Return of the Native 2.1 - Part 1 - Sydney to Singapore

     

 Peter & Glenn at the SilverKris Lounge - Sydney Airport

This was originally planned and booked back in September 2019.  It was to be styled ‘Return of the Native 3’ but much like shit, viruses happen so settle back and enjoy the next five weeks of virtual travel blogs as we take you along on our fascinating journey - well more a fantastic journey, really! 

There will be both tiny and regular trains, a boat across the Irish Sea, some very smart flight legs and one ordinary one plus car rental upgrades (or so we hope).  You’ll see snowcapped mountains and pretty Welsh valleys with coal and slate miners as well as their beloved pit ponies all singing merrily in both horse and Welsh as they go.  There will be fields of green and spectacular coastlines around the Ring of Kerry, catch-ups with old friends and new in Mother England and culinary experiences galore.  Taste with us Welsh rarebit, the unavoidable crumbed scampi with mushy peas and chips, lashings of Guinness, the odd Pimm’s or two, some fabulous vegetarian food in Durham and lots of yummy mamak in Singapore.  So why are we waiting, let’s get started

Up up and away

Singapore Airlines SilverKris Lounge at Sydney Airport is excellent.  We did stick our noses into Air New Zealand’s larger Koru Lounge just for a look but it was much busier and I’m a sucker for Asian tucker so we stayed put.  I settled on the nasi lamak, passing as always on the ikan bilis since the very thought of eating dried baby fish repulses me almost as much as the taste and smell.  Peter went the dumplings which was a rather excellent choice.

I thought it best we stay away from hard liquor so we sat on a couple of glasses of champagne and a bottle of water.  We will tear ourselves away shortly and make our way down to the Promised Land of Singapore Airlines A380 Business Class.

I’ve done business class before, from Auckland to Sydney on Qantas; Wellington to Sydney on Air New Zealand; and Edmonton to Ottawa on Air Canada but all three were many, many years ago.  We’ll sit up till Singapore but after a three hour layover there I’ll be snoring in a flat bed most of the way to London but not until the Lobster Thermidor I ordered via Singapore Airlines Book the Chef option has itself been put to bed.

Once More Around the Sun - 2019

Glenn, Aunty Joan & Peter - Bongaree September 2019

The year kicked off with the hottest summer on record but of course there's no climate change, coal is good for humanity and if Jesus doesn't come back to sort things out soon we’ll all be moving to Mars anyway.  ScoMoses lodged our $150 million down payment when he was in Washington doing a Lewinsky on Trump back in September.

Of course Labor lost the unlosable election in May because they behaved like arrogant pricks and refused to listen to the electorate then promptly shot themselves in the foot just as they’ve done ever since Keating left the Lodge.  They don't deserve to govern but then I don’t deserve to have ScoMoses and his vacuous pack of inhumane, self-serving, corporate lackies running my country either!

There, that's got climate and politics pretty much covered, well maybe not Bruckoff but I always set myself a two page limit for these annual tomes.  You can probably guess my thoughts on the wanton and deliberate destruction of both the US and the UK and the swirling great vacuums that will result.  Have you started your Mandarin lessons yet?  But much like the extinction crisis, all that matters is that the wealthy become wealthier.  That's what we're all here to facilitate.

And speaking of the extinction crisis, don't you find it interesting that the exact same political commentators and politicians who defended George Pell so vehemently took to abusing a 16 year-old Swedish girl like ducks to rising water levels?  They just can't help themselves!

Politics and climate aside, our year kicked off with a Cawthorne family lunch although I was the only one present who still bears the surname.  My cousin Nancy, who I hadn't seen since her wedding 40 years ago, put on quite a spread.  Her sister Rae was there as well along with children, partners and grandchildren including their late brother Russell’s daughter Tanya and her two kids from Melbourne.  What a wonderful day!  Grandma and Pop would have been delighted.

Although Peter's NDIS support got off to a peculiar start with his perfectly adequate funding stuck all in the wrong and unchangeable dissections we muddled through and eight full months of hounding by me finally got things sorted.  But looking on the bright side, had the first plan been properly organised all of Peter's $24,000 budget might have been spent.  Instead half of that was sucked right back into consolidated revenue to help Josh Frydenberg balance his first budget.  Nice try Joshie but no cigar, Mathias Cormann and Smokin’ Joe Hockey got to them first!

We saw our Claytons niece Sara just after Easter when she came to visit with her mum, our old friend Taffy, who was over from Canada for a few weeks.  That was a lovely catch which we half did again two months later when we attended Sara’s naturalisation ceremony in Melbourne.  I had promised to take the fairy bread which I did.  We met Sara's partner Mags and his family; stayed with our good mate Russell and his lovely Cairn Terrier Jess; and caught up with my cousin Zelda (Tanya’s mum) after a quite unintentional hiatus of 51 years.  We've vowed to not leave it so long next time.  All up it was a wonderful wee break of just 4 days but we packed it in.

Tales of the Subaru - Four Nights in Victoria

We were off again in June on a six night cruise to Hobart and back aboard P&O’s Pacific Norovirus and what an utter disappointment that was, even in a mini-suite!  Our only point-of-comparison was an Alaskan cruise with Royal Caribbean in 2000 and believe me when I tell you there was nothing to compare.  P&O is the Ryanair of cruising, it's shit, shit, SHIT!!!  Hobart was wonderful though and we enjoyed what we saw of the Dark Mofo mid-winter festival.

A Postcard from Dark Mofo - The Pacific Norovirus

At that point we decided to put any sort of travel, even overnighters, on hold.  Our seemingly immortal Kevin could no longer be left unattended, even in the capable hands of his Aunty Jan and Uncle Tony.  Age suddenly caught up with Kev and the three of us just needed to be together along with a good supply of paper towels, kitty litter and fresh prawns - preferably tigers.

But despite a diet of love with generous servings of surf ‘n’ turf we said goodbye to Our Boy on 20 August at the ripe old age of 19 years, six months and two weeks.  We were fortunate to have him for all but the first 12 weeks of that time but somehow thought he would just go on forever.  My mother always said “You'll never find another one like Kev” and Ruth was always right, even when she was wrong.  We are grateful for the time we shared and even more grateful for the brevity of Kev's decline.  His last year was slow but manageable; his final two days very sudden; and the decision to grant him a dignified release not at all difficult to make.  Vale Kev.

As I've already mentioned, travel was on hold during Kevin's final months but with him now quite literally pushing up daisies (orange and white gazanias to be precise) a road trip seemed like a truly excellent idea for all manner of reasons.  We pointed DeDe northward up Bucketts then Thunderbolts Ways to Armidale and on to Golden Beach just south of Caloundra which isn't too far from where our lovely Aunty Joan lives on the southern end of Bribie Island.  The trip up was all drought, dust and bushfires but the time we spent at Golden Beach restful and seeing Aunty Joan wonderful as always.  She's one very special lady.  

Tales of the Subaru - Northbound 2019 - Dead Trees & Dust

Holidays over it was back to pestering the NDIS.  I staged a very polite lone sit-in at their Chatswood office with all documentation in hand and several hours later a chap who knew very little about the core business of the organisation was sent out to speak to me.  That stirred something because two hours later I received a phone call from a senior somebody offering me a proper planning meeting so we could “move forward into the future”.  I was very tempted to ask where-the-fuck else we would move forward to but sensed I had the upper hand so let that ride.

So back we went, me armed with three professional reports as well as a highly detailed budget proposal for the next 12 months and bugger me if they didn't approve the whole thing with a 60% increase!  We were delighted but at the same time left wondering what happens to the Peters who don't have Glenns with the wherewithal to badger recalcitrant organisations into submission?

We weren't looking for another cat-shaped-being but sometimes the Universe has other plans and early October saw Bruce come into our lives.  A friend’s daughter works in the vet clinic where Bruce had been living since being brought in abandoned at 2 years-old in February and one thing just led to another.  From the very beginning it was clear that Bruce is the anti-Kev, completely different from our Old Boy in looks, behaviour and personality.  He was the right cat at the right time because the hole Kev left behind wasn't getting smaller - and we liked his name.

Bruce is a gentle being but he’s also timid and terribly shy.  Who knows what happened to him during those first two years and although the staff at the vet clinic took great care of him much of his six months there was spent in a cage.  Bruce bonded with us almost immediately but getting him comfortable with family and friends remains an ongoing project.

Which brings us to Jan and Tony who are wellish despite their respective arthritis and back pain.  Tony turns 80 next year with Jan 18 months behind but they remain active with a garden that looks a picture and a house that only ever gets messy if I'm there.  They have just done a 13 day cruise around New Zealand and had a lovely time.  Here's looking forward to more of the same.

One of our New Girls left the chook house mid-year.  Ethel the Emu developed peritonitis and despite the best of avian veterinary care she suffered a ‘yoke stroke’ one morning and joined Margaret and Sylvia in the ‘camellia hedge’ which 5 years on steadfastly refuses to make that rather critical transition from a row of 17 individual camellias to an actual hedge.

The garden, oh yes the garden!  We've spent a lot of money on it, way more than any other indulgence, but now have Level 2 water restrictions which means no hosing.  We do have a 10,000 litre roof water tank below the lawn but that's not inexhaustible.  Two things are for sure, though; there is no climate change and coal is good for humanity!  ‘Thoughts and Prayers.’

Much love to you and yours from everyone here at #5.

We’ll catch you again next rotation if not before so stay well, stay happy.

Tread lightly upon the Earth which is a bit more fucked up than it was this time last year.

Glenn, Peter (Lyle to some), Bruce, the Significant Women, Fluffy & Uranus,

Baby Blue & the Little One, Mr & Mrs White, Peggy, the Frogs, the Fish and assorted blow-ins

Tales of the Subaru - Northbound 2019 - Dead Trees & Dust

I normally feel immense joy when “I return again to New England’s hills” if I may borrow a line from my favourite Mike McClennan song of the day.  But not this time, I felt great sadness instead.

Driving from Walcha to Armidale was a taste of the apocalypse some twisted christo-fascists hope to hasten so that Jesus will return and sort out the environmental, geo-political and social chaos that's being created by their egocentric adherence to the Gospel of Wealth.

The land was parched, dead trees and dust galore, and willy-willies too.  Cattle were thin and sheep were strung out along lines of feed which had been laid out for them but there can't be much money left to buy more and the dams are dry or nearly dry anyway.

Thunderbolts Way - Walcha

But let's back up to Day 1 and Bucketts Way which I always thought was named for somebody called Buckett much like the revered but never actually seen Bucket from Sea Change.  Not so though.  The name is derived from buccan or something similar which is a word the traditional owners, the Biripai and Worimi people, used for big rocks and there are some absolute beauties along Bucketts Way.

We overnighted at the classic and highly recommended Bucketts Way Motel in Gloucester (be sure to ask for an upstairs ‘rock view’ room; we like 14) and just south of there is where the current flush of coastal green stops.  From Gloucester on up to Thunderbolts Way was a bit dry.  Once the road reached the top of the escarpment and the farm country on the tableland it’s dry as and back we go to the opening few paragraphs.

Armidale is something of a spiritual home for me.  It's where I spent four extremely happy undergraduate years living in college and it's also where I did my external postgrad work.  I looked forward to residential schools and still feel the need to go back regularly just to be there.

Lunch at the beautiful old country gentleman’s residence, Booloominbah kicked of my return.  ‘Bool’ was given to the University of Sydney in the 1930s by the White family so that a rural university college might be established, the first of its kind in Australia.  The New England University College grew into its own in 1954 which coincidentally enough was the year of my birth.  It became the independent University of New England and in more recent years expansion has meant that all university’s teaching and residential functions as well as all but the highest level of  administration have been removed from Booloominbah and it's been returned to its former glory.

Booloominbah - University of New England

I was absolutely delighted to find a large Booloominbah snow dome with autumn leaves in the campus store and was even more delighted when the woman on the checkout gave me a 20% student discount.  A stroll through the Faculty of Arts completed my pilgrimage and we were off back into town.

We had dinner with Shara and Tom that night, a must do each visit, and lunch with Sheree next day.  Sheree and I are old mates from Drummond College days and hadn't seen one another for 40 years until we reconnected last year and it felt like just a couple of months.

Shara

Sheree & Glenn

People aside, the highlight if the visit was a morning spent at the New England Regional Art Museum viewing their latest exhibition from the Howard Hinton Collection.  It was a generous display featuring some of the best works from a collection of a thousand pieces.

The Hinton Collection used to hang on the walls of the now defunct Armidale Teachers' College and when I did the methods part of my Dip Ed there in 1977 they were literally everywhere, some hung in the most inappropriate places right in full sun.  And there was absolutely no security.  You could have walked out with a Dobell or a Streeton up your jumper and I've no doubt that happened.

The college was eventually absorbed by the university and under the terms of Hinton's will should Armidale Teachers' College ever cease to be the Collection was to go to the City of Armidale which has also technically ceased to exist.  The compromise was to establish the New England Regional Art Museum.

Pieces of the collection on display at the moment include works by Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, William Dobell, Margaret Preston, Rupert Bunny, Hans Heysen, Elioth Gruner, Albert Namatjira, Norman Lindsay, Lloyd Rees and many other fine Australian artists.  It was a truly magic morning!

A small part of the Hinton Collection

Two nights is never long enough in Armidale but we had places to go so it was northward up the New England Highway with my traditional piddle stop at Glen Innes where we're spotted a bric-a-brac shop that might just have contained a worthy piece of green Depression Glass like in Walcha and again in Uralla.  And sure enough it did but the real find was a bit further along at Deepwater where I scored a one pound green butter box.  I started out collecting Depression Glass butter boxes 30+ years ago on a visit to New Zealand but the find in the Yorkshire village of Cawthorne distracted me into bowls.  

The chap in the Deepwater bric-a-brac shop was amazing.  The town is just a spot on the map and he looked like a very weathered version of Owen from Vicar of Dibley.  We were met by his old dog, clearly blind in one eye, who also greeted another bloke but he'd pulled up right out front so that done the dog walked over and peed on his back wheel then lay down again.

But back to Owen whose voice had the same resonance as his Dibley namesake...

He knew the history of green glass and what a joy it was to listen to the man.  It appears manganese oxide was used to give the glass clarity but this came from Germany back in the day and was difficult to obtain during the Depression so they added other oxides to create colour and thereby compensate for clarity.  Green glass has iron oxide in it or uranium oxide if it's the glow-in-the-dark kind.   Clear glass with manganese in it will eventually turn various shades of purple if left in the sun and that's exactly what's happened to a bowl a friend recently bought me from an op shop.  All fascinating stuff and a very interesting man.  And chatting with interesting people is what always makes a trip.  We have encountered quite a few along the way.  The old chap in the junk shop in Uralla being the stuff of dinner parties - so engaging and funny as well.

On we went to Tenterfield past smoldering trees on either side of the road that were well inside the town’s 50km/h zone.  They lost a number of houses and businesses and it put a dent in the Annual Peter Allen Festival but every good performer knows the show must go on so with water bombing helicopters buzzing overhead they were busy preparing the park in the centre of town for the Peter Allen luncheon dance as good countryfolk do.

Tenterfield, NSW

Things were a bit dire across the border near Stanhope and hour or so later when we spotted fire jumping the road about 400m ahead.  At that point there was no need to be told to turn back so I threw DeDe into a tight U-turn and we buggered off quick!  It seemed wise to follow a couple of cars with Queensland plates on the assumption that they knew where they were going and they did.  A bit of zigzagging and a short while later we emerged on the other side of the fire and were once again en route to Caloundra.

We checked into level 9 of the Gemini Resort, Golden Beach late that afternoon following a very long drive from Armidale and were instantly happy is pigs in shit.  Gemini is right on Pumicestone Passage and the north-east view from apartment 73 is absolutely flawless.  It looks straight over the channel and across the narrow northern tip of Bribie Island to the ocean beyond as well as up the channel to Caloundra, the passage out to sea and the ocean beaches.  And the view floods into both the living room and the bedroom.  It's an apartment I could grow old in, or at least older, and you won't often hear me say that!

Sunrise from Level 9 at the Gemini Resort

Kim, Annette and I first discovered the Gemini Resort when we “gunned the heap north” during the old spring school holidays in 1986 and fell in love with the place.  On our way up we assumed the names of characters from the ABC’s wonderful radio play ‘Brunswick Heads Revisited’ which was something Drooghead wasn't entirely happy about but when we overnighted with her parents Sir Reg and Lady Glenys at the Casa del Reg on the south side of Coffs Harbour everything fell perfectly into place and thus became set in stone.

And how we did love a “teensy weensy pineapple daiquiri” or just about anything alcoholic that year and the following year when we ventured north again.  When Peter and I decided to come up in 2018 to visit lovely Aunty Joan who had moved from her home on the Gold Coast to a facility on the southern end of Bribie Island I thought “Why not?” and we were delighted.  The place has been meticulously maintained and just as I suspected, the view is even better from the South Tower which I booked last year and this.  So the outlook is better but the alcohol consumption doesn't even rate a mention as, with any degree of luck and good management, is what happens as we age.

Golden Beach Tucker Tip #1

Next day was swims in the channel, the huge superbly landscaped pool and a couple of rounds in the spa pool.  I'm no fan of sitting around in hot water but the water jets did my sciatica a power of good after our long drive.  A much anticipated Vietnamee dinner at nearby Miss Hoian finished off a perfect day.  Their green papaya salad had been on my mind since our previous visit and didn't disappoint.

Fully refreshed we headed south next morning to visit Aunty Joan who was looking fabulous.  She is Peter’s father Keith’s sister, the youngest in the family.  They were very close and it's not difficult to see one in the other. 

Now I've been into an aged care facility of two and I have a very critical eye and nose but I couldn't find fault with Bribie Cove at Boongaree.  It’s spacious and spotless and the staff are extremely caring.  Aunty Joan is a huge hit with them and it's not difficult to see why.

We met son Peter and daughter-in-law Mandy for lunch at the same seafood cafe as last year then went back to their house to see Roxy the dog from whom all future dogs should be cloned, she's a treasure.  And Peter and Mandy can come and do home renovations for me any time they like.  They have a great sense of style which they execute with perfect finish.

Mandy. Aunty Joan, Peter T, Peter B & Roxy

“Crickey!”  I must say I never was much of a Steve Irwin fan and entirely understood where that sting ray was coming from so have tended to avoid Australia Zoo on previous visits but urged on by the recommendation of Uncle Russell in faraway Melbourne we ventured forth next day and once therein we were mightily impressed.  It's well laid out and whilst their collection of animals is not extensive they are extremely well kept and clearly loved.

I've always been partial to lemurs, I don't like monkeys but our cousins the lemurs are much more benign creatures.  At Australia Zoo they free-range on an island and interact with visitors at will as do their wonderfully informative keepers who clearly love their charges as does Tiger Boy Terry who romps with his young charge for several hours each day much to everyone's delight, especially the tiger's.

Lemur Brothers

Golden Beach Tucker Tip #2

So it's a big thumbs up for Australia Zoo but a thumbs down for Dilon’s Kitchen Indian restaurant at Golden Beach.  We enjoyed our meal there last year and while this year's visit wasn't bad the 12 hours of squirts I suffered next day each smelt suspiciously of prawn moli.  My long ago ex’s mother used to make a lovely moli and I just had to have one, didn't I!  Stay with the Vietnamee!

It was with no small degree of regret that we packed up DeDe and set off south after our 5th night at the Gemini.  But never mind, we still had two days of holiday to go and that day was another chance to catch up with Aunty Joan on or way to Ballina but what is it with bloody Queensland and their motorways?  They're as slow at a wet week.  The one down from the Sunshine Coast was bad but from Brisbane to the NSW border was automotive purgatory!    When traffic wasn't crawling because of roadworks or some other merging road it was just crawling for the sake of crawling.  We were ever so glad to see the “Welcome to Queensland - Penalty for keeping rabbits exceeds $44,000” sign in the rear view mirror!

Glenn, Aunty Joan & Peter

I share my father's middle name.  Neville was born in Nimbin just shy of 50 years prior to the Aquarius Festival so my grandparents named him Richmond after the nearby river.  Some 50 years on weed smoking hippy parents probably would have gone with River instead.

On the way south we overnighted at Ballina near the mouth of the Richmond and it's the third time I've stayed in this town.  The first was in 1963 in a fairly ordinary riverside motel two blocks from where we stayed this time around.  I was 7 and I remember it had a large treacherous swimming enclosure that projected out into the river.  That was fine by me though but my mother stuck quite close which was reasonable because that's where we met Barry who was either a paedophile or was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder from WWII - possibly both.  Barry took an immediate shine to me and Mum didn't take her eyes off either of us.  It's interesting what sticks in your mind.

As chance would have it Peter and I stayed in that very same motel, and near enough the same room, 50 years later but only because every room on the North Coast was booked solid for Splendor in the Grass at nearby Byron Bay.  The swimming enclosure had been filled in (probably illegally) expanding the area of the motel by a good 25% and Barry was well gone but nothing else had changed.  The decor, the smell - all bad.  The only time we've ever left a hotel earlier was in Iceland where we had a 4.00am check-in at Keflavik Airport.

This time we stayed in a suite at the new Ramada Hotel with views over my namesake, perfectly pleasant furnishings, no smell and no Barry.

Our view of the Richmond River at Ballina

Ballina Tucker Tip #1

Sonnie’s Thai which is right on the main drag smack in the middle of town is friendly, unpretentious and good.  Since it was a Friday night and I'd had a long drive we ordered take away which we enjoyed on the balcony of our suite overlooking the river - perfect!

We were surprised by all the motorway construction south of Ballina.  Some serious money is going into the new road, much of which is elevated on land bridges where it traverses the Big River Country.  But for now the highway still passes through little riverside towns with sugar mills and bric-a-brac shops that have the odd bit of green glass although they now have less than before because we scored a few more worthy pieces and met some more interesting people.

I can't drive the Pacific Highway without a stop in Port Macquarie to visit my friend Noelene Bailey who was the mother of my late great mate Dave.  He left the building 30 years ago when he kissed a concrete mixer on his way to school early one morning to coach his netball team.  Dave was always a shit driver who very nearly killed us both north of Grafton in 1976.  Given that and other near misses, the news of Dave’s death came as a shock but no great surprise, to me at least; it was both to poor Noelene.

We managed a little shopping excursion and morning tea out last year but not so this time around.  She wasn't even up to a short shuffle to the retirement village cafe but we spent a few happy hours together all the same.  Then on we went, no more stops, no more green glass, nothing until we got home to the Heights-of-Hornsby and our Girls who were delighted to see us again and wanted to know what we'd brought them.  Thank goodness we saved the leftover coconut rice from the previous evening’s Thai or we'd never have heard the end of it.

Our view of the Hastings River at Port Macquarie