Sublime Points

Another half year down, and it’s not just noticeable for the obnoxiously irritating adverts flogging gear to dodge tax. The upside-down southern hemisphere has had its winter equinox, meaning that despite getting progressively colder at least you can enjoy the cold with slightly more daylight. It’s a year since nerds were out and political redheads were once popular. And it’s now just one month of work left before embarking on the annual quest for clotted cream, smelly cheese and – this year – a few extras like crispy fried chicken heads and nu yark bagels and maybe even Outback Steakhouse for that authentic Aussie experience good day mate, yes it is strewth of a billy mate. How is it going?

A genuine Aussie experience is dangling your legs off a sandstone precipice with a million and one gum trees coating the folds and creases of a landscape so vast and untouchable it is almost bewildering to comprehend. Despite not being blue neither technically mountains, the Blue Mountains are why Australia should be cherished and celebrated, not a cork hat or a stubby holder or cuddly clip on koala.

A working requirement for Monday planted a seed for a weekend visit, the clear blue skies encouraging the brain and body to point the Magna in the general direction on Saturday morning, and the Magna deciding to take an alternative inland route just for a change. It was an okay change, and there was tarmac all the way, so at least a solid surface to squeeze past logging trucks between Goulburn and Oberon. From Oberon, the landscape stepped up a mark, the road skirting the extremely lengthy Megalong Valley and climbing up the Blue Mountains plateau from the west, eventually spitting me out at Govetts Leap. A lookout! How I love lookouts. Even a road sign for a lookout is thrilling, the anticipation of, er, looking out and all that.

Sat here I had my lunch of leftover pasta and for once it seemed to do what pasta is famed for doing and give a rather uncharacteristic boundless energy. Useful for the walk around to Pulpit Rock, especially the first kilometre which was down slippy steps then up similar but slightly less slippy and more gargantuan style steps. You know the ones, where you have to raise your whole leg pretty much the height of your leg to get up it and pray you are not wearing skinny jeans.

The rest of the walk was bliss though, the sun rather warming, the path drier and with fewer gradients to get in the way of happy times. The regular views over the Grose Valley only interrupted by serene forest growth and lyrebird repertoires. Even the walk back along the same path was not too much of a chore, the steps somewhat less annoying but the finish a bit of a breathtaker that’s for sure.

Sunday was a huge day of transition, from the mountains to the sea, with a touch of the old food treat escapades chucked in for good measure. While most normal people would have a nice lie in and drink tea on a Sunday morning, I was up at 6am, driving to Sublime Point, so named because it is a piece of rock that sits out (a la point), and is undoubtedly rather amazing, sublime you could say. I was after some of those mist in valley, red sunrays on rock type of shots. I wasn’t so keen on the chill wind gusts that came with it, but the bellbirds and I liked it a lot anyway.

In the distance, the famous three sisters – Beryl, Ethel and Maude – were shining like three old dears after a few Sherries and a night out to watch the Chippendales. They were also, like a lot of their cohort, extremely windy, somewhere you didn’t really want to dwell but were intrigued to spend a bit of time with nonetheless. A fitting point to say farewell to the mountains that aren’t really mountains and head down their non-mountainous inclines to Sydney...

...Where second breakfast was waiting courtesy of that favourite little spot in Coogee. Here the blue skies were just as blue and the post-winter solstice temperature was inching its way up to 21 degrees. There is nothing better to do on such days in this city than to get out on the water, that rather well known patch of liquid that spreads its watery fingers in all directions. A regal way to travel on it via the ferry from Watsons Bay, alongside the blend of unattainable wealth and accessible picnic spots, to Circular Quay. Which isn’t technically circular, but what does that matter. The Blue Mountains aren’t blue or mountains, and they turned out okay. You gotta love a place where you can watch the sun come up in the mountains and go down in the sea. Slightly later than usual too.

A shorts interlude

Is Australia still a lucky country? With its more recent lack of sporting prowess and demented politicians you’d say not. It also cops its fair share of crap, like fires and floods and killer plants and psychopaths. It still has – shock horror – winters. Where twelve degrees Celsius can generate a public parade of furry coats and scarves and communal huddling around wood-burning stoves...the ‘Big Freeze’ indeed. It also does not have as much French cheese as France. Or , a good frickin Pork Pie. And don’t get me started (again) on clotted cream. But it still has cheese. And it still has places where you can wear shorts in winter. This is undoubtedly a good thing. This makes it – if not lucky – reasonably fortuitous in the random lottery of geographical positioning and climatic conditions.

There can be nothing more pleasing than rising above freezing Canberra fog and a few hours later meandering along tropical rivers and plants in shorts. Sure, you may be in Rockhampton – hardly the tropical tourist paradise of Queensland – but you are in Rocky and it is 26 degrees and pretty much perfect. Even the wide brown terror that is the Fitzroy River is looking placid. All you need now to make it a perfect Sunday is a good XXXX.

I’m sure the wonderful locals of this part of the world would not disagree when I say Rocky is not the most appealing of tropical Queensland towns. But that’s part of its very appeal, the everyday bogan vibe of utes and raised wooden verandas and wandering slightly lost on to the ‘wrong side of the tracks’, people sort of checking you out as they mow their lot or tinker with their Holden. This sounds odd, and perhaps it goes back to my younger years perched on the edge of Swilly, but there’s something comforting about that. Anyways, my wanderings eventually led to where I was intending which was the very un-janner-like Kershaw Park, and a serene shady spot of tropical greens and a rather grand ornamental pond completed with waterfalls.

After a couple of days work I finished the final day just with enough daylight for a final XXXX beside the river and felt very content all of a sudden. Lucky even. And with that lingering beery glow I was off down south to Brisbane. The locals warned me it was cold down there and I was like...I live in Canberra! And then Thursday only goes and ends up being one of the coldest June days ever and a maximum temperature below that of Canberra. OK, so it was thirteen degrees, but you know that almost qualifies it as being a ‘big freeze’.

Mercifully the Friday heralded the return of the sun and, sure, it wasn’t exactly balmy but it made a huge difference. An early morning walk by the Brisbane River was almost idyllic. Hard to think this particular monster was swirling above where my head now was five months ago. In fact, as hard as I looked, I could not see much in the way of evidence that a brown tide had swept along this way. Perhaps the only indicator the whiter than white glow of riverside buildings, dazzling in fresh coats of paint.

Evidence of the flooding is not hard to find when you speak to people though, and this kept me fairly busy until the end of Friday. Keeping me busier into Friday night was liquid of a happier kind...several thirst quenching beverages with Brisbane locals, and a rather delicate disposition to commence the long weekend. Marginally helped by breakfast in West End (I at least felt less sick), it was time to gather up Queens Birthday Weekend mates Jill and Jason, and head on up to the Sunshine Coast. I’ve has mixed weather in the Sunshine Coast, sometimes blessed, others cursed with storms and chill winds streaming off the Pacific. This weekend had both. It really should be renamed Sunshine Coast With A Chance Of Heavy Downpours. Be a nightmare to update the road signs though.

While the remainder of Saturday was spent avoiding the rain, doggedly eating alfresco undercover, Sunday dawned surprisingly okayish. No rain anyhow, and progressively brighter as we took the Skoda down by the Big Pineapple, through Kevin and Wayne’s hood, and up the hills to Mapleton. The kind of place you come for Sunday coffee and cake, though don’t expect it anytime soon. We probably could have ordered the coffee then gone for our little jolly nature walk in and around Mapleton Falls and picked it up on the way back. The nature walk though was just as pleasant post-coffee, all the requisite rainforest type things, and perfectly suitable for Queenslanders in camouflaged pink thongs.





While the landscape is undoubtedly Australian hinterland, there is that decidedly peculiar attachment to Europe that comes with being slightly above sea level and ideally placed for day trips. A French restaurant with cocks everywhere (yep, just like France), a Scottish and Irish shoppe with Irn Bru and Daniel O’Donnell, a wooden chalet crammed with cuckoo clocks. And cheese, good delicious overpowering fromagey cheese. Dare I say too much cheese? Yes there is such a thing... my raclette literally a whole block melted in the oven on a few potatoes and garnished with token pickled onions. Sooooo good, but, as memorably quoted by Mr J Davis, “you do feel a bit dirty afterwards”. Cleansing in part was a late afternoon stop on a windswept ridge overlooking the Glass House Steve Irwin Australia Zoo Mountains. Not quite or not really the Alps, but equally distinctive in their own right.

More cleansing was a return to sea level, and the last of the day on Mooloolaba Beach. Not only is Mooloolaba a great name and much fun to say, its beach is really rather fine, and the crystal curls of surf glittering in the orange light marked an end to a day which under-promised and over-delivered. And it definitely over-over-delivered on cheese, thanks to Mrs Davis’ homemade veggie lasagne for dinner.

The last day on this trip to the Queen’s Land was supposed to be the Queen’s birthday or something. Official or real, I’m not sure, but regardless it’s a day off, so bless you ma’am. And like on all good public holidays, the shorts were back and the weather fine. A few hours in Noosa the perfect opportunity to feel hot for the first time since March. Feet in the water for the last time in a while... I suspect the next time they see sea may be Spain. And more food courtesy of the Surf Club. Okay, so maybe you can keep those Sunshine Coast signs the way they are. For me, it’s back to the big freeze.