• Although I did not “make” my item, the item I brought was a foul ball that I had caught at a New York Yankee’s spring training game in 2018. This item was a good representation of myself and also America.
• I gave my baseball away to Kal, a fellow Yankee fan, meat lover, and burger maker at BrewBar restaurant in Wellington, NZ.
• On our second night in Wellington, we ventured over to BrewBar for what was sure to be another excellent meal in New Zealand. The meal did in fact blow me away; it was one of the best feeds I had on the trip. The burger was amazing and was for sure one of the best I’ve had in my life and the chips too cannot be disregarded. At around the same time I was eating, I looked up and noticed the chef behind the counter wearing a New York Yankees hat. It was then I knew who was receiving my baseball. The next day I went back to BrewBar with the intention of giving it away to Kal but he wasn’t working at that time and it was our last day (free morning) in Wellington. I was going to walk away sad that I couldn’t give him the baseball until his co-worker told me that he would hold on to it and give it to Kal when he got in that night. He told me he knew that Kal would appreciate it so much, so I told him to tell Kal how much I had enjoyed the meal he cooked for us the night before and that I had noticed his Yankees hat so I thought he would like the foul ball from Yankee’s spring training.

(more…)

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Looking over the late night Melbourne skyline.

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After visiting many different Australian cities, I was able to take away a new perspective on the way the Australian people live their lives daily and picked up various things about their culture overall. Before we visited the country, we had only learned about their culture from films we had seen, many of which were dated or were not an accurate display of life in the country. These films, like Crocodile Dundee, provided a sense that the Australian accent was going to be thick and remarks like, “crikey” were going to be heard in day to day conversations with the people. In fact, I did not notice much difference in the Australian accent except for a few phrases they would use like “mate”, “cheers”, and “G’day” all which are just a little different from our own American variations. At times, the accent itself was a little hard to understand because of the pronunciation of their consonants but otherwise I enjoyed hearing their accent and I got used to it after a short while. Another thing that many of the Australian films and their perceived culture says is that the country is full of large and dangerous animals and bugs. It may have been just where we were staying in each city but aside from some nasty looking spiders we encountered at the Tjapukai village, I barley saw any other creepy crawlies outside. One of my favorite animals we saw in the wild were the bats in Cairns. I thought they were amazing creatures and really enjoyed walking to dinner and seeing flocks of them above the city during the sunset hours. That was a sight I’ve never seen before and it was a lasting memory. It was clear from many experiences like this that the Australians respect the natural animals from all over the different parts of the country. Overall, I do not think most the Australian films we watched during fall semester provided a good inclination as to the true culture of the country. The people everywhere were kind and the amount of nationalities present surprised me as well. The land was looked after and people around the country respected nature and the animals that inhabit it.

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During our stay in Melbourne, the city tour was a great class activity which introduced us to the city in a unique was and allowed our group to see the important sights of the city. Starting near Federation Square, our tour guide took us past St. Paul’s Cathedral, an Anglican church which stood tall in the middle of city and was an amazing building to see. It was too bad they charged money to go in and see the inside but from the outside it looked like an amazing work of architecture completed in 1891. Proceeding farther into the city, our guide told us about all the shopping arcades that had been created inside of older buildings and how you could find coffee cafes around every corner of the city. She brought us by the smallest coffee shop in the country and it was unbelievable. The barista section of the cafe was along one side of a small hallway and seemed as though a maximum of two employees would be able to stand there at once, without much movement at all. The other side of the hallway was for the customers and included two small tables and some chairs fitting at most four people. The place was packed! We continued down alleyways full of artistic works which are painted by locals every couple of months before they are painted completely black and redesigned. This added a very unique feel to each street and was a great way to see what was happening at that time in the city. Additionally, we ran into an Australian Open tennis player in one of the alleyways being photographed and interviewed. We then we able to watch him on TV as he played in a quarterfinals match against Rafael Nadal. Being in this city at the time of the Australian Open made the experience that much better as everyone was excited to see the upcoming games no matter who was playing and there was so much hype around the city about the event. Overall, this tour through the city and getting a change to experience Melbourne in this environment was an amazing experience and something I will never forget.

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During our visit to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne, we were able to learn about the history of film through various readings and even older flip film technologies. From the moment I entered into ACMI’s main gallery, I felt a little overwhelmed by the amount of screens and information they had provided but after taking time to walk through the museum was very well laid out. The museum started from the beginning of Australian film with moving pictures.  At first, they had used technology to rapidly show still images making them into the first moving image films. From this point, film seemed to take off as television came to be the next big invention bringing moving image pictures to homes around the country. Around the world, television was beginning to be revolutionized in the 1930s as Russia, Japan, and Germany began to host regular television broadcasts although they offered extremely low picture quality still. Still, the ability to broadcast both voice and video across countries was a major step for television. Finally, in September 1956, Bruce Gyngell was the first to appear on television to say the words, “Good evening and welcome to television”. The introduction of the television was key in this time and needed in Melbourne and Sydney for the 1956 Olympics which was to be televised. The next major event to be televised was in 1977 for the World Series of Cricket. Kerry Packer owned Australia’s Nine Network and he made a bid for exclusive rights to broadcast cricket nationwide but was turned down because of favor towards the national broadcaster ABC. Instead, Packer broke off and created the World Series of Cricket which would pay higher salaries in order to attract star players. Packer ended up revolutionizing the game and eventually the Cricket Board decided to work with him after all. Along with all this great information about the history of Australian TV and film, there was also a gallery dedicated to the growth of video games over the years internationally. The museum provided interactive ways to learn about these games and gaming systems which have all impacted what we have today. ACMI had interactive games from the original gaming system, the Atari, and allowed you to play through the progression through the original Mario Bros. era and to Minecraft, a 2009 game which revolutionized gaming. Finally, the gallery ended with a virtual reality (VR) experience where the user was dropped into a city and given superpowers to destroy the infected buildings in sight. This entire experience was great to see as ACMI did a good job with the progression through the image timeline and how it has lead to what we see today in modern TV, video games, and film.

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Class spear throwing lessons at Tjapukai!

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The Great Barrier Reef was one the most amazing thing I have seen in my life. Although our group was only able to see a small fraction of this natural ocean barrier, the marine life it contained is something I will never forget. I have always loved the ocean and I am fascinated by the immense amount of life it hides beneath its surface. Taking a dive into the depths of the reef, following around beautifully colored Coral Trout and schools of thousands of fish was breathtaking. During our visit to Marine World we learned about the sheer size of the reef, stretching across almost half of Australia’s northeastern coastline. Additionally, we learned that the entire reef is classified as a marine greenzone meaning there is no commercial or recreational fishing allowed. This law allows for the flourishing ecosystem that we can see today. The specific part of the reef we visited was about 250 kilometers off the coast of Cairns, Queensland (a 90-minute boat ride). During the ride over to the reef, I was trained on scuba diving by a marine biologist named Dan who taught our dive group about each piece of the scuba gear pointing out specifically what we should and shouldn’t touch especially in the case of an emergency. My first dive into the reef was such a great experience I felt teased when it only lasted 20 minutes. So I went down for another 30-minute dive later in that afternoon. On this dive we didn’t need to go through any of the training and we were allowed to go even deeper and father out on the reef. During this dive, we saw a huge fish eating a sea cucumber off the sea floor and we must have frightened him a bit because he took a big bite and swam away from his lunch, leaving it for other smaller fish to eat. We also we able to touch Wally, an extremely friendly big blue fish who seemed to love our guide as he followed us around the reef. Unfortunately, time flies when you are down under the surface and I only wish I could have stayed down there all day. The silence 30 meters down was so peaceful and around every corner there is something new and colorful waiting to be discovered. I hope someday I can go back to the reef and do it all again, but maybe for a full day dive this time.

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After visiting with the Tjapukai people in Cairns, many things stood out as similarities and differences between the Maori people of New Zealand and Australian Aboriginal people. Many of these differences came in a variety of aspects of past and present life and also the continued cultural practice for each culture respectively. One of the things that stood out the most to me was the treatment of the indigenous people upon the white settler’s arrival. In New Zealand, we heard stories of a peaceful assimilation of the white settlers. When settlers came to mine gold in the mountains that the Maori people called home, the Maori had no quarrel as they saw gold as a useless metal which had no value to them. Additionally, most the Maori tribes chose to settle in the forests and hills of New Zealand to be more connected with nature so, while some were still forced to move, more often there was little to no displacement of the tribes during the country’s industrialization period. Unfortunately, this was not the case for the Australian Aboriginal people. In Australia, there were thousands of different Aboriginal tribes across the continent and many of them lived near the coastline where settlers first landed. This land had the most fertile soil and a much more temperate climate than the middle of the country. In Sydney for example, Australia’s first major port of settlement, Aboriginals welcomed the white men. Many even believed the settlers were spirits of their ancestors returning to the lands. In dealings with many Aboriginal tribes, the language barrier caused confusion between the settlers and aboriginals and in many cases, this led to violence and the imprisonment of the aboriginal people for no better reason than their differences. Over the years, the aboriginals were continually looked down upon as lesser and were made into slaves for the white men. Because of this treatment, today many of the old aboriginal cultures have died off and are not practiced anymore although they were truly Australia’s first inhabitants. For the Tjapukai people, however, this is not the case. They still live today and continue to teach new generations the ways of their people both in language and their cultural practices. Overall, the treatment of the New Zealand Maori people and Aboriginal Australians could not have been more opposite as one group was given a chance to assimilate into the white settler’s culture and still live and practice their ancestral culture, meanwhile many of the old Australian Aboriginal tribes have died off and in many cases that was the goal for the white settlers, to be rid of the people who were the first to inhabit the Australian lands.

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G’day. It is me and an Australian landmark. Cheers.

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Over the past five days, out group learned a lot from our Sydney tour guide, Pam, in Australia’s largest and oldest city. Pam often spoke about the original landing of the Englishmen on Australian soil and their impact on the aboriginals who welcomed them to their lands. She told us how the English brought over boatloads of convicts, settlers, and government officials to begin construction on the settlement of the new land. She told us how the convicts worked to build their own shelter which still stands today along the coastline of Sydney’s harbor and is still home to Australians living within the city. Pam told us how the harbor bridge, one of Sydney’s most iconic sites, was also one of the city’s biggest accomplishments as it finally connected both sides of the harbor allowing free trade across the harbor which boosted the flow of money in and around the city. One of my favorite facts I learned from Pam was that in Sydney no one, no matter how much you pay for your home, can have property leading up to the harbor. This means the land from the harbor and 20 meters inland is public and cannot be built on. I think this is a great feature to the city and is extremely important; this is one of the many things that makes the city so great. You can walk from one side of harbor to the other all along the public pathways making it a great place to go for a walk or run at any time of the day. Additionally, during our Opera House tour, our guide told us how the construction ended up taking 7 more years than originally planned to complete and additional hundreds of millions of dollars. She also explained how the ceramic roof was built to withstand all the natural elements of the sky and sea so it would not erode away. The tile also gives it a very pleasing look; even from far away you can easily see this Australian landmark. Overall, in our tours through Sydney our group learned a lot about the city’s birth and present-day preservation. It was a great city to see and I hope to be back someday.

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