Australia

Well, it's time to post some pictures from Australia. I have had very little time for this blog lately, and I apologize. I just started working for the X Prize Foundation, and they have me 10 hours a day, with a two hour commute (round trip)...there's not much time left for anything else. It's a great group of people though, and they're a lot of fun to hang out with.

Anyway, let's get back to Australia...two weeks ago.

I'll start with the recent story from the Tehachapi News.

THS grads perform at Sydney Opera House
By Carin Enovijas

On July 9, two Tehachapi High School graduates participated in an event hailed as the largest band event in the Southern Hemisphere, the 2006 Premiering Sydney Inaugural Festival, held at the Sydney Opera House.

That’s Sydney, Australia, as in, “down under,” and “put another shrimp on the barbie.”

John Starr Dewar, 21, of Tehachapi, who is currently attending Chapman University as a film major, is also a member of the university’s wind ensemble. When the ensemble’s director expressed a need for clarinet players to make the trek to Sydney, John quickly suggested his longtime high school friend, Lauren Hirsch.

Lauren, 19, is a cellular biology major at University of Southern California at San Diego, where she is also a member of her school’s Wind Symphony.

Although she began playing the trumpet in high school and also played saxophone occasionally, Lauren decided to give the clarinet a try after John suggested she come with his ensemble to perform in Sydney.

“I can pick up a wind instrument in about a month,” Lauren said.

That’s pretty much what she did, borrowing a clarinet from a friend, and later, after discovering, “it was sort of broken,” she rented one.

After practicing under the instruction of a recent UCSD music graduate for only 10 weeks, Lauren joined Chapman’s Wind Ensemble for rehearsals, one week before leaving for Sydney.

On the third day of rehearsals, Lauren decided to tell the director about her newly acquired talent.

“He just thought I was a sax player as opposed to a clarinet player,” Lauren said, adding that he wasn’t concerned in the least about her musical abilities.

Lauren and John, a trumpet player, joined approximately 350 other young musicians from high schools and colleges around the world to perform in the world premiere of Dr. David Gillingham's “Sails of Time,” a new work composed especially for the Sydney Opera House and for the season’s inaugural event.

“They (opera house attendants) kept telling us not to be nervous and, in essence, saying that we were nervous, but that we really shouldn’t be nervous,” Lauren said about preparing to perform before such a large audience, at such a famed and prestigious venue.

John also said he had been more nervous at much smaller performances.
“When you’re on stage, the lights tend to blind you, so you forget how many people are there,” he said.

Lauren said she was happy with her performance, in spite of the difficulties associated with performing with 350 other musicians.

“I nailed parts of the performance that had been difficult during rehearsals. I think I just zoned out,” she said.

Lauren also said that after seeing the outside of the famous Sydney Opera House for several days prior to the big performance, seeing the inside was somewhat anti-climactic.

“It just didn’t seem that big inside,” after all the buildup, she said.

John disagreed.

“Some of the other students said the same thing, but there was a different architect inside the main hall and the architecture was just less timeless than the outside. I don’t think size really matters in a concert hall. The acoustics were beautiful,” John said.

This was Lauren’s first trip out of the U.S. She preferred the quaintness of tropical Cairns, located north of the bustling city of Sydney.

“Usually people go south to get warmer in the winter,” she said of her first experience with the southern hemisphere’s reversal of seasons.

While the queens’ English didn’t pose many language barriers, Lauren said she became frustrated when dealing with the monetary differences.

According to Lauren, there are no Australian one $1 bills, only $1 and $2 coins, which are the size of dimes, making them quite easy to lose and mix up.

“I haven’t had to be helped with making change since I was 6 years old,” Lauren said, “but twice I just stood at the counter while a clerk counted out my money for me.”

She described it as a very humbling experience.

Lauren’s favorite highlights of the trip included a snorkeling trip to the Great Barrier Reef and a skyrail trip into a rain forest.

“John said he found Nemo, so he was really happy,” Lauren said.

Like many foreign travel experiences, there were some unexpected historical and cultural surprises. For Lauren, a visit to an aboriginal cultural center clearly illustrated some of the brutalities of imperialism.

“It was really sad. It was like a mini-holocaust. The English were really horrible to them (the aboriginal people),” she said.

More uplifting experiences included aboriginal dancing and a traditional fire-lighting ceremony, which she described as “really cool.”

Lauren also enjoyed a didgeridoo demonstration, a native wooden instrument hollowed out by termites, that mimicked different native animal sounds, including a cuckaburra, a kangaroo and a dingo.

“It was amazing,” she said.

John, who just returned from a semester abroad at China’s University of Beijing, said the cultural differences weren’t that striking.

“From a cultural standpoint, I guess I just needed more time. The only difference between Sydney and, say, a city in Canada was that the cars drive on the other side of the road.”

Lauren and John also visited a nature preserve and the Sydney Zoo, where they saw kangaroos and wombats.

John was particularly excited about the wildlife he saw, including massive nests of large colorful spiders and giant bats with 3 foot wingspans. In these cases, however, the wildlife was not inside an animal preserve, but living outside their hotel in Queensland.

Now let's look at some more photos.

I saw a shot of the Opera House's Sails that looked like this, so I copied it as best I could.


Here's a slightly wider shot in the same style.

When we got into Sydney, the first thing we did was to take a whirlwind bus tour of the city, ending with a boat ride around the opera house. And by whirlwind, I do mean positively tornadic. We had ten minutes tops at each stop. "Bondi Beach everyone! Be back in ten minutes!" Sigh...tours.

Here's the flag flying on the back of our tour boat.


This is a pretty bird on the cliffs overlooking the mouth of Sydney Harbor.


Looking down at the water where a ship sank during a storm, and all aboard drowned except for one guy that managed to cling to the cliff face all night long.

After that we went to our hotel, which was called "The Vibe". It was supposed to be a 4 star hotel, but the three elevators didn't work so I only give it two stars. I guess I'm not very forgiving that way. Also, if you wanted to use the internet you had to pay $30, and I figure if you're already forking over $200-300 a night any establishment worth its salt would throw internet in for free.

Anyway, after a nap, we went to the University of New South Wales for dinner. There was a group there, that played lots of Australian bushdance songs. They sang "Waltzing Matilda"...and so did everyone else in Australia the whole time we were there. It got stuck in our heads, and became something of a joke among the band. Dr. Frelly, our director, kept singing it on the bus intercom, but he could only remember the words "Waltzing Matilda," so he sang it thusly: "Waltzing Matilda, WALTZING MATILDA, you'll go a waltzing Matilda with me, Waltzing Matilda, WALTZING MATILDA..." If you want to hear it, go to iTunes and preview one of the 121 different versions of the song.

Here I am at dinner.

The next morning we all got up and had breakfast. An interesting Australian breakfast food is a sort of even more westernized version of chow mein. I forget what it's called, it starts with a "K". Lauren loved it. Everyone sampled the traditional Australian spread, Vegemite. I liked it. Nobody else did. You need to use a thin layer. It definitely tastes like it will cure you of any malady that might affect you! That's good, because, as it was winter, everyone soon had the sniffles.

The famed vegemite.

We went over to Trinity Grammar school for mass rehearsal. We were playing the piece Sails of Time, which was commissioned for this event. It was nice, but it wasn't terribly original. It sounded very much like James Newton Howard's score for King Kong mixed with Harry Gregson-Williams' score for The Chronicles of Narnia.

Eventually we got dropped off at the waterfront, in a major shopping area called Darling Harbor. They have a nice aquarium and a maritime museum.

A replica of Captain Cook's ship frames the skyline. (he discovered Australia and Sydney Harbor, and there's a funny Blackadder episode about him in which Edmund hires an insane captain who can't navigate and discovers Australia.


While shopping for souvenirs, we discovered this very sad pile of wallaby skins.

Finally, the big day arrived, and it was time for us to perform. The sunset was one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.

I loved the way the glass in the Opera House reflected the water.

The choristers performed the first concert, and as we waited, the night crept over the harbor. The Opera house is beautiful at night, with its gleaming tiles reflecting the moon.

Presently, it was our turn to perform. We were up first. As you read in the newspaper article, Dr. Frelly was really nervous. He kept going on and on and on about how we shouldn't be nervous. It was rather comic.

Another group performs onstage. When we were done performing we went and sat in a semicircle around the back of the stage. Then our section moved down to the stage for the performance of Sails of Time.

The next day, we flew to Cairns.

This really cool spider lived at our hotel.