Being an Account of an Expedition to the Antipodes

Undertaken in the Year of Our Lord 2025

For the Purpose of Scientific Inquiry and Exploration

By Dr. Kelly and Mr. Cambias

Back in 2024, Diane got awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to go study the reproductive physiology of echidnas in Australia. She flew across the Pacific in January 2025 and spent the next four months at the University of Adelaide gathering eight terabytes of data, plus tissue samples.

On April 18 I set out to join her. For reasons I don't fully understand, I had to fly out of JFK airport in New York to get to Los Angeles, where I boarded the plane for the long haul across the ocean. I won't discuss the flights — they were uneventful, which is the best kind of trip to have. I arrived in Sydney on Easter Sunday and got the stiffness out of my legs by running around the airport in search of my flight to Adelaide, thanks to my airline helpfully re-booking me when the trans-Pacific flight arrived too late to make the original connection, and not telling me about it.

The trip from Sydney to Adelaide was interesting. From the air, Australia's landscape looks very different from what I'm used to. It doesn't look like North America, nor Europe, which are the places I've seen from above. Much of the area I saw from the air I later got to see on the ground, and there were things I was curious about.

Diane met me at the Adelaide airport and drove us back to her rented apartment in the seaside town of Largs North, north of Adelaide near the port district. I don't sleep well on airplanes, and my internal clock was 14 hours off, but I managed to stay awake until after dinner — a lovely supper of lamb chops and local red wine — then collapsed into bed.

On Monday the 21st, my first full day in Australia, we walked over to the commuter-rail station in Largs and rode to Port Adelaide, where we visited the Train Museum. It's big, housed in an old railroad freight terminal, and definitely exceeded expectations, and I learned a fair amount about railroading in Australia: the initial problem with different rail gauges in the different colonies (a baffling issue since presumably they were all buying British equipment anyway), the life of Bob the Railway Dog (a dog), and the immense cultural/social significance of railroads in Australia.

Railroads are/were a major cultural force in a lot of countries, of course: the USA, Canada, India, and Russia. Probably others. What strikes me is that all the countries where trains were a Big Deal are big countries. Having a way to get across the continent in a week instead of a year was a huge change for those places. Where the rails went determined the future growth of Russia and North America — you can see the old rail routes in satellite views of city lights. (Australia's geography seems more based on where the fantastically good natural harbors were.)

After the museum we visited a nearby brewpub and sat outside in semi-drizzle while I had my first taste of Australian beer. I suppose this is the place where I should gush about how amazing it was, but I won't, for two reasons. First, I'm not much of a beer guy — my benchmark for beer is the old K&B Drugstore house brand from New Orleans, so I'm easily impressed. Second, I didn't drink all that much beer in Australia, as I preferred to concentrate on wine. I don't know if the products of Pirate Life Brewing are the best thing they've got, the worst, or solidly average. It wasn't bad.

That evening we went out for wine and oysters with our next-door neighbors, who turn up later in this saga but whose names I am keeping private. A. and B. are a lovely couple and we killed at least two bottles of wine that evening — along with four dozen oysters and a few hapless potatoes. (My conscience is clear.)

On Tuesday the 22nd we ventured up the rather on-the-nose "Mount Lofty" in the range of the same name just west of Adelaide. Our objective was the Cleland Wildlife Park, a lovely zoo with amazing views over the Adelaide metropolitan area below and the St. Vincent Gulf to the west. At the park we saw wallabies, koalas, kangaroos, dingos, echidnas, a solitary wombat, and a huge variety of birds.

After three hours pestering local fauna we went back down to Diane's pied-a-terre in Largs North, where I took a turn making dinner: shrimp and ravioli. We spent the evening reading an interesting paper on the Khazar Khaganate, then once again I collapsed before 9 p.m.

Wednesday the 23rd was lovely (pretty much every day was lovely — unless otherwise noted, assume that's the default). We got up early and rode the train downtown so that Diane could spend an hour downloading her massive cache of data onto a portable device to carry home.

While she was clicking on folders in the University of Adelaide's Imaging Center, I strolled across downtown Adelaide. My course took me past the South Australia Parliament building — both the brick original and the florid neoclassical pile put up half a century later — the Governor's residence, and the ANZAC Memorial. As ANZAC Day was coming up later that week, crews were out decorating the Memorial with flags: British, Australian, and the flags of Australia's armed forces.

Australia's service flags are an interesting mix. The Army banner is simply the national flag: a blue field with the Southern Cross, a Union Jack at the canton, and a seven-pointed "union star" underneath the Union Jack.

The Navy banner is a neat variation on the Royal Navy's "White Ensign." Where the British navy flag has a white field with a St. George's cross on it and the Union Jack at the canton, the Aussies have a white field with a Southern Cross in blue stars on it and the Union Jack as usual.

The Royal Australian Air Force's flag is frankly, kind of dumb. It follows the same pattern as the Navy banner, with a Union Jack, a sky-blue field, the Southern Cross . . . and an RAAF roundel stuck in just in case you're too stupid to figure out it's their banner. Way to go, guys. Why not have "THIS IS THE RAAF FLAG" in big letters in case anyone's still confused?

My ultimate destination was the Australian Space Discovery Centre, a fun little museum focusing on space science and Australia's contributions to the field. Adelaide is the center of Australia's space program, as the state of South Australia is home to both the Parkes radio observatory (famous from the film The Dish) and the Woomera rocket test range. The museum is compact, and doesn't really have many artifacts on display, but it does have some nice interactive exhibits — all of which actually work!

Diane collected me there and the two of us had a lovely midday Japanese dinner, including some of the best fried octopus I've ever eaten. Afterward we went to the South Australian Museum to see the collection and the special traveling exhibition about the Galloway Hoard, a Viking treasure trove dug up in southern Scotland.

We made our way back to Largs North and indulged in more oysters and Australian sparkling wine, and then off to bed.