In which the Intrepid Explorer does a Thing no Australian would Dare, and later makes an Amazing Astronomical Discovery

Still disoriented from crossing the International Dateline, I accompanied my gracious hosts to Bondi Beach, which you can see below. Bondi (pronounced Bond-eye), is apparently world famous as a site of surfer movies, and is currently the site of an Olympic Beach Volleyball stadium, much to the chagrin on locals.

As this was a Thursday in August, the beach was rather sparsely populated -- just a few tourists, some wet-suited surfers, and a couple backhoes building the volleyball pre-match area. Warned by Australians that the beach was virtually unihabitable at this time of year, this being the dead of winter and all, I nonetheless ventured down to the seaside. The sand was smooth and fine and densely packed. The water was clear, appearing green near shore and fading to blue as it got deeper.

Bravely, I removed my shoes and socks, rolled up my pants legs, and waded into the surf. Cold? Hah! Nothing like as bone-numbingly icy as the water off Provincetown, and able to give the warmer waters off, say, Falmouth a good run for their money. I guarantee you, people in Mashpee are swimming in water at least this cold right now and coming out to tell each other how nice it is.

Later we passed a family -- English by their shouted accents -- frolicing in the waves. Apparently they hadn't been warned, and were under the mistaken impression that they were having the time of their lives.

The next day, we visited Centennial Park, a large park lined with gum trees (at least Stefan said they were gum trees, but consider the source). About a half acre in the center of the park was a cordoned off swamp, a local "bush reclamation" project.

The park was filled with strange and exotic birds, most of which were very loud and all of which expected you to feed them. There was also a strange and exotic human, who brought at least three bags of bird seed and sat on the ground while pigeons and screaming cockatoos crawled all over him.

In the park, we paused and sat on the bank, and I gazed at the moon, visible in the daytime. "There's something weird about that moon," I said, but I couldn't say what.

Later, looking out from Stefan and Jeannie's balcony at the Opera House, which changed from purple to green to light blue and back again, I glanced up at the moon again. Now that it was night and the moon shone brighter, I got a better look. And I discovered a startling fact:

The moon is upside down.

OK, maybe that should be obvious, since my head is pointing in the opposite direction from how it usually does. But to see something as fixed and familiar as the moon, and to notice that the Man in the Moon is standing on his head, is a strange experience.

Any of you who doubted you were living on a globe, I now have the proof.