Perfleshing

My goodness, winter is crap! I mean, all these cold nights and uncharacteristically grey days we’ve been having, it’s just like England in early October. It makes you pine for the coast, tropical North Queensland preferably, but if that’s a bit out of reach, then South Coast NSW will do. Perfect for reflection and refreshment, or Perfleshing as they say.

For the second coast trip in a row I based my travel mostly around eating opportunities, arriving in Bateman’s Bay for brunch at this little place by the water. After the big breakfast I was keen to walk it off and waddled a little north of here at Maloney’s Beach, the first of several beaches on the beach part of the tour.

With the first sand broken, I whizzed south down the Princes Highway to a place called Mystery Bay, the only mystery being how somewhere so beautiful can be so empty and pristine, so refreshing and perfect, so pleasingly mild for midwinter, so suitably designed for a little read propped up against a rock.



We have perfect and refreshing then, so where’s the reflection bit I don’t really hear you ask? Courtesy of the many inlets and lakes of course, both at Beauty Point (another one of those acutely accurate Australian place names) and, my spot for the night, Narooma.





I’m still reflecting on the rather fine fish and chips beside Wallaga Lake from Saturday evening! (By the way, you may notice I talked about brunch and dinner, but not lunch, which I am happy to say was non-existent, in case you though I was a fat b*%$”^!).

After a breakfast of fruit salad and bacon, scrambled eggs, mushrooms, beans and toast (ahem, ok ignore that last paragraph) on my little veranda at Anchors Aweigh, it was off to the green green grass of (almost, kind of a bit like) home. Fuelled with a large flat white in the village of Tilba Tilba, I meandered along a little lane in the foothills of Gulaga (Mount Dromedary). Cows = cheese = ABC Cheese Factory tastings.



Given I didn’t really eat that much free cheese, I stopped for a reasonably late lunch overlooking the beach just north of Narooma, a customary last stop and farewell to the perfect sands and seas of the South Coast. The drama of the trip home was heightened by a red fuel warning light and, for the first time ever, relief at reaching Queanbeyan’s bogan petrol precinct, only a couple of hundred of kilometres but in many ways a million miles from the perfleshing Pacific.

Deja View

Is June the Antipodean equivalent of February in the UK? It’s cold, swine flu is taking a grip and government departments recklessly try to spend all of their money before the financial year ends so they can get even more money next year to form committees and strategic insight branches and have morning tea. Now, when I say cold, usually it means I’ve had to put a jumper on, perhaps turn on the heating, but this week saw overnight lows of -6, the lowest daytime high in about 40 years (it topped 4 degrees) and potential swine flu cases left right and centre. I have had bouts of lethargy, sneezes, headaches, body aches but part of me doesn’t know if it’s down to the time of year or comeback for all those pork pies I’ve gorged upon in the past.

Before the lowest daytime temperature since 1966, we had some cold nights, leaving a dump of snow on the nearby hills but clear skies nonetheless, captured in the morning up Red Hill and again in the evening up Mount Ainslie.





I think I have been to Mount Ainslie three or four times in the past week, though the sub 20 minute ascents have been absent and the wheels have been taking the strain. Last week you would have since my foggy time up there, and it happened yet again on Saturday, though only this time it was a bit lower and gradually dissipated as the thermometer nudged into the positive. I don’t know how many pictures I’ve taken from atop Mount Ainslie, but these ones were at least a bit different (er, yeah, apart from last week).







And while the barbies are put on hold and a trip to Queensland is sounding ever more appealing, the smell and taste of a slow roasted leg of lamb, falling off the bone, smothered in warming gravy, with smashed veggies and roast potatoes at least provides some very welcome comfort. There’s some leftovers if you wanna pop by. Just bring the sun with you.

Wagger Wagga Foggy Shocker

I’m writing to you this week in part to try and avoid a 5pm snooze, so excuse any lethargy in the vocabulary and grammar in this one. I think picking over a platter of smoked meats, cheeses and dips during a long lunch at Poacher’s Pantry has caught up with me. That and the rest of the week, which though nowhere near as tasty saw me take in some more of regional NSW and a whistle stop fly by work trip to Sydney.

Midweek, I took the road to Gundagai, which has lots of songs about it apparently, no doubt most of which revolve around a dog on a tucker box. In fact the sign for Gundagai says something along the lines of “You’ve sung the song, now visit the place.” I remain oblivious though if I was to dust off the Best of Australia CD I purchased for five dollars in a bargain bin it could make more sense. Drizzly and rainy, why oh why, has bushman Neil come to Gundagai. Dog on a Tucker Box, Subway in trucker stops, Cockatoo roo poo, wah ma wah waaaaah coolibah tree.

Along the road from Gundagai, is Wagga Wagga, or if that in itself is too ridiculous a place name to handle, just plain and simple Wagga. It’s claim to fame is the largest inland city in NSW, though if you are expecting a high rise metropolis, you’ll be disappointed. It’s a typical country hub, a few colonial era buildings mixing it with strips of fast food joints, a glitzy RSL, simple but pleasant parks and gardens and the broad brown meanderings of the Murrumbidgee River.



On Thursday morning, I was flying from Wagga to Sydney, where I had multiple pleasures of joining a Catholic Social Club for $5.50, being told I made something really boring really fun and mixing it with the youngsters (it was, like, so gay). See last week’s entry for a far more interesting account of Sydney.

And so back to Canberra, where it is now officially winter, and like clockwork the rains have arrived and it’s generally been dull and cool. It sure was murky on Saturday morning, but the sun was there above 800 metres, emerging out of the low cloud and fog at Mount Ainslie and providing some good ultraviolet light on the skin.

And as I sit here full and thirsty, I wonder how much of this was not fog but smoke blowing in from the meat smoking shed at Poacher’s Pantry.

Blue Sky on the Horizon

It’s been some time since I was last up the road in Sydney, back when summer was summer, shorts were short and skies were blue. Blue sky was at a premium at the end of May, always seemingly just out of reach on the distant horizon as a further shower or two fizzled overhead. With dodgy weather and the sun setting before 5, it’s a good job they’ve distracted the tourists with a cunning display of lights around the city, culminating in a not quite frequently enough changing opera house illuminati.



After a Friday night getting feet wet hoping the Opera House would turn as yellow as a politician’s nation-building fluoro vest, Saturday was filled with beauty of a natural kind, as a I looked in the mirror… nah, I mean headed north to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park with my friend Jill. This is a beautiful series of bays and bush and boats set around the southern shores of the Hawkesbury River and Pittwater. Sadly, with frequent showers far too much time was spent in the car, but a few stops for views and a fantastic lunch sheltered beside the inlet at Cottage Point made it a worthwhile jaunt.



Heading back to Sydney, with familiar blue skies distant but rain lashing overhead, we managed eventually to navigate the Pacific Highway (which sounds far more glamorous than it looks) to Greenwich, and a break in the weather late in the day for a short harbour-side amble.


The next morning provided a surprisingly blue sky, at least long enough to enjoy breakfast at Globe in Coogee, site of probably the best breakfasts I’ve had in Australia (Eggs Florentine with a side of bacon and a flat white in case you are interested or, now, hungry). This made me very happy and was more in keeping with the cruisy, sunny weekend I was envisaging. Taking advantage, we walked off at least a very small amount of the fat and calories from that Hollandaise Sauce by walking to Bondi, only to add it back on and more with a final stop for coffee and cake in Randwick. I should have inflated my tyres a bit more to cope with the extra weight on the drive back to Canberra!

The good old days

Hard as it is to believe, I didn’t take any photos this past weekend! It wasn’t a conscious decision and I even took the camera for a jaunt round the Botanic Gardens earlier today but was content with a snapless stroll. Sure, it was less suited to other weekend activities, which included a bracing round of golf on Saturday, and a very middle aged Sunday of morning tennis, afternoon naps, car washing and roast dinner. What I think happened is that the voices inside my head were thinking, ‘ho hum, we didn’t do our blog last weekend did we Neil,’ ‘No we didn’t Neil, even though we went to the coast,’ ‘Oh yes, thanks for reminding me Neil,’ ‘that’s OK, Neil, by the way, looking good today,’ ‘Why thanks old chap.’

So in an effort to shut the voices up, here are some pics from last week (they’re, like, soooo last week). It’s coming flooding back to me now, it was a blue sky day, whizzing to brunch beside the Bay at Bateman’s, taking a walk through forests and lakes, slurping an ice cream in Mogo, watching the day unwind at Broulee, and finishing it with fish and chips. Food. Activity. Food. The meaning of life.

Winding back the clock

Now I may have alluded once or twice in recent weeks to the onset of autumn, despite the temporary blip last weekend when we skipped straight to winter. It seems to have been a slow process this year and peaking later than I can remember (which hopefully means a shorter winter…) It all seemed to begin over two months ago, but now I feel we are finally at a peak to bring you this year’s official autumn tree collection, courtesy of Commonwealth Park on a bright Sunday morning.

So like autumns across the globe it is time to avoid the pigs with sniffles and venture down on the farm to harvest all that natural bounty. While the diversity of Australian climates means that the likelihood of there being something nice growing somewhere nice is a no-brainer, down here it is time to pick the pumpkins and gather in a small country town to celebrate, 1950s style. The no doubt normally placid town of Collector hosts the annual pumpkin festival, complete with largest pumpkin prizes, pumpkin scones, pie and soup served up by a host of lovingly doddering eighty-somethings, sheep shearings, choirs singing Clancy of the Overflow, and self-styled bushmen selling the latest in sheep dip technology. Vintage charm in the afternoon warmth.





Buying my obligatory pumpkin (butternut squash variety) on the way out, an even smaller nearby town is Gundaroo, possibly even more charming and heralding future visits I’m sure with its log fire restaurant, cosy pub and wood-fired pizzeria (yes, everything does revolve around food!) Despite the cooling off, it aint gonna be too bad after all. Now where did I put my butternut squash?

What the...?

Anzac Day usually marks the unofficial start of the descent into winter, a time when heating can be rightly justified and soups and stews replace salads and snags. In reality this usually means a drop in temperature to the high teens and fine, sunny, autumnal days for many more weeks to come. Or it has in the past. This year, a rather big dump was deposited upon us.

Not in Canberra, which remained a balmy 8 degrees, but some 600 metres higher up in the Alpine area around Thredbo. When I planned a couple of days in Thredbo a few weeks ago I was picturing nice sunny walking across Alpine meadows to glacial lakes, fine driving along winding mountain roads to expansive lookouts and perhaps even the odd ice cream upon the summer decking. What I got, once the rain had swept through and turned into white stuff which continued all of Sunday, was a veritable winter wonderland...