Bicycle Diaries

by David Byrne

  The visual image, the incongruity as it struck me then, was jarring and disturbing. The shock in seeing suburbs consisting of cute little houses with quasi-English gardens in a land that seemed so utterly unsuited for them took me a while to get past or get over. For me, much of Southern California has the same vibe—a residential theme park in what is essentially a desert.

  Here is an aerial view—much of the landscape is about as welcoming as Mars.

  However, after a few more visits I began to like Australians. The folks I met were mostly unpretentious and open; the food and wine is fresh, tasty, and plentiful, and the countryside is forbidding but spectacular.

  As a place for urban biking Australian towns are better than most. Sydney is a bit tough—the geography and the busy arteries that link the various neighborhoods are not very welcoming—but Melbourne, Perth, and Adelaide I find to be more accommodating. The weather is pretty near perfect—Mediterranean—and these cities, though they sprawl a bit, are in size nothing like those in the United States, so one can get from one end of town to the other reasonably quickly. There are bike paths along the rivers that flow through many Australian towns—paths that eventually lead down to the sea, and more are being added yearly.

  The urban planner Jan Gehl was brought down here from Denmark some years ago and made studies of Adelaide, Melbourne, and most recently Sydney. Gehl’s reports and recommendations for Melbourne, in 1993 and 2005, were implemented, and the whole center city became a more livable place as a result. There are now 83 percent more central city residents than before. This means many people now live near where they work or where they go to school and can therefore easily accommodate most of their transport needs by bike or on foot. Parks were added, arcades and alleys revitalized, and outdoor cafés opened—about three hundred of them. Needless to say, more bike lanes were added throughout the city. (More on Gehl’s philosophy later.)

  Sydney is completely different. It’s an odd mishmash of neighborhoods scattered fairly widely around little bays, on peninsulas, and along ancient paths. Much of the urban settlement is on the other side of the bay from Sydney proper. One has to drive over the harbor bridge or take a scenic ferry ride to reach these neighborhoods. One day I bike from the center of town to Bondi Beach, which is more or less due east of downtown on this side of the bay. The biking is, for such an incredibly beautiful city, surprisingly rough and unaccommodating. Sure enough, when I reach Bondi there are people surfing in the middle of the day, and we’re still, sort of, in town.

  The next day I decide to bike to the Gap, one of the rocky points to the east of the town center that encloses Sydney harbor like a pair of sandstone pincers, one from the north side of the bay and one from the south. To avoid some of the larger roads that I encountered getting to Bondi I try to stay closer to the water’s edge by biking along Rose Bay and up through Vaucluse. Modest, unpretentious houses line the winding streets. I could be in a small well-to-do English town, which has somehow been airlifted and plunked down in a sunny semitropical landscape. As I reach the point, the cliffs bordering the Pacific give a spectacular view—for the dead. A cemetery occupies what seems to me the most scenic spot in the entire area.

  You’re Not Welcome Here

  Australia is full of unpleasant reminders of nature’s indifference to humans. Poisonous snakes and frogs, spiky plants, toxic spiders, rip currents, quicksand, and endless deserts abound. There’s always something out there lurking, reminding you that you’re just a guest here. It’s almost as if the bush sits there like a croc, its jaws open and waiting for the hapless and naive to wander in. In the Australian film Lantana (named after a flowering plant with poisonous leaves), which follows various drifting Sydney couples, a woman’s body is found within the insidious tangle of local plant life. In another film, Picnic at Hanging Rock, some girls on a school outing mysteriously vanish into the bush. They are never heard from again. To me, the anomie and alienation that constitute the mood of these films almost seem to be caused by the encroaching vegetation and potentially hostile landscape. The filmmakers probably see this as a metaphor for their “real” subject, but I think this is the real subject.

  One would think that at least in a big city like Sydney one would be safe. Sydney, however, is home to one of the most dangerous critters of all—the funnel-web spider. Dealing with the urban hubbub hasn’t bothered this deadly spider in the least. It loves slightly damp places, and a towel dropped pool-side or in a bathroom will do nicely. In the words of climatol ogist and author Tim Flannery, a bite victim is “immediately plunged into excruciating pain and is soon convulsing in a lather of sweat and foaming saliva.” Adult humans can stand about thirty hours of this before dying, but infants only last about an hour. To top off the insidious aspect of nature here, the venom of the funnel-web spider is more or less harmless to many animals, such as dogs and cats, but for humans it is deadly. Though the spider evolved way before people arrived here, it almost seems as though nature was merely lying in wait. Like Southern California, a place it superficially resembles, Australia is seductively beautiful, but blink and you’re a goner—from either a mudslide, earthquake, bushfire, or some poisonous critter.

  In New York there are raccoons in Central Park and there is rumored to be a beaver who has set up shop in the Bronx. But as far as wildlife encroaching on city dwellers it’s nothing like here. In Brisbane there was recently a “wet”—a period of rain—which resulted in an infestation of both jellyfish and echidnas—a small monotreme (it’s related to the duck-billed platypus) that has spikes like a hedgehog. The jellyfish here are not to be messed with. The box jellyfish is a particularly deadly little cube of aspic. According to a local source, “You have virtually no chance of surviving the venomous sting, unless treated immediately. The pain is so excruciating and overwhelming that you would most likely go into shock and drown before reaching the shore.”

  Around Brisbane the local dogs are reportedly becoming addicted to licking cane toads, the skins of which are poisonous, but just a little taste gets a dog high. Some unfortunate dogs overdo it and end up convulsing in violent spasms, but most have learned to regulate their toad intake—and after a dose wears off they sometimes return for more.

  Cane toads were introduced to Australia in 1935 in the hopes that they would eat the local cane beetle, an agricultural pest. Though omnivorous, eating both living and dead foodstuffs, the cane toads weren’t interested in the cane beetles. But they do breed prodigiously and their poisonous skin kills off both local predators and pets. The would-be pest killer is now a pest. People have died from them as well, because, as with dogs, a lick of a cane toad can stimulate hallucinations that last for about an hour, and some folks aren’t as smart as dogs.

  The famous introduction of twenty-four rabbits to Australia in 1859 (for hunting purposes) was a similar mistake. It was an absolute ecological disaster here, as the rabbits ate every kind of vegetation and bred like . . . rabbits. They have no natural predators in Australia to control their numbers and, as a result, a fence was erected in the desert, stretching from one end of the continent to the other, in hopes of limiting their spread. In 1950 a virus was released to kill the rabbits, which it did—until they developed a resistance.

  Not every native life-form here is unwelcoming. Some go out of their way to make us feel at home. The lyrebird imitates the calls of other birds—as well as other sounds it hears in its environment. In the BBC series The Life of Birds there is footage in which a lyrebird puts on a stellar performance, first clearing a space in the bush for its little stage and then stringing all its acoustic accomplishments together in a five-minute extravaganza of song. The song cycle is mostly a mashup of other birds’ songs, but then, shockingly, this one ends with an imitation of the sound of a camera shutter, a car alarm, some loggers’ foot-steps, and finally the sound of the loggers’ chainsaws cutting through a tree—these last few sounds were completely accurate, the mimicry impeccable, like perfect recordings!

  The
Peaceable Kingdom

  In Pleistocene times, giant “megafauna” inhabited Australia. These animals—the great rhinoceros-like Diprotodon; the giant kangaroo standing three meters (ten feet) high; a giant marsupial wombat; Megalania, a goanna lizard six meters (twenty feet) long; Quinkana, a land crocodile three meters long; Wonambi, a python seven meters (twenty-three feet) long; the flightless birds, Genyornis (giant emus) and Dromornis, which matched the great moa in size—mysteriously disappeared from Australia about fifteen thousand years ago. People were, presumably, more or less the same puny size they are now.

  Aboriginal stories, which have been recorded throughout Australia, indicate clearly that these animals were a part of the environment of early man on this continent, remembered with both fear and awe—impressions that have been passed down over eons via a unique oral tradition.

  That Aboriginal oral tradition dates back to . . . fifteen thousand years ago! A continuity that makes our own written history seem, well, not worth the papyrus it’s written on. We think of our history as being more solid, more real, because it’s written. But written history doesn’t go back anywhere near this far. And why does it being written down make it necessarily truer or more real to us?

  Adelaide is a small city on the southern rim of the continent—the last sizable town before you hit the immense deserts to the west. My favorite name for a desert—Nullarbor (zero trees)—is here. I bike down the main street of Adelaide past big old colonial buildings with grassy lawns. A cluster of Aborigines sits on the grass in a miniscule city park. A few meters away the traffic roars down the main street and pedestrians pass by. The little clump of indigenous people are like living ghosts, a reminder of the deep history of this land—a place that is now occupied by Europeans. These people are, if not the land’s custodians, at least its children. They were birthed and formed by this land. They embody it, they do not manipulate it. (I admit that maybe this is my own romantic interpretation.)

  The fact that they have chosen to congregate on a little patch of lawn right in the middle of town, clearly visible to all who pass by, but that they are usually ignored, invisible, is portentous, meaningful. It’s a sign, a reminder, a living billboard that gives notice that all the buildings and the hustle and bustle of we who pass by are superficial. Their physical presence says that there is a deep, slow biological and geological history that this new European colonial world seeks to quietly cover over with countless new things and a frenzy of commerce in order to obliterate that history from memory. They’re a living sign, a living “fuck you” to the looming office towers and manicured lawns.

  I continue west and ride my bike to the beach by following a bike path along the Torrens River that runs through the center of Adelaide. The path winds through eucalyptus groves (gum trees they are called here), where there are magpies and pelicans hanging out.

  The gum trees eventually begin to thin out and soon they disappear altogether and the river empties into the sea. This is a Sunday afternoon, it’s hot, but there are only six people on this part of the beach. If this beach were this close to a town of this size on other continents it would be jam-packed on a day like today. There would be hawkers selling crap and cars parked nearby. The whole country seems so new—to the European settlers anyway—that they have barely had time to encroach on much of it.

  A bit farther up the beach, in the town of Charles Sturt, there are cafés and restaurants overlooking the ocean. I have a beer, some calamari, and assorted veggie dips, all delicious. This unpretentious café food is amazing. The Mediterranean immigrants to Australia have had a positive and profound influence, not the least of which is on the food. I’ve had a simple octopus over greens that was much, much better than the mangy little tentacles served up in some top restaurants in New York. This was like a steak but with big suckers on the side.

  Melbourne

  In Melbourne I bike along the riverside and stumble upon the opening of the new downtown park. It’s Australia Day, so there are lots of festivities in the park. The Aborigines see it as a day commemorating the onset of shame, horror, and degradation. I decide to pay homage to the local outlaw legend Ned Kelly, so I bike back through town to the exhibition at the jail where he was executed.

  This is a picture of Ned taken on the day he was hanged, looking more like an elegant sadhu than an outlaw.

  There seem to have been a lot of extenuating circumstances in Kelly’s story. He was Irish, and the powers that be at the time were all English, and they viewed the Irish as dogs and referred to them as such. He may have been treated unjustly before he became an outlaw, which eventually led to a life on the run and to his deadly battles with the police. In preparation for a final standoff against them, Kelly fashioned himself a homemade suit of armor in hopes that he might survive the imminent raid. He also knew that he and his gang were in a hopeless position, so part of the plan was just to take down as many of the police as he could before a lucky shot took him. He was felled by a man who shot him in the knees.

  The Red Centre

  I’ve been to Australia quite a few times, and the locals never fail to claim that I haven’t seen their country until I’ve seen the interior. I decide to take up the challenge and drive around the Red Centre with a loose itinerary that will include Uluru (Ayers Rock), Alice Springs, and Kings Canyon.

  Arriving in Alice Springs I see Aborigines everywhere—unlike in the coastal cities—though most in town are lounging in the parks under the few shade trees. I obtain a permit to pass through Aboriginal lands and I head west in a rental car. Shortly all traces of human presence begin to disappear, though for a while I can get a cricket game on the radio. One wonders what could be more boring than watching a cricket game? Well, here is the answer.

  Soon there are no more markers, no telephone or electrical poles along the road (or visible anywhere), and no signs of human habitation as far as one can see. The cricket game fades out. Even though signs of European humanity are diminishing I am still on a paved road—for now.

  I must sound like Mr. City Slicker, but even in some of the farthest reaches of the American West one can usually see high-tension power lines in the distance, aerials of some type on distant hilltops, a shack or decrepit structure. Here there is nothing. I haven’t seen a car in at least an hour—and this is the main road in this region.

  The traditionally nomadic Aborigines tend to leave little trace of their existence on the land—none that I can see anyway—though I occasionally spot an abandoned or burnt-out vehicle or a tire stuck in a dead tree, sometimes placed there to mark a completely invisible turnoff.

  Eventually, as the road enters Aboriginal lands, it becomes a dirt track, and any traffic I’d previously seen on the paved road disappears completely. In the distance there are ranges of hills, a vaguely circular formation that, from the way it looks on the map, appears to be the far-flung remains of a massive meteor crater. A group of camels crosses the road. Camels! It seems that camels were imported, along with Afghan labor, to haul goods from Adelaide up to Alice Springs, until a rail line was completed in 1929. After they were no longer needed the camels were simply abandoned to roam, and eighty years later they’re still here, wandering.

  I stop and take a short walk into the desert. From the car window most of the vegetation appears to be grassy, similar to the succulent grasses in New Mexico or West Texas. I wonder, if the vegetation is similar, why isn’t anyone grazing cattle out here? A few steps and I have my answer. These “grasses” are spiky, almost painful to touch or to rub against. Whatever the camels (and kangaroos) are eating, it probably isn’t this stuff.

  The track dips down occasionally into what might be called arroyos—dried-up riverbeds—which in many cases are sandy. I’m glad I rented a 4-wheel drive. As I approach maybe my third one of these things I spy, as I pass over a rise, something down in the riverbed. It’s a scarily sunburned family standing around their station wagon (not a 4-wheel drive) that is mired deep in the sand and is facing me. I drive thr
ough the sand to the opposite side and get out to help if I can.

  They’ve been here for hours and I’m the first car to pass by. They’re from Melbourne. Aren’t they supposed to know better—being locals? Dad has the rear hatch open and as I approach he reaches into their cooler, which is stocked with beers, and hands me a cool one. A tinny, I think they’re called here. VB, Melbourne’s finest—though I prefer Cascade, the Tasmanian brew with the extinct Tasmanian tiger on the label.

  The red family needs to get out of the sun. I suggest that if Dad wants to go forward I can push him with my car, but Dad seems worried that the push might dent his station wagon—or jostle the beers maybe. He prefers to be pulled, but neither of us has any rope. His hitch is at the back of his car, so the only way to move him will be to pull him back from where he came. I can sense that Dad doesn’t really want to go backward, but it’s the only way I could conceivably drag him. He produces a tarp from somewhere and says maybe if we twist it and roll it up it could work like a rope. It’s worth a try. We tie the back ends of our cars together and I begin to ease forward. The tarp tightens and the knot tying it to his car slips off. But the tarp doesn’t tear or break. He ties it tighter and I move even slower—and inch by inch I get his vehicle back onto solid ground.

  I’m thinking, great, job well done, but Dad has a look on his face. He’s pondering trying to get across this sand trap I just pulled him out of so he can move on to wherever it is he might be headed. He wants to try to get across again! I suggest that there are quite a few more of these sand traps up ahead, as I’ve been through them. I tell him it’s his decision, but I’m not going to help him out twice and that I won’t be back this way. I prepare to drive off. As I pull away I can see him contemplating whether or not to drive his family back into the sand pit.