Once More Around the Sun - 2018

January was stinking bloody hot, the hottest on record, but of course there is no climate change and the Abbott of the Abyss has taught us that “Coal is good for humanity.”  Peter and I have finally embraced that message, joined the masses who couldn't give an airborne act of copulation about sustainability and thrashed the shit out of our ducted air conditioning.  Bugger the planet, we’ll be outa here in 20 years so let somebody else's grandchildren pay the price!  Yes?

Kevin celebrated his 18th birthday in February and now he's headed towards 19 albeit rather slowly and with long sleeps between meals and toilet breaks.  The birds that regularly visit our garden no longer take Kev seriously and he shows little interest in them anyway.  He does, however, enjoy a morning ramble which usually includes a graze on fresh grass which he never throws up again until he comes back inside.  We do treasure our very special Old Boy and don't take a single day with him for granted.  In fact we don't take any day for granted.

That goes especially for family and friends.  Jan is managing fairly well but Tony has had a rough year with his back and the sudden passing of his younger brother, Noel.  Since he's now 78 we've been trying to avoid spinal surgery for a raft of reasons and have finally had success with a nerve block on his lower back.  Let's all touch wood and cross our fingers!  That came after their long awaited trip to Japan which they enjoyed but felt a bit compromised because their general decline in mobility and corresponding increase in pain.  Ageing is a bitch!

We said sad goodbyes to two of our Significant Woman this year.  Our most gentle girl, Sylvia, simply stopped walking and eating one day in early April although she seemed otherwise well and happy.  I tube fed her three times a day for a month and administered a series of pills and injections but on our third trip to the avian vet it was clear what must happen.  She went without fuss and is now helping to push up a couple of camellias.

Miss Margaret, who was a small chook with a big personality, joined her in November.  Marg suffered a prolapsed cloaca mid-year but once that was fixed and she had a remarkable recovery.  But as it happened, her hormones were extremely determined.  They fought the implant she was given to stop her from laying and it was on again.  All Kathy the avian vet could do for the second prolapse was to help her gently along.

Hazel has also had an implant to stop ovulation and give her a chance to recover some condition.  Like Sylvia, she's an ISA Brown and if you're considering chooks I urge you to stay well away from them, personable creatures though they are.  ISA Browns are an engineered breed, designed to lay an obscene number of eggs in a very short time.  There’s no well-earned retirement, just chooky “women’s problems”.  Hazel, Sylvia and Margaret racked up some seriously impressive medical bills between them but Truganini and Oodgeroo, both Australorps, go from absolute strength to strength and lay almost as many eggs.  If you're getting chooks get purebreds!

Which brings me to Lottie, Molly and Ethel, our new Chooklettes who arrived in mid-November after quite a search.  Point-of-lay purebreds are scarce as hens’ teeth so we got Lottie and Ethel at 6 weeks and Molly at 8.  Lottie is a Light Sussex named for Jan and Tony’s gracious neighbor; Molly is a Lilac Sussex named for Tony’s very special Auntie Molly; and Ethel the Plymouth Rock is named for my dear irreplaceable Auntie Eth.  The Significant Women tradition continues.

When Peter first sustained his Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) I fought long and hard to get some kind of rehabilitation and while every facility I approached was sympathetic they were also quite blunt about the fact that rehab was only available if the ABI was the result of a road accident which attracted third party insurance.  There was very little for anybody else.  I won't labour the details but the first few years were extremely difficult, especially after Peter’s wonderful dad died and his formerly supportive cousins moved in to hijack what was left.

After months of dead ends and floundering we had the extreme good fortune to be taken under the wing of St Joseph’s Hospital at Auburn which was not too far from where we lived at that time.  They provided us with several months of in-home occupational therapy and when that came to an end we were picked up by their amazing speech pathology team and here I must acknowledge both Belinda McDonald and Linda Clarke, especially Linda who stood by us both for a full eight years and found slot after slot for Peter long after any other organisation would have dropped him off their books.  Linda, Belinda and the dozens of students they organised to work with Peter over those eight years made a huge difference to both of our lives.

Enter Prime Minister Julia Gillard who recognised that an extraordinary number of people like Peter far worse had fallen through the cracks of a highly flawed system.  She set about building the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) which, along with The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, is a lasting legacy of her prime ministership and for that I acknowledge and thank her as well.  The conservatives fought to stifle Julia's plan but it limped to fruition under their reluctant watch when they took government.  It had become a force that simply could not be stopped.  Peter has been approved for support and the plan I presented was accepted without amendment.  We were treated with curtesy and respect every step of the way which I might tell you has been our same experience with Centrelink over the years.

We headed northward in DeDe to visit our lovely Aunty Joan in May.  She moved from her home on the Gold Coast to a facility on Bribie Island just north of Brisbane where she's enjoying the company and is also much closer to her son Peter and his wife Mandy who live quite close by.

No northern sojourn would be complete without a few nights in Armidale and a wander around my alma mater.  I like to remember and catch up with friends.  This time it was my old mate Sheree and it’s been a full 40 years since we both lived on Top D at Drummond College but it was as if no time had passed.  We always spend time with Shara and Tom as well.  They're not from the day but it's been almost as long.  There’s comfort in being with old friends who’ve shared your history.

Next was the town of Esk in south-eastern Queensland, the ancestral home of the Kransky Sisters who we discovered aren't quite as famous in Esk as they are in other places.

Click here - The Kransky Sisters  - Psycho Killer

That aside, a very friendly woman in the deli section of the Esk IGA kindly offered us each a free cheese kransky.  I don't eat anything even vaguely mammalian so politely declined the offer but Peter assured both Mavis and myself that it was rather moreish.

We motored on to Warwick wondering why there is no Trevor, Brian or Pamela and that's where DeDe’s windscreen was struck and cracked by a stone on the town bypass which, like much of Queensland, was under reconstruction.  When we were hit by a second stone at the back of the unrecognisable Sunshine Coast development orgy that was once Mooloolaba we just laughed.  I'd neither cracked nor broken a windscreen in 46 years of driving but you know they say about Queensland: Beautiful one day, two cracks in your windscreen the next!

We had 5 nights at the Gemini Resort at Golden Beach just south of Caloundra which is where Kim, Annette and I used to stay when we had our Queensland spring holidays back in the mid-1980s.  I worried it might have changed but wasn't disappointed and nor was Peter.  We had views up the Pumicestone Passage, over the northern tip of Bribie Island and out to sea.  It was perfect for day trips and driving down to the southern end of Bribie to visit Aunty Joan.

Next came the Anstees; Annie and husband John; another flash apartment; and a very nice Thai dinner at Coolangatta on the way south.  Now anybody who knows Mrs Anstee should sit down immediately, OK?  She baked us an excellent banana loaf for afternoon tea and even made passionfruit butter to go with it!  I remained gob smacked next day as we continued on down the ever lengthening and still somewhat newish Pacific Motorway for a couple of nights at Port Macquarie.  We like to catch up with Noelene Bailey who is the mother of my late great university mate, Dave.  It's been about 35 years since David left the building and I can't drive past Port without stopping by to visit Noelene.  It's that shared history thing again.

My annual political observations in two words: Donald Trump - twat; Scott Morrison - joke.

And speaking of jokes, I was joking when I said we had joined the masses who couldn't give an airborne act of copulation about sustainability although we did give the air conditioning a hiding last summer.  That said, we do have solar power and unlike many, we close all the windows when the air is on.  We have planted about six extra trees this year and just when I'm certain there's no more space another one presents itself and we suddenly find a spot that's perfect. 

So, my friends, our message is the same as every year.  Tread lightly upon this fragile planet of ours.  It took it 4.5 billion years to develop its extraordinary diversity so let's not bugger it up.

Peace, love & happiness

Glenn, Peter (Lyle), Kevin, Fluffy, Uranus, Baby Blue, Little One, Peggy
& the Significant Women

Tales of the Subaru - Leura Gardens Festival 2018 - The Epilogue

Writing about the Leura Chinee Restaurant brought back a raft of memories from the Loong Cheong Chinese Restaurant which used to be at the end of a short arcade in Florence Street, Hornsby.  It still exists further along Florence Street, tucked into the side of Westfield to which it is otherwise unconnected.  I describe it as a Chinese restaurant because Jane Turner in her guise as Kath Day-Knight was yet to be born let alone coin the word Chinee as a culinary term when the Loong Cheong first came into being.

Our friend and neighbour Daphne worked at the Loong Cheong during its first incarnation and her name should be a lesson in what not to call your child because poor Daphne spent her entire life known as Daffy which must surely take a toll.  One can only imagine what was going on in the minds of Jack and Ida Face when they named their son Richard.  He went on to become the Member for Charlestown in the NSW Parliament then Minister for Gaming and Racing in the Carr Government until an ICAC inquiry brought poor old Dick Face completely undone.

But I digress!  I want to reflect on the Loong Cheong, not people with unfortunate names like Gordon Fang who was a dentist I once had or the Turkish boy I taught whose name was Kunt.  That apparently means strong or durable in ancient Turkish but gets a bit lost in English.  There was no time to be wasted so after a very sensitive discussion with his parents Kunt became Curt.

Now back to the Loong Cheong which was way ahead of its time with optional chopsticks back in the 60s and exotic names for some of their specialty dishes like Wah Hop Fan which might have been a crumbed chicken cutlet with sweet and sour sauce at any other suburban Chinese.  I was rather partial to this dish, particularly with a side serve of special fried rice, and it remains something of a favourite to this very day provided the sauce is more sour than sweet and not too glow-in-the-dark.

It was a winter evening in 1968 when Daffy brought my Wah Hop Fan and special fried rice to our table then returned to the counter to take people’s BYO pots and casserole dishes through to the kitchen so they could collect their pre-ordered takeaway in the very same thus saving the container surcharge which in hindsight was environmental friendliness decades ahead of its time.

That was the night the Loong Cheong lost a much valued customer. 

In walked Ed Devereaux who played Ranger Matt Hammond in the new and very popular TV series ‘Skippy the Bush Kangaroo’.  He had arrived sans pots and pans to collect the order he’d phoned through earlier as one could do now that it was the 1960s.  He was an actor and therefore presumably wealthy so didn't need to skimp on such things as disposable food containers which was pretty much the mark of affluence at that time.

All would have been fine and Ed would quite possibly have gone on collecting his takeaways from the Loong Cheong for decades more had my mother been seated on the other side of the table but no, she had an unobstructed view of both the door and counter so recognised Ed Devereaux immediately.  Things would have still been OK had my mother possessed the skill of containing herself but no!

She stood up, pointed and yelled “Look, there's Skippy’s daddy!”

The near full restaurant gasped; he glared; I shrank.  Dad had seen and heard it all before but I was 14 and it was just like the morning Mum drove me to school in her nighty and dressing gown and the car broke down in the rain so 20 years before the invention of mobile phones she hightailed it straight into the school office and called the NRMA without batting so much as an eyelid.

Ed Devereaux gathered up his order which had been packed into newfangled plastic bags and according to our good friend and neighbour, Daffy, never again returned to the Loong Cheong Chinese Restaurant.  In fact, he left the country not long after that and moved to London where I can only but hope he enjoyed relative anonymity at his local Chinese restaurant.

Tales of the Subaru - Leura Gardens Festival 2018

We pointed DeDe up the hill to the residence of the a Emeritus Principal Foy in Leura on the Friday of what was apparently a long weekend, something which is delightfully irrelevant when you're retired.  Of course a holiday tends to attract other people which is always a shame but never mind.  They usually maintain some degree of distance if you carry a walking stick and mumble a great deal.

 Blue Mountains Tucker Tip #1 - The Avalon

This is my favourite restaurant in the Blue Mountains.  It's located in the lounge and dress circle of the old Savoy picture theatre in Katoomba where the deco decor is eclectic as are the table settings and the defunct urinal in the men’s toilet - if you go you must look!  They even have some of my mother’s flowery crockery which I gave to friends in Katoomba with instructions to pass on anything they couldn't use so eating off that is a treat in itself.

But the food!  Yes, the food; it's good.  I always order the pan-fried chicken fillets with a lemon & Dijon mustard cream sauce that's served with rösti potato & salad because the do the best röstis this side of Switzerland.  And can I ever go past the liquorice cheese cake?  No, never!

We met our mutual friend Kathie for drinks at the Carrington and I was looking forward to chatting with her over dinner at the Avalon but no such luck.  They had a jazz quintet playing and they were bloody loud!  They were also very good but I think management has become little confused about their core business.

I had my back to them which was as well because they were distractingly scary to watch.  The singer, who was quite the talent, had his balding hair dyed several shades darker than jet black and sported a pencil thin moustache to match.  In fact most of the band had jet black hair which projects a certain look in a group of men who are all in their 60.  The jury is still out as to whether they were taking the piss or serious but given their collective commitment to jet blackedness I'm tending towards the latter.

The Leura Gardens Festival

Andrew, Peter and I hit the gardens next morning and there were some stunners.  Best not waste your time on institutional landscapes like the Fairmont Resort, look for real gardens that surround the homes of the people who actually created and tend them.

The garden of Hawke Government minister Neal Blewett and his partner Robert Brain is one such treasure.  During his time as Minister for Health, Neal worked hand in glove with his Opposition counterpart, Peter Baume to prevent the AIDS epidemic from becoming bigger than it already was  and between them they saved thousands of lives.  For this reason they are my heroes so when Neal came trotting down the stairs to his garage where I was buying orange and ginger marmalade from some Katoomba Hospital volunteers I crash-tackled* him to introduce myself and to think him for all he has done.  The latter seemed to genuinely surprise him which is the mark of the man.

*I didn't really crash-tackle Neal because he's about to turn 85 as I write and spritely though he appears, you just never know about bone density but he did offer his hand and I haven't yet washed mine.

And speaking of 85 year-olds, we discovered another one stuck high and dry in his golf cart on our way to the Blewett-Brain House.  I'm not sure how he managed it but regardless of how hard we pushed either one or both of the rear wheels simply failed to make contact with the ground and since these are the wheels that do the business he wasn't going anyway fast - or any other way.

I'd have thought that lifting a golf cart would have been achievable but up until that point I’d failed to factor in the bank of batteries beneath the seats.  That's when a pair of Italian lesbians pulled up to lend a hand.  Never underestimate the power of a determined dyke!  Between the four of us we had the old chap and his clubs puttering off towards the golf course, and doubtlessly the 19th hole, in no time at all.

Blue Mountains Tucker Tip #2 - Lily’s Pad

Lily’s Pad Cafe in Grose Street, Leura is a great place for lunch being, as it is, one street off Leura Mall and therefore one street away from the tourist coaches.  The food is excellent as well.  I went with the all-veg three salad combination plate but both Peter and Andrew ordered pig things despite me reminding them that at the time of slaughter pigs are as intelligent as a three year-old human child and often much easier to live with.  One can but try!

Leura Art Tip #1 - Light & Shadow Fine Art Gallery

This is actually a photographic gallery with access through Lily’s Pad.  The owner’s mother has the right to print from Max Dupain’s negatives so most of the downstairs area is dedicated to his iconic images.  It's difficult not to enjoy Max Dupain but tear yourselves away and go up stairs to see what some more contemporary photographers are doing.  We were intrigued by the work of Peter Damo who specialises in nature photography but also creates montage overlays of up to ten images with quite magical results.  One such piece created from ten land and sea images he shot while in Iceland took all three our eyes collective.  Having been there ourselves just last year we now own it but will also need invest in some more walls on which to hang our growing collection.

Blue Mountains Tucker Tip #3 - Leura Chinee Restaurant

I prefer the Kath Day-Knight pronunciation of the culinary style so let's go with Chinee rather than Chinese who are people and therefore best not eaten, apparently unlike pigs who are fair game.  Did I mention that our porcine cousins have the intelligence of a three year-old human child when they're slaughtered?  The pig that is, not the child which like Chinee, you must not eat!

Peter and I first discovered the Leura Chinee Restaurant whilst not celebrating Australia Day in 2016 - Tales of the Subaru - Leura After Dark.  I said it then and I'll say it again now, its beaut!  They serve good old fashioned suburban Chinee Tucker, the kind you had for takeaway on Friday or Saturday nights. 

Remember when Mum would take you into the local Chinee with her own pots or casserole dishes in hand because takeaway containers cost extra?  That's how the generation that produced the Baby Boomers afforded to buy their own homes rather than sitting back complaining about how they can't get a break because of all the old people with their superannuation and negative gearing.  Come on hipsters, give up the smashed avocado and espresso martinis for a while.  Go and buy a fibro majestic starter home or a one bedroom flat somewhere that's pretty ordinary.

I rather wish we’d arrived at the Leura Chinee about ten minutes later than we did this because we would have completely avoided several families that were sitting at a large round table with an indeterminate number of self-raising children.  There was a time when taking a child to a restaurant was not only a treat but a learning experience but not these days, any public space is simply an extension of one’s own home and therefore absolutely anything goes.

And go they finally did, thank Christ, but not without a great deal of too and fro and holding open of the door on a rather chilly Blue Mountains evening.  Yes, I'm a grumpy old man and I'm seriously comfortable with that!

The young couple next to us were charming but impossible not to observe.  She looked like a blonde, non-transitioning version of Jordan Raskopoulos which would have been fine had she stuck to Jordan’s subject matter or at least something a little lighter than the dark philosophical monologue the young man opposite was politely absorbing, or at least so it appeared.  They also absorbed the best part of six different dishes compared to our two but we did splurge the kilojoules and sugar on some deep fried ice cream at the end.

I do enjoy watching and listening.  The two young people who were waiting tables were ethnic Chinese (not Chinee which you eat) but had unmistakable Australian accents which is in no way unusual but I did enjoy the exchange, in English, with the table of Chinese Chinese behind us who were being whipped into shape by one of their own number, a 30-something woman who’s passive aggression bloomed into full-blown aggression by the time they all left.  She was going to make her point and eat it too, all in heavily accented English for which I mentally thanked her.

But the best was to come.  We met the owner, a very pleasant and surprisingly tiny woman who can talk the leg off an iron pot as we discovered when I asked why the restaurant had been closed for 13 months.  It appears she slipped and fell in the kitchen which caused a brain bleed necessitating major surgery and a long recovery so they shut up shop.

Now those of us in the Brain Injury Community have to stick together and there went our second bottle of wine while we heard a full two-thirds of her life story starting from when she owned the Ingleburn Chinee Restaurant, had her son down there and her daughter in Leura (the aforementioned wait staff) as well as the advice from her father and various in-laws that got her to the point where I'm writing about it.  She also mentioned that she'd become a lot more chatty and a bit forgetful since the operation as I can testify when she came back for round two after we finished our deep fried ice cream.

She is both chatty and charming and we were very pleased to know she's joined the ranks of the survivors.  It was hugs all around before we were finally on our way into the chill Leura night, me with shorts on of course.

Next morning was a testimony to the need for retirees to avoid festive long weekends.  When we set out to view our final three gardens I was reminded, in no small way, of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice scene from Fantasia.  The previous day’s tourists had all split in two then done so again like rutting amoeba and the buggers were everywhere with more and more completely disinterested youngsters appearing as if out of nowhere. 

Blue Mountains Nursery Tip #1 - Longview Garden Centre

There really should be an application process for attending garden festivals - and a written test!  The gardens at The Everglades were a purgatory that neither owner Georgina Stonier nor designer Paul Sorensen could have ever imagined.  It was like a Norman Lindsay etching with the satyrs and sirens replaced by day trippers.  We pointed DeDe back down the hill with our booty from the Festival plant sales and Longview Garden Centre at Wentworth Falls which I cannot recommend highly enough for both their range and knowledge.

If my ramblings have whet your appetite for next year’s garden viewing I strongly recommend you stay overnight in Leura and hit the trail early on the Friday when it's not so busy.  If you exclude anything commercial or institutional you'll happily knock the lot over by closing time with lunch and a stop at the plant sales included.

Click on the image to view the slideshow.

Tales of the Subaru - Northbound 2018

Welcome to Queensland - but not rabbits!

With all creatures and gardens attended to and the house moderately organised we left Jan and Tony in charge and turned DeDe the Subaru northward for a ten night sojourn to four different places: Armidale, Caloundra, Coolangatta and Port Macquarie.
 

Scone Tucker Tip #1

Under no circumstances whatsoever should you stop at the Scone McDonald’s!  The food is the same as every other Maccas but the place is full to overflowing with loud bovine women and even louder bovine children who only occasionally come up for a brief gasp of breath between screams and stuffing down McHappy Meals.  Each tribal group was accompanied by a nanna who was generally skinny and terribly weathered but did her very best to satisfy and calm both her daughter and grandchildren albeit in a terribly wan kind of way.  The nannas all looked to be in their 80s but I doubt that a single one of them was older than 60.

Scone Tucker Tip #2

If you think Scone might be the place to enjoy a Devonshire tea think again.  I've tried numerous times over the years and there's not a single scone to be found in Scone.

Armidale

Returning to New England always feels like coming home.  I did seven years of undergraduate and post graduate studies at UNE, living in one of the university colleges for the first four years and I love the place.  When we hit the tableland proper, about 20km south of Armidale, and saw that big sky I felt a little bit emotional.  Many’s the afternoon I kicked back in front of my window just gazing out at that sky for hours on end which is why so many of my assignments and much of my exam preparation involved pulling all-nighters.

Our first stop was just west of town to drop some cliveas off for my old college mate, Sheree.  We haven't seen one another since 1978 - a full 40 years come November - but everything fell right back into place.  We continued on the following evening with dinner at PJ Thai which I've raved about on past visits but it's gone to the pack.  The food was shit but the catch up with Sheree was wonderful.

Glenn & Sheree

Armidale Tucker Tip #1

Breakfast at Booloominbah, which is the magnificent old country gentleman’s residence that was the original New England University College of the University of Sydney, is a must-do and the best $10 you'll ever spend.

Breakfast at 'Bool'

When the university first began ‘Bool’ was all there was.  Students lived, learned and ate there.  The grand old house has had many incarnations over the years.  When I was there it was used as an admin building but it has since been restored to something approaching its original state with the eastern section and upstairs used, as they were in my day, as vice-chancellor’s offices and university council rooms but the western downstairs is now a restaurant and bar.  It's all good!

Booloominbah

We also had the pleasure of catching up with old friends Shara and Tom.  We enjoyed our traditional evening at the Armidale Bowlo with pre-dinner drinks at the same table as last time and dinner at the exact same table in the restaurant.  I even had coconut prawn again!  Unlike PJ Thai, the bowlo is reliable!

Onward to Esk

I decided on a rather roundabout route to Caloundra so as to avoid driving through Brisbane.  This took us north to Tenterfield through some beautiful country then across the border to South-Eastern Queensland’s Granite Belt where the New England Highway continues, but not as it did in New South Wales.  We have a cracked windscreen to attest to that and were only doing 60km/h at the time.  Better the windscreen than us!

All that was forgotten though when we reached the town of Esk, the ancestral home of the truly amazing Kransky Sisters.  You won't be the least little bit surprised to hear that you can buy what Peter assures me is a rather nice cheese kransky at the deli counter in the IGA there but not being an eater of anything even remotely mammalian I can't confirm that.  My eating habits aside, the connection between the Kransky Sisters, actual kranskies and even Esk itself is completely lost on most Eskimos which is deliciously ironic.

The kranskies are just kranskies.

The ear is the legacy of a BCC & skin graft.

Caloundra
 

Or perhaps Caloondra as Thelma the sat nav insists on calling it.  I'm a bit of a tragic.  I wanted to return to the Gemini Resort were Kim, Annette and I used to come for our spring school holiday in the mid-80s back when we went under the names of Chazza, Drooghead and Kenny.  That was so long ago that we had three term years and naturally dark hair although I’m told I still have some of the latter on my back.

Management listened to my request and we were absolutely delighted to find ourselves on the 7th floor of the South Tower with uninterrupted views of the channel to Bribie Island and the ocean beyond.  A much more developed Caloundra than I recall sits at the distant third of our outlook where it presents as something of a fairyland at night.

Our view approaching low tide.

Caloundra Tucker Tip #1

Miss Hoian Vietnamese Restaurant at Golden Beach is worthy both your time and not too many of your dollars.  Their rice paper rolls are ordinary yet acceptable but their chicken, chilli and lemongrass as well as their green papaya salad with coconut rice are rather excellent reinventions of a pair of classics.

Caloundra Tucker Tip #2

This one’s in Golden Beach as well.  If you like Indian food give Dilon’s Kitchen a go, if only for their correct use of an apostrophe.  We had the Kashmiri Kofta which was unusually firm for kofta but once past the initial almond surprise it was excellent, as was their Prawn Molee.

The reason for aiming DeDe this far north was to visit our lovely Aunty Joan who has moved from independent living on the Gold Coast to a facility on Bribie Island much nearer to family.  She's enjoying the new arrangements and the staff clearly love her - why wouldn't they?  We had a wonderful catch up and went to lunch with her son Peter and daughter-in-law Mandy.  Meeting both was a first for me, Mandy a first for our Peter, and that was lovely.  We had an excellent seafood lunch by the water on Pumicestone Passage which would have earned itself a Tucker Tip had I paid attention to the name of the place.  A quick return visit to Peter and Mandy’s for Mother's Day celebrations on our way south saw us looking forward to next year's visit with Aunty Joan.

Peter B, Glenn, Aunty Joan & Peter T

Aunty Joan, Peter B, Peter T & Mandy

 

And speaking of names, you may have noticed both Peter and his first cousin Peter share a name which would normally be a bit weird but our Peter is Peter Lyle, known as Lyle to family, not Peter, so the name was technically free for reuse.  Now the part that I've never quite got my head around is the transition of Lyle to Peter around the time he started with the National Parks and Wildlife Service.  I like to think it may have been an attempt to escape a criminal past but now that his memory is shot I'll never know for certain.

Look what they've done to my coast, Ma!

We tried to drive north along the coast but there's has been so much development in the 42 years since my first visit that it can be difficult to find in places.  Beautiful Mooloolaba beach now has a density of development directly behind it, a cheek and jowl wall of 20 storey apartment buildings with smart cafes, restaurants and boutiques below.  Al fresco dining had conquered all with super smart pavements and equally swanky car parks but it's all just too new millennium perfect and there's way too much of it.  The Sunshine Coast used to be low rise and friendly.  Now there are generic malls, high rises and every kind of business you can imagine.  And cars, everywhere cars!

Noosa Heads, long the jewel of this coastline still looks good though and its heart, Hastings Street, has remained low rise but designer low rise.  The streetscape is impeccable, with coordinated stonework, plenty of seating and seriously smart street plantings but it's absolutely rotten with designer label shops - and turkeys.  Yes, the brush turkeys have discovered Hastings Street, Noosa.  Dozens of them just wander up and down amongst all the Botox, tight faces and Prada.

The camping area at the end of the street where I stayed nearly 40 years ago has been reborn as a very smart rainforest park and picnic area which I do applaud.  It's a narrow spit between the ocean and the river and I don't think a disjointed camp ground was sustainable in the long term.

We scored another crack in the windscreen on the way back.  That's two in less than a week. Bloody Queensland!  Perfect windscreen one day, cracked the next.  Then cracked again!

Big bucket list tick: we visited to the Eumundi Markets which began as an informal local arrangement many decades ago but now it's a huge twice weekly concern in a purpose-designed and landscaped park that's a bit too much like an outdoor shopping mall for my liking.  A lot of the stuff is local which is great but it just goes on and on and back and forth. It's extremely well organised and spotlessly clean but lacks hippies or something.

I'm probably just old and jaded.  Or maybe I just have all the stuff I need - another nice piece of glass or a plant excepted.  We did pick up one more hibiscus at a small nursery on the way back - a red one with green and white variegated leaves.  That makes a running total of nine hibiscuses and one poinciana tree to carry home.  The latter probably won't even grow in Sydney but I've been fascinated by them since I first visited Queensland at the age of seven.

Coolangatta

That very first trip to Queensland saw us staying in what was then a reasonably good motel right opposite Coolangatta Beach and it's still there albeit with more of a focus on backpackers these days.  Well been there, done that, don't need to do it anymore!  We stayed in a very smart apartment at the Mantra.  The views were excellent and the balcony big enough for the chooks.  I could live there!

The reason for our overnighter in Coolie (as the locals so groovily call it) was to catch up with old friends Annie and Annie (Anstee and Green) as well as their husbands Peter and John.  The Annies and I worked together at Artarmon PS then Anstee and I again at Willoughby.  Old friends are gold and we had the best night out at a Thai restaurant in Tugan. 

I once did my level best to embarrass Anstee at a fashionable cafe in Mosman by turning up in a flannie, King Gee shorts and Uggies so it seemed appropriate to come strolling out of our hotel in similar shorts and the new pair of Uggs I bought in Armidale on the way up.  I teamed them with a smarter and highly predictable Hawaiian shirt this time though.

 

Glenn & Annie G

Annie A & Glenn

Tugan Tucker Tip #1 - do you like the alliteration?

Sticky Rice has the best and lightest fish cakes I have ever tasted - anywhere!  It serves up some other pretty impressive creations as well, their betel leaf prawns being highly worthy of mention.

I must have been there before but for whatever reason I'd forgotten about Rainbow Bay which is just around the corner from Coolangatta and the last Queensland beach before New South Wales.  If Coolangatta was Manly then Rainbow Bay would be Fairy Bower and it's glorious.  Go there but don't tell anyone else!

Rainbow Bay

Byron Bay Tucker Tip #1

We had an excellent seafood takeaway for two from Fishheads which is on the main beach across from the pub.  Local whiting, potato scallops, calamari and chips for $35 which we enjoyed in a park with a view.  They were overgenerous with the chips but the bin chickens saw to those.

Calamari Anecdote #1

Back in 2009 the BBC produced an excellent six part documentary series titled ‘A History of Christianity’.  One of the episodes was about relics and having grown up blandly Protestant that's something I knew very little about.  Suffice to say it's all pretty disgusting - bits and pieces of dead people in glass cases with lots of fuss made over them on certain prescribed days of the year.

They seem to have bits of just about everyone except for Jesus who you will recall took a Led Zeppelin like ‘Stairway to Heaven’ leaving behind naught bar a few fingernails but wait!  Jesus was Jewish; he was circumcised on his 6th day!  That discarded foreskin has some seriously powerful relic potential and no less that eighteen religious institutions across Europe claim to have it.

So the BBC set off to investigate the mystery of the Holy Foreskin and found that twelve of the eighteen gold and jewel encrusted caskets contained something that in fact might have been a 2000 year old foreskin which painted a graphic image in my mind of the mohel slicing it up like calamari and sharing it around.

That gave me something to think about as we battled the 200km of roadworks south of Ballina.  I know you have to break eggs to make omelettes but I wondered if they couldn't make one smaller omelette at a time before moving on to the next rather than cooking one extremely long one.

Coffs Harbour Must-do #1

Under no circumstances whatsoever are you to pass by The Big Banana.  It's iconic, it's the first of the ‘Big Things’ and they sell ‘Dicks on Sticks’ which are chocolate coated frozen bananas that come naked; with hundreds and thousands; or with crushed nuts.  I go with the nuts, of course!

Port Macquarie
 

I can't pass by Port without looking in on Noelene Bailey, the mother of my old university mate Dave who was one of the world’s kindest people and worst drivers.  He nearly killed us both just north of Grafton in 1976 and then succeeded in doing the same to himself about 10 years later.  Selfless as ever, he was school bound very early one morning to coach his netball team but failed to notice both a stop sign and a concrete mixer.  Vale Dave.

Noelene was pleased as always to see us and I was very pleased to see her.  We've been friends for 43 years now since she and husband John used to welcome me into their home on long weekends and university holidays.  She's not very mobile these days due, in part, to quite dreadful scoliosis but we managed a brief shopping excursion and coffee out which was a first.

Glenn & Noelene

As last time, we stayed at Waters Edge Hotel in Port Macquarie which really is on the water’s edge with a lovely outlook from the front rooms and at its just a block away from town it's a short walk to a dozen or more restaurants and a fairly easy stagger back.
 

Port Macquarie Tucker Tip #1

I've recommended it before and I'll recommend it again - the Oriental Spoon Korean Restaurant but it was sadly closed the one night we wanted to go and I'd already decided what we were going to order - bugger!  We went next door to the Indian which was fine but my mind was fixed on kimchi and chapche not mango pickles and kofta.

We made it home from Port in just shy of four hours which is something of a record for us but it's motorway all the way now with the only roadwork being around the back of Lake Macquarie where about 30km of both carriageways cracked and moved from Day 1.  Some say mine subsidence; some say shabby road base; but years of rumour has had it that the dismembered body of missing urban conservationist Juanita Nielsen is buried beneath that particular stretch of motorway so perhaps she’s just trying to claw her way back out.  Juanita was always difficult to silence.