim and damp forest. I wonder at what point, if ever, the host tree realizes what's happening. Does the strangler fig ever lose? Or is a David still evolving for this Goliath?

All in all, Australia finally made me understand what it means to live in the modern first world. I don't worry about survival on a daily basis. My mind and life have been granted the freedom to think about other things. It brought on many of the same feelings that getting tenure did: it's more about the responsibility to do something interesting with the (life or job) security than with the freedom to do nothing at all. My culture and circumstance makes complacency far too easy. In the natural parks of Australia, I got to see the forest through the trees.

Our trip included the obligatory cruise-and-snorkel trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. I'm no fan of snorkeling. I tried it once before in the Virgin Islands and couldn't get past the unsettling feeling that I was intruding on "fish territory". Forget the rational argument that merely swimming achieves the same intrusion: easy to ignore what you don't see and all that. So I headed out to the Reef with considerable trepidation, overridden by a sense that I'd have to be a massive idiot to be in Cairns and not view the Reef.

I'd expected the Reef to be vibrant in both color and sea life. The tales I'd heard of Reef bleaching hadn't prepared me for how little color we saw in the coral. Most of the coral was grey or brown; only a couple of specimens were brightly colored (a bit of blue and greenish-yellow). The texture, shape, and structure was quite interesting though, and I suspect I'd have looked less at those aspects had the color been there. There were some brightly colored fish, lots of blues, yellows, stripes, etc. The contrast between the fish and coral emphasized the coral bleaching even more.

The night before our trip, we followed the advice of our guidebook and took in the ReefTeach program in Cairns. Run by a marine biologist who also works a dive instructor, the program spends a bit over an hour introducing the ecology and varieties of fish and coral to be found on the reef, and the second part setting you straight on what to and not to be afraid of out there (short version: reef sharks harmless, coral-induced scratches potentially dangerous). The ecological overview definitely helped me appreciate what we were seeing, but by far the most valuable bit of advice was to just float and let the sea life come near you. Most people look down, don't see much, and swim off to find fish, which scares off the fish, and so on. We tended to look for open spaces of surface over 20 foot depths and then just float. Worked wonders. We got to see all sorts of fish come and feed off the coral, or just interact with each other. (Shriram even got buzzed by a reef shark, an experience I'm frankly fine to have missed.) It mimicked our experience at Euroka: sit off to the side and watch the wildlife just do its thing after the crowds have left. Perhaps it should have been obvious, but I strongly suspect that without that advice the night before the Reef, I'd have just swum around with everyone else in search of something colorful. Some lessons just take a while to sink in.

10:30pm walking on the Cairns esplenade with an ice cream cone. 36 hours and one re-routed flight later, we were back in Providence. I often find flights a form of reset button: a long time in the largely void space of the cabin dulls the sensation of wherever I was so that I get home more or less picking up where I left off before the trip. The impact coming home from Australia was less than that from India, but it did leave me with a renewed respect for the natural world and the diversity it's capable of within reasonable distances. Reading about Australia pre-trip could make anyone paranoid: there are tons of warnings about jellyfish, crocodiles, and bugs that would love to kill you. It paints a vivid picture of Australians being pretty tough folk who expect they might drop dead any moment from an encounter with their weird natural world. The fear of imminent death went away in most of Australia (outside parts of the rainforest). Soon as we got home and started watching nature shows centered around Australia, the paranoia resumed: I felt myself thinking "we went there and _survived_". It's definitely a place that captures the imagination, for better and worse. The stories of the Aboriginal culture enhance that experience. But I do find it odd to have most of my pre-conceptions about a place still firmly rooted in my psyche upon returning, even though they disappeared while there. I've never experienced that before, much less in a place I enjoyed so much. Guess it's just more evidence that Australia really is a little bit strange and upside down.