Very-Lovely, Always (Green): 2010

This time next week I will be on the other side of the world, though much rests in the hands of sporadic ash clouds and any closed border to nasty foreigner policies of Davey C and the Cleggmeister. Before I go overseas, alas for just a brief visit (unless, rather fortuitously the ash cloud re-emerges when I am over there), it is important to me to get a double shot of Australianness. Australia may not have a wonderfully quirky electoral system or the miracle that is Cornish Clotted Cream, but boy does it have some very big plusses. The South Coast in May, for instance, where blue skies beam down on yellow sands and green forests, all very shortsable but with reduced risk of red skin.



Most of the South Coast is pretty darn fine, so it doesn’t matter too much which road you take off the Princes Highway. While Canberra suffers from its lack of waterfront joie de vivre, the South Coast provides salvation, this beach – Depot Beach – being two hours from my door. Two hours – pretty much the same as some bogan from Western Sydney would take to crawl through dreary suburbs to reach an overcrowded beach with expensive parking. Eat my shorts Sydney!! (and I was wearing shorts).

So, what happened at the beach... well, I walked along it, and then along some more, and then across some rocks and through a pebbly bit. All the time making remarks like ‘oh how lovely’ and and ‘what a great day’ and rather self-congratulatory on my decision to head to the coast. That tired me a little, so I sat down for a while on some nice grass at Pebbly Beach, ate some leftover pizza, and continued through the mighty spotted gums and ferns. This led me to another little beach, which was also oh so lovely, where I shared views with the Rosellas and generally felt rather good. And then I walked back again, via another brief stop to get some bare feet in toes and test the water (not too bad, wasn’t running out shrieking like a girl anyway).











It doesn’t sound much, but it took a fair few hours, what with all the ambling and taking pictures, the stops for little rests here and there, the clambering over pebbles and through grains of sand. Plus I think it was about 12kms or so! Distance enough to justify fish and chips? Why, of course. Not only is it important to dose myself up on Australia before I leave it for a little while, but my stomach needs to prepare for what Mum will do to it! Luckily, just a little back down the road, Batemans Bay provides the required measures of fish, chips and dusky calm waterside views. Thank you Australia, see you again soon xxx

Well good walks

It’s been a couple of weeks since the golden circle, which I revisited this weekend to find slightly less golden but equally as amiable. It’s a good idea to get the walks in, at least some recompsense for the lack of weekday sunlight on the face and counteracting some of the recent excess of food. A potentially fatal combination of visitors and events over the last week have probably knocked a couple of years off my life, bringing wonderful excesses of chocolate, coconut cream, hollandaise sauce, steak, pork, beef, blue cheese topped burgers, bacon, chips, coffee, calamari, sushi and sandwiches. The irony that all this was topped off with a discussion group on eating fruit and vegetables.

Luckily at this point I don’t think I’ll qualify for the Biggest Loser, though there is still a trip to Europe to come which may add weight to that possibility. For now, rotundness is kept at bay by activity, and wallking up mountains may have helped. OK, it was Anzac Day weekend so there were a few Anzac biccies, but these were a simple reward for tramping oop ill and oover dale in quite bracing temperatures on the rooftop of Australia.



With my housemate Alex and Rear Admiral Davis in tow, the first walk was a rather simple affair, a warm up to acclimatise and get used to the terrain. A walk through boggy alpine moss and snow gums, up to some granite boulders looking out over the Thredbo Valley. A chance to suss out the landscape, scope the business environment and plan for tomorrow and beyond. With darkness falling, there was little more walking to be done and so we retired to our digs in Jindabyne, complete with beer and steak and an episode of Underbelly, and a 24 hour service station that shut at 9.

After overnight rain, the next day brought with it stunning blue skies and crisp clear air. The aforementioned overnight rain had been overnight snow at the highest levels, with a few residual bits and pieces in evidence at Charlottes Pass and dotted in shady pockets of the Main Range. The wet stuff had also heighted the level of the Snowy River, a slight complication given the walk we were on required a certain river to be crossed. Icy water on bare feet not so good. Sense of adventure excellent.

The Snowy River represented the lowest point of this particular jaunt, the track rising quite steadily for a few kilometres, offering views across the very un-Australian landscape, no beaches or warmth or majestic white gum trees in sight, just a barren, stretch of buttongrass and marsh and gentle mountain ridges. A place for intrepid explorers and mighty mountain men and people just masquerading as intrepid and mighty.



At Blue Lake food was on the menu once more, nothing fancy this time, but a ham sandwich just as welcome. And one of the more scenic locations for lunch, though if this was in the land of civilisation, the patio heaters would be expunging greenhouse gases very regularly and there would be some nice warming coffee to nourish the soul. But a beanie and some cold water from an icy metal bottle would have to do instead.

Now many of history’s most momentous occasions have been shaped by paper scissors rock. It was around during the French Revolution when Jean-Luc Chamborissinimentilly tried to steal some fromage from Pierre Petit-Beurre. Winston Churchill always went for scissors, but that was okay because Hitler always thrust his arm out to reveal paper. The Berlin wall crumbled under the rock fisted fury of the Hoff. And so it was, thanks to some timely scissor intervention that three intrepid walkers pushed on up into the blue sky towards the summit of Mount Carruthers.

Just a few tens of metres lower than the highest point in Australia (which itself was further along the sweeping ridge of the Main Range), good ol’scissors delivered us some spectacular views across the characterstic blue ridged wilderness of the high country, the landscape dipping and folding continuously into the horizon. Magic.





It really was all downhill from that, the return walk more like a pleasant afternoon amble, the conversation flowing and the sun and sense of achievement warming. Good times, the three of us like a distorted vision of Clarkson, May and Hammond without wheels and slightly less ludicrous hair. Time for ideas to flow and blue sky to permeate all, time to get back to the Snowy River and cross it without getting the feet wet, time to climb back up that awfully steep ending to the car park and watch as time passed from day to night on the drive back to Canberra. And time for takeaway to see us through to the end.

------------------------------------

This weekend has brought with it walks considerably less dramatic, well suited to a mood of quiet relaxation and healthier eating. A simple Saturday morning stroll from home to the markets in Fyshwick, through the hood of Narrabundah, was surprisingly endearing. The knowledge that I was stocking up on veggies and not using a car to do so gave me that initial inflated sense of worth, but it was eclipsed by the simplest suburbanity of people raking up scrunchy fallen leaves into huge piles, dogs and their walkers stopping to have a chat with me, kids on bikes scrambling across front yards and half hearted footy playing in the oval. Narrabundah has its rough edges... ramschackle fibro homes, sofas and veranda combos, utes and more utes, but it is the sense of community which trumps it over the more refined, stale, public servant crammed apartment land of nearby burbs.

Sunday morning’s stroll was not so much a walk amongst nature or the leafy suburbs, rather a walk back in time, and slightly on the weird side. It’s that time of the year where a small village in NSW celebrates the extraordinariness of the humble pumpkin, bringer of scones and soup and pumpkin pie. Country music plays over fields of sheep and straw, a bucking bronco is available for party hire, quilting displays adorn the church and in the village hall, everyone’s favourite grandmothers beaver away in a frentic melee of tea making and washing up. Simply charming.

And so we come to the last walk of the varied tour, a simple late Sunday amble down beside the lake, a final chance to soak up the weekend and yet more flaming galahs and flaming trees. I think all this walking is making me hungry again...

Golden Circle

Today, like most of the week just gone, was simply one of those Canberra is Beautiful days... deep blue skies peppered by a few fluffy cotton clouds, comfortably warm with little more than the odd faint gasp of breeze, and a gentle, amiable glow of autumn reflecting in the mill pond reaches of the lake. Some Sundays are just made for strolling and very little else...including writing!

Bello... is it you I'm looking for?

Well, I hope you all had a nice Easter. I did, and it didn’t even involve that much chocolate. Ok, there was a chocolate brownie, oh, and some chocolate. Oh yeah, also that chocolate filled croissant I had. Plus there were the eggs. Usually poached with a pile of hollandaise sauce. Food was just one element of a great Easter getaway though, eclipsed by beautiful countryside, water and sand around the mid North coast of New South Wales.

Leaving Sydney early on Friday morning with my sometimes travel buddy and now bringer of good weather Jill, it was a fairly boring drive out of the city for some hours, clocking up the k’s and iced coffees and podcasts. We reached the coastal town of Port Macquarie just in time for some lunch and a blissful walk along the sand. That hit the spot.

It was a relatively short onward jaunt to the idyllic town on Bellingen, tucked away slightly inland from the coast in a beautiful valley, carved out by the Bellinger River plunging its way down mountainous rainforest. The setting is perfect and the town itself also is one that hits the spot – small but refined, laid back but not too hippy, and, importantly, boasting a very high cafe per capita ratio. Bello: home for a couple of nights, and bringer of cake and chook and breakfasts and coffee.

Nearby is a less refined kind of place, situated in the coastal hub that is Coffs Harbour. It is a big fibreglass banana, and this is my second visit. It is one of the most famous big things in Australia and a major tourist attraction. It cannot be eaten, however it seems to have had a flow on effect on the food scene in this area, with many dishes served with a twist of banana, including my rather good Thai chicken curry that I had for dinner on Friday night.

So, quite a bit of food talk already, right? Time for some exercise, four hours of it on a canoe, trying not to go round in circles. Mostly the Bellinger River and the tributaries were placid, with the exception of one or two jumping fish; however the current always seemed to be against us and there must have been something wrong with the weight balance of the boat causing it to veer off a straight course. No major incidents, though the boat did try to escape on a rising tide when left on a spot of gravel for a mid-morning healthy apple break. But the parking at the end was exquisite.

With somewhat numb arms, aching shoulders and stiff legs, late in the day a more sedate stroll along a beach just north of Coffs was rather nice, a good way to see out the last day of daylight saving.



A constant backdrop to the region are the green cloaked ranges rising up from the coastal valleys, the Waterfall Way taking you up to these heights and linking a number of excellent national parks. The first one is a World Heritage area, an extensive pocket of sub tropical rainforest called Dorrigo National Park. A place I had been to before, but a place I am happy to go back to again and again. Here, from the relative hubbub of the visitor centre you can descend into a dark world of vines and ferns and sassafras, rediscovering stunning waterfalls along the way.







And thanks to the IGA back in Bellingen, afterwards you can enjoy a chicken and avo roll in a pleasant little glade to reflect on the lovely walk through the forest and the sight and sounds of Crystal Shower Falls.

Moving higher up on the tablelands now, you noticed not only the change in landscape which was in parts rolling green hills Devonesque, but also the shift in civilisation and refinement! Stopping briefly at the town of Dorrigo (the poor man’s Bellingen), it was then on to the town of Ebor, hovering around a cool 1300 metres above the sea and offering a few amenities and banjos on the veranda. Just out of town is Ebor Falls, a contrast to the rainforest falls of earlier, torrents of water plunging off the sandstone and cutting its way through a more classic Aussie bushland environment.



With the afternoon sun out, the brilliant white gums surrounded by long grasses and wildflowers all around, it was a very pleasant spot for an easy little walk along the cliffline.

In fact, it would have been a great place to camp, though there was no obvious campground around, so instead we took a dirt track a little further off the main road and headed into New England National Park. Here was a campground rather brimming with activity... I think I was the only one with a 4x4 and all the camping paraphernalia you could never want. My tent looked rather inadequate, and coupled with an air mattress that decided to gradually deflate and the dysfunctional on site BBQs, it ended up being quite a basic camping experience! Luckily, just up the road is Point Lookout, above 1500 metres and a place designed just for me and my love of lookouts. A place conveniently sited for watching both the late sun peeking through mists and clouds, and the early morning rays glimmer through trees and extend its warmth across the phenomenally vast and wild landscape.





Up here there is a different type of ecosystem, and seemingly quite a rare one in Australia. The cool and damp climate brings with it a world of mosses and fungi and little hobbit steps, small frail trees and trickling rocks, all appearing as it probably did many thousands of years before when Bilbo Baggins took a wrong turn. Taking a wrong turn here could prove pretty dangerous, with several likely death options including getting lost forever, slipping on the mossy watery mud combination and plunging down a ravine, getting bitten by a snake or swooped on by a pack of merciless Currawongs. It is perhaps this combination of imminent peril and the enclosed, ancient, otherworldly feel that made a walk through here on Easter Monday morning really rather splendid.



Well, you may have guessed by now that I survived the dangers of New England National Park, which sadly meant it was time to head off back down the hills and south to Sydney. Not before one last stop in Bello for a timely sausage roll, coffee and almond and hazelnut croissant, bidding goodbye with a mouthful of pastry. As coincidence would have it lunchtime (which was a late lunch after all that other food) arrived around the Port Macquarie area and chance to cook up the BBQ food that escaped us the night before. It was a fine BBQ spot, with fine views and ample sand for a little post meal nap before the rest of the drive south.

Alarmingly, with daylight saving disappearing over the weekend it was all too soon that darkness began to fall. All too soon to make it to Port Stephens while it was still light, but eating fish and chips for dinner in the dark was not so bad, and it means there’s a place to definitely return to in daylight one day. That was really the last stop on the trip, the roads widening, traffic building, and orange glow nearing as Sydney approached. A bed for the night and chance for Globe breakfast before heading back to Canberra the next day.

The Magna certainly clocked up a few more miles than usual over Easter, but it was really good to go somewhere a bit different for a change, try out some new things and revisit some old favourites. You can’t really go wrong with world heritage landscapes, golden sands, and too many cafes. Oh, and the big banana of course! The Lindt bunny and I enjoyed it much, so much so that the Lindt bunny cannot cope with being back in Canberra. He feels a bit hollow and I had to take the terrible action of putting him out of his misery. Head first of course.