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.