Australian ultrarunner to attempt pole-to-pole run

by Kraig Becker on

Australian ultramarathon runner Pat Farmer has announced that he plans to run from the North Pole to the South Pole in an attempt to raise money for charity. The endurance athlete, who once served a decade as a member of Australia’s parliament, has already completed long distance runs around and across his home country, as well as across the United States twice.

The expedition will get underway in March of 2011, beginning at the top of the world, 90ºN. From there, it’s a 13,000 mile journey, heading south the entire way, crossing through Canada and on to the West Coast of the U.S. From there, he’ll run down into Mexico, before proceeding through Central and South America, and eventually ending up in Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world. From there, he’ll hop a flight to Patriot Hills in Antarctica, where he’ll resume the run until he reaches the Pole at 90ºS. The entire journey is expected to take about 11 months to complete.

Farmer’s charitable goals are just as lofty as his physical ones. He hopes to raise $100 million for the Red Cross to help fund their clean water and sanitation efforts around the globe. The inspiration for this endeavor comes after a recent trip to Southeast Asia, during which he witnessed children living in poverty and lacking common resources that most of the developed world takes for granted. Upon his return home, he decided that he wanted to do something to help.

All told, when the run is complete, Farmer will have traveled through 14 different countries on three continents. He also says he expects to shred about 40 pairs of shoes and 300 pairs of socks along the way as well. As an extreme endurance athlete, he is use to running for 50-60 miles per day on a regular basis, but he also admits that this will be the biggest challenge of his life, and that he has been in heavy training to get ready.

Come next March, we’ll see if all of that training can sustain him in the harsh Arctic conditions.

A round-the-world trip: Where?

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Once I’d dispensed with my unrestricted fantasies of scurrying from seldom-visited corner to seldom-visited corner (see Monday’s post) we got down to the essentials of figuring out where we wanted to go.

The Micronesian islands of Palau and Yap were our first priorities. Both destinations had been on our radar for years. Palau with its faintly stinging marine lake jellyfish and the Federated Micronesian state of Yap with its enormous stone money both struck us as appealing in a magical, fairytale sort of way.

Once we’d identified our trip duration and got into the planning phase, however, the inclusion of Micronesia on our itinerary became a less appealing prospect. The flights there and onward were long. We’d need to overnight in Guam at least once, possibly twice, and though that wouldn’t be a hardship exactly, we wanted if at all possible to avoid layovers in places where we wouldn’t also be spending several nights.

The final clincher was the cost of zipping around Micronesia, which would have made an unavoidably pricey itinerary even more expensive. If we had been planning a round-the-Pacific tour, there is no question that Palau and Yap would have been included, but for a round-the-world trip they weren’t quite right. Reluctantly we crossed Micronesia off the list.Where else did we want to travel? We’d settled into a Southern Hemisphere focus, and we were keen to get back to Australia. We both wanted to visit Sydney and Melbourne. For a jaunt to a third city in Australia, Matt had made noises about Cairns and I focused on Perth. The inclusion of these two cities would have made a round-the-world air ticket even more complicated (more on that on Friday) so we dropped them and decided to divide our time in Australia between Sydney and Melbourne.

Years of thinking about Palau and Yap had us fantasizing about a Pacific island and we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to visit one. We glanced across the region and zeroed in on a Pacific territory easily visited from Australia: New Caledonia, a French overseas “collectivity” three hours by plane from Sydney. We decided to sandwich six nights in New Caledonia between stays in Sydney and Melbourne. In New Caledonia we would spend most of our time on Lifou, one of New Caledonia’s Loyalty Islands, with a day reserved for checking out New Caledonia’s capital, Nouméa.

Beyond that, we wanted some time on Mauritius and the French overseas territory of Réunion, two Indian Ocean islands. To journey from Melbourne to Mauritius we’d need to break our rule against short layovers with a single night’s stay in Johannesburg. We’d then divide nine nights between Mauritius and Réunion, which is a short 50-minute flight from Mauritius.

From Mauritius we’d fly to London, where we’d spend the final days of our round-the-world itinerary visiting friends and exploring various East End neighborhoods.

Without further ado, here is the full itinerary: New York (via a stop to visit friends in New Orleans) to Sydney to Nouméa to Melbourne to Johannesburg to Mauritius to Réunion to London and then home to New York.

Seven stops in five weeks. After five years of daydreaming, it’d hard to believe that it’s now happening.

Check out other posts in the Capricorn Route series here.

(Image: Flickr/Eustaquio Santimano)

Heavy snow delivers great late season skiiing down under

by Kraig Becker on

Ski resorts in the Australian state of Victoria are experiencing some of the heaviest snowfall in years, and it’s paving the way for the best late season skiing and snowboarding the region has seen in the past two decades. This great snow base is prompting Aussie’s to flock to the slopes before the spring melt puts an end to winter fun, and they’re finding some of the best all around conditions in recent memory.

For instance, popular resort Falls Creek has received more than their fair share of the white stuff, with 89 inches of accumulation for the season thus far. That’s their highest total since 1992. Similarly, Mount Hotham, another resort in the region, has topped 90 inches just for August, and has seen more than a meter of snow fall this week alone. Meanwhile, Mt. Buller has received over 13 inches of snow this past week too, with forecasts saying more could fall soon. When added to their already impressive totals for the year, it gives them their best season, in terms of accumulations, since 1985.

This all bodes well for the tourism economy in Victoria, where they expect visitors to be hitting the slopes will into the spring, With a considerable base already on the ground and more snow still falling, it looks like it is going to be a great time to be a ski bum down under.

[Photo credit: Alex Cohen via WikiMedia Commons]

G’day mate: Cruise lines head Down Under

by Ralph Grizzle on

Why would anyone choose to cruise Australia when there is so much to see in the interior? Two reasons: 1) Australia’s coast is spectacular, and some of the continent’s best-known cities — Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane Darwin and Perth — dot the coastline; and 2) cruise packages are designed to put passengers off the ship and into the Outback.

The latter packages feature so-called cruisetours, which are nothing more than a cruise and a tour combined. Cruise lines create these seamless excursions to allow passengers to have a full experience beyond the shoreline.

Both Celebrity Cruises and Holland America Line have developed a number of cruisetours to tie in with the deployment of their ships in the region next year.

Celebrity’s guests can select from four packages ranging from four to five nights. On the list of attractions: Ayers Rock, the world-famous giant red monolith, and the Great Barrier Reef.

Holland America Line also has Alice Springs as an alternative, the remote town in Australia’s Northern Territory. Among the experiences I had while in Alice Springs was ingesting witchetty grub, pictured above (for the delectable details, see Australian Outback Buffet: Garnish The Grubs, Pass The Maggots Please).Cruise lines are headed Down Under in record numbers. Remember, the seasons are reversed from the Northern Hemisphere, so itineraries get cranking in earnest around Christmastime.

Early next year, Silversea’s Silver Shadow departs Sydney on a 30-day circumnavigation voyage of Australia. It will be a first-ever for luxury cruise operator Silversea, which plans to visit Australia’s major cities as well as lesser-known ports.

Holland America Line will send not one, but two cruise ships to Australia in 2011. The Seattle-based cruise line will deploy its ships on itineraries that take in Australia and New Zealand.

Likewise, the two sister companies Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises plan to put more emphasis on cruises around Australia and New Zealand. Following suit with Holland America Line, Royal Caribbean will deploy two ships instead of one in the region next year. Celebrity Cruises will return to the land Down Under after a two-year absence, when the Celebrity Century begins cruising the region late next year. Century also will offer a circumnavigation of Australia, divided into two combinable 18-night sailings.

In 2012, Cunard Line’s flagship Queen Mary 2 also will circumnavigate Australia, a first for Cunard.

Adelaide’s Central Market offers the flavors of South Australia

by Laurel Miller on

“This is what Adelaideans do,” Mark Gleeson explained to me, as we wandered through Adelaide’s bustling Central Market. “The Market is a part of how we live, and has been since 1869.” Gleeson, a retired chef and owner of the Providore, a market shop selling pastry and picnic items, also leads public market tours. I’d hit the market on previous visits to South Australia’s charmingly provincial capital city. This time, however, I was his willing disciple as introduced me to vendors and gave me a detailed history of the state’s ethnic culinary influences.

The indoor public market, which is owned by the city council, is far more than a tourist attraction. That much was apparent from my first visit, in 2005. It’s always thronged with hungry locals shopping for weekend barbecues and beach picnics, sipping coffee, or savoring a bowl of Malaysian beef rendang.

As we walked, Gleeson told me, “Adelaideans are pretty savvy about food- we take an interest in how it’s produced, where it’s from. Knowing the vendors who make or sell it is part of the social fabric. We’re a multi-cultural city.” Unlike the rest of the continent, South Australia wasn’t settled as a penal colony, and the market reflects that.

The first German immigrants, fleeing religious persecution in their homeland, arrived shortly after the colony was established in 1836, followed by Russians, Czechs, Poles, and Hungarians. The state (indeed, all of Australia) also has a considerable Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Asian population. This mash-up of ethnicities have had a significant impact upon the food of South Australia, but none more so than the Eastern Europeans (wine, beer, and charcuterie being the most obvious examples).

As we wandered the marketplace–a tantalizing cacophony of sights and smells–Gleeson brought me to some of his favorite shops so I could try some ethnic specialities. Because of him, I’m now into a half-decade-long affair with the delicate piroskhis at Taddy Kurgan. These ample, fried puffs of dough resemble yeasty, perfectly-made doughnuts, except they’re stuffed with savory fillings of ground beef and rice or braised cabbage, or spinach and feta. The original shop owners emigrated from Kazakhstan. They recently sold to a Chinese couple, after training them very carefully in the art of piroshki and pelmeni-making.

Over at Sevenhill Fine Foods, Mr. Waldeck, a Polish refugee, sells traditional tastes of his homeland, including makowiec, a poppy seed bread, and regional charcuterie like mettwurst and lachshinken. Sun Mi runs a small stall offering her Korean take on made-to-order sushi, while Tony O’Connell of O’Connell’s Quality Meats specializes in local product, such as lamb. O’Connell, 52, started in his family’s shop at 15, and treats his customers like relatives. The first time I met him, in ’05, he gently tucked a couple of extra-fatty lamb chops into the display case while we talked. “We’ve got a couple of older ladies who will be real happy with those, so we’ll keep them,” he murmured. You don’t find personalized customer service like that too often these days.

At Wild Oz, you can buy native game such as emu, kangaroo, and wallaby, and feral (aka, “environmental nuisances”) wild pig and goat. A number of shops sell regional and indigenous “bush tucker” ingredients such as lemon myrtle, wattleseed, and quandong jam, and flaky, red, Murray River salt. House of Organic sells pristine, sustainably-grown Australian produce: Mildura asparagus, Adelaide Hills beurre bosc pears, kipfler potatoes. Seafood shops display local Smoky Bay oysters, sweet, teal-hued, blue swimmer crabs, scallops in the shell glistening with neon-orange roe, octopus, and bugs, a delectable Australian slipper lobster.

At dough!, Turkish pide and Lebanese flatbread compete for space with quiche, pastry, and locally-made, whole, glaceed figs, clementines, and kumquats, and plump, dried muscatel grapes from Barossa Valley vineyards. Across the aisle, The Smelly Cheese Shop is one of Australia’s finest specialty providores, stocked to capacity with imported and Australian artisan cheeses and housemade condiments such as skordalia, oil-packed, dried tomatoes, marinated bocconcini, and other picnic and cheeseboard items.

You need to fuel up for all of this browsing. Local’s love “brekkie” at Zuma’s, a coffee house serving savory muffins and egg dishes. The first place I always head, however, is Asian Gourmet. This unassuming, somewhat dumpy restaurant inside the market is famed for its laksa, a spicy, coconut milk-thickened noodle soup (the Singapore version with egg noodle is my pick). I’ve never had a better version, and I’m not ashamed to admit I actually plan my schedule around market hours, so I can get a daily (sometimes twice daily) fix.

Speaking of Asian food, the Market is conveniently located in Adelaide’s thriving little Chinatown, also known as Gouger Street. It’s lined with cheap and upscale Asian eats, most of which have sidewalk seating. I adore Wah Hing; besides consistently excellent, deceptively simple Chinese dishes, it’s a sleek, lively place with a great regional wine list.

And that describes Adelaide in a nutshell: locals may refer to it as “just a big country town,” but that doesn’t do justice to this city of astonishing diversity and quality ethnic cuisine. The Central Market is a national treasure, and Adelaideans love of convivial, adventurous dining and their pride in regional products make it a must-visit on ever food-lover’s itinerary.

For a more in-depth South Australian food experience, put Tasting Australia on your 2012 calendar. One of Australia’s largest food and wine festivals, it’s a week-long orgy of eating and drinking. It’s held in Adelaide every other year.

The following recipe is about as simple as it gets, and is very reflective of the region. Haloumi, a mild, salty, fresh sheep’s cheese traditionally from Cyprus, is artisanally produced on South Australia’s Kangaroo Island. Fried haloumi is a beloved regional treat. Serve as an appetizer, as part of a salad, or as a dessert course, drizzled with honey.

Fried Haloumi

recipe courtesy of The Market- Stories, History & Recipes from the Adelaide Central Market, by Catherine Murphy

Dust some slices of good-quality haloumi with flour. Fry quickly in olive oil until golden on both sides. Serve immediately with a squeeze of lemon and freshly ground black pepper.