It’s time to say goodbye to the land of the Eora People (Sydney) and board a Qantas jet to cross the continent to the Country of the Wajuk (Whadjuk) People (Perth). Combining travel time to and from airports and the roughly five hours in flight means today will have lots of down time. As is often the case, we’ll arrive long before hotel check-in time because we’ll also pick up three hours so we’ll have a tour of the Botanic Gardens immediately after our arrival. But it’s a five hour flight and I have to write something to hold your attention and mine.

In my initial post, I noted my impression that most Americans know very little about Australia’s political system or its individual states, I think that’s also true of the continent’s size. Most common global maps use Mercator projection which distorts landmasses in a way that makes Australia look smaller than it is. This map produced by the Australian government

[From ANBG]

provides a more accurate picture. The countries are comparable in size. The flight distance from Sydney to Perth (3,290 km) is only 400 kilometers shorter than from Washington, DC to Los Angeles.

Flyover country

It’s not uncommon for many people living on the east or west coast of the U S to call the nation’s center “flyover country.” While the nearly 60% of the people who don’t live in coastal counties might be (rightfully) offended, I think it would be fair to call the center of Australia flyover country. With an estimated 87% of its population of 27,200,000 living within 50km of the coast, Australia is an urban coastal nation. While we’ll eventually visit some of these inland areas, the flight from Sydney to Perth crosses a portion of what I think is truly flyover country.

For the more visually inclined, here are some maps of population density from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We left from Sydney

and would land in Perth

after crossing the whole of Australia which looks like this.

In this instance flyover country seems appropriate, no?

A few words about Qantas

Have you ever wondered about the name of Australia’s flagship carrier? Does it have a meaning? Why is there no ‘U’ in the name? Even if you haven’t, you’re about to get those answers. First, let’s split a few historical hairs. We’ll start with KLM. In continuous operation since its founding on 7 October 1919 KLM can, by one measure, rightly bill itself as the world’s oldest operating airline. However, in 2004 it merged with Air France. It’s now Air France-KLM and has different ownership from its original incarnation.

Next, we’ll cross the Atlantic to South America and an airline founded on 5 December 1919 as SCADTA (Sociedad Colombo Alemana de Transportes Aéroes). A Colombian – German  partnership, the United States essentially forced it to cease independent operations on 14 June 1940 and to ultimately merge with the Colombian Air Service (SACO) that had begun operating in 1933. The new airline, called Avianca, remains in operation and bills itself as the “second oldest airline by foundation date.”

And now we come to Qantas. Founded on 16 November 1920 by Paul McGinness, Hudson Fysh, and Fergus McMaster as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services, Limited, it bills itself as, “the oldest airline in the world continually operating under its original name and ownership unmerged, the third oldest airline by foundation date, and finally as the oldest airline in the English-speaking world.” This sentence also answers both questions I posed above. The meaning is found in the first letter of each word in its original name and there’s no ‘U’ because it’s not a first letter.

During the entirety of this trip, I’ll take nine flights on Qantas with eight of them in my original itinerary. One thing I noted was that all of them seemed to be somewhat old school with regular pilot announcements, a complimentary meal or snack even in economy, and their boarding process often including use of the rear door for passengers seated in the back of the plane. Later in this journal I’ll relate two remarkable events on Qantas flights but for now, it’s time to land in the land of the Wajuk people also known as the British founded city called

Perth

(Bring on the dancing girls and put the champagne on ice.)

The first impression I had in Perth was a feeling of mild disorientation because exiting the airport I was greeted by a Costco on my left and a KFC on my right. Or perhaps the KFC was adjacent to the Costco. My notes aren’t that specific. Most noteworthy for me was the glaring presence of two iconic American businesses.

The first impression I had of C, our local guide in Perth, was that she would be a vast improvement from our Sydney guide M. On our 20 minute ride to Kings Park and the Botanic Garden nearly everything C told us was both informative and relevant.

We’d have a local volunteer guide to take us through what is probably the most important section of the garden to people not from Western Australia (WA) – Western Australia Plants. We waited for him near the State War Memorial overlooking the Canning River.

At 400 hectares, Perth’s Kings Park is a respectably large urban park. In fact, it’s the largest urban park in Australia contained entirely within the city limits. (Western City Parklands is more than 13 times as large and is considered to be within Sydney’s metropolitan area but it’s also more than 35km from the CBD.) While we were waiting, C pointed out a glimpse of the famous (infamous?) Canning Highway.

Some of you might be familiar with the song Highway to Hell by one of Australia’s iconic bands – AC/DC. Some people have opined that the song is an ironic reversal of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. Others have interpreted it as a rumination on the perils of being a touring band. There is, perhaps, a more prosaic interpretation available.

At one time the road had neither stop signs nor speed limits and 1979 was a particularly bad year for Canning Highway with several rather gruesome and fatal accidents at a particular intersection near the Raffles Pub which happened to be a favorite haunt of Bon Scott the band’s second lead vocalist.

Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best. Here’s the song’s official video to help you decide.

Back to the garden

As I noted above, the highlight of Kings Park is the Western Australia Botanic Garden. You enter through a striking piece of art called Symbiotica. With seed patterns cut into its surface, it’s meant to evoke the relationship between plants and insects and nature’s intricate and intimate connections.

Regular readers of my travel journals know the breadth of my interests. Unfortunately, botany isn’t among them. Thus, when I visit a place like this, or any botanical garden for that matter, I can admire the place’s beauty and wonder at the remarkable adaptive diversity the plants demonstrate. This means that, in addition to the problem I had with the tour itself (my notes say that we walked too slowly and our guide talked too fast), it mattered little whether we walked through the Southwest Region, the Mallee Region, the Mulga, Desert, or any other of the 13 environmental regions, I retained almost nothing of his identification of varied species or his descriptions of their evolutionary adaptations. In fact, my inability to identify or remember plants, birds, and other animals led me to dub them “Dunnos”. If you see this identification in a photo, don’t ask me what it it because I dunno. (Don’t confuse my neologism with the Australian dunny!)

The baobab tree that’s a standout resident of the park particularly fascinated me. Baobabs are native to Madagascar but they also flourish in Australia’s Kimberly region. Ideas abound(ed) regarding how baobabs reached Australia. The earliest was that they floated on ocean currents but the fragility of the tree’s seeds make this a hypothesis that might not hold water. It’s more likely that early humans migrating from southern Africa carried the seeds as a food source. The controversy with this notion is that it pushes back the arrival of Australia’s First People a further 10,000 years to 70,000 years ago.

This particular baobab,

is estimated to be 750 years old and has been named Gija Jumulu. (The tree came from the country of the Gija People and the Gila call this tree jumulu.) In 2008, the tree was about to be felled for highway construction and in a rescue mission the 14-meter, 36 ton tree was carefully uprooted and transported 32oo kilometers to Kings Garden – the longest historical land journey for a tree of its size.

The tree above is healthy but dormant. Baobabs have an annual eight-month dormancy period during which they shed all their leaves and rely on water stored in their trunk and branches.

For those interested, the day’s remaining photos are here. Tomorrow, we’ll visit Rottnest Island.

POSTSCRIPT:

As I note in the post Conventions and Conversions, I’ve established a policy wherein I try to keep my posts to 1,500 words or shorter. This postscript and explanation will exceed that somewhat arbitrary limit. However, the gesture was so kind that it merits inclusion.

One of my fellow RS travelers sent an email noting that she was particularly moved by the crocheted poppies adorning the area near the War Memorial where we waited for our guide to the Botanical Garden. The poppies were there in anticipation of Remembrance Day that Australia celebrates on 11 November.

I responded that unlike her and her husband, I have no real connection to the military and, because I had no photographs didn’t remember that aspect. She was then kind enough to send me this photo

and this one.

Now that you have the explanation and context, I hope you don’t mind that I’ve run past my limit.