Country Mouse and City Mouse

In the fable of the country mouse and the city mouse, the country mouse yearns for the excitement of the big city but then is overwhelmed by the crowds, noise, and crush of people he finds there.


It's a cautionary tale.  Carol and Roger should have remembered it as they left New Zealand.



We loved every minute of New Zealand, but we were ready for a taste of urban life again.  New Zealand's scenery Carol describes as "magic," but most of the country is pretty remote and lacks big-city amenities.

South Bank Promenade

Our first stop was Brisbane, Australia's third-largest city.  Situated on a large river, the city boasts a metro area well in excess of a million people.  The North Bank of the river is downtown. The South Bank has been turned into one vast park, connected by ferries, and boasting a variety of urban recreation opportunities and riverside cafes.

Brisbane is the home of many companies that exploit Australia's vast mineral resources and sits on the South Pacific between Australia's Gold Coast and Sun Coast.


It's a modern city and boasts a climate that would make Floridians green with envy.

We went to Brisbane to visit old friends, Daphne and Dan Kelly...whom we had met on a previous trip to Italy (Greg and Ruth, they say, "hello.")  Dan is the director of Disaster Relief for World Vision and had just returned from an extended stint in the Philippines, where World Vision had been helping people recover from last November's typhoon.

They we wonderful hosts, showing us much of what Queensland has to offer...including the Lost Valley.

Then it was on to Sydney...out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Sydney has 6 million people...almost the size of New York in a country with a population of only 30-million.
It's the corporate, financial and media center of Australia.  It's an international metropolis that has attracted immigrants from around the world.  In fact, Sydney has more Greeks than any city but Athens.

Sydney has so many recent immigrants and international visitors, it has to remind them cars drive on the left-hand side of the road.

It's bustling, noisy, jostling place lit by flashing neon.  After New Zealand's South Island, we found the noise and visual distractions overwhelming.




The first Europeans to settle in Sydney were British convicts, exiled to the then-most-remote part of the world for such crimes as stealing a set of noble-woman's ivory combs.

One of the first governors of the colony of New South Wales was Captain William Bligh...of Mutiny on the Bounty fame.



Bligh proved as popular a governor as he was a ship's captain.  Residents of Sydney...both convict and free...rebelled against his rule, and the British Crown had to send in troops from the motherland to calm things down.


The first convicts settled in a part of Sydney now known as "The Rocks."  The free citizens settled some distance away, not wanting to reside too close to all that riffraff.  You can imagine what life was like in a village of thieves and murderers, ruled by gangs made up of those same thieves and murderers.

While we were in Sydney, a long-simmering controversy came to a head about the houses on "The Rocks."  The housing is old,  historic, and largely run down...and sits right adjacent to the heart of downtown.  The city government decided many of the houses were too dilapidated to repair, and so decided to raze them and erect high-rises in their place.

Preservationists went berserk, backed by unions who represent many of the workers who live in the neighborhood.

The decision is supposedly final.  However, we suspect the fight is not over yet.

Sydney's most famous landmark is...of course...its Opera House.  Before we even arrived in Sydney, Carol had purchased tickets to Madama Butterfly...just so we could go to an opera there.

It turns out Madama Butterfly was not performed in the opera house...but outdoors in a park nearby.

Outdoor opera proved to be quite an experience.  Madama Butterfly takes place on a hillside overlooking Nagasaki Harbor, and here we were at an opera overlooking Sydney Harbor!  In one scene, one of Butterfly's suitors even arrives by boat.

The opera was re-set in modern times with motor launches and taxi cabs delivering the players to the stage.

The set change between acts was very industrial...with large cranes moving the pieces of set into place, then lifting a huge Japanese lantern to simulate moonrise.

Neither of us appreciated the challenges of staging an opera outdoors until we saw this performance...having to deal with sound outdoors, the wind, the water, passing ferries...and the thunder storms across the harbor that punctuated the performance.

Carol got her dose of opera.  But Roger failed to get his dose of baseball.

Photo courtesy of Sydney Morning Herald

Yes, baseball!  For some reason Major League Baseball decided to open its regular season in Sydney this year with the first two regular-season games between the Dodgers and Diamondbacks.

The two games plus two exhibition games against the Australian National Team drew a combined gate of just under 100-thousand...in a cricket oval with 110-thousand seats.  MLB commissioner Bud Selig called the 25,000 average attendance a "rousing success."

Photo courtesy of Sydney Morning Herald.

Perhaps they might have drawn better if they had priced their tickets differently.  Upper-deck bleacher seats went for $99.  Box seats went for $650.  Most of the spectators were American ex-pats or Dodger fans who decided to take an exotic vacation.

All for the opportunity to see such Australian baseball "stars" as former Mariner Ryan Roland Smith pitch against the Dodgers.




Roger decided to save his money for a soccer match in Rome.

One footnote:  Major League Baseball flew 250 tons of infield dirt from San Diego to Australia just for the game.  One Sydney newspaper asked, "Wasn't Australian dirt good enough for the Americans?"