The Only Alaskan in Australia Part 1:

Goin' Down, Sin City!

Sydney, NSW Australia
-September 1993-

Everybody I knew, including family, were sick and tired of hearing about it. It was like having someone read you the same National Geographic article over and over again. I was like a walking Australian almanac. Something had to be done. Something like mustering enough gumption and capital to really go ahead and do it. Easier planned for than accomplished. Isn't that always the case?

I wasn't completely without a plan. I had the vaguest notions of lighting out from Sydney and making my way north through New South Wales, into the wilds of tropical Queensland, and across the top end into the Northern Territory. From there it would be all heat and dust down the sparsely inhabited west coast of Western Australia, through the Pilbara Region, the hottest in the world, to the capital city of Perth.

After awhile I'd head east across the forbidding Nullarbor Plain to the rich South Australian coastal greenbelt, and then on into the bucolic farmlands and bustling metropolis of Victoria, before swinging back up the southeastern coast into Sydney. Realize the astounding distances being covered here, and the whole trip begins to loom monumentous.

The flight out of Fairbanks was routine enough - a short hop over the Alaska Range before descending into the sphere of the Big Town, Anchorage. I had not been out of Alaska since 1987, unless you count frequent junkets to our largest city. Many northern locals don't consider it to actually be part of Alaska, more like a bedroom community of Seattle, or some sort of misplaced medium-sized midwestern town.

A stop in Anchorage is no big deal, a mere 357 road miles from home, and even less as the raven flies. The fact that I was leaving the state, and "The States" as well, had yet to sink in. Even after arriving in Seattle it was all still a novelty. One airport is like any other when you see it from the inside.

I began to get nervous and excited upon touchdown at LAX, due to the fact that I was landing in the second most dangerous city in the United States, a city that had not only torn itself apart in some of the fiercest rioting of this century, but had just suffered the devastation of a major earthquake, and at the moment was all Halloween orange and chimney red from the rampant brushfires in the hills. I've often said that you couldn't drag my ass down to the States unless it was just a short stop on the way out of the country. A three hour layover before boarding the Qantas flight to Sydney was all the time necessary to reconfirm my negative outlook. America could do without me, and I without it.

Qantas, compared to American commercial airlines, is like the Waldorf compared to the YMCA. Qantas has class. Even in the business and coach seats they treat each passenger like the Sultan of Brunei, or at least like a foreign service employee. Not only do they give you a travel survival kit including eyeshades, terrycloth socks, headphones and a disposable toothbrush, but the alcoholic beverages are complimentary. There is also a smoking section for the 14-hour flight.

The food is also better than your average airline fare, with lots of salt and sweet cream butter, gravy and other such delicious yet unhealthy condiments. This, it turns out, is indicative of a trend in Australian dietary habits. Nothing is too salty, greasy, or rich for the Australian palate, and it is even more desirable when chased by beer and cigarettes. A bunch of foreigners after my big, clogged heart.

I have always been the type of traveler who lapses comatose at the slightest engine noise. As soon as a mode of transportation turns its motor over my head lolls backwards and I am out like a light, entering a self-induced state of suspended animation for nearly the duration of the journey. This is like a specially developed genetic trait for dealing with the raw mechanics of the wanderlust, shutting down all unnecessary systems during long-distance travel in order to conserve energy for arrival.

I departed Fairbanks on the 1st of September at eleven in the morning, one month to the day after my planned departure date. This postponed state of affairs was compliments of bureaucratic red tape on behalf of the Australian Consulate in San Francisco.

Partly due to the fact that the magazine I publish has been declared contraband by the Australian Board of Censors ("promoting the misuse of controlled substances," and even more insidious,"seditious material,") and partly through some cruel turn of fate, my visa application was assigned to Angela, the paper-pusher from hell. The processing of my visa was held up until a scant five days before my rescheduled flight was leaving. The sleep that I had lost fretting over whether my visa would get back in time for me to flee the country would be gained back on the flight out. Good thing sleep is entirely cumulative.

I had no intent on becoming a regional redneck at the age of 25, but I was. Through all the uninterrupted years in the State of Alaska my attitudes have grown, peaked, and then ossified, creating a shield that has allowed me to compare the rest of the world to what I know, and find it wanting. Alaska is an extreme and awesome environment that breeds characters just as awesome and extreme. I find that after a lifetime spent straddling the top of the world and looking disdainfully down south towards the rabble of the rest of the planet, I had developed an aggressive sense of land-based superiority, and had actually become one of those looney Alaskan characters that the TV program "Northern Exposure" so desperately tries to capture. I was the country rube in the big city, the hillbilly at the World's Fair, the sourdough on the world market. Abroad with the ugly Alaskan.

I have never considered myself an ambassador of any kind, and I'll always be the first to make it clear that I'm from the Last Frontier, Alaska, and not the United States, which causes some confusion in most of those confronted with the idea. At least most of those who realize that Alaska is neither an independent nation, nor a province of Canada, or a protectorate of Denmark. Had I known that I was to be the sole Alaskan guest in Australia for the final months of 1993, I would have taken a booster course on diplomacy, brushed up on basic tact, and made myself more generally acceptable than I currently was.

As things happen, I was well versed in the convict past of the island continent, had a general overview of its politics in the twentieth century, at least enough to get me into a lively argument in any pub concerning the limits of power in the office of the Governor-General, and a very sketchy knowledge of Aboriginal culture and the current land-rights legislation controversy. I knew just enough about Australia to get myself in trouble, if I were so inclined. What are vacations for other than to eat like a king pig, drink like a liver-fish, and argue with the locals?

My birthday is on September 2, and I had intended on celebrating it in Sydney, known variously by the locals as Harbourtown, Sin City, or the Big Smoke. I hadn't factored in the effects of that mysterious fourth-dimensional demarcation suspended invisibly over and bisecting the South Pacific, the International Dateline. I was convinced that it was a 900 number phone sex line set up to accept credit-card calls from anywhere in the world. Little did I know that it is a time portal, in this case an expressway to the future.

My flight crossed the IDL shortly before midnight, accelerating me forward a day, into the third. I had completely missed my 26th birthday, lost it over the Pacific like Amelia Earhart. The dateline to eternal youth! Was it possible to prolong your natural life by anchoring a houseboat on the International Dateline? The possibilities were endless.

I had seemingly gained a year, but when did I pay for it? Most likely when I least expected it, like on birthday number 39, on which I'd actually turn 40 and immediately lose muscle mass, gain wisdom and weight, and have a completely crazy midlife meltdown. Nothing comes for free, especially when you are dealing in time.

About an hour before touchdown at Kingsford Smith Airport, just south of Sydney and slightly north of Botany Bay, I woke up and noticed that the fellow in the aisle across from me was reading a book by Noam Chomsky, so I struck up a conversation. Bradley was a police officer who was just returning from the Law Officers and Firefighters Games in Colorado Springs, Colorado, after a five week vacation in the U.S.A.

A native Sydneysider, my first Australian acquaintance was friendly and soft-spoken, with a mildly self-deprecating sense of humor, and a somewhat glib attitude towards government. It was this ambiguity towards authority, so odd in a police officer, that interested him in my tale of being banned from his country, and he offered me a ride into Sydney proper if I'd give him a full rundown on my censored status.

I have always been a night person. Every summer for years I have worked the graveyard shift. Most people who endure 22 hours of flying suffer from jet lag, but because of my nocturnal predilection not only did I not suffer the unpleasant consequences of that malady, but it somehow reversed my schedule. I was now a morning person, up with the light. It would take several months to slip back into my natural state, which was only logical, Australia being the home of the nocturnal.

We cleared Customs with no problems, and he drove me into the city, stopping for a two-cent tour of the university. Aping Oxford architecturally and atmospherically, The University of Sydney exudes an air of education with a capital 'e'.

I was dropped off in Glebe, a student and bohemian neighborhood around the corner from the university and perched on a hilltop overlooking the tourist spectacle of Darling Harbour. There I booked in a four-share dormitory room in the rather rundown hostelry known as the Glebe International Backpacker's Village. The room was expensive, at $14.00 per night, but I was to learn that most of the good deals on accommodation were to be found outside of the big cities.

The truth is that I am a Fairbanks boy, a country hick at heart, and Sydney was the largest city I had set foot in in over ten years. Naturally I was overawed by the immensity and motion of the metropolis, the giddy flash and sensation of being in the dead center of the Australian universe. The city reminded me of an odd hybrid between San Francisco and Honolulu, with the sheer size and neo-Victorian architecture of the former, and the subtropical port city melange of people and styles of the latter, but with its own trendy, individual vibe as well.

Sydney is the big psychedelic mushroom with the "eat me" sign, nourished on the guano of Australia. All Okker as well as no Okker; the all-encompassing, exclusive celebrity face of the continent. The Big Town that envelops everything Oz is, and everything that is fast and loose freak- featured metropolis.

Sydney is as unselfconsciously gay as an aging drag queen camping on the role of Mary Magdalene in the way-off Broadway production of "Jesus Christ Superstar." Sydney is both meatloaf and caviar, champagne and sterno - a volatile mix of the old and the new, the tacky and the stylish, all the contradictions inherent in the Antipodes rendered down and skimmed from the top, packaged in glittering holiday wrapping and served up as a surprise pudding to the world.

The Big Smoke indeed, Harbourtown, the main piston in the six-cylinder Holden engine that keeps the heart of Australia beating. Sound and fury! The gateway to the Outback. An international port with a similar reputation as Bangkok, only lily-white. It is the busiest city that I've ever seen. The skyline is alive with construction cranes, and the pace is only going to get more frantic as the year 2000 approaches. The Olympic bid has accelerated everything. I was knocked down and shook up by the sheer energy of the place, and was therefore unwilling to spend too long there, for fear of just getting swept along on the kinetic high voltage charge and utterly lost in the mood.

Sydney is the type of place where it would be easy to spend several months in, then when asked, you'd be hard-pressed to say that you've actually been to Australia. It is a lumbering entity unto itself, as separate from Australia as it is an integral part of the national identity. The city stirs a mixed response in the Australian people, but love it or hate it, it is always strong and genuine.

It is both the Hollywood and the Manhattan of Oz, the flashpoint for fashions and trends, and the cultural beacon of the country. A glittering paradox on one of the world's most beautiful natural harbors, and both the Jeckyll and Hyde of the Aussie consciousness. Sydney begs you surrender to it, let it wash in great colorful waves over you, or it will steamroll the same results.

One week in Sydney and I was beginning to get a feel for city life. Everything still maintained a high degree of novelty, from the strangely archaic plumbing, to the wrong-side drive automobiles executing such dangerous maneuvers as left turns on red.

In the five and a half months in Australia I never fully adapted to the left-side drive. It was an adventure safari every time that I crossed a street. I couldn't shake the conditioned response of looking the wrong way before crossing into traffic. It was a lucky thing that I was not driving, the potential for life-threatening slapstick was enormous.

All the intricate architecture and unusual people packed closely together was exhilarating The slight initial paranoia I experienced began to transform into an almost aggressive display of gregariousness. Walking down the street I'd look people in the eye and say hello, which is sort of taboo in any big city, but prepared me well for the outgoing small-town Australians I was to meet later. I had also become much enamored of the food.

Australians, as I've mentioned, enjoy the good things in life to excess, being essentially a nation of high-spirited gourmands. Salt, fat, alcohol, and sugar are the four essential foodgroups in Aussie cuisine, and even the Asians have assimilated this into their cooking. Favorite amongst the locals are the thousands of small counter-lunch snack bars serving such deep-fried delicacies as the veggie and chicken stuffed "Chiko Roll," various greasy varieties of schnitzels, and the ubiquitous meat pies.

Meat pie culture is as Australian as Banjo Patterson, and I must agree that a bacon, egg, cheese, steak, and kidney pie smothered with salt and ketchup is a wonderfully high-cholesterol way to start the day. High-tech, maximum-yield fat and salt delivery systems! It is a wonder that they haven't caught on in the USA.

The flavors of meat pie available are only limited by the imagination, or the bravery of the sampler. Don't be surprised by the things that you may find in one. The push for a multicultural society in Australia has contributed to some odd variations on your basic staples, with the meat pie being the most visible example of the ongoing cultural transformation.

Other fine examples of Australian food are the dishes incorporated directly from other cultures, like the pizza-like sandwich "focaccia" from the Italians, and, my personal favorite, kebabs from the Greek and Armenian population. Kangaroo meat had just gone on sale commercially in September, so I was able to sample marsupial. It tastes nothing like chicken, but more like drier, slightly gamier moose meat. The secret is in the marinade, I suppose.

Another surprising quirk of the Australian diet is the unavoidable addition of sliced red beets to every sandwich, burger, salad, or any meal in which more than two ingredients are combined. You cant really take a meal without staining your gums, teeth and fingers a bright red, and it is this characteristic that is sort of an Australian tribal tattoo. It seems to be some kind of social faux pas to ask to hold the beets, so you are better off just developing a taste for it. After about three months you will get used to it and sometimes even crave beets.

For an Alaskan, a visit to an Australian supermarket is like a tour of carnivore paradise. Australia must be the place that werewolves go when they die. Never before have I seen such a wide variety of inexpensive meat products. They package and sell everything! No waste is tolerated. Just the availability of lamb, a delicacy back home, yet a staple in Oz, is enough to bring on culture shock.

I availed myself of the opportunity and sampled a vast selection of unusual organ meats, including stewed lamb kidneys, boiled lamb tongues, Greek garlic ox brains, water buffalo hearts, and most everything that fits inside a pig. All that and much more, and for mere pennies per kilogram! Oz is cattle country, and beef is very much a part of traditional cuisine. The rump steak grilled on a barbie is very nearly the national dish, and the meat is invariably fresh.

The day after I arrived I was casually investigating the area and, after choosing one of the few rainy mornings of spring to ferry across the harbor to the seaside resort community of Manly for breakfast, rode back after only two hours because of the squalling weather. On the ride back across the harbor I stood on the prow of the ferry and caught the invigorating salt spray, with the Australian passengers staring at me as if I were insane. I even think that several of them were laying bets as to whether I would freeze to death, or come back inside the boat.

Arriving back at the Circular Quay, I came across "The Rocks," which is the name given the original convict settlement, the old town down on the harbor sandwiched between the ferry terminal and the Opera House on one side, and Darling Harbor on the other. This picturesque area is the heart of old Sydney.

"The Rocks" is an amazing living record of Australia's penal past, with many of the old buildings still in use, and the streets paved with "convict brick." The scene of a good deal of Australia's early history, The Rocks is situated on a rocky spur of land on the west side of Sydney Cove, and unfortunately a large number of the original buildings were demolished during a virulent outbreak of bubonic plague around the turn of the century.

Historical restoration projects have since rebuilt quite a few of them, and those that haven't been refurbished have not been fully demolished, and the ruins remain on display. Site of tourist attractions such as the Australian Museum of Modern Art, the Sydney Visitor's Center, and the harbor ferry terminal, "The Rocks" is also home to a handful of antique pubs and hotels, tourist gift shops hawking fire opals and kangaroo-logo sportswear, as well as dozens of world class restaurants.

That particular Saturday was day one of a promotional weekend involving the Australian Seafood Council, Guinness Brewery, and the Visitor's Center. I had accidentally stumbled onto "the Guinness and Oyster Festival 1993." Two of my favorite things together! Stout beer and raw oysters, fully indulged by an appreciative crowd, plus the added attraction of a Scottish pipe and drum marching band, a street fair, and a colorful variety of migrant performers. By noon the street was filled with browsers, everybody armed with pints of Guinness and dressed in silly paper hats. One quality of the Australian character is that they need no excuse to party, don't care about looking stupid, and are always enthusiastic revelers.

It was the perfect belated birthday celebration, utterly serendipitous and potentially dangerous. I started a relaxed pub crawl on George St., on the boundary to The Rocks at about 11 a.m., working my way north into the older sections. At about 2 p.m. I staggered out of the pub where I had been drinking and went looking for "The Hero of Waterloo," the oldest continually licensed public house in the city. It had held a license since 1841 and had not once been renovated.

Wandering aimlessly under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, I asked the nearest passerby if he knew where the 'Waterloo was. It turned out that the person I asked for directions was a Coloradoan named Jeff, who had just arrived in Australia the same day as I. We traipsed back to George St. and fortified ourselves with several pints of stout and a few dozen oysters before jointly going off in search of the landmark pub.

With some trouble we were able to locate the establishment and procure two excellent seats at the end of the ancient oaken bar before the place got too crowded. And it did fill up fast. By 7:30 p.m. the pub was packed to capacity, and celebrants were still trying to force their way into the press. The business was spilling out into the street, with happy drunks staggering about on the sidewalk and seated at the curb.

The Irish band that had been playing all afternoon was getting loose and loud, and every time they would launch into a reel the whole building would sway. I was fascinated by the grafitti carved into the bar, some as old as the pub itself. Between the rowdy Australians, Irish music, historic grafitti and strong stout beer, my head was beginning to swim.

We stayed until shortly after 8:00 p.m., when they ran out of oysters. By then most everybody was completely intoxicated, and the mixture of the heavy stout and muscid mollusks turned out to be too much for some. About a half dozen people were leaning with their foreheads pressed to the brick wall in the alley out back, projectile vomiting in briny black, foaming jets. Another half dozen people urinated into the storm drain after waiting in line for the outdated and overcrowded toilets. We managed to avoid that fate and ended up having a nitecap at the Toxteth Hotel in Glebe before passing out at about eleven.

Only two days in the city and already I was caught up and along for the ride. On Sundays in Australia they just about roll up the sidewalks. The only places open at all are the pubs, and even then for limited hours. This sad state of affairs leaves only one option for filling up the day, and that is drinking. I decided to walk up to King's Cross, the high-sleaze district of the city, to have a look and a few beers.

I had heard frightening stories and vulgar tall tales about the excesses of "The Cross." With a reputation similar to Times Square in New York, or Hollywood Boulevard in LA, King's Cross is the place to go in Sydney for vice. Prostitutes line the sidewalks, almost willing to fistfight each other for your business. Many of them hold up placards advertising reduced rates. The Olympic bid just about started a price war amongst the working girls in the Cross, and things were much wilder than usual for several days.

Home to a mindbending assortment of lowlife, King's Cross is the one place in Sydney that never closes. I even ran across a brothel advertised as "Budget Backpacker's Accomodation - from $45.00 per night," obviously designed to lure unsuspecting German backpackers into unsavory exchanges. International recording stars and Sydney locals AC/DC sang of the Cross in the song "Sin City," from their "Powerage" album.

"I'm going down/ Sin City."

Rough-trade leatherboys abroad from their Oxford St. digs, Korean gangsters, drunken pommie frat boys with Union Jacks painted on their faces, dissolute Aborigines, junkies of all stripes, nervous police officers, raincoated customers of the many porno theaters loitering about at all hours, the Cross is an unending parade of skid row characters.

After a long night's ruckus, in the mid-morning and early afternoon the Japanese tourists spill from their high-security high-rises to snap at the duty-free deals. Young, just up from the Outback, teenagers gaze up wonderingly at the big city before being swallowed whole and spat out cynics before the onset of evening. Life in the Cross! Even on Sunday, when the rest of the nation is docilely barbecuing in their backyards, or sucking up pints of bitter in the local, the Cross is bustling with manic energy.

I had subsequent opportunity to investigate the Cross further on my way back through Sydney before I left the country, and found the sleaze to be ultimately endearing. I guess that I'm a large enough fellow to not have to worry about any physical harm, and, with that threat removed, the atmosphere becomes quaint. Any visitor to Sydney owes themselves a taste of King's Cross, and it helps that there are a good deal of legitimate backpacker's hostels in direct competition in the area. Some of the best bargains on accomodation in all of Sydney can be found in the King's Cross and nearby Potts Point neighborhoods. Most are extremely run down, but you get what you pay for.

I fully intended to stay two weeks in Sydney, even going as far as to book in seven days in advance after the first week, but it is just such carefully laid plans which tend to fall to the wayside in the wake of spontanaiety. In this case, travel plans presented themselves in the form of a stark raving mad 58-year old Melburnian who had shady and unspecified business in Brisbane.

A rip-snortin,' wild ride through the Hunter Valley wine district and up along the New England highway into Queensland ensued, and it was several weeks before I was able to make it back for another round in the Big Smoke. My first impression of Australia is Sydney, and no matter how different the rest of the continent is, I'll always think of the Harbourtown when I conjure memories of Oz.

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