When visiting Glasgow recently, as I wrote last week, I found an unexpected connection to Australia. During the same visit, as I walked away from the Glasgow Cathedral, I found another. 

This giant mural was painted by Australian artist Sam Bates, also known as Smug. Born in the small town of Nowra, New South Wales (about three hours south of Sydney), he has lived and worked in Glasgow for 16 years.
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The mural is beloved to Glaswegians and depicts a modern-day representation of Mungo, Glasgow’s patron saint. The birds in the mural symbolize the story of the Bird that Never Flew, one of St. Mungo’s miracles. The nearby Glasgow Cathedral is the final resting place of St. Mungo.

As a follow up to St. Mungo, Smug painted another mural at the corner of High Street and George Street. Here, St. Mungo is breastfed by his mother St. Enoch. Again, a bird appears in the mural.   

Smug has painted several other murals in Glasgow, and his work is known for both its photorealism and gentle humor.
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I happened upon this mural by Smug, which was commissioned for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. Tucked beneath the Kingston Bridge, the swimmers look as if they’re competing in the chilly River Clyde. 

The mural below remembers that people are not the only residents of Glasgow. These animals can be found in Glasgow’s parks and green spaces.

​Near Central Station is this mural of a girl with a magnifying glass. Towering above pedestrians, it looks as if she’s ready to pick up something or someone. 

This video excerpt from a Rick Steves’ episode about Glasgow includes one theory about this mural along with a look at street art by Smug and other artists.  

Finding signs of Australia in Glasgow reminded me that the world is interconnected and sometimes it feels like a smaller, cozier place.

Recently I saw the exhibition Storytime: Australian Children’s Literature, which runs until February 2020 at the National Library of Australia. It traces the development of children’s literature from colonial days to the present and includes everything from picture books for small children to novels aimed at young adults. For many native Australians, this would be a nostalgic journey, reminding them of many old favorites from childhood. For me it was an odyssey through a whole new landscape—a chance to learn more about Australia’s culture by exploring what stories authors have chosen to tell children.    
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No surprise, I gravitated to the stories featuring iconic animals like kangaroos, possums, koalas, and wombats. Women have written many of these books, and the work of three authors resonated with me.

The earliest work, written by Ethel C. Pedley and published in 1899, is called Dot and the Kangaroo. A kangaroo comes to help Dot, a young girl who’s lost in the bush. After eating berries that the kangaroo offers her, Dot can understand the animals around her.  The other bush animals help the kangaroo and Dot to find her way home. The book was made into an award-winning film in 1977 and eight more movies were made about Dot. Both the book and the movies include the idea that humans have had a terrible effect on the lives of native animals.

Mem Fox focused on possums, and in 1983, finally published Possum Magic. She started writing an early draft in 1978, and like Jackie French later, the book was rejected many times. The possum protagonist is Hush, whose grandma made her invisible to keep her safe. The problem is, Grandma has forgotten how to reverse the spell, but she knows it has something to do with food. The pair leave the bush to journey across Australia, trying traditional Australian foods along the way to find out which ones will make Hush visible again. This story, a popular favorite for Scholastic Books, has never been out of print since it was published and was turned into a musical. 

Five years later, in 1988, Mem Fox wrote Koala Lou, when Australian singer Olivia Newton-John asked her to write a book about a koala named Blue. That idea led to Koala Lou, a determined little koala who enters the Bush Olympics to get her mother’s affection and approval.

​Jackie French has written more than 140 books. Her breakthrough picture book, Diary of a Wombat, published in 2002, features a lively, demanding wombat named Mothball. The book is in the form of Mothball’s diary entries for a week as she tries to coexist with her new human neighbors. She soon learns how to train them to give her carrots, her favorite treat. With charming illustrations and Mothball’s deadpan delivery, this picture book is laugh-out-loud funny.  
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After seeing this exhibition, I not only feel like I learned a lot about Australian culture through its children’s literature, but I also made some new literary friends along the way.

On this anniversary of 9/11, a friend and I found ourselves on a hill to the north of Canberra. Walking through the National Arboretum, we listened to a guide talk about the 94 forests of different trees planted at the Arboretum.

Our guide stopped in front of a modest tree, called a Chanticleer Callery pear. 

This pear tree, he told the group, had been planted in 2011. The U.S. Ambassador at that time, Mr. Jeffrey Bleich, had planted the tree to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

This type of pear tree, our guide continued, has a history. In October 2001, 9/11 rescue workers at Ground Zero found a Chanticleer Callery pear tree under the ruins. Its trunk blackened, its roots and limbs snapped, the tree was alive, just barely. It was nursed back to health and later replanted in 2010 in the National September 11 Memorial, where it became known as the Survivor Tree. That tree, the guide concluded, and the one planted here in Canberra to commemorate that awful day are both symbols of hope.

My friend and I hadn’t spoken during the tour; no one knew we were Americans. And yet the guide had told the story thoughtfully, and the Australians had listened with respect and sympathy. What could have been a moment of alienation and separation, of feeling so far from home, was instead intensely moving because of the kindness and empathy of the people around us. Thank you, Australia.

Approaching the huge water tank from the trail side, it’s a nondescript green.

​Called the Narrabundah reservoir, it holds 18 million liters and supplies water to southern neighborhoods like mine. It’s important. But utterly unremarkable … unless you see the opposite side, from the highway. 

​The mural explodes with color. I can pick out native flowers like banksia, grevillea, and wax flower. A goanna climbs a tree above a kangaroo family.

​And the birds! Many fly across the mural or populate the ground and trees, including a pelican, yellow-tailed black cockatoo, a gang-gang couple, and a purple swamp hen.

Something that I have always appreciated about Canberra is the effort to make the mundane quirky, colorful, and even beautiful. Local artist Geoff Filmer has played a big role. He’s known as Canberra’s “mural man.” The water tank mural is one of many projects he’s tackled.  

This artist is now one of my personal heroes; I was delighted to discover that he was the one who transformed a pump station into the famous TARDIS on Red Hill.

I admire Canberra too, for supporting local artists in their quest to make the everyday into something extraordinary.

We don’t normally have white winters where I live in Australia, although snow has been part of our forecast this year. Still, I searched the nearby wetlands in this last bit of winter to see what white I could find.

No snow on the landscape, but clouds and trees and a ghostly moon contributed some winter white.

Birds provided some fleeting white splashes.

​And humans have made their own additions.

​While my home in Australia may not have the snowy seasons of my childhood, I can still find lots of winter white if I look.

Australia is known for its parrots. Of the more than 300 different species of parrots around the world, Australia has 56 of them, not counting sub-species. Twenty minutes north of Canberra’s city center is a spot to get up close and personal to many of Australia’s parrots: the Canberra Walk-in Aviary

Planted with suitable habitat for birds, this privately-owned aviary stretches over 3300 square feet and up nearly 30 feet high. It houses around 500 birds from 55 species, including more than 20 types of parrots.

​The admission price includes a plate of apple slices and a bowl of live meal worms. The birds flock to visitors (and more importantly, to the food they’re carrying). It is not the place for people who are squeamish about birds perching on them. One determined bird landed on me repeatedly, running his beak through my hair, as if grooming me.  

I made the acquaintance of the lorikeets, particularly the rainbow type. These small parrots are cheeky, social, and persistent. Although they are often a pest in the wild, there is no denying their charm here.

These lorikeets figured early in Australia's history: a rainbow lorikeet was the first parrot to travel back to England with Captain Cook.

I thoroughly enjoyed my morning here and look forward to the next time. I’ll return with a better zoom—the camera loves these birds. 

My thumb is the opposite of green. I can kill any houseplant, failing to keep even ivy or kitchen herbs alive. Imagine my boundless admiration when I visited the National Bonsai and Penjing Collection of Australia and saw what a combination of artistry and patience can do.

Bonsai is the art of growing miniature trees in pots, and it started around sixth century AD in Japan. Penjing means “pot scenery” in Chinese and goes back to the first dynasty of imperial China (around 221 BC to 220 AD). While the oldest bonsai and penjing are more than 1200 years old, this impressive collection is not that ancient. The oldest tree here dates to 1880.

About 80 trees are usually on display, and all the Australian or exotic trees have been donated or loaned by artists and their families or friends. The trees have been lovingly sculpted over time to create natural landscapes that evoke calm and tranquility. 

​Volunteers knit scarves for some of the trees, to keep them warm in Canberra’s chilly winters.

This lovely collection is located at the National Arboretum Canberra, and the website includes a 3D tour. 

While many towns may consider street art to be a public nuisance or at best a civic experiment, street art actually saved the town of Sheffield, Tasmania. Sheffield is located about fourteen miles inland of Tasmania’s northwest coast.

Sheffield was a thriving little town while several hydroelectric plants were being built in northwest Tasmania. By the mid-1980s though, the construction had finished, and the town shared in the area’s general decline. The town’s leaders looked for inspiration to the other side of the world, in Canada, in a small town on Vancouver Island called Chemainus.

Also facing an economic decline, Chemainus had begun painting murals on its buildings, which drew visitors and revenue. The citizens of Chemainus credited the murals with saving the town.

Sheffield decided to give murals a try too. In 1986, John Lendis painted the first mural, and Sheffield rebranded itself as the Town of Murals. 

​Sheffield encouraged artists, commissioning and creating murals for the town's buildings.  Many of the murals depict the area’s history and life in the town’s early days. The emphasis on having an enormous outdoor art gallery of more than 100 murals worked, and now Sheffield is a tourist destination.

The town now hosts a yearly International Mural Fest, where nine artists paint works based on one theme. The winning murals are then displayed in Mural Park for the next twelve months, ensuring that returning visitors can see new artwork.

Sheffield offers more information about each mural on a website, and the Visitor Information Center has both a map and a self-guided audio tour.

What a wonderful way to spend a morning—looking at the paintings that saved a town. 

Thirty minutes away from Canberra, at the top of a hill in Sutton, New South Wales, is an astonishing sight: a stone circle reminiscent of Stonehenge.

Unlike many people, when Robbie Wallace saw a pile of boulders, his first thought was to build Stonehenge on his own property. Robbie, who has an earth-moving business, was tasked by a local sheep farmer to get rid of the large rocks sticking up in his paddocks. The columns of blue granite reminded Wallace of Stonehenge, so he called his wife Tracey and asked her to find him a map of the site. When Tracey came home, she found the stones Robbie had hauled away, one of which weighs about 17 tons, in a line at the top of the hill. When asked how she felt about creating their own circle of stones, her response was, “What a great idea!” Over the next few weeks, they planned their “Henge,” drawing from plans of Stonehenge and their own imaginations. The result is magical on a cold, foggy morning, about a week before the winter solstice.​​

The Wallaces are passionate about their stone circle, and Robbie takes photographs in every type of weather and light. Those pictures are featured on their website’s photo gallery and Twitter feed. ​

While the Henge wasn't built to be a tourist attraction, people have wanted to see it. The circle of stones draws a wide range of visitors who come for book launches, Halloween parties, photography tutorials,  ghost tours, weddings (including one where all the participants were cosplayers), and druid ceremonies. Everyone finds something different in the circle of stones, and Tracey Wallace explains, "We let them take from it what they want."

Anyone interested in visiting the Henge can contact the Wallaces via email and make an appointment.

In the National Automobile Museum of Tasmania is a green 1974 Holden Monaro HQ GTS in completely original condition. Even though I know nothing about cars, it didn’t take long for me to recognize how special this one is.

To understand why, imagine a foggy night in early January 1975 on the Tasman Bridge in Hobart. In the Derwent River below, a bulk ore carrier, called Lake Illawarra, collided with several pylons of the Tasman Bridge. A large section of the bridge deck collapsed, falling into the river and onto the ship. The ship sank, and seven of its crew died. Four cars failed to stop in time, plunging into the river, killing five occupants.
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The green Holden Monaro was balancing precariously on what was left of the bridge.

Frank Manley was the driver of that new car. His wife Sylvia was with him, along with their daughter and her uncle in the back seat. As Frank later recollected, the lights had gone out on the bridge, so they thought there had been an accident. His wife realized the bridge was gone when the road’s white line disappeared. She yelled for Frank to stop, and he hit the brakes. 

“Next thing,” Frank remembered, “we dropped over, and the wife said, ‘Put her in reverse!’ And I said, ‘Bugger reverse, get out!’” Frank explained later, “The back wheels were off the concrete, off the bridge, and if I had put her in reverse, I think the vibration would have sent us the rest of the way off the bridge.”

Frank and his family escaped the car. Since the bridge collision had happened on a Sunday night, there was very little traffic, with few cars on the bridge. The disaster had cut the main artery to Hobart’s eastern suburbs, causing major disruption.​

The repairs to the bridge took nearly three years. It reopened in October 1977. Frank Manley continued to drive his Holden Monaro.
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Every museum is filled with objects that defied the odds, that lasted long enough to make it to a museum. This car, however, feels like a particularly lucky survivor.