Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Prawns, lobsters and cheesy marmites



OK, so no lobsters apart from the British and Irish backpackers, but it’s been a partly sun soaked Aussie Christmas of immense proportions making my proportions immense. There is of course something totally and utterly wrong about an Aussie Christmas yet also something rather fine... mostly the two weeks off work at the height of summer when spirits are high, days are long and life is comfortable. The spirit seeped in during the week leading up to Christmas Day, with sunny Canberra days bringing with it a few holes of golf, pleasant evening walks and the commencement of indulgent eating.





With sausage rolls and cheesy marmites baked, $45 worth of cheese safely acquired, beers stacked and esky filled, the pilgrimage to Sydney on Christmas Eve was underway. It was murky and cool, the car heating peppering my chilly feet at times and a repeat of 2009 weather seemed inevitable. But in between a final shopping trip for yet more food in Randwick, the grey turned to blue, the mercury rose and things were looking good. Perfect timing for an afternoon lie on the beach followed with a couple of beers at the Coogee Palace.



Darkness finally enveloped Christmas Eve, again spent down at the beach eating that most traditional of Christmas Eve meals... fish and chips. And then the Christmas Eve TV... no late night episodes of Casualty where there is some miraculous birth in a barnyard and carol singers await outside A&E singing in a strong Bristolian tone; instead a terrible movie that was either so bad it was good or so bad I would like those two hours of my life back please Channel Ten.

And so, rather quite joyously, Christmas Day dawned with clear blue skies and pleasant warmth. Take away the sand and the heat and in many ways Christmas is the same... too much food, a few drinkies, some more food, board games and chatter, chocolate, a few more drinkies, all leading to a warm glow and overwhelming feeling of excess. There are of course a few quirks with this. Breakfast involves food on the beach, some broken Pavlova in fact, a good intake of fruit and dairy to start the day, with a shot of caffeine on the side.

Presents are opened in shorts and thongs, sparkling fizzy stuff laced with alcohol to keep hydrated. And then, just to keep going before dinner, a picnic lunch under a shady tree, resplendent with cheese and dips and prawns and pastry and salad to the sound of the surf. Scattered around in shady clusters are families and friends and backpackers and barbecues. Alcohol and cricketing endeavours seem to take hold, a cooling dip in the Bronte waves keeping the lifesavers on edge.







Later in the day it was – mercifully – a bus back up the mountain to Waverley and time for some pre-dinner games... a deranged Australian themed hunt for utes and BBQs and blue heelers, winning money by achieving a [insert drongo stereotype] from a [insert fair dinkum cliche] . I would be more critical, but given I bought the goddam thing and there were a few vino fuelled giggles from it, I shouldn’t [insert raw prawn style saying].

And finally, in a pretty toasty kitchen, the nod to the northern hemisphere with roast turkey and all the trimmings including brussel sprouts sadly. Despite this, it was very fine and capped off with my unintentionally broken Pavlova bits, cream, ice cream and oodles of berries.

The following days brought with them some rain and drizzle, accentuating the joy and luck of Christmas Day, but it wasn’t without a few sunny interludes and blue skies. Boxing Day meant a walk back to pick up the car, but when the walk involves a stroll along the eastern coastal suburbs it’s not too much of an ordeal. Facing more of an ordeal were the many yachts streaming southwards as they ventured their way from Sydney to Hobart. And even more of an ordeal, Australian batsmen.





Boxing Day mostly involved eating leftovers, but the next day it was time to eat out again, a last minute decision to head over to Manly for some scrumptious breakfast opposite the beach, the spots of rain failing to dampen the sweet potato and corn fritters. Being now northside, I decided to take the road up to Palm Beach, stopping at Collaroy for a pleasing read of Ashes disastrousness and coffee along the way.

At Palm Beach it was mostly cloudy and drizzly, but not too bad for a walk up to Barrenjoey Lighthouse, possibly spotted by some of you before in Home and Away.



A soaking soon followed in the afternoon but this abated back down in the north shore, and another little walk in one of the many pockets of bushland lining Middle Harbour ensued. Sydney really is blessed with a quite remarkable geography, especially when you are really in to geography and places and rocks and stuff. Much of the north shore seems to me to be one big national park, just with staggeringly expensive houses dotted precariously on sandstone cliffs and hovering in the midst of a lemon and frangipani fragrance. Not really the smell of Christmas but then that comes as no surprise in this topsy turvy land down under. As Roy Walker may have once said on a special Christmas edition of Catchphrase, ‘it’s good but it’s not right!’

Saturday, December 11, 2010

A reasonable state to be in

There were many significant milestones over the past week – temperatures, rainfall, food consumption, runs – but none more so than me completing the clean sweep of Australian states and territories. Back in 2000 I first dumped by smelly shoes in NSW, ACT, Queensland, NT and WA. Vic came about in 2006 and Tassie soon after in 2007. The absentee, South Australia, remained neglected for a few more years... no fortuitous work trips, no compelling reason to go there, snipes and sneers from the colonials about it being dullsville (er, like, I live in Canberra mate). I think in hindsight that’s a bit of a shame. For Adelaide and its environs has it all, as discovered in just under four days conveniently timed with the second Ashes test.

It has heat. I know about that. But this was proper summer heat like it should be this time of year everywhere else. The mercury hit 38.2 late in the afternoon on Saturday, a nice proper dry heat coming in from the desert, none of this stupid humid stuff. A good day to hit the beaches, which were really quite surprisingly nice.... wonderful beachside suburbs all laid back and full of happy people living life with a little entertainment thrown in thanks to cafes and bars and random shops. Glenelg is the undoubted queen of beachside suburbia, with its white sand, calm, shallow water, jetty and backdrop of fine eateries and cold beer handily available, linked to the city by the semi-famous tram ride.

The sand continues to the south and onwards to the Fleurieu Peninsula, the suburbs becoming rolling wine country and small unhappening towns and villages. Golden hills reminiscent of California are cut by twisting ribbons of road and silvery white gums, an almost time warp hallucination leading you around the next bend and the rather fine Shiraz producing vines of McLaren Vale.



By now things are hotting up and the best plan is to go for some air conditioned comfort and brief afternoon snoozes with the calming backdrop of English willow on Kookaburra ball on the TV. Still decidedly toasty as the evening emerges, Glenelg itself a hotbed of people and noise and tastes and smells, plenty of walks along the beach and dips in the sun as the sun dips. Saturday night here was far from dull, the full spectrum of life on display from toddlers splashing in the fountains, kids plunging off the pier, teens being like totally lame, young romantics and old charmers, lobster red Scots, ten kid families getting that first slightly bracing touch of the sea on their toes. This is a good place to be at this time on this day.



The Adelaide Oval was a rather good place to be all weekend really, including up until the tea interval on Sunday. Another balmy day for the Australian bowlers to toil, milestones overhauled at regular intervals and, just before tea and a huge thunderclap signalled the end of the day, a double century to salute. The ground itself was rather nice, one of the few remaining in international cricket with a grassy bank for the fans to stand, to roll out picnic blankets and foldaway chairs, to eat chicken rolls and drink copious amounts of overpriced but underwhelming beer on sale (for some reason the insipid XXXX Gold rather than the more excellent Adelaide brew from the Coopers Alehouse). I suppose you can’t have it all.







The next morning dawned with blue skies returning and the local beachside was again hard to resist for breakfast, the love of England clearly all around in Brighton and Hove, just south of Glenelg. Not really at all like the English Brighton and Hove thankfully... no pebbles, no tacky amusements, no men parading in budgie smugglers. Adelaide is far too respectable for anything like that.



Today was town day, a chance to explore the city centre of Adelaide itself. It’s a fairly modest city, the skyline less distinctive than the Sydneys or Melbournes of this world, the streets dotted with 1800s civic pride in between 1970s beige blocks. One of the more remarkable things about the city is it’s positioning which is effectively as an island in the middle of a sea of parkland. Some of this parkland is rough and ready, others green and refined, like the Botanic Gardens and strip of fountains dotting the Torrens River. Occasional wafts of celebration blowing downwind from the Adelaide Oval.



Again warm, solace was provided in the air conditioning of the Art Gallery but the art of beer and cricket was more on my mind. If you can find them, it seems as though Adelaide has some decent, traditional looking pubs. Alas some ludicrous decision not to be airing the cricket during the afternoon in South Australia meant the much needed cold beer and cricket in the pub scenario was delayed. Instead it was a snooze back in the motel as the commentary drawled its way forever onwards on the radio.

Luckily the last session of the day was on TV, so off to the pub in Glenelg it was. Cold beer ordered, stool beside one of the trillion TV screens, all set. For the heavens to open. Meh. Somehow Glenelg avoided all the storms around, so instead of watching cricket the other amiable option was to sit on the balcony watching the world go by. The cricket did resume, then annoyingly cut to the news while still playing (yeah, they do that as well) so a prized Aussie wicket of the useless vice captain was missed. In Glenelg, the day ended – still grey, still threatening, still quite muggy, but still dry – with fish and chips on the beach.

The last day, of Adelaide and the test match, started with a dilemma – pay and go the test with the risk of an early finish and / or rain, or go for a jaunt in the Adelaide Hills and eat lots of food. Sometimes you just wish you could be in two places at once! As it was, the prospect of bushland, lookouts, vineyards and, yes, food won out. And there was even enough sunlight around for the cricket to finish and the bushwalk to be had.



The Hills commence pretty much to the east of the city and rise up into suburban crescents and lanes until national park and reserve takes over. Over the other side, the bush dissipates into farmland and wine growing terroir. And a German theme park. Okay, so Hahndorf isn’t quite a theme park but there are plenty of oompah loompahs and sausages leading it that way. It’s actually a rather pretty little spot, a place built and cultivated by a close knit German community in the 1800s and now evolved into beer halls and sweet shops and hiding places for former dictators (possibly). If you stayed here a week you would, without question, leave with an extra twenty kilos and clogged arteries. While the German platter of sausages, pork, mash, pretzels and goodness knows what else was a sight to behold, I was rather pleased with my salted pork belly, creamy mash and onion relish, washed down with a fine wheat beer.

The only dampener was the oompah loompah music incessantly playing so that it was stuck in your head for the rest of the day. The other dampener, by now, was the weather, which was busy giving Adelaide its wettest day of the year and more than its average December rainfall in a few hours. Thank goodness we mopped up that Aussie tail pretty quickly! There were, in between lightning bolts, a few breaks in the rain, time enough to fill a couple of hours back on the coast near the airport. Here again were more rather fine beaches and a laid back, unhurried vibe, strips of low rise suburbia punctuated by a surf club or cafe or ice cream shop once in a while, and the Adelaide love for jetties continued. On most days of the year it is probably rather sedate and lovely. Today its skies as least were was a little more dramatic.



Since that bumpy ride through the clouds took me back to Canberra and mercifully a return to solid ground, the rains have been almost unprecedented. South Australia, Victoria and large parts of New South Wales were, at times, underwater. Travelling into work on Thursday morning was slightly dodgy, a usually dry trickle of a creek swollen and up to the road. Further down the road, the town of Queanbeyan was turning into a murky lagoon, washing its trees and dirt and rocks down river and into Lake Burley Griffin. Now we seem to be drying out, the sun is back and the garden is even more like a jungle. No doubt we’re into the customary settled spell of weather which will break just before the Christmas holidays. Until then, let the mangoes and BBQs reign!

Thursday, December 02, 2010

Totally Tropical Taste

Dear Britain, I am sorry to complain about sweltering humidity and tropical insects as you sit in a zillion inches of snow. But I’m sweaty and speckled with itchy insect bites, so have some sympathy! You see, as you are shivering in the latest once in a generation weather event since last year, I’m astride the tropic of Capricorn, visiting the good teachers of Queensland and discovering snippets of their palm fronded world.

The trip started further north in Cairns, which is best described as a bit like the Gold Coast on Lilt. Veering into the sweaty season, the rains were plentiful but a few breaks allowed early evening walks along the Esplanade, which is a nicely designed strip of exercise along the rather gloopy Trinity Bay. It was thirsty work in the heat, and a nice cold beer was perfect to look forward to... but being rather stupid I bought a non-twisty top bottle without any bottle opener around. A serious crisis saved by the Cairns crocodile available in one of the many terrible souvenir shops here.



On Saturday opportunity arose to become a tourist, hiring a car and taking it north to the end of the road. Not before yet another ridiculous early start. You see, Queenslanders tend to be pretty, er, basic and prefer sunrise at 4:45am rather than joining the rest of the country to bask in daylight saving and beautiful light evenings. So I took an early walk in brightening skies, the piercing sun hot already and making sitting out with a beautiful brekkie a bit more uncomfortable than was ideal.



It was nice to get out of Cairns, the first stop following a climb through dripping green rainforest up to Kuranda and the nearby Barron Falls. With all the rain I expected a pounding torrent of water here, but, like the local wildlife, the falls resembled a series of slivery snakes swirling their way around the rocks and into the murky pools below. Not that I saw any snakes, but they were always there, a potent menace in the back of my mind. All jollily reinforced by the presence of the Australian Venom Zoo in Kuranda.



From here it was back down to the coast and a ribbon of road which must be up there with the best of them, thirty kilometres of the Captain Cook Highway hugging the coastline between World Heritage mountainous rainforest and World Heritage oceans and the very outer fringes of that reef. It was even better on the way back with the sun out, but for now it was on to Mossman Gorge in Daintree National Park, where the sun did come out and the lush tropical rainforest was getting very steamy.



As nice as this place was it was almost as nice to get back into the car, with its air con and (hopefully) lack of venomous creatures. Still pointing north the car and I breezed past fields of sugar cane, hills cloaked in deep green denseness, and over murky creeks until the road stopped at quite a big creek. The Daintree River no less, with its little cable ferry that you travel on at your own risk. The risks I believe including crocodiles, sea snakes, drowning, probably a few jellyfish, being washed up and skewered by a cassowary, swallowing spiders when sleeping with your mouth open, dehydration and merciless abuse from the ferry operatives for not having marvellous facial hair like them. Thankfully I was okay on that count.

The safe crossing of the river makes you feel almost intrepid, on the final, narrowing and flood prone slice of sealed road that begins in a better condition way down south in temperate climes. It wriggles its way over mountains, slides its way around plunging rainforest gullies, bumps over cassowary crossings and skirts its way across beautiful but very potentially deadly creeks and gullies spilling into the sea. With each kilometre it seems to get better, and then you stop. You get out and get bitten endlessly by invisible bugs, you feel spider webs blowing in the wind and crossing your skin, you hear twitches in the undergrowth in between deafening clicks of millions of insects. A palm frond falls to the ground in an almighty crash. At least you hope it is a palm frond. It is at one simply breathtaking and horrific.









There is some respite at the very end of the road, the last bit of tarmac, some of which is already washed away by flooding creeks, which brings us into Cape Tribulation. Named by Captain Cook for the trials and tribulations he faced up this way navigating the reef, even in air conditioned, sealed comfort of the twenty first century, getting here, especially if you started in a beat up combi in Kings Cross, takes some going. The reward is a bunch of hippies and some backpackers, but among that a very fine beach where the rainforest meets the reef.





There is nowhere to go from here, unless you get seriously upgraded by Thrifty into a Landcruiser, other than back the way you came. There is relief along the way though thanks to a sign pointing to Daintree Ice Cream, an obvious stop for Dougie’s Daintree Day Tours, and what’s good for Dougie is good for me. The pineapple ice cream is particularly recommended, as is the surroundings.

Back over the dangerous Daintree, civilisation becomes more pronounced and thrusts itself upon you in Port Douglas. Port Douglas is the slightly moneyed up in a trashy way American in a flowery top brother to old Cairnso. There is no other clearer way to describe it. What this does mean is some luxury, though for me a cold shower followed by a cold beer followed by a warm seafood basket was sumptuous enough.

The beach at Port Douglas is all coconuts and palm trees as I discovered the next morning, though I have to say I was expecting something a bit finer and whiter. So it turns out Hyams Beach in Jervis Bay really must have the whitest sand in the world then. Never doubt Norris McWhirter. Still, regardless of colour or granularity, it was blissful to wash the sand off in the palm lined pool of my reasonably bling hotel before checking out.



Back on the road to Cairns the weather, just like the cricket on the radio, was getting better all the time. This made it hard to resist stopping numerous times on that stretch of World Heritage road, taking in spectacular views and much improved golden sands. The beaches just to the north of Cairns are rather lovely, though I’d find it galling to have that on your doorstop and be unable to go in there for six months of the year for fear of being lacerated to death by the stingers. If the sharks and stingrays don’t get you first!



The beach stops were alluring, so much so that I was cutting it just a little fine for my flight out of there. Not much time to see Cairns airport that’s for sure. The check out girls were nice though, I think they must place the glam ones up this way, all part of the totally tropical taste. I wasn’t quite done with those tropics however, my next stop just north of that dotted line in Rockhampton... a different proposition to the Far North, but still with deadly bugs lurking invisibly in every hidden corner.

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What can I tell you about Rocky? It’s the beef capital of Australia. Set on the broad murky banks of the Fitzroy River, the second (second no less!) biggest river system in Australia. It’s somewhere around the tropic of Capricorn but about 50kms inland from the coast. And it is pretty dead on a Sunday evening when you are searching for something to eat. In fact, wandering the streets on Sunday I decided it was Australia’s answer to New Orleans, only without the buzz and plethora of dining options...just the swaggering humidity propensity to flooding and undertone of murder.

Things in Rocky perked up somewhat with the advent of a new week and things being open. One of those was the Cambridge Hotel with its tasteless interior but bargain all you can eat buffet! Why do I see the words ‘all you can eat’ and immediately think the gauntlet has been thrown down. Of course, it did include several slabs of beef, being the beef capital and all.

Anyway I survived that and being a hardworking type beavering away at strange hours (usually very early thanks to the non-daylight saving QLD philosophy) I managed to give myself some free time midweek to potter about the area. Rockhampton does have some very fine botanic gardens, especially if you like all the creepy jungle creepers and palmy palms. And there is some nice bushland up on the Berserkers, clearly named by the locals for the locals (it’s actually pronounced Bursika as I was happy to learn...)





And Rocky’s really not that far from the coast, the town of Yeppoon being the biggest centre and appropriate spot for lunch beside the beach. In my head I had fine white sands pictured, shaped in no small part by the presence of Great Keppel Island nearby. This is one of those barrier reef islands which actually isn’t on the barrier reef but still tells you it is, and seduces you with those fine white sands and I believe a Contiki resort for wanton drunkenness and sexual promiscuity. Sadly I had missed the ferry! And the sands on the mainland weren’t white, more brown and gritty, no doubt thanks to the rain and the wide brown waters of the second largest river system spilling into the ocean.

I did learn that Great Keppel Island (which isn’t the only island out there) was formed from volcanic activity and remnants of this are dotted along the mainland coastal strip from Yeppoon to Emu Park further south. What this provides is a series of quite spectacular headlands, mostly national park which offer not only great views but diversity of bushland, rainforest gullies, grassland and rocky, er, rocks. The view from one volcanic plug to another reminded me of Rio... in miniature of course and without any beautiful people flaunting themselves, though there were at least some slums nearby.





So there you go Rocky... touches of New Orleans, Rio just round the corner, the beefiest river in the whole of Queensland and gateway to the tropics. It calls for a cold XXXX to toast it, so a cold XXXX I had, in a pub with maybe four people present. My time in the tropics drawing to a close, just sweaty clothes, insect bites and hairy memories to take with me. And, importantly, no crocodile bites or encounters with box jellyfish.