Hello from Sydney, Australia!
I’m currently sitting in my hostel bed (upper bunk, lucky me), still in a bit of disbelief that I am halfway across the world. After a minor visa scare at the San Francisco airport, an anxious wait in the international terminal, and a 14-hour red eye, I made it to my first country. I’m challenging myself to go to bed at a semi-normal time tonight in an attempt to boot my jet lag, so this blog post is an excellent way to pass the time.
I don’t know what I expected Sydney to be like. But whatever my expectations were, they were quickly surpassed. Sydney has the buzz of any major city, like Chicago, a temperate coolness, like my home in the Bay Area, and yet is engulfed with vibrant nature. One of my favorite parts of traveling is seeing new wildlife — not just in the proper “outdoors,” but in the city, too. After dropping my bags off, I spent all morning exploring nearby neighborhoods, and the scenery did not disappoint. Thick trees with tangled roots sprawl over the city streets; the canopies sing with birds, even in the winter. I spent part of my afternoon at the Australian Museum learning their names: long-billed ibises, striking black-and-white magpies, and even occasional cockatoos or kookaburras (if I’m lucky). Most apartment buildings have intricate metal balcony railings that seem uniquely designed to complement their surroundings. The city feels busy, yet intimate. I’m very excited to keep exploring tomorrow.
The time I didn’t spend walking around Sydney or eating delicious Pad Thai from Spice Alley (thanks for the rec, Zella!) was dedicated to grounding my research. My interviews are all scheduled for next week, but I was anxious to get ahead of my work. The majority of my visit to the Australian Museum was spent taking ethnographic notes — I have read several articles about fire management on their website and was curious to see what they had in person. About half of a gallery was dedicated to climate change, and the growing threat of bushfires received a few mentions there, but my most interesting takeaways were from the First Nation’s gallery. As you can imagine, the relationship between Aboriginal knowledge/practice and state authority is a crucial part of the conversation around fire management. The exhibit served as an important learning opportunity about the Garrigarrang nura creation story, the Ancestral Laws around land treatment, and how the museum (funded in part by the state and national government) treats and discusses Australia’s First Nations. For example, the first thing you notice when entering the building is a land acknowledgment paying respect to “Elders past and present” — the language of which was identical to the statement given when my plane touched ground in Sydney this morning. I don’t think the fact that the Australian government seems to have a state-sanctioned, copy-paste land acknowledgment is necessarily worthy of high praise, but it does reflect a vastly different relationship between Indigenous communities and the state than we see in the United States. I’m interested in how this will come up in my conversations next week.
In the meantime, I’ll be walking, hiking, and public-transporting all around New South Wales! I’m hoping to go to the Sydney Harbour tomorrow and the Blue Mountains this weekend. I’m proud of myself for taking the first big leap of this journey. Wish me luck on my adventures!