HomeHomeSeptember 2000
Good Day from Minnesota! We're savoring these beautiful end-of-summer days, and getting ready to enjoy our long Labor Day weekend, which is the unofficial end of the American summer. We're already seeing signs that the fall season will soon be upon us. Days are getting shorter, nights are cooler, and the leaves are gradually beginning to change.
Meanwhile, in the southern hemisphere, winter is slowly giving way to spring, and Sydney is preparing to host the Olympics, beginning September 15th. For a few days this month, the world will be watching Australia.
Unfortunately, because of time zone differences, American television will not be able to carry a majority of the Olympic coverage live. Web sites will carry updated information, but are banned from showing live video clips of the events. According to an article in the August 25, 2000 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald, which took the original article from the Wall Street Journal, the International Olympic Committee ordered the ban to keep the television networks happy, which paid large sums for broadcast rights. Web sites will offer lots of updated results, trivia, and athlete interviews instead. It will be interesting to see what comes of this tension between the online sites and the networks. It's only a matter of time before television and the Internet merge for good, and as this global revolution continues, consumers will demand more and better "real-time" information.
In the meantime, where will you go surfing if you want to get Olympic news with an Aussie point of view? We recommend these sites:
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Sydney Morning Herald
ninemsn newsFor Olympic news with an American flavor, try these sites:
CBS Sportsline.com
CNNSI
MSNBC.com
NBC
Where can you find information on the female Olympic athletes? The September/October issue of Sports Illustrated for Women has a terrific preview of the athletes to watch. They also offer interesting bits about women's history from previous Olympic games. For instance, did you know that Australia's Fanny Durack was the first Olympic swimming champion in the 1912 Stockholm Games? She had to pay her own way to get there! In the August 29, 2000 edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Jim Litke of the Associated Press wrote a wonderful article about how women are changing the Olympic games. American women will compete in a record 120 events against 4,100 women from all around the world. Consider this: When Barron Pierre de Coubertin revived the modern Games in 1896, he said that women should not participate because it was indecent that the spectators should be exposed to the risk of seeing the body of a woman smashed before their very eyes! "Women will do whole a lot of smashing down in Sydney," Litke writes," but it will be stereotypes and barriers they leave in their wake."
Besides tales of athletes' courage and determination, there will probably be stories from the American media about the Olympic torch run, the Sydney Opera House, or Australian cuisine. And, during this time, we may be inspired to dust off our copies of Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds or review the "Crocodile Dundee" movies or listen to our old Olivia Newton-John tunes. Other than kangaroos and koalas, what do we really know about this marvelous land? Where do we begin?
National Geographic Magazine is always a good resource. They have been covering Australia for years with thoughtful articles, maps, and beautiful photography. The August 2000 newsstand edition has a wonderful pull-out map of Sydney. The other side of the map contains a layout of the Olympic Park at Homebush Bay. Bill Bryson, author of In A Sunburned Country, wrote a fun article about Sydney and the changes that have occurred there since Australia last hosted the Games in Melbourne in 1956. Annie Griffiths Belt's terrific photographs accompany the article. Sydneysiders are a dynamic ethnic mix of global citizens who finally realize and appreciate the beauty of their unique city.
In mid-September, the Olympic torch will be carried into Stadium Australia after a long journey from Olympia, Greece. The torch traveled across the Pacific and arrived in Oz in June. The torch run around Australia began at Uluru, otherwise known as Ayer's Rock, a sacred site to the Aboriginal people. Unfortunately, many tourists do not hold this amazing monolith with the same reverence as the original Australians, and see it as a climbing challenge.In the July 2000 issue, National Geo's editor, Bill Allen, writes eloquently of the growing tensions between the issue of tourists' ambitions versus respecting sacred sites:
"Like ants scaling a loaf of bread, tourists troop to the top of Australia's Ayers Rock--despite polite reminders from park workers and tour bus drivers that the rock, known to the Aborigines as Uluru, is a sacred place. Such conflicts between the devout locals and ambitious outsiders are not unique to down under. Here in the United States, the Park Service imposed a "voluntary ban" during the month of June on scaling Devils Tower National Monument--Mateo Tepee to Native Americans of the northern plains, who hold spiritual rites there at that time and sought to limit the throngs of visitors. Rock climbers sued to overturn the ban, but a federal appeals court ruled against them. As each of us becomes more at home in the farthest reaches of the globe, conflicts like these can only increase. We should develop policies to resolve them now, or we may someday awaken to find a team of tourists rappelling from the Statue of Liberty's nose."
The tragic history of the Aborigines parallels that of our own American Indians. The brutal treatment indigenous people the world over have received at the hands of conquering settlers is a familiar tale throughout human history. Such people were viewed as "primitive" or "barbaric" by new settlers in a strange land. Yet those same "primitives" had a sophisticated understanding of what it took to live on the land, and a worshipful respect for the delicate eco-system as well. The Aborigines have been around nearly 60,000 years, and their culture is well worth our attention and appreciation. And, in fact, the world is beginning to take notice, particularly of the inherent beauty in Aboriginal art.
Claire Smith of Flinders University in Adelaide wrote a wonderful article about Aboriginal art in the March/April issue of Scientific American's Discovering Archeology magazine. It's worth checking out for an understanding of this fascinating culture. And, if you're interested in the art scene around Sydney, check out the Spring 2000 issue of World Sculpture News.
Remarkably diverse Australia has a little bit of everything, from the beautiful islands of the Great Barrier Reef to rain forests to desert to beaches. Most of the population lives in the coastal areas, while the "red center" - the heart of the country - is largely uninhabited. It's a continent unlike any other, and Michael Parfit wrote an illuminating piece in the July 2000 National Geographic on Australia's environmental problems. He traveled all over the continent and chronicled the tensions between land developers and environmentalists. Cari Wolinsky's beautiful photos are included.
And what about the lives of Australian women? Where can we learn more about them?
Anne Summers, columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald and former co-owner of Ms. Magazine, wrote a poignant and honest autobiography of her early years in Australia in Ducks on the Pond (Penguin Books, Australia, 1999). The title refers to an expression used by the sheep shearers of old, an exclusively male domain, who wanted to warn their mates that a female was nearby. Ms. Summers was active in Australian politics and the women's movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and was an advisor to former Prime Minister Paul Keating. She also ran the Office of the Status of Women for former Prime Minister Bob Hawke from 1983 to 1986.
Jill Ker Conway, first female president of Smith College, wrote a beautiful book about her early years in New South Wales in The Road from Coorain (Vintage Books, 1989). Her journey continues in True North (Vintage Books, 1994).
Journalist Caroline Jones wrote an inspirational book called An Authentic Life: Finding Meaning and Spirituality in Everyday Life (ABC Books, Sydney, 1998), which was based on her Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio show, "The Search for Meaning."
Are you interested in Australian women's organizations? Helen Hawkes wrote an article for the Autumn 2000 issue of Vive magazine, which is found on Ansett Airlines, on the business of networking. Among her recommendations are the following:
Australian Businesswomen's Network. This group includes 700 female entrepreneurs from Sydney and Melbourne.
Australian Council of Businesswomen
Women's Network Australia. This organization connects executive and professional women.
Women's Electoral Lobby Australia. This group is "dedicated to creating a society where women's participation....is unrestricted, acknowledged and respected."
Other interesting organizations include:
Women are IT
Webgrrls Sydney
Rural Women's Network
Older Women's Network
Other Recommendations:
Australia: True Stories of Life Down Under, edited by Larry Habegger (Traveler's Tales, 2000) is one of the best places to begin to learn about Australia.
Ilsa Sharp wrote a wonderful book about Australia called Culture Shock! A Guide to Customs and Etiquette (Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company, Portland, OR, 1992). This is a must-read for anyone who wants to know more about Aussie culture and identity.
Editors Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein compiled a book of essays called Australia for Women: Travel and Culture (The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1994). It's divided into three sections; the first deals with Aussie history, the second deals with geographic regions, and the third provides useful resources for women.
The Lonely Planet Guide to Australia:Up Front, Outback, and Down Under is a travel guide loaded with good information, photos and maps. Their web site lists the wealth of guidebooks that they carry on Australia.
Another good source for the budget traveller is Arthur Frommer's Frugal Traveler's Guides. His guide to Australia recommends "dream vacations at down-to-earth prices."
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin (Penguin Books, New York, 1987) is an account of a trip to the Outback to understand the meaning of the "Dreaming tracks" of the Aboriginal people.
Johanna Lambert's Wise Women of the Dreamtime: Aboriginal Tales of the Ancestral Powers (Inner Traditions International, Rochester, VT, 1993) is a delightful read. Ms. Lambert edited the stories collected by K. Langloh Parker in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
A. W. Reed's Aboriginal Stories (Reed New Holland Publishers, Sydney, 1999) is another excellent place to learn more about Aboriginal culture and mythology. Lardil: Keepers of the Dreamtime by David McKnight (Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1995) is a pocket-sized book which provides an introduction to the Lardil people of the Wellesley Islands near Queensland.
Marlo Morgan's Mutant Message Down Under (Harper Collins, 1995) caused a stir when it was first published. Her spiritual account of a walkabout with Aborigines is a very interesting read.
If you can possibly find one of Australian photographer Peter Lik's coffee table books, it will be well worth your while. Australia: Images of a Timeless Land contains breathtaking photos of incomparable beauty. Writer Robert Reid also contributed to this book.
In Other News...
The October newsstand edition of the Utne Reader contains an interesting article by Joe Robinson, editor of Escape magazine. Robinson is behind the "Work to Live" campaign, a movement to gain increased vacation time for the America worker. "Workers and travelers of the world unite," he says. "We have nothing to lose but our stress." Find out more about this important trend on Escape's web site.
Have fun watching the Olympic Games! We'll see you back here in October.
Teresa
tcallies@hotmail.com
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