Liz just wrote about the view from the Langham, Melbourne, where I also stayed this past Spring.  It reminded me of something that happened to me on that visit.

I am in no way a morning person, but my body never quite accommodated to Australian time. I was routinely up before sunrise. One morning, I threw back the curtains on the day to admire the skyline and…what was this? In the gray pre-dawn sky, I observed three gray flying objects — apparently bearing down on the city.

Occasionally they changed color, flaring orange. I rubbed my eyes, blinked a few times.

The flying objects were still there. Was I dreaming? I going crazy? Was Melbourne under some sort of attack? I got my camera, perhaps to document the end of this lovely city, but more sensibly to use the zoom lens as makeshift binoculars.

Aha, hot air balloons.

I hadn’t planned on going to Melbourne, Australia.

But the abrupt end to my ‘around the world’ trip resulted in having to return home to a cold and wet New Zealand a couple of weeks earlier than planned. And cold and wet was something I wasn’t quite ready for.

So when friends, who were heading to Melbourne, Australia for a few days,  suggested I join them, I jumped at the chance. Surely, I thought, it would be warmer in Australia.

Sadly, I was wrong.

Turned out that Melbourne was just as cold and wet as Christchurch. In fact, it might have even been colder, thanks to a wind that felt like it had blown through from the Antarctica.

Not willing to let a little thing like rain and icy winds stop us from sightseeing, we soldiered on, adding layer after layer of clothing to keep out the cold.

We walked the streets, wandered through the huge open air Queen Street Market, and examined Federation Square‘s fascinating architectural designs.

In the end we had to give up.

Tired of cold noses and wet feet, we headed back to The Langham hotel for warmth, hot tea …and dry shoes.

We arrived too late to partake in The Langham’s Chocolate Indulgence Afternoon Tea.  But that was okay, because we got something just a good -  a room with a view.

Located on the nineteenth floor, the room had a bird’s eye view of the Yarra River that flows through the center of Melbourne. 

On this side of the river you can just make out the Southbank Promenade. Sparsely populated during the winter months, it becomes alive in summertime, with locals and visitors alike strolling around and checking out the area’s upmarket shops, restaurants, cafes, food courts and  five-star hotels.

Across the river to the right is the award winning Melbourne Aquarium with it’s 360 degree Oceanarium housing giant sharks and stingrays .

Directly across the river are numerous well worn train tracks that allow commuters, and the occasional tourist, to get into and out of the city with ease.

A little more to the left, just out of sight, is the Flinders Street Train Station. Built in 1910, it’s not only Australia’s oldest train station, it’s also the busiest suburban railway station in the Southern Hemisphere.

Throughout the evening, sipping first hot tea and later wine, we sat and watched the flow of the traffic, the trains, and the river.

Sometimes having a ‘room with a view’ is really all you need.

I’ve just gotten back from Marrakech, where the temps reached into the 100s, F.  I spent quite a lot of time lounging around the rather fabulous pool of the distinctly fabulous hotel, La Mamounia. I watched many a well-preserved European bikini’d body arch their backs towards the sun in order to tan.

Of course, the western vogue for toasting is not shared universally.  When I was in Shanghai last summer, the analogous well-preserved woman was obsessed with keeping her skin far from the sun’s rays. Protection included a colorful parades of parasols,  what I can only describe as “forearm cozies” – handmade fabric coverings protecting the skin from the elbow to the wrist — and for bicycle riders, what looked like a welding mask. (Although I think that also defended against road debris.)

In Asia, white is beautiful, and a seemingly without controversy.

From what I gather, this is a class or status-based issue than one that’s tainted with skin color-based racism that  stains history here in the New World. (People of high castes were not manual laborers, ergo, not in the sun’s rays, ergo, tan=poor.) But it’s still startling nonetheless to encounter ads for Avon ClearWhite Supreme,  Yves Saint Laurent’s White Mode line,  Dior’s DiorSnowPure.  And it’s startling to learn, as I did from Foreign Policy’s blog the other day, that Vaseline has just launched a Facebook app targeted at the Indian market that lets you lighten your skin on your profile picture.

It was also eye-opening when I visited  downtown Melbourne, and stumbled across a display of blackface dolls, in the Block Arcade. They’re called “Golliwoggs”, and although a local I spoke to assured me that they were noncontroversial among Australians, a little digging revealed that they’re not completely benign there either. This shopkeeper evidently moved this display out of the window after a 2009 controversial blackface performance on an Australian variety show.

That backlash had its own backlash, as discomfort with these dolls was also seen as projection of American morals, history and shame on a land far far away. It’s an odd twist on the old argument against US cultural imperialism, although I wonder whether discomfort over racial stereotypes is really in the same category as, say, Hollywood’s global dominance.

In any event, the controversy faded as fast as a suntan in winter — when I visited in March 2010, the Golliwoggs were restored to full window display.

Monkeys and dead fish are probably the last thing most visitors expect to see in Sydney, Australia. But those who veer a little off the usual tourist path with find both in abundance.

Monkeys and a multitude of other animals can be found at the Sydney’s Taronga Zoo  located on the Sydney Harbour, still within sight of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. Based on a bar-less system and offering a spectacular views of Sydney, this Zoo has been entertaining locals and visitors since 1916.

Covering over 40 acres, the best way to get an overview of the layout is by taking the Sky Safari cable car which operates from the top entrance to the Ferry Wharf from 9.30am to 5.00pm daily.

Dead fish, on the other hand, can be found right in the heart of Sydney at the Sydney Fish Market. Most locals know about the market, but very few, including the doorman at the Four Points at Sheraton where we were staying, know about the large Fish Auction that occurs every morning behind the market. The second largest fish market auction in the world (the largest being in Japan), it is a hive of activity from 5 am to mid morning. It’s open only to those in the industry, but visitors can get take part in a behind the scenes tour of the Sydney fish auction floor on Monday, Thursday, and Friday mornings.

A demure woman prepares for a cooking demonstration at the Rundle Street Mall in Adelaide, Australia.

Her modest, long-sleeved brown and blue checked dress and her center-parted and feathered hair are picture-perfect late 1970s housewife — which makes sense, since it is 1981. She’s got a microphone to help raise her voice over the cheery mall music, and soon she’s ready to begin the creation of Murray River Punch.

“One of the most wonderful things about this beverage is you don’t have to buy anything much,” she says, as she busies herself over a portable gas burner.  She starts with deoxidized water, and then, using the exact cooking show patois and intonation that recalls Julia Child, calls for the next ingredient.

“A quarter cup of human urine,” she says.

“Just collect a bit of human urine and set it aside. To complement that, you should have some human feces. Here we are. Collect it in the morning…wrap it up to keep it fresh. So in that goes. Right. Now, chop it up…like so. As you know, sewage goes straight into the water so this is really quite an important ingredient to get the full effect, the taste of the punch. Mix it up with the hand blender. You can use an electric blender for doing this, too of course. But for public demonstrations I’ve found it much too noisy.”

And so it goes on, with the woman — actually, the experimental artist Bonita Ely — adding toilet paper  (“you don’t have to shred it or anything like that, as you know, toilet paper is very absorbent”),  fertilizer (“two tablespoons of fertilizer should do it, I should think. It’s an important addition of flavors to the drink”), European carp which were introduced into the river and became invasive, lots of salt, chemicals and insecticide. (“If you want to make this drink even more interesting, add a defoliant, like Agent Orange for instance. But I think we’ll just stick to the insecticide today.”)  And then she’s done.

“Oh, my mouth is just absolutely watering,” she says. “It looks absolutely wonderful.”

I saw stills of this performance in Melbourne last month at the Ian Potter Centre at the National Gallery of Victoria, part of the museum’s permanent collection of contemporary work, much of which had a strong political theme. (If you’re not getting to Melbourne any time soon,  watch and listen to the work here.)  Ely’s been following this troubled  South Australian river since 1977, and released a series of photographs in 2008 and from a time of drought in 2009.

You can talk about river pollution in terms of sediment, run-off, invasive foreign species and other abstractions for hours and hours, but nothing makes you understand the issue quite as well as watching how a particular river got that way — and contemplating the results in a decorative punch bowl, elegantly garnished with rabbit dung.

On Earth Day 2010, this Thursday, have a drink (of something else) to that.