Settling In and Getting Around

We have just over a month left here in Australia and I can't begin to express how unready we are to leave. We have settled in, ventured out, made friends, and have found an easy rhythm that will be hard to replicate when we return home. All four of us have flourished here, the kids especially. Here Jake learned to ride a bike, his reading took off, and he has slipped into a new level of maturity that is heartbreakingly sweet. Here Lucy learned to walk and talk (her favorite words are "more" and "mine" and she has even picked up "ta" which is an Aussie colloquialism for "thanks," used most often with kids or when someone holds the door for you or pays you a casual compliment). Above all it has been wonderful to see Jake and Lucy's relationship blossom. Jake is amazingly patient, caretaking and genuinely entertained by Lucy (who can be genuinely entertaining). They share a room and Jake has taken to pulling her out of her crib when she wakes up in the morning and bringing her to his bed to play; instead of waking up to the sound of Lucy screaming to be freed, more and more Matt and I wake up to the sound of them laughing. Nothing brings me more joy. My gratitude for their flourishing and for small sibling pleasures is heightened by the fact that Lucy just turned 18 months old, the age at which Julien was diagnosed, and that part of my grief after he died was grief for the kind of companianship Jake had lost. Julien has been on my mind a lot recently and I am feeling both his absence and his presence very acutely.

Just a few days ago we returned from a week in Tasmania, a small Australian island just across the Bass Strait from the mainland. Tasmania feels remote, untrammelled and easy-going for Australians in much the way that mainland Australia feels for Americans. To us it felt almost other-worldly even though it takes less than an hour to fly from Melbourne to Hobart (above is Hobart's harbor). Once a penal colony for the worst of the convicts sent to Australia, it is now a kind of eco-paradise of the variety that California must have been 50-75 years ago. There are gorgeous harbors, bays, coastlines, beaches, pastures, vineyards, orchards, mountains, lakes and small lively cities. With the cleanest air and water in the world, Tasmania grows meat, seafood, cheese, fruit and honey that is sumptuous. We were traveling with my cousin Josh and my friend Steve Metcalf, who was there to do a story on Tasmanian food and wine for Travel and Leisure Magazine, so we ate like pigs on an expense account. In addition to some memorable feasts, including one of the best meals I've had at the Stillwater Cafe in Launceston, I also tried some of the best oysters, octopus, cheese, yogurt, honey and wine I've ever tasted. The gourmet Leatherwood honey, for example, is made only in Tasmania, where the bees are released into the small western rainforest to gather the spicy, pungent nectar of the flowering Leatherwood tree.

There is also a profusion of wildlife in Tasmania, and as a sad corollary, a lot of road kill. We saw many many echidna and wallabies, and one young wallaby in particular came up to us as we headed in from the beach, followed us to our car and even let us pet him. When we stayed in a wilderness camp on our last night, there were kookabura flying around hunting lizzards and a wombat waddled around our cabin. Needless to say, seeing a wombat in the wild was thrilling for me. I think he heard my squealing on the other side of the kitchen window though, because he bolted. We drove around most of Tassie, through endless pastures of grazing sheep, through Frechinet National Park, were we hiked up to the lookover from which you can see the famous Wineglass Bay (below), a pristine beach that is only reachable by hiking for two hours.

We toured a deep and shimmering cave heavy with stalagtites and stalagmites. We took a morning boat ride across Lake St. Clair at the southern end of the Cradle Mountains. We were stopped on a lonely rural road for 10 minutes while a loud heard of cattle were escorted haphazzardly across the road by two dogs and a rancher on horseback. We played on cool, beautiful beaches, where the sand was so fine it squeaked and as soft as velvet. We saw so many cows and sheep that Lucy learned how to say "moo" and "baa". We ate ourselves silly.

We have now seen more of this country than most Aussies have. It is vast, varied, spectacular, humane and we have completely fallen for it. We have fallen for the daily delights of Melbourne maybe even more than for the dazzling landscapes--for the smells of lavender and lemon and jasmine, which grow everywhere, for warm people, wonderful coffee, outdoor cafes, markets filled with local produce, and an abundance of parks. It will be very hard to leave.