James Waldron's 6foot6 Australia travelogue

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Australia:

Stories and images
by Jim Waldron

Five weeks to get around Austrailia. Foolish undertaking. Next time a year.

Stories

Too much fun to write
Actually, my computer crashed and I lost some
I recovered a good one from Sydney though
Happy New Year, Stick-em up.

Photographs

Some favorites

See them all at once
Look at thumbnails of all the photographs from this country.
Each picture was made with the Agfa ePhoto 1280 digital camera.

Manley, Australia (Sydney Bay)
Manley is the beach town just across the harbor from downtown Sydney. Long a surfing and tourist mecca, manley is dotted with restaurants, surf and curio shops. You can walk miles along the shoreline in either direction from Manley and watch the water sportsters and fishermen. All this a quick 25 minute ferry from the downtown bustle.

Manly Australia Sandstone
Manly Australia Sandstone 2
Beach shack
Beach shack 2

Aurora Beach
(Photos by Fiona)
My host to everything Australian is Danny Edwards. Edwards is the president of an in-line skate accessory company named Crank-Straps, but at heart is a action-sports junkie.

Danny Edwards
Digeredoo Danny
1967 Holden HR

Sydney
The gateway to Australia, Sydney has perhaps one of the five most-recognizable pieces of architecture in the world: the Sydney Opera House. I had the good fortune to catch it in a beautiful blue-sky day and spent a few awe-struck hours running around making images.

Sydney is also the home of the excellent Powerhouse Design Museum, housing technology from Australia's earliest days to the present, and a number of well-designed interactive exhibits for children and adults.

Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House
Skytower lobby
Skytower lobby
Skytower lobby
Icecubes
Chair Design
Powerhouse Museum Entrance
Powerhouse Museum Aircraft

Nundle Gold Mine
Far from the downtown bustle of Sydney Australian individual spirt is evidenced in every tiny town. Nundle, about an 8 hour drive west of sydney is home to the Nundle Gold MIne. This mine is worked by one man, painstaking foot by foot. Working a mountainside that was part of the original gold-rush in Australia 100 years ago, this lone miner scratches out an existance waiting for the big find, which he figures is just about 35 meters further into the mountain. At his current rate of progress, just about two years.

Mine Entrancee

Byron Bay
Byron Bay is a popular Beach town famous for its surfing, diving, and laid back attitude. Crawling with backpackers, lost hippies, and barrooms, every night in Byron can be a drunken memory loss. Everyone joins in.

Stairs
Hot car
Hippie Van
Lamp
Roof
Roof 2
Roof 3
Storefront

Nimbin
In the early 1970's a music concert was held in Nimbin featuring all the psychedelic artists of the time. The organizers of the show offered to repaint the village's downtown as part of the payment for staging the event, and the result is an interesting mixture of acid rock graphics and Aboriginal art.

Many of the concert-goers liked Nimbin so much they stayed, and with them came a certain hippie ambiance. Nimbin is the one place in Australia where drug-enforcement is openly disregarded. Lots of blissfully stoned pseudo-bussinessmen ply their illegal wares openly on the street. The type of tourists that arrive are either those who are eager to sample the local produce, or those who are quite dumfounded by it's availability.

On the way to Nimbin I stopped in to see Dr. Paul Rechter. Paul left Long Island New york in nineteen seventy-five with a vision to build his own botanical garden on a cattle ranch he bought. Twenty-three years later I'd have to say he achieved his goal. On his rambling estate he claims to have nearly 20,000 different kind of plant species.

A man of just over 50, Paul's vegatarian lifestyle and outdoor work have done him well. He looks just around 40, and has the taut musculature of someone ten years younger than that. Wildly outspoken, Paul will happily rant on about nearly anything, during my visit explaining how humans polluting the earth was just another example of natural selection taking it's path. Eventually we'll wipe ourselves out and the next wave will take over.

Dr. Paul Rechter
Pauls Garden
Paul's Truck

Coolum Beach
The Australian Coast is lined north to south with great beaches. Coolum is a sleepy, non-touristed place, most of the busses move along up to Fraser Island without stopping. But if you were interested in 20 or so miles of uninteruppted, empty beachfront, this could be a good place to land.

Beach Fence

Fraser Island
The world's largest sand island, Fraser. Inhabited mostly by wild ponies, wild dingoes, and poor four-wheel-driving tourists, is a popular destination for most everybody making their way North to Cairns.

Fraser was known for it's lumber exports until a few years ago when it was designated a National park and logging was shut down. The islands extremely fresh-water lakes and streams are a wonder, allowing visitors to see all the wildlife within, including quite a number of fresh-water eels. Great fun watching the tourists discover them on a quick swim.

Lake Wabby
Pinnacles
Pinnacles 2
Red Chair
Sign 1
Sign 2
Sign 3
Sign 4
Sign 7
Sign 8
Sign 9
Wreck 1
Wreck 2
Wreck 3

Naomi Cattle Station, Dingo
My favorite destination in Australia, Dingo, has a human population of around 200, and a bovine one of 50,000. Dingo is 8-10 hours due west of the East Coast of Australia, a little Northwest of Fraser Island. At night the sky is crystal, and by day the heat is blistering.

Hay Barn
Riding Office
Water Tower
Housing
Ranch Manager Macker

Wooribinda, Digireedoo Making
On Australia Day I took a tour with the Aboriginie locals into the bush and handmade a musical instrument called the Digereedoo. Wooribinda is a run-down community made of wood and corragated metal, but in comparison to other towns I've visited, like those in Indonesia, Burma, and Nepal, it looks positiely civilized. Still, in comparison to the standards to the rest of Australia I'd have to say Wooribinda is in pretty poor shape. It was my only visit to an Aboriginie settlement, but if it's indicative of the style I'd have to compare it to the treatment of American Indialns as wht white folk took over the country.

Searching
Scraping Bark
Painting Shack
Painting
Painting 2
painting 3
Brian the guide
Group
Authors Dige
Group 3

Tropical Princess Dive Boat,
Great Barrier Reef
You only have limited subject matter for pictures when you're on a boat two days out to sea and your camera dislikes being underwater. You'll have to believe me that the undersea landscape is truly wonderful.

Boat Stairs
Chair
Divers
Exhaust
Traveler
Dive Buddies

Melbourne
At the southermost tip of the country lies Melbourne. I only visited long enough to see a professional rollerblading event and stroll along the boardwalk for a few hours.

AuMelbourne_AirSculpt1
AuMelbourne_AirSculpt3
AuMelbourne_Skater

See the other places