Awestrayleah

I don’t know if it’s the inherent seasonality of winter in my genetic make up that continues to make this time of year so enchanting, so suprising, so satisfying... my bones and genomes and chromosomes still attuned to expect grey cold misery but filled with long sunny days and nourishing warmth, triggering a slightly smug smile every day I drive alongside the white gums of Captain Cook Crescent. It’s the time of year when Australia seems to be the only place you would ever want to be, which is a bit tricksy of it my precious. It’s only tempered slightly by wondering each day if this is the summer ‘peak’, leaving us in a virtual hangover from too much tennis, BBQing, sandy toes and iced coffee. That’s a bit how I have felt this weekend, at a bit of a loss, disappointed at inefficient cycle mechanisms, annoyed at kitchen mess, unexcited by bushland spots, bored with facebook but not bored enough to play fishzoofarmland or whatever. There are still shots of tennis and BBQ smells to keep me from that. Plus mood swings in one paragraph.

One wonders if the peak is in fact Australia Day, the time when all this good Australia has gathered and snowballed and hits you in the face with its beauty rich and rare. A time when some 200 odd years ago some some bumbling Brits landed next to where Gelatissimo now stands down at Circular Quay, poked a flag in the ground and proclaimed this place for King and Country. Now that was lucky, as it means some 200 years later we all get a day off and do our best to be whatever it means to be Australian or, at least, honourary Australian.

For many it is of course obligatory to be beside the water, getting dumped by sparkling surf, casting a line, taking the dog for a walk, getting greasy hands from fish n chips. For me, it was a pleasure to head down to the coast over the weekend to do some, if not all of the above, and to be able to share it with, if not my own family, someone elses. Because the Australia Day weekend – like any day really – is a chance for families to come together, to share the good times, to play snooker in the garage and have the odd robust discussion after a few glasses of wine. It’s just doing what families do and thank you to that family in question who extended their warmth and endless food upon me and gave me something extra than just another trip to the beautiful South Coast. (Note: real family: it could be you! Airline ticket and time off required, good times guaranteed!)





And so like strawberries are with cream, steak is with salad, and hunger is with mention of nice food, the other Australia, the other jewel in which people gather beyond the crystal seas is the obiquitous bush. The bush is a giant green shrub situated in the heart of Australia that people worship, a concept popularised in 3D by James Cameron. In fact, that’s not far off the truth, though it is billions of trees instead, and miles of sunburnt country, with sweeping plains, some ragged mountain ranges, all subject to droughts and occasional flooding rains. The Bush is as Australian as Shane Warne dressed in a white singlet holding a lamington in one hand and a XXXX in the other while whistling the tune to Neighbours as he rides a kangaroo to the dunny. The Bush even has its own capital, known at Canberra, which is a roundabout way of bringing this post back from some wild tangents to where I was on Australia Day.

Canberra seems to come to life a little on Australia Day, which I guess should be expected given it’s the capital of Australia. Suddenly people are everywhere, things are going down, Canberra is on the news. My part in all this was mostly on the periphery, watching afar as 35,000 people picnic down on the lawns of parliament house for an Australia Day Eve concert featuring mostly Grade B Australian star turns. Watching instead the things that are here everyday, but just as worthy of cheering about.





January 26th itself, and possibly the peak of this summer, brings with it a sense of ceremony and celebration. In Canberra the Prime Minister and Governor General undertake their usual polite attendance of military parades, give us a speech on why it is so darn good to be Australian, and then, like everyone else, head off for a few gross processed cartiliage snags and listen to unpatriotic and underwhelming winning songs of Triple J’s Hot 100. For me, it was a bush walk, a fish platter and an afternoon watching sport. A good attempt at being Australian I think.





It is of course, totally self indulgent but then why not? Coming from a country where it is a national sport to grumble about everything, it’s refreshing to have some communal back patting and celebrate what you have got. The academics of course debate what it means to be Australian and have all sorts of serious ruminations and grievances but thankfully the rest of the country just indulge in one big “F**k it, let’s get out in the sun, eat some grub, have a few beers with some mates and listen to some tunes.” The culmination of “F**k it Day” is, you guessed it, fireworks, up and down the land. The best fireworks were happening on Rod Laver Arena, where some freckly Scottish youth was making a Spanish chap with a continuous wedgie run around and hurt his knee chasing tennis balls.

And as the fireworks fade, the end of a chapter of the year seems to abruptly come upon the nation. People go back to work. Talk of interest rates and environmental schemes resurface. Crap TV programs return for another series. Suits and ties and shirts emerge back in the cafes. It’s all a bit more serious and suddnely important. But it’s only the end of a chapter of what is a rather large and seemingly endless book. A good book. The peak may have been, but it’s no Mount Fuji, instead more like the alpine ranges of this great southern land, gently rounded and undulating, with plenty more high points on the horizon.

I'm hot N' cold

And so here we are in twenty-ten and January is racing away from us already! Predictably once back at work the weather turned from dreary to sweltering, the snow in Europe seemed all rather ridiculous and exploring Westfield’s air con rather sensible compared to wandering the Botanic Gardens in the midday sun.



Despite the heat, things don’t stop (i.e. life goes on… i.e. no slacking off… i.e. no stopping work because of the weather) and I’ve been busy meeting new year’s resolutions, including ridding the bike of cobwebs, giving it some air, tweaking with the brakes and using the damn thing. On a Monday night after work when it was still 38 degrees. Somehow it was really enjoyable, thanks largely to a reasonably flat route around part of the lake and the cooling airflow as I hurtled along at, ahem, great speeds.



I hope I am warming avid readers from Europe up. Sometimes I wish we could share more. Like when I can’t sleep because it is too hot, couldn’t you just dump a few piles of snow outside my back door so I can cool off? And when your tootsies are frozen from bitter Siberian winds, I can send you a puff of hot air blasting from the dead heart of Australia?

Having said that, things did chill out a bit later in the week thanks to the marvel of the cool change. This is quite an Aussie thing, and in geeky weather terms quite fascinating. An upper level trough which is responsible for directing the hot northerlies from the desert passes through and suddenly the winds are coming from Antarctica. On Wednesday the temperature dropped about 15 degrees in something like an hour. Just in time for a game of tennis. And then there was snow… well kind of…

Pleased to be on the open road, blaring away some tunes and passing through dirt bowl towns I headed down to the Snowy Mountains for a bit of a hike. Welcome back clothes! Up here at 2,000 metres it was time to break out the extra layers and head up into the clouds which were blowing around in quite a bracing wind.



While the Snowies might not be the most spectacular mountains in this world, you can’t argue with the contrast from virtually everywhere else in Australia, which is in itself refreshing. Openness, gravel paths, bogs and granite rocks. Dartmoor on steroids. Just to prove it is Alpine there are even a few glacial lakes, one of which, Blue Lake, was a rather delightful end point for an up and down walk. It even provided a perfect rock to sit upon for lunch and some sunshine. Someone is looking out for me… but then I haven’t really been a bad boy yet this year.

There were even a few blobs of snow around, and not a BBC news special on it in sight. Don’t think I can get away with a snow day tomorrow. And so, despite the walk back the same way, the clouds lifting had made it seem more like a circular, and pleasingly it was mostly downhill to the Snowy River crossing. All this happiness and love tarnished by a killer uphill section back to the car park at Charlottes Pass.

Now it was quite warm again, and back on the road home, past those same old dust bowl towns, there was more crazy weather experiences, as some very funky clouds gathered, forks of lightning created near heart attacks each time they bolted down into distant bushland, and I got through unscathed. Rain cleared, BBQ on, beer in hand, thoughts of Westfield air con in mind, and sweet sweet dreams (of Reblochon cheese on sale in Coles no less). Some dreams are harder to achieve than others.

A Coogee Woogey Christmas

Happy 2010 and as everyone looks forward to the year ahead I am being all unconventional and antiestablishment and looking back to 2009 and the first few days of 2010 instead. For me, this was spent in and around the vicinity of Sydney and was an enjoyable jolly along coastlines and cliffs, navigating brunches and lunches and munches, smelling flowers and dodging showers, singing the odd advert song and playing hit the thong. There are many people to thank for lodgings, food, and a sample of the glamorous life of Jacuzzis and yachts., so thank you Jill, Jodie, Jake & Louise, Jane and John and the boat crew, Barb & Rod & Amber, the restaurant owners of the Eastern suburbs, Ricky Ponting for getting out first ball and least of all thank you very much Laurence, tropical cyclone remnants of. Two months of wall to wall sunshine, ended on Christmas day and enduring on and off throughout the holidays. Despite old drippy Larry, there were some clearish gaps and splendid highlights as I take you on a whirlwind tour of the last couple of weeks…

Christmas puddles and bubbles

December 25th in Coogee, the watery sunshine rising out into the Tasman Sea and a chance to get up early and soak up Christmas breakfast on the beach while the sun was out. It wasn’t there for long but the scene was decent enough for shorts and a dip of feet, along with a coffee and some biscuits and chocolate at eight in the morning.



With just a handful of presents opened, it was onto Bronte later in the day for a picnic lunch beside the water with hundreds of other people - strangers but friends, brought together in a communal melee of portable barbecues and picnic blankets, managing to maintain festive cheers as the darker clouds and spots of rain began to roll in. Enough time though for prawns and cheese and dips and sausage rolls and crisps and a few tokenistic salad bits accompanied by some bubbles and a beer. Sunday roast it aint. That came later in the evening, when it was all suitably dark and cosy, a great traditional roast dinner, only distorted by my Aussie twist of homemade pavlova for dessert (still featuring plenty of cream mind you).

Boxing day involved boxing and a day of really quite British dreariness. A day at the footy would not have been out of place. Instead, the cinema was the venue of choice, a rather silly Sherlock Holmes punctuated by leftovers and another good dose of coffee and cake at The Sweet Spot in Randwick. Laurence was in full swing at this point and continued into the next day as I paid a visit to the Central coast, eating fish and chips next to the beach where a man’s toe was nibbled by a shark the previous day. A far safer and comfortable watery experience is in a heated spa pool, useful for easing the aches of ping pong in the garage and the previous day’s boxing. Thanks to Jodie and her Dad for this welcome Christmas present.

Here comes the sun, sun, sun

Just to prove I had been at least a partly good boy this year, the weather let up and miraculously provided the most perfect scene for a trip on a boat in Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park, up in the northern edge of the Sydney area. Another Christmas present - thank you boat crew for such a lovely day and arranging such wonderful weather. Cruising the fingers and coves of the Hawkesbury was good enough, but standing in the water drinking a beer and chatting with friends beside a sandy beach and gentle cleansing waterfall will forever be ingrained in the good memory bank.







The day was so good it demanded being extended as much as possible, and once disembarking and saying Adios to Adios, it was a rather darn good idea of Rod and Barb to take Amber for a walk in Manly and drag Jill and I along. What was particularly good about this idea wasn’t the ambient walk along to Shelly Beach, nor the pink hues of the day’s end, but the classic fish and chips and Bundy Ginger Beer to finish off. This is more like it



By now all this food required at least some exercise, especially after sitting two hours in the car driving up to Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains the next day. I read a few articles recently about the restoration of the National Pass track, a shortish six kilometres but descending into the Valley of the Waters, following midway down the escarpment to Wentworth Falls and - for the buns of steel workout - rising and ascending and climbing back to the car park. It was a lovely jaunt down to the Valley of the Waters, a series of falls and cascades, simultaneously providing trickles and plunges of water, home to lizards and snakes and climbers and perfect for a picnic of more Chrissie leftos.





Fuel was a good thing, not so much for getting across the escarpment to Wentworth Falls, but for climbing back up the hundreds of virtually vertical steps back up to the top. No pain no gain, or more aptly, nice gain for a little pain, the walk meaning a practically guilt free helping of chocolate meringue cake once back up the top and finding a place that was actually open for business in Leura. I’m not sure how far this guilt free feeling extended to Doughboy pizza once back in Sydney but it certainly tasted well deserved with a cold beer.

Into the tens... unlike most Aussie batsmen

And so with all that fine weather and exercise 2009 drew to a close. You may have seen the town of Sydney on your television set with a few fireworks saying hello to new year. It was the same again this year, as I was one of around one and a half million cramming the harbour foreshore to try and find a view among the buildings and trees. All the best spots were taken a long time earlier, but there was ample space for picnicking, playing chess and cards and splashing out on the $35 wine at Mrs Macquaries Point, and, come midnight, clusters of people from all over the world gathered at gaps in the trees to grab a view of 2010. Now how do I work my way up the pecking order to get on that boat in 2011...



2010 had an inauspicious start, with a bus breakdown on the way back to Coogee, tempered only by a walk along the shoreline once there to prepare for the long walk uphill to bed. Things got better the next day with a New Years Day lunch featuring an impressive array of salads which were very impressive and the best salads ever (yes, I made a couple of them) to go with some ham and cold bird. And then the trifle, oh yes, the trifle. A very happy new year.

If Christmas Day was a bit grey then New Year’s Day was a bit less grey and towards the late afternoon the sun even made an appearance. Perfect for a doze on Coogee Beach followed by a game of French Cricket (rules: shrug shoulders and munch on a raclette baguette). This was only bettered by the cleverly designed and improvised four way hit the thong poo game. Which was subsequently bettered by a cold beer in the Palace as cruisy guitar chords echoed out over the sands. A good first day of the year.

The second day of the year and the blessed occurence of a weekend meant that the good times continued, despite a stinker of a day where the humidity hit totally tropical man. Not quite ideal weather for a laksa, but the chance to have my best chicken laksa since Thai Cornar changed ownership was not worth passing up. Thai-riffic in Bondi Junction Westfield (with super views) if you happen to be in the area. As always with a good laksa, the ten minutes afterwards are like paralysis, unable to walk or talk very well, but thankfully wearing off enough in time for one of the best walks there is - Walk#3 from Taronga Wharf to Balmoral Beach on the North Shore.



And at Balmoral Beach, just enough time to cool off in the calm water of Middle Harbour before the storm rolls in.



So far the Christmas break had provided many of the typical Aussie trappings… prawns, beaches, snakes, coffee, and a lot of rubbish TV. Apart from some rather lame beach games there has been a distinct absence of sport, something which was rectified on my last day in Sydney. The sport of watching Aussie cricketers getting a once over by the Pakistani bowlers at the SCG. Despite yet more general drizzly dreariness which unfathomably gave me sunburnt knees whole delaying play, the first day of the second test yielded some excitement and atmosphere as the Aussies got skittled out for one of their lowest scores in a while.



You may recognise the face of Mark Nicholas, who must be the jammiest smarmy average former county cricket player in the world, covering TV cricket summers in Australia and England and doing a bit of eating on a cooking show in between. I bet he was on a good boat in the harbour for New Year’s Eve as well!

The cricket signalled pretty much the end of the holidays, with just another wonderful brunch at Globe in Coogee to see me on my way back to Canberra. It was as usual a pretty boring, but pleasingly quick drive and I arrived back to warmth and sunshine as if the summer had instantly returned following yesterday‘s all round Englishness (weather and batting totals). Another Aussie Christmas goes by (my third one!) and I’m still waiting for a scorching beach version. Christmas in the summer is all a bit odd but at the same time there is much of appeal about it. The washing line which now contains five pairs of shorts drying in the Canberra sun is testament to that - it was still pretty warm and there were some top top days. And like Christmas everywhere, there was no shortage of excess - too much food, too much drink, too much hit the thong (flip flop) game. While the food may decrease slightly, the good thing about an Aussie Christmas is that the summer is set to go on and we have more things to look forward to - like Australia Day, hopefully more pummelling of Aussie batsmen, and the continuation of light evenings, shorts and thongs. As for 2010, she’ll be right.