2 Texans Down Under

Where’s the best place to live? The answers vary, but every year Australian news sources pay attention to survey results and generally report that Sydney and Melbourne get high ratings among the world’s cities.

This year, Sydney was named “world’s best city” by a group called Anhold City Brands Index, just topping London, Paris, Rome, New York, and, in sixth place, Melbourne.

While researching my book on Australia last year, I found a report from a British firm called the Economic Intelligence Unit that put Melbourne at the top of its list of “most livable cities,” behind only Vancouver and Vienna.

That group put Perth, Adelaide, and Sydney in the top 10 and Brisbane at 11th.

This year’s report from a company that advises on pay levels for expatriates puts Australian cities high in its list of 215 cities, but not at the top.

Mercer’s Worldwide Quality of Living Survey for 2008 has Sydney at 9th, Melbourne Read the rest of this entry »

Finally, we have a clear notion of “the Darling downs.”

Most Brisbane folk watch the ABC television weather news on weekday evening, I expect, for hints on how to dress the next day, but for me it’s a geography lesson as much as anything else.

On an outline of Queensland, town and city names are posted with their high and low temperatures for the day, and I think, “Oh, that’s where that is” or, more rarely, “We’ve been there.”

But the names of various regions such as “the Darling downs” never get put on the screen because, obviously, everybody knows where they are. Unless, of course, you’re newcomers, as we are even after nearly three years.

Until Easter weekend this year, we didn’t know where Australia’s “New England” was. Then we drove through there and expanded our knowledge even further by visiting Texas, QLD, which is, appropriately enough, in the southwestern part of the state. Well, south, anyway, and as far west as we’d been.

On that trip, we also learned, while hiking over large chunks of it, where “the granite belt” is and we got to know a bit about Stanthorpe, where our farmers’ market apples come from, near the New South Wales border.

But “the Darling downs” was an entirely mythical place as far as I was concerned. I assumed it must have something to do with the Darling River, which is dying a slow death from drought, up-stream irrigation, and city-water demands.

Our printed maps don’t use the term as a label and my trusty Australian dictionary carries no definition of it despite listing “Darling shower.” That’s a dust storm.

As I said, though, we are finally in the know. This past weekend, Kristi and I traveled west and then north, passing near Ipswich, driving over the Wivenhoe Dam’s dam, and going through Esk, Toogoolawah, Blackbutt (named after the tree of the same name, I assume), Read the rest of this entry »

On this Environment Day, Queensland got news about water in our dams, the Prime Minister talked about cars and fuel, and everybody seemed to be paying attention to events in the United States.

On the down side, this week’s rains didn’t top up Brisbane’s reservoirs after all. They’re still a half point short of the 40 per cent of capacity needed to trigger a pull back from the current level of water restrictions here, according to an announcement by Premier Anna Bligh.

Only showers are predicted for the weekend.

But on the up side, our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, announced to Parliament that fuel efficient and hybrid cars will be the main focus of his government’s plan to assist Australia’s faltering automobile industry.

Noting that there’s already a $500 million green car innovation fund set to begin operation in 2010 and run for five years, Rudd looked to a government/industry partnership to address fuel and environmental challenges by producing not only a “green” car, but also “a green car industry.”

The biggest story in Australian news for most news outlets today, however, is an American story: the victory of Barack Obama in the Democratic primary contest. It was the lead story on the 7:30 Report (ABC, public television) last night and Hillary Clinton’s indication of her decision to soon withdraw will probably be the lead story tonight.

The entire front page of Brisbane’s Courier-Mail (tabloid) was devoted to the Obama victory and the national paper, The Australian, gave it thorough coverage, too. Public radio carried a story of jubilation in Africa and in Indonesia along with positive comments from America-watchers in Europe and other parts of Asia.

Geoff Elliott, The Australian’s Washington correspondent, wrote that there is much for Australia to be glad about in the possibility of an Obama presidency, noting that Obama is Read the rest of this entry »

Two liquids, water and gasoline or petrol, are big news here this week, as is the case in many parts of the world.

The good news is that we’ve had rain, glorious alternating bands of light to heavy rain for more than a day, ending this morning, about three inches of unexpected wet stuff here in Brisbane. That’s about twice the normal June total.

News reports say farmers south and west of here, who’ve missed out on earlier rains this year, also got welcome totals.

The three lakes (called “dams” here) that are Brisbane’s main water source — Wivenhoe, Somerset, and North Pine — have all caught some runoff and their total content is approaching 40 per cent, the point at which water-use restrictions here would be eased back a notch.

The largest, with about two-thirds of the storage capacity of the three, is Wivenhoe and it is often shorted by weather systems that soak Brisbane. Located well inland from the coastline, where rain is almost always heaviest here in Australia, it’s increase yesterday was less than two-tenths of one per cent of capacity.

Worse, government bar graphs show a decline from nearly 30,000 megalitres of stored water in the three dams in April, 2005, to just over 10,000 in April, 2008, roughly the time we’ve been living here. (Honest, though, we’re not at fault; the two of us use just a bit more water daily than Brisbane’s Council has set as a usage goal for one person.)

Petrol is another matter, of course. While the gasoline pumps seem to be delivering ample supplies, the cost has soared here as it has in the United States and elsewhere. Unleaded regular was selling this morning at our local 7/11 for about $1.43/litre or roughly 5.15 US dollars per gallon.

I put in premium on the recommendation of a Prius mechanic and paid Read the rest of this entry »

Fog was still burning off in low places Sunday morning as Kristi and I headed south from Brisbane to the Main Range National Park, which is part of what is called, with good reason, “the Scenic Rim.”

Less than an hour and a half after leaving home, we were in Cunningham Gap, parked in a roadside lot containing only one other car, and ready to hike up Bare Rock Trail.

In the 1820s, explorer Allan Cunningham saw the possibilities for a pass through the dividing range here and now the Cunningham Highway carries sometimes heavy car and truck traffic past the start of the trail, but within half an hour or so we walked beyond its distracting sounds.

Soon we were standing still and listening to a fascinating concert of bird calls and trills and flourishes from what could only have been a lyre bird, though we never saw her. After 10 minutes or more she quit as suddenly as she’d started and we felt like applauding.

Most of the treats of the day Read the rest of this entry »

Thinking of taking a big leap? Thinking of starting a new chapter in your life and considering Australia as its setting? Then you may be in luck.

The new Rudd Government has announced for the coming fiscal year the biggest annual increase in permanent and temporary migration into Australia since the 1940s, and there doesn’t seem to be much backlash. Some worries, but no real opposition.

The plan is to open the door to nearly 300,000 workers from overseas between July 1 this year and the end of June, 2009, and the work visas will be not only for high-demand jobs, but various kinds of work, skilled and unskilled.

As I noted in my last blog, Treasurer Wayne Swan, speaking for the Labor Government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, announced this widening of the immigration door in his budget presentation last week and it could be good news for anyone considering moving to the Land of Oz.

(Note: My spell checker IS working. Aussies put a “u” in “labor,” writing it “labour,” but not in the name of the party now in power, Labor.)

Inflation is a hot topic here and business leaders hope opening the door to more migrants will help dampen wage demands. Labour union leaders fear that it might, but they don’t seem to be too worried, only protesting that they need a place at the immigration decision-making table.

The reasons behind this substantial change and the absence of acrimony about it, so far, were expressed in a column May 17 in The Australian by the newspaper’s primary political-affairs editor, Paul Kelly.

Kelly wrote: “Australian labour shortages are here to stay. They are Read the rest of this entry »

Australia is one of the few countries that it is still relatively easy to get into, one of the few not closing down its borders, according to the Dallas-area doctor who did our health checks as we were applying for visas to move here in 2005.

Certified to screen visa applicants for Australia and other countries, he seemed to know what he was talking about. The news here these days supports his opinion.

Of course, that Texas doctor said “relatively easy,” not “easy,” so his remark didn’t do much to calm our fears about all the requirements and paperwork looming up between us and the work permits that would allow us to move down under.

Three years later, as we look back, the scary mountains we saw before us in 2005 look like rounded hills. With permanent residency status in hand,we have a “that wasn’t so bad” perspective.

Moving here does involve clearing many hurdles. You have to pass Read the rest of this entry »

“Less tar, more taste,” proclaimed a United States cigarette company
ad a few years ago. Today, the US and Australia could claim this:
“Less smoking, more pollution.”

Americans send huge amounts of toxic stuff into the air and water and
Australians pollute more per person than any other nation, but while
we foul the atmosphere, we are breathing easier at ground level than
we otherwise would because of steady declines in tobacco smoking.

Phillip Adams, a prominent print and radio commentator here, recently
wrote about parallels between the indefensible tactics of tobacco
companies peddling their products over the decades and the way our
political leaders in both countries avoid taking effective action to
stop “giving the planet lung cancer.”

Propaganda and profit, he argues, are keeping us from cleaning up our
environmental act in the same way lies and deceptions allowed
companies to manufacture and sell billions of highly addictive
products that maim and kill.

These little white sticks that Adams labels weapons of mass
destruction (March 22-23, 2008, The Weekend Australian) are still
being manufactured and sold, of course, often addicting the poorest
and most vulnerable before they reach the legal age of consent. Adams
could have written about corporate child abuse, too.

Tobacco use is still the leading cause of preventable death in the US,
according to the Center for Disease Control, but the proportion of
adults smoking there is as low as it’s been since the 1930s. About
21% of adult Americans smoke.

A government report says 70% of Aussie men and 30% of Aussie women
smoked in the 1950s. About 17% of adult Australians smoke now.

In both countries, prohibitions against smoking in enclosed public
places Read the rest of this entry »

Train service in Europe, as many of you know already, is wonderful. By the standards of most American cities, trains run frequently and reliably here in Brisbane and in other Australian cities, but the wait for a train in the Netherlands and Belgium, from which we’ve just returned, must average less than half the normal wait time here.

As Kristi said to friends of ours this morning, “You don’t even have to know train schedules. You just show up at the train station and you can be pretty sure there’ll be a train going where you want to go in a few minutes.”

Such high levels of train service, along with the predominance of bicycle travel in both the countries we visited, make us green with envy or, more exactly, envious of the “green” values manifested by the policy decisions of the Dutch and Belgians.

Given the great bus and subway/tram availability, too, getting around in much of Europe is easier than it is where we’ve spent most of our lives and, it turns out, better for health.

Population density, of course, is necessary for the economic viability of mass transit, but culture-wide expectations matter, too. There are plenty of places in car-dependent America with enough people to make train or trolley service feasible if people understood how much better off they’d be getting to work or school without jumping into their own cars.

Australia is no less car-dependent Read the rest of this entry »

Here we are in Belgium, and I forgot to mention chocolate. Yesterday I said a person cannot live on beer alone. I said you need cheese, too, which the Netherlands has in great varieties and impressive quality. But I forgot to mention chocolate.

Belgium is famous, of course, for its production of that cocoa-based product, and travelers shocked by exchange-rate inflated restaurant prices here and in the Netherlands (AU$35 for lunch, US$80 for dinner, per person, without wine?!) quickly learn to supplement their diets with chocolate as well as cheese.

Relative to restaurant meals, the luxurious brown, or sometimes white, stuff — said to have health benefits, to be a mood lifter, and even to be an aphrodisiac — is cheap here. You can, of course, pay high prices for it molded into various shapes including shells, small animals, and bare human breasts with prominent nipples. (Chocolate shop windows can be aphrodisiac.)

In Bruges’s tourist area, you can buy assorted chocolates elaborately gift-boxed in any one of 40 shops, but you can get the same good stuff in plain bars in grocery stores for much less. What a diet! So relatively frugal.

Fortunately, given our high-calorie intake, our main mode of getting around in the towns and cities here is walking hour after hour through the sight-laded streets. We’ve even rented bikes a couple of times.

Bicycles are everywhere and amazingly well provided for by the planners of infrastructure, especially in the Netherlands. We rode from a small town called Oss to a smaller town called Heesch on the country’s longest dedicated bike path. It’s marked with a symbol proclaiming bikes to be king.

Bike riders surely rule on Amsterdam’s downtown streets even when Read the rest of this entry »