My Australian Ancestors

*Chad*

This blog posting is a bit late and I have to take complete responsibility for that fact. I can’t say I have a good reason for it, but I guess I just let time get away. I digress.

A few weeks ago Melissa and I took a Sunday and went for a bit drive to find out what lies just outside the Adelaide area. Melissa had found an interesting drive that included a lot of interesting and uniquely Australian sites but little did I know that this seemingly innocent day trip Melissa had planned would actually turn into a shocking glimpse into my own ancestry.

We packed our cameras, a few snacks, and headed off out of town towards Hahndorf (a sleepy German town a few kilometers outside of the city in the Adelaide Hills). The drive always reminds me of Southern Oregon. Granted the trees are different and we drive on the wrong side of the road here in Australia, but I still think the feel and the overall appearance is strikingly similar. Once off the main roads, you drive through sweeping fields of green and brown, past homes that seem strangely removed from the modern world and through forests that appear suddenly only to be lost again in the rear view mirror. The roads narrow, the traffic thins and you know you’re in the country. Our first stop was in a little country town called Balhannah. It had been a good few hours since brekky and, naturally, I was famished. We pulled into a small shopping area that consisted of a Coles grocery store, a bottle shop and a few restaurants. Melissa and I stood for a few minutes trying to decide which café to try when a group of local kids rolled by on push-bikes talking about how they had just enough money for “chips” at a shop around the corner. I heard chips (French fries to us Yanks) and was instantly committed. The café was small but busy. The menu boasted a list of local ingredients and a few Australian style desserts. One thing I have really grown to love about South Australia is that they are very much into eating local, fresh and organic meats and produce. Brad would be proud to know that I have been eating free range eggs, fresh fruits and veg since arriving in Australia. No canned or frozen foods here (except, of course, the occasional can of Dr. Pepper)! After a delicious lunch we jumped back on the road and headed to a South Australian institution: Melba’s chocolate shop.

Melbas chocolate shop has been producing sweets for years in a few different places in South Australia but this particular shop was old, very old. Because Melissa is a fan of anything with the word chocolate involved she as excited as a kid in a…well…candy shop, to see a real, old school, operating chocolate shop. The building was a large open room with a lot of smaller rooms around the perimeter and bins of various as sundries lining the center. Each room was a different stage in the sweet making process; some rooms had chocolate some had hard candies while others were packaging. The center of the room was filled with chocolates, hard candies, gummy treats and other odds and ends. A lot of the candy seemed strange to me and some of it just down right terrible. I will never be into chocolate covered gummy snakes or chocolate apricots. Aniseed flavored things are very popular in South Australia; another sweet that would never agree with my taste buds.

After leaving the chocolate shop, we drove a few more kilometers to a nature reserve were we hoped to see some native Australian animals. After paying what I consider to be a massive amount of money to see animals in cages we started out by watching people line up to hold a chunky little koala. Melissa and I decided that the que wasn’t worth the photo op and we headed off towards what sounded like a bird being violently eaten. We rounded the corner past a few peacocks and a small pond housing two small gators over to a small bamboo walled enclosure. We immediately found the source of all the strange noises. Inside we watched three otters sprinting from one end of the cage to other chasing a small black and orange bird that had gotten trapped in the enclosure. It was by far one of the more hilarious things I have ever seen. The bird was safe as long as it stayed on the far side of a small wire fence, but the otters intently watched the birds every move chasing after it as it ran around trying to find a way out. In the rest of the park we found various birds, different kangaroos, wombats, and a couple echidnas. What I found most interesting was the flying fox area. I had never seen a flying fox that close up before but they are awesome creatures. Hanging from the ceiling by their feet, they would hang upside down eating a bit of lunch with their hand like wings.

Although I found the flying foxes very interesting, the next cage may have changed my life. The next cage was home to a group of capuchin monkeys. Now I have always considered myself a fan of climbing trees, swing on ropes, and jumping around on various structures so I already had a connection with monkeys. As Melissa and I walked up to the cage, a couple monkeys wondered over to get a closer look at us. We had bought a package of “animal crackers” before entering the park and Melissa and I had a few left over. I held out a cracker to see if I could get a monkey to take the thing out of my hand, and then it happened. Instead of taking the cracker from my hand, the little fella reached out with his miniature human hand and grabbed my finger. He didn’t just grab my hand and pull away in a mistaken attempt to get food. No no! He reached out purposely, grabbed my hand and looked into my soul! It was like my long lost ancient ancestor was holding my hand and saying “hello mate”. It was just fantastic. Here I was in South Australia, thousands of miles from home, and here was this little ancient relative holding my index finger. Then, just like that, he let go, grabbed the cookie from my hand and swung away. It was amazing. The rule of thumb here is that you will never know what’s around the corner or what sort of connection you’re going to make. The park was fantastic and I was grateful to have met a long lost member of my family in Australia.