An extreme monotreme, a lounging croc, and a turtle the size of your bed

There are things that are rare — a successful University of Houston alum, a commercial where the Trix rabbit actually gets some of the cereal — and then there are things that are unthinkable (which, before meeting Tracy, entailed ‘attractive Yankees fans’). For me, the existence of monotremes fell, until two days ago, squarely in the latter category.

Sure, I’d seen pictures of these awkwardly graceful creatures, but then again, I just saw a picture a picture of Bigfoot on CNN.com (although that could just be an unshaven Wolff Blitzer). With the existence of these genetic anomalies up in the air, I decided a trek to the Sydney Aquarium was in order.

Bypassing the plethora of Finding Nemo memorabilia — it seems like Pixar had a bigger impact on the city than the 2000 Olympics could have ever wished for — I meandered into the depths of the Aquarium, shaded on one side by the mammoth Murray Cod, the size of an obese child, and on the other by Eastern Water Dragons, stealthy catfish, and a puttering, sputtering Cinnamon Teal. Following the yellow ground-arrows, I blitzed past these bland, common-place animals and straight toward the main focus of the entire waterfront complex: the monotreme.

Ok, I guess since we’re not all biology majors — with far too little room to BS on tests, I discarded biology for English a long time ago — I’ll explain what a monotreme is. It’s a mammal….with, uh, the ability to lay eggs…that are unique to Australia…yeah, that’s about as much as I got from the not-so-explanatory signs. Needless to say, I’m sure that’s all you need to know to figure out that the monotreme du jour was none other than he duck-billed, deep-diving, ankle-barbed platypus.


They say you never forget your first (thanks Stephanie Rice). Clearly, ‘they’ were talking about platypus encounters.

In a five-meter long tank of frond- and root-filled water, with a graveled bottom and rocky outcroppings above the pond, a foot-long creature — and that’s the only way you can really describe it — darted up, down, and all around the semi-translucent pool. In one of the more farfetched comparisons I’ve ever found, the platypus in question reminded me of an electron (wow, I’m being really science-y today, huh): smaller than I imagined, but with a non-stop motor and a penchant for releasing more energy than the lackadaisical spearfish that surrounded him.

Everyone knows that platypus’ modus operandi. Alonside the kangaroo and the koala, the platypus — which Aboriginal populations viewed as sacred and thus inedible (think Hindus and cows) — rounds out the triumvirate of Australian animals. And rightly so. With a bird’s beak, a beaver’s pelt, a seal’s flippers, and a Lhasa Apso’s rotund torso, the platypus is truly on of evolution’s jokes. If there is a God, the platypus came directly from his/her closet of spare parts. It’s no wonder that English taxonomists thought the original specimen was a hoax.

Still, the animal’s uniqueness and homeliness — alongside the fact that ‘on land, they cannot see directly ahead and often run into obstacles — endear it to the fawning public. The platypus received far and away the most attention of all the marine life, although it couldn’t have cared less: for the entire 15 minutes I watched it, the animal’s sole purpose seemed to be digging a hole to China (or, since we’re in Australia, I guess it would be Mexico) in the vain search for food.

Of course, the platypus was not the only major player of the aquarium. From the ghostly ‘banana-peel’ eel to the waddling Little Penguins to the Southern Calamari Squid, whose manta ray head helped it fly from one end of the tank to the other, and back, and forth, and back, and forth…for hours on end, the aquarium was anything but a one-trick lobster (there were no ponies here, so I went with the next best thing).
The Mourning cuttlefish, a small, beanie-baby-esque squid tugged at my heartstrings as, upon my approach, it started bumping into the glass (although on second thought, maybe it just thought I was food). There were the typical staples of marine life: a basking crocodile, hungry for tourists; a pooped-out seal, sun-bathing on the center rock (and thus unable to be seen from the tunnels below); the leafy sea-dragons playing neighbor to the highly-poisonous, highly-ornate lionfish; and, as always, the inspirations for the characters of Finding Nemo.


These foreign, floundering species all had beauty and intrigue on their own merit, and yet they were either too sloth-like or too cramped to be of any real significance in my eyes. So it was with great, anticipatory zeal — and a steady diet of Discovery Channel’s ‘Shark Week’ — that I descended into the bowels of the shark tunnels.

And disappointed, I was not.

With Harry Potter knockoff music filling the background, I (subconsciously) held my breath, took a step, and found myself immediately surrounded by the largest, densest, and most breathtaking display of mariner life I had ever seen.

I immediately realized that ‘shark tunnel’ was a misnomer — a freckled, sheep-sized Ornate Wobbegong was napping on the top of the tunnel entrance, a three-meter Loggerhead Turtle soon glided by, and a manta ray that could have easily doubled for Aladdin’s flying carpet quickly made itself evident — but I was nowhere near bummed. With only three feet separating my head from the top of the tunnel, the proximity to these colossal beasts caught my heart and turned my eyes into saucers.



But it wasn’t only the upper half of my body that was affected. As soon as a Gray Nurse Shark landed over my head, I’m sure the knocking of my knees could have been mistaken for Morse Code. (It wasn’t till later that I realized that the Gray Nurse Sharks, whose populations have diminished almost to the point of no return, are nothing more than big puppies, preying solely on pencil-sized fish.)

Sure, there was pressurized glass separating our worlds. And yeah, I may have been sharing the experience with dozens of Japanese tourists, none of whom understood the concept of ‘excuse me.’ But the few moments I spent in those tunnels made the entry fee worth every Australian penny.

Some more, (thankfully) final references to Nemo greeted me on the way out, but I didn’t mind. Somehow, a giant turtle had accomplished what a tear-jerkingly boring lecture on Victorian novels could not: bringing a smile to my face.

With a couple hours left to burn, I decided to mosey through downtown Sydney. If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again — this city is absolutely gorgeous. From tall, sprinkling skyscrapers to imposing 19-century façades, this city has encompassed its past and present in a way most cities can only dream of. And the way it’s been gift-wrapped and delivered to the cosmopolitan public only cements the fact that the city is unique. The Queen Victoria building may encompass this time-traveling sentiment best of all. Looking like a revamped, refurbished Parliament building, this block-long, multi-domed marvel is actually a high-class shopping mall, with clothing boutiques, chocolate factories, and an Adidas store calling it home. Located outside the mall are a twenty-foot high statue of the building’s namesake, shipped directly from the mother country, and a wishing well dedicated to her loving pooch (which comes directly with an English voiceover directly well-wishers how they should deposit their coins, arf, arf!)















Following the shopping extravaganza — don’t worry, since I’m already broke, I didn’t buy anything from Tiffany’s — I walked past the towering Town Hall and headed to Hyde Park, a three-block long tree-fest, home to the Anzac Memorial (which comes complete with Jesus strapped to a sword, which was just kind of awkward) and a statue of a dude beheading a minotaur, which must have symbolized the Greeks third-century B.C. conquest of New South Wales, right?


A stroll through the Royal Botanical Gardens finally yielded a picture of the elusive-but-only-because-I’m-lazy Sulpher-Crested Cockatoo, whose nest-building skills entailed finding a hole in a tree branch and lying down. Still, the Cockatoo wasn’t even the highlight of the Gardens. With however many hundreds of imported species calling the greens home, the RBG was a stupendous feat of botanical architecture, with herb gardens (make sure to pronounce the ‘h’ down here) flanking Jurassic mangrove trees, all while prancing statues looked on from the distance.
If I ever have an appreciation for foliage, this is the place to go.

The final trek I made landed me at the feet of the Sydney Opera House, whose disappointments have dissipated somewhat — must be afflicted by some cousin of Stockholm Syndrome. I still needed to take my first snapshots of the oft-snapshotted (yeah, I just made that word up), and, well, here’s one.


Oh, one other thing I noticed on the walk through the city: It turns out the the Sydney Imax is the biggest in the world, which I did not know until a few days ago. Therefore, not only did I attend the New York City world premiere of The Dark Knight, not only did I attend the midnight showing, but I’ve also seen the movie on the biggest screen in the world.


One more nugget to tell my students when I’m teaching the one-hour ‘Batman: The Modern Myth, the Cultural Icon, and the American Staple’ course my senior year. (It turns out that those painful Victorian novel lectures are the perfect time to finalize my syllabus for the course.)