Why Oz?

“Why Oz?” is a short question with a not-so-short answer.

The easy part is that “Oz” is a nickname for Australia. Yes, a whole continent has been reduced to two letters that connote “fantasy land” and for a pretty fantastical reason.

Australia originally became “Oz” because of the Australian habit of abbreviating everything. A restaurant is a “resto,” dump truck is a “dumpo,” cigarette break is a “smoko,” etc. But when The Wizard of Oz was released in 1939, Aussies (Ozzies?) immediately saw their own magical country in Frank Baum’s imaginary land, and Oz it has been ever since.

The “Why Oz?” question with a more complicated answer is “Why did Doris and Louis decide to visit Oz?”

Anyone who has talked travel with Doris knows she has never been a fan of visiting former British colonies on the grounds that she already lives in one. They fail the novelty test, a failure compounded in Australia’s case by how far away and big it is. For his part, Louis had already visited the continent twice before he met Doris and counted that as enough.

But then there they were on the Around the World cruise with the hypnotic marketeers of Oceania dangling a “Wonders of Australia” circumnavigation of Oz before their glazed eyes, and they couldn’t resist. Circle an entire continent without ever getting on an airplane?!? Bring on the kangeroos!

And that’s how your Partout pair flew from Phnom Penh to Sydney at the end of our recent month in Southeast Asia and boarded the good ship Regatta (identical twin of our world-cruising Insignia) three days before Christmas. Could the novelty and revelations of circling a continent overcome the flatness of colonial similarity? We would soon find out.

The first test was Sydney, where we set sail. Arriving a few days before Christmas, we found the city awash in sunshine, extravagant decorations and happy Aussies on holiday. Although lacking in kangeroos, Syndey’s spectacular setting, zippy water ferries, charming mix of old and new architecture and festive spirit easily offset its colonial familiarity.

Score: Christmas in the dead of summer? Novel for North Americans!

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Next came Brisbane, another east coast city with zippy water ferries and interesting architecture. There, we encountered something even better than a kangeroo: the only son of the only child of Doris’s only sibling, who happens to live there. Meeting up with Jordan, her only great-nephew, gave novelty a whole new meaning.

Score: Who cares? Doris and Jordan meet at last.

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From Brisbane, it was north over nearly 1,500 miles of Great Barrier Reef and into three east OZ ports.

• Cairns (pronounced “Cans,” which provided the unexpected experience of visiting a rainforest complete with pythons draped from tree branches and a few examples of Oz birdlife seen nowhere else on earth.
• Airlie Beach, which offered the unsettling sight of spectacular sandy beaches without a soul in the surf because the waters are teeming with creatures that can kill or at least hurt a lot.

• Cooktown, which demonstrated that an entire town can live off the shipwreck of one English captain if it’s small and determined enough.

North of Cooktown, we turned west into the Arafura Sea and headed to famously scorching Darwin. Despite the heat, we spent a day in a wildlife park where Doris was rewarded with a near-kangeroo encounter, and Louis had lots of wildlife photo opps (including the frog above).

Four-city score: Short on novelty

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With only one port in Oz ahead of us now, we have decided the best stop on the “Wonders of Australia” circumnaviagation has been … Indonesia.

Yes, folks. In the magical world of cruising, circumnavigating Oz includes nine days of steaming back and forth to Asia and visiting three islands there.

First in every way was Bali, where we jumped ship with four other world cruisers and spent 36 hours trekking rice paddies, touring temples, shooting rapids, marveling at landscapes, consuming mie goering and generally self-indulging in paradise.

With its lush terraced mountainsides, 20,000 temples and thriving Hindu culture, Bali is called the island of the gods for good reason. It might be a former colony (Dutch), too, but it felt galaxies away from Oz.

Two islands later, we landed in search of the wild Komodo dragons that can smell prey from five miles away and kill it with a single bite. With such deadly attributes, the giant lizards are a natural for Oz and actually roamed the continent back in the day (up to 300,000 years ago) but now roam exclusively on five Indonesian islands. This was definitely not British colony stuff.

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Indonesia is now behind us, and we are at sea steaming back to Oz and our final hours on Regatta. For practical reasons, we gave up the south coast of Australia (including Kangeroo Island, Adelaide and Melbourne) for our month on land in Southeast Asia so our circumnavigation will ends about a quarter of the continent short of a full circle in Perth, officially the world’s most remote city. After that, only our own former colony lies ahead.

We leave Australia impressed that its novelty rests not in its pleasant modern cities but in its primeval rainforests and jungles, its fabulous fauna its vast daunting interior and its indigenous population whose culture was well-established before Europe and the Americas were even populated.

Australia is indeed more than another former colony, but it requires far more than following the coastline to experience what makes it Oz (and to see a kangeroo!). Maybe next time.

Who Knew?!?

All of earth’s songbirds (oscine passerines) are believed to have originated in Australia about 50 million years ago. After wildly diversifying for a few million years, some of them winged off for Southeast Asia and, eventually, to the rest of the world. Today about a quarter of the world’s songbirds still can be found only in Oz.

NEXT STOP: Potty Talk 3

Postscript

Hats off and thanks to readers who came up with additional breakthroughs that make today the good old days of travel: online ticketing, suitcases with wheels, skip-the-line passes like Global Entry, TSA Precheck and Clear. One reader pointed out that while our seats may be less comfortable, flying is safer than it used to be. Who wouldn’t trade legroom for that?