On this Australian trip, I missed the Penguin Parade, but we saw Philip Island on a day's outing. It is a pretty island, full of enchanting beaches, striking views of the sea, small picture-postcard coves, cliffs, and blow holes, and eye-catching observation points from where you can see countless sea birds nesting or taking off or dipping into the sea. The pelicans, alas, were nowhere-- daytime for them is for foraging in the sea--but the gentle breeze combined with the island's delectable sights to leave us happy and excited when we headed back for Melbourne in the evening.

Queensland Art Gallery/Museum, South Bank, Brisbane.
One hot Brisbane morning, we got off at the City Cat service's South Bank station to spend the next few hours in the cool comfort of the Queensland Art Gallery and the Queensland Museum, all part of the same cultural complex, a place so beautifully designed that it was voted the world's "Best Public Project" in 2004. Inside the art gallery were many delights: Australian art of the nineteenth century, though not terribly original stylistically, distinctive for the broad vistas and bright light of the continent captured by landscape painters; major displays of leading Australian modernists such as Sidney Nolan and Margaret Preston; an exhibition of Australian photography from the mid-twentieth century; works by a contemporary jeweler Barbara Heath, and a special room containing interactive art for children (the room was full of thrilled boys and girls when we were there).

Like the Queensland Art Gallery, the Museum was packed with exhibits for people of all ages. I found especially fascinating the Aboriginal & Torres Islander Cultural Center and exhibits from the first penal colonies and displays on Queensland flora and fauna. We didn't have the time to visit the Queensland Sciencentre that is part of the museum, but the excitement of the children coming out of it was testimony to the appeal of the complex.

Race Relations
Australia is beautiful but of course it isn't paradise. The particularly clammy cloud that has always darkened this mostly sun-drenched land is racism. In the three weeks we spent in the country we came across a number of reminders of the way racism survives here. In fact, a couple of days before we left Dhaka I was sobered by a report on CNN about race riots in Bondi Beach. When we were in Sydney the TV channels were still carrying stories of mob excesses and analyzing the cause of the riots. We heard that fights had taken place between the sizable, strutting Lebanese youths reveling on the beach and the bigoted, beer-swilling white Aussies who were not ready to let anyone else swagger on their turf.

The museums we visited in Canberra and Queensland contained exhibits that reminded us that racism was always the serpent in this Eden, driving some white immigrants to acts of extreme cruelty and apartheid against the aboriginals. Although the government now appears to be determined to do away with discrimination and promote multiculturalism, some hate-genes of the past have persisted through generations. I might be mistaken, but one night in a Melbourne bus stop full of Chinese people and our sizeable Bangladeshi group, I think I heard a drunken white Aussie turn around and swear at us. Encounters like these always remind me of Countee Cullen's poem "Incident" where he remembers how once as an eight-year old boy in Baltimore he had been called "nigger" by a white man, so that he "saw the whole of Baltimore/From May until December;/ Of all the things that happened there/That's all that I remember."

Sydney Opera House
From up close, the Sydney Opera House is every bit as attractive as it looks on post cards or from a ferry moving across Cockle Bay. One of the highpoints of our stay in the city was the guided tour we took of it. Our tour guide, a Kwassie ("a Kiwi or a New Zealander who has become an Aussie or an Australian"), recounted the legendary birth of the Opera House, its driven, deadline-blind Danish architect, the aghast city fathers faced with unacceptable cost overruns, the eventual commissioning of the masterpiece and memorable concerts that took place in it. She showed us the impressive interior, gave us demonstrations of the amazing acoustics of the concert halls, and pointed out the intricate details of the ceiling. I was dazzled and went into the wishing mode: If I could I would be back here for my next holiday watching Carmen or Madame Butterfly!

Toilets
For the sensitive South Asian, an exasperating moment in the irritable V. S. Naipaul's book on his travels/travails in India, An Area of Darkness, is his account of Indian toilet habits. But the closet Brahmin has a point: tourists in the sub-continent will inevitably suffer as they travel across the countries of the region either because of the lack of toilets or because of the filthy state in which most of them seem to be. How nice then to travel for hundreds of miles at all times of the day in a country where the toilets are never unclean and always working, and where whether one is in a park miles from nowhere or in an overcrowded airport lounge early in the morning, one can feel relieved at the thought that one can relieve oneself in a clean toilet whenever one wants to. I salute then the cleanliness of Australia; for a traveler to a distant land, no negligible issue!

Universities
No doubt because university teaching is my life, I am fascinated by campus architecture. In Sydney, therefore, I went to see Macquarie University, in Canberra the Australian National University, in Melbourne, Monash and Deakin University and the University of Melbourne and in Brisbane the University of Queensland.

University education is big business in Australia and business is booming! I believe that it earned the country over a billion dollars last year; the result can be seen in the investment being made in campuses: new buildings seem to be everywhere while old ones have been refurbished and reequipped with state-of-the-art research and educational facilities. Of the campuses we visited, the University of Melbourne is in the most splendid shape. It's obviously in the Oxbridge mould, architecturally as well as educationally. The sprawling, lush green campus of the University of Queensland is pleasant too, but of the newly built campuses, only Deakin appealed to me because of the innovative ways in which its architects designed their buildings in the middle of Melbourne city, making maximum use of the space available while establishing a contemporary, almost postmodern ambience.

Vineyards
In a few Dhaka cocktail parties, Australian wine will occasionally be served, and wine connoisseurs now acknowledge that the best Australian wines, like some South African and Californian ones, are comparable to good European ones, but it was a surprise to see vineyards almost everywhere we went in New South Wales and Victoria. For me one memory that will stay vivid is that of vineyards in the evening sun next to the highway as we drove to Mornington Peninsula--a couple of hours away from Melbourne--the hills appeared to heady me to be draped with grapevines and looked very picturesque in the mellow light.

War Memorial, Canberra
The Australian War Memorial in Canberra has been built to commemorate the thousands of Australians who have been killed in the two world wars and the Korean and Vietnam War but is also a war museum. It records how Australians have given their lives for conflicts that erupted in the western hemisphere and is a reminder of how closely Australians link their nation's destiny with Great Britain and the United States. The most impressive part of the memorial is the roll of honor where all Australians killed in conflict are listed; there is a solemnity about the way the list has been put up and the Hall of Memory it leads to is particularly memorable.

When are our martyrs going to have a memorial museum as solemn and as grand and as complete in the Canberra one? When will we pay our debts to every single one of them for 1971?

Xmas Day, 2005
We spent the day in and around Sydney, but the city had gone quiet; most people seemed to have taken off for the country or for holidays overseas. To me, it didn't feel like Christmas, not certainly the way one is encased by it in Canada or USA; the weather in the city that day was quite hot and the vegetation not quite right; no pine trees, no chimneys, what ruse could Santa take to invade the minds of children of all ages in such a climate? Even the TV channels didn't appear to be preoccupied with the day, unlike on New Year's Eve, which seemed to be an occasion for revelry and non-stop partying.

Yarra River Promenade, Melbourne
It was evening when we got down from the delightful (plus free!) City Circle Tram, crossed the Yarra, and strolled into the Southbank Promenade. Modeled obviously after London's magnificent art para on the Thames (as is Brisbane's South Bank), it is a reminder of how cities can learn from each other to become more livable, cosmopolitan, and lovable. Theatres, sculptures and cafes dot the South Bank; on the Yarra riverboats ply tourists and rowing teams glide their boats swiftly past people like us who decide to fling themselves in the grass, rest tired legs and fascinate themselves with the wonderful views of city skyscrapers, parkland, and people relaxing.

Zenith Beach
As I think of our Australian trip a month later the image that first comes to my mind is of its blue skies and blue water, its innumerable beaches and bays where one can surf, sail, or simply stretch out in the sand. It is fitting then that I end my Australian travel piece in Zenith Beach, a small, somewhat wild, but perfectly beautiful beach facing Tasman Bay in New South Wales. Nowhere near as glitzy as the Gold Coast in Brisbane, or as crowded as Manly Beach in Sydney, it is an example of how much there is in Australia for one to discover and enjoy quietly, and at one's own pace too.

The author would like to thank his hosts in Australia, Asif and Saima in Sydney, Shahid and Shammi in Canberra, Rakib and Urmi in Melbourne, and Obaid and Iffat in Brisbane, without whom, truly, this could not have been written. Fakrul Alam is professor of English at Dhaka University.