Australia Travel Log, Part 1

By Jenine Stanley

Introduction

I went to Australia to present my first professional paper at a conference. This was my first trip overseas. Though I travel extensively in the U.S., this was also my first major trip alone. By "major" I mean of the magnitude of an overseas trip. There was something inside me that kept telling me that I had to do this alone.

As the travel log shows, traveling as a totally blind person can be interesting, challenging, and yes, even fun, if you don't sweat the small stuff. Having a good looking dog with you doesn't hurt either.

Destination Sydney

The trip to Sydney, which began on Monday, September 14, was an adventure in and of itself. Our flight was late leaving Chicago to Los Angeles, which gave us no time to stop for Toby (my guide dog) to relieve before heading off to our plane to Sydney. This would mean that he would be nearly 22 hours without a relief-break. Luckily, Toby got his break. Our plane sat on the runway for two and one half-hours with a broken hydraulic pump on one engine, which never could be fixed.

United Airlines bussed us all to hotels. Due to a large convention in town, we were sent some 30 minutes drive away to Long Beach to a hotel where we got a chance to shower, and maybe catch a few hours sleep. We arrived around 3:30 a.m. and left again at 10:00 a.m. for what was supposed to be a 12:30 p.m. flight.

You tend to get close to people on your flight when something like this happens and we were all friends as we boarded the buses and straggled through the airport. On the flight from Chicago, I'd been upgraded to first class, thanks to some certificates from United during our Hawaii trip. First class on a 777 is quite nice…take it if it's offered. Bulkhead is very spacious, but there isn't a bad seat up there or, as I was told but didn't see directly, is there a bad seat in the regular cabin.

I had the pleasure of sitting next to a man from Switzerland who was working in Sydney for Nestle for the next 18 months. He told me all I needed to know about Sydney and was most helpful as we went through the delay and re-boarding the plane. During our first attempt, while we sat on the runway, I had a seat in the upper part of the plane. The crew seemed shocked that I would want to sit up there. They said they'd had a guide dog-handler who regularly took that flight, but never had they had anyone sit upstairs.

Why I don't know. It's wonderful up there. It's quiet and if you get the bulkhead, your dog has more room than you can ever imagine. Things worked out well though as I got a row in connoisseur-class, or business class, of three seats to myself for the trip over. I took the middle one and Toby had plenty of space.

Before we left L.A., I made sure Toby was well emptied. He'd had breakfast, lots of water at the hotel and felt pretty good. We found some grass across one small service road on the same level as the L.A. Police station. It's one level down from international arrivals for anyone who might need it. You go down an escalator, the elevator is buried God knows where, and head right, past the police station and across a space to grass. On the other side of the grass is a road and the grass strip isn't very wide, but it will, and did, do in a pinch.

During the flight, I gave Toby ice cubes every three to four hours. The flight was about 14.5 hours long. I wasn't sure how much ice he would need. He got very dry and began to cough. He didn't seem to need to go out though.

In the Land Down Under

Once at the airport in Sydney, we went right to the quarantine office. It was around 9:00 p.m. when we arrived. They'd been expecting us at 6:00 a.m. and needless to say, hadn't been too happy when we weren’t there.

The vet looked over my paperwork and discovered that I'd had the extra blood tests done about 15 days too soon. They were to be done 45 days, or less, from my date of arrival but the forms are a Byzantine mess and I said that we couldn't decipher when they were supposed to be done. I was sweating at that point. The vet said that the dog looked very healthy and he would let us into the country because the tests had been done technically within two months of arrival. Whew!

There is a processing fee upon arrival, but no blood is taken. You receive a form that you must have with you at all times which states that this dog is legally allowed in Australia. The vet gives a physical, with you present, unlike Hawaii. This is something we will be changing about the Hawaiian system though.

Once we cleared the quarantine, I went with an airport employee to baggage claim where I met Glenn Casey and his wife, Tina. Poor Glenn had gotten out of bed that morning way too early to meet me at 6:00 a.m.!

Our very first stop was a patch of grass. <grin> Sydney airport now has a new lake. Actually, Toby did really well at holding himself and once that initial flight was over, he got back on schedule fairly easily.

After being on an airplane for that long, in re-circulated, low-oxygen air, it really felt good to walk around. Glenn and Tina drove me to my hotel, the Old Sydney Park Royal. This is, I believe, one of, if not the oldest hotel in Sydney and is very nice. My room itself wasn't anything to write home about, but the hotel was great and I was just a short walk from the restaurant. <grin>

By the time I'd checked in and tossed my bags in the room, it was time to get out and walk. If I didn't wear myself out, I'd never get to sleep and would never get acclimated to the time change. Glenn and Tina, being the gracious hosts they are, made sure I got good and tired by showing me around the harbor area. We walked up the steps of the famous Sydney Opera House, a place I remember in pictures and have read about in many a John Cleary mystery.

Glenn gives excellent descriptions, by the way. But all that was registering with me that night was that there was clean, fresh air and that it felt good to walk around. It was a bit cooler than back home, with temperatures in the low 50's to high 40's. I'd left 90 degrees in Columbus the previous afternoon.

The next morning I had a leisurely breakfast and met Glenn at around 9:00 a.m.. He brought with him what was possibly the cutest, sweetest little Golden Retriever puppy in training. Daisy was six-months-and-one-day-old. She's probably going to be a big girl, maybe around 75 pounds, and sturdy. She has the makings of a great worker.

It seems that in Australia, Goldens are a lot lighter in color with shorter hair, like Drummer, rather than the fine, flowing hair and long feathering, like Toby. People were constantly commenting on his hair. <grin>

Daisy was quite the little trooper as we walked around the harbor area in daylight. We walked through the Sydney Botanical Gardens, a place where guide-dogs, and of course pups-in-training, are the only dogs allowed. The gardens were so quiet in the midst of the city at rush hour.

There were lots of Freesia flowers in bloom. Freesia smells kind of like a cross between Honeysuckle and Jasmine. The garden was also full of Magpies. These birds are kind of like mocking birds in that they are very loud and definitely not afraid of people. They were all over the trees and bushes. You could hear their wings flapping as we approached and then they began squawking. What a racket!

From the Gardens, we visited the prime tourist spot in Sydney Harbor, Mrs. McQuery's Chair. This is an outlook with a spectacular view of the harbor, the bridge, the opera house and other landmarks. It was named for the wife of Sydney's first governor, who loved to come to that spot and sit to watch the harbor. She had a chair placed there, hence the name. Glenn will correct me on any historical flaws. <grin>

The thing about this spot though is that flocks… no… hoards, of tourists come there by bus. Glenn and I, with the dogs, got there several minutes before the first bus of the day, so we got some time to enjoy the spot and have photos taken. We weren't able to escape though before the bus came and at least three Japanese tourists got our picture. <grin>

From this spot, we walked up some never-ending stairs so that we could walk on the pedestrian part of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. I thought at first it would be open, like walking on the very windy Golden Gate Bridge, but the pedestrian walk is sheltered. You can feel the bridge moving though, especially when you get out to the middle. It does sway and vibrate a good bit. This didn't seem to bother the dogs at all.

One good part of having a puppy with you is that when the public comes up, gushing over the dogs, they can always pet the puppy and leave the working dog alone. Daisy accepted this attention with typical Golden grace.

I was very pleasantly surprised by how many people actually knew what a guide dog was and that it wasn't to be petted. That didn't stop everyone, certainly, but when asked not to pet, most people responded with apologies. The Guide Dog Association here has done some incredible publicity, and compared to some areas in the states, it's worked well.

At the Guide Dog Association

We really noticed how much that bridge had been moving when we stepped back onto solid ground. Down more steps we went and on our way to a morning tea reception at the Guide Dog Association of New South Whales. They were honoring volunteers who manned their information booth at malls and such. Glenn had invited me to come along and meet the staff and volunteers.

The tea proved to be several hours that I spent looking around the center. Puppy raisers asked a lot of questions about Toby and I learned about their pups as well. The Association trains mostly Labs, a few Goldens and crosses. The yellow Labs are mostly white or very pale yellow.

One of the raisers was finishing off a Marama Sheep Dog puppy. A litter had apparently been donated. Marama Sheep Dogs are Italian GSD-like dogs with longish, white coats. They are proving to be a bit too aggressive and hard to handle as guides, but it never hurts to experiment by raising a litter.

There were no puppies or actual guide dogs at the center that day, unfortunately. Had we given more notice, maybe there would have been a few. The center is mostly offices where the telemarketing and sales, as well as administration goes on. The Guide Dog Association also provides all the mobility training, including white cane and electronic travel aid training. They have a very interesting and accessible web site at:

http://www.guidedogs.com.au.

The real fun of this trip, though, was a visit to the Guide Dog Store! (not the name). Actually, it's the storeroom for the products they sell and they certainly sold a lot to me! Check out the website for more details on these products. Lots of folks are getting Australian guide-dog gifts for Christmas this year. <grin>

I looked at a harness during my visit. Mazz, Jordie, Marco, Louise and all… please correct me, but here's my description and evaluation: The harness body is very simple. If you've ever seen a Pilot Dogs harness, this one could be a dead wringer for one. The bodies are almost exactly the same. The Aussie harness has very small loops for the handle to fit through so it does not move upward toward the dog's head past, maybe, 45 degrees.

The harness handle is held on with bolt snaps though and you can, it appears, give a harness correction by jerking back on it. The rings it fastens to are a bit bigger than the D rings on a Pilot Dogs harness. The front or chest/breast strap felt as if it might be two pieces of leather with some padding in between. It was a bit wider than the body straps.

The whole thing is a natural light brown color. The handle is slightly different though from a Pilot Dogs handle. It seems to be very long, to compensate for its lack of vertical movement. The handle tapers to the hand-hold which is no wider than a large man's hand and rounded on the ends where our handles are squared off at the ends. The entire handle is covered with white leather and I believe has some reflective pieces down near the body.

The young apprentice trainer told me that they use the long, straight handle mostly. But they do use an off set handle, equally as long and rounded at the hand hold end, for people who veer a lot or who have access weight problems that cause them to get too close to their dogs.

The handle mounts to the body at the same place ours does, the shoulders, rather than atop the belly strap, like the U.K. harness. The dogs all wear fur saver or big link collars and their leashes are just like most of ours…nothing special or different.

Transportation Adventures

From our visit to Guide Dogs, we went to lunch. People eat outside a lot in Sydney and we enjoyed a nice sidewalk café lunch. Then it was off again to take the ferry to a beach area that (Glenn forgive me) I can't remember the name of to save my life.

This was going to be a multi-modal trip. We first had to take the train to the ferry stop. OK, gang, the Australians know about accessibility. There were tactile warnings on the train platform and the stop announcements were audible. Blind people apparently ride the trains, ferries and buses free and their sighted companion rides free. The detectable warning tiles on the train platform were mounted like the ones in Washington DC, about 18 inches back from the platform edge. Nice arrangement I thought.

The ferry had a walk on ramp and took us about 15 minutes or so to get to the other side of the harbor. The area we went to reminded me of an east-coast U.S. boardwalk…there were shops, places to eat and a wall that ran along the road. You could go down at various points and walk on the beach. It was in the low 70's that day and absolutely beautiful for walking, but a bit cold for going into the water. Daisy got her first walk on sand though. I think she was learning by watching Toby. <grin>

More transportation adventures after taking the ferry back to our side of the harbor. We took a bus back to the hotel. Now watch… I'll have gotten them backward and it'll be bus then train.<grin> Anyway, it's kind of weird the first time you get on a bus from the other side. I wanted to turn left once I got on and had to really fight the urge. The Sydney bus we rode on had all front facing seats, but the very front ones had loads of space for the dogs.

They were up a little platform like a Greyhound bus. Interesting. I'm glad I didn't take one during rush hour. After resting in the hotel for a bit, we were joined at dinner by Glenn's wife and Susan Thompson. Some of you may know Susan from her posts on the ACB list or you may have met her if you went to the ACB mid year meeting this past year. Glenn insisted that I try some local delicacies.

So, we dined on pizza, but not just any pizza. We sampled kangaroo, emu, crocodile, pumpkin, octopus and prawn pizza. These were little four-piece gourmet pizzas. OK, to end your suspense, kangaroo is actually good. If it's cut thin, it tastes like goat. Yeah, I know… what's goat taste like? Actually, to me, when cut nice and thin, it tastes like good pork roast with a little more character, but not gamy or too rich like venison. I've been told that kangaroo can be awfully stringy, too, if cut too thick.

My favorite by far was the emu. It tasted like duck, or the really good dark meat of turkey, and had some good spices and things with it. The crocodile was horrible! OK, now, I love alligator meat, but crocodile is chewy and fishy. It is a salt-water animal and, well…I wasn't impressed. It makes much better boots than pizza.

The Australians do more things with more different kinds of pumpkin than anyone I know…and all of them were good. Pumpkin vegetarian pizza is delicious. In my state of exhaustion though, I bit into my first piece of the pumpkin delight convinced that I was about to sink my teeth in to a juicy prawn. Uh, it wasn't a prawn. The "smushy" texture of the pumpkin is just about the exact opposite of what I was expecting. It made for some great laughs as Susan, Glenn and Tina had been extolling the virtues of pumpkin and I'd convinced them that I actually love the stuff anyway. <grin>

The prawn pizza was excellent, by the way. The octopus was not, however. <grin> I'll wrap it up for now and leave the Perth adventures for the next installment. Coming up, we meet Glenda Jackson, explore a London Taxi, hold a baby kangaroo, and pet a koala and ikidna.

Note: This travel log was originally sent to members of the Buddy-l e-mail list for guide dog handlers.

Jeninems@infinet.com
Consultants on Access to Transportation
President, Guide Dog Users Inc. (GDUI)
http://www.infinet.com/~jeninems.

For more info about GDUI, call them at 1-888-858-1008 for a free guide dog disk, or send e-mail to: jcsheehan@smart.net.