the land of tomorrow

I am having a Billy Pilgrim moment.

You know the type. They are summed up in the opening line of Slaughterhouse Five when Billy Pilgrim (Kurt Vonnegut's take on John Bunyan's most-famous creation) tells us: "I have come unstuck in time."

I have been in Australia (Sydney to be exact) for the past three days with my cruise pals Sophie and the Millers (Nancy and Roy). Time has been a constant in our conversations. Calculating the difference in hours between here and wherever. The coda is always -- "yesterday." Because of that fascinating temporal devise: the international dateline.

But Australia has a feel of being a place separate from time. Starting with its animals. The place is filled with a menagerie of evolutionary cul-de-sacs that thrived when the Australian continent separated from Asia.

Kangaroos. Wombats. Koalas. Platypuses.

This was Sophie's first trip to Down Under, so we wandered over to Sydney Wildlife to gape at some of Australia's stranger (and tastier) animals. One of my favorites is the inland taipan -- the world's most-venomous snake -- and one of Australia's prettiest.

Distance also gives Australia the feel of being in its own orbit. But not so much any more. Air travel has bridged the gap that distance once gave to the country.

We had lunch with Sophie's cousin, Emma, who had emigrated here decades ago from Britain -- about the same time Sophie's family made the same exit in a westerly direction to Canada.

Our conversation with her evoked the same sense of adventure that was once stored in wagon trains that trundled across the American west a century and a half ago. Admittedly, Emma's experience was far more sophisticated than that.

That "wagon train" reference was intentional. On each of my visits to Australia, I have been struck with the decency and virtues of the people I have encountered. There is a certain sense of "midwestern values" that the nostalgia set adores.

And rightfully so. Because that nostalgia complimenrts the moral values that tend to get lost in many of our daily lives.

The national television news here is thoroughly parochial. And it gives me a warm feeling. Walter Cronkite with a Kookaburra accent.

But Sydney is not a Meredith Willson sound stage. It is a modern city of 5 million people that offers almost anything a visitor might want. Fashion. Electronics. Beaches.

And then there is the cultural crown jewel of the country -- the Sydney Opera House. No tourist can avoid its siren call. My camera's storage card is larded with shots of it.

I have often wondered why the building can change colors from bright white to a warm amber. I knew the intensity of the sun played a part, as well as the curves of the styled-sails that make up the three structures.

If you look up close at the tiles covering the surface, they give up the secret of the ever-morphing colors. The tiles themselves do not have a uniform color. Similar to Seurat's paintings, Our eyes combine the differing colors to create new hues throughout the day.

But, the opera house is not merely to be viewed from the outside. I like to attend at least one performance inside the building. And those performances can include recitals, concerts, or plays.

And, of course, opera. This year, the four of us attended a pleasant production of Puccini's "Turandot."

Time has not been kind to the opera. Man-woman relationships filtered through the eyes of a 1920s Italian composer have not well-weathered our current tumultuous sexual relationships.

But it is an opera. And complex story lines merely get in the way of diva-nation. 

It is now Friday morning (tomorrow to you). We will be boarding our ship in about seven hours.

I do not think I have told you about this cruise. We will be sailing around the northern coast of Australia stopping in Brisbane, Airlie Beach (for the Great Barrier Reef), Cairns, and Darwin ending up in Singapore. A number of sea days are peppered in between.

It should be a great cruise. Especially with Sophie (who I am always pleased to see) and the Millers.

So, let me return to tomorrow and start my day.