…living life like it’s golden
French restaurant for dinner before David Sedaris next door at the Athenaeum Theatre.
Goats Cheese Souffle
Hanger steak
David Sedaris is a clever man. Writer, humourist, commentator, radio personality. He travels the world on ‘lecture tours’, which, as he says himself, is really just him reading aloud. He reads his own work aloud. His thoughts, his articles, his diary entries. He is an astute observer of people, culture, language. I would like to be as clever and as articulate as David Sedaris.
The MCG, or ‘the G’. Melbourne Cricket Ground. Largest stadium in Australia. Tenth largest in the world. The MCG is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register. On 30 January 2009, the MCG was named as one of the seven wonders of the sporting world. It is referred to within Victoria as the “Spiritual Home of Australian Sport”.
My first outing to a cricket match. The KFC T20 Big Bash League. Melbourne Stars vs. Perth Scorchers.
Nothing like test cricket. T20 Big Bash League features eight privately-owned, city-based franchises. A lot of high-profile players come out of retirement to play in the Big Bash League and it gives rookie players the chance to play alongside the greats, such as Shane Warne. I saw him. I didn’t see Liz, but apparently she was there.
Brighton Beach, clean, fresh water, golden sand and the Brighton Bathing Boxes. There are 82 brightly coloured, yet uniform bathing boxes. They are Victorian in their architecture and their enduring sentiment of being a place to get discreetly changed in. Nowadays you can pay the equivalent of a small apartment to buy one of these and they tend to get handed down through generations of beach-goers. 40 degree day. On the beach by 9am. Good.
The Arctic Monkeys played in Melbourne on the 2nd of January at the Palace on Bourke Street. I was there. The Palace is a big old-school venue with a big lower floor area and then layers of stalls up to the back. The Arctic Monkeys are from England and this year marks 10 years of making music together. They were one of the first bands to come into public favour via the internet. Lots of energy. Good amount of English accent coming through the lyrics. A couple of flying drumsticks. And one pair of way too tight white jeans. Very rock star.
If the start of 2012 is anything to go by, this is going to be a great year. Good people, relaxed times, sun, beauty, laughter. Nice.
The Great Ocean Road begins at Torquay and travels 243 kilometres along the coastline. The beaches along the coast are some of the greatest surf beaches in the world. Particularly Bell’s Beach.
A walk along the coastal path from Torquay to Bell’s Beach, blue skies, indigenous plants, cliffs and crashing waves.
Although many believe that the final scene of Point Break is set at Bell’s Beach, it is actually set on a beach called Indian Beach in Oregon, USA. But it does feature in the 1966 documentary, Endless Summer.
They have strange signs in Australia…
The Southern Star Observation Wheel or Melbourne Eye had such potential. It is 40 storeys high and was intended to attract 1.5 million visitors a year. Which you would hope for, given that it cost $100 million to construct. It took two years to build, opened and within a month of the opening, buckling and cracks in the structure meant that it had to be closed. The 2009 heatwave was blamed. Reconstruction work began at the start of 2011, with the hope that the wheel would be turning by the end of the year. Last month, the wheel broke free from its restraints and began turning in strong winds, resulting in minor injuries to one of the workers as he fled the site. There is no completion date for the wheel. Easter 2012 at the earliest. It is unlikely that I will ever take my life in my hands and take on the wheel.
Bolte Bridge, I know it well. This is the infamous bridge where I spent many a weekday afternoon in imposed reflection and patient meditative thought when a truck had jack-knifed and blocked an exit, thus holding up traffic or a car had broken down in a lane thus holding up traffic…It’s an impressive bridge, all the same. twin cantilever bridge for the engineers amongst us.
The Port of Melbourne is Australia’s busiest port for containerised and general cargo.
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Willliamstown Botanical Gardens.
Sittin’ on the dock of the bay watching the tide roll away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STg8MB7g62M
While the visit back to the home country may have turned out differently from what I had imagined or had been led to believe, in the full and satisfying wisdom that is retrospect, it was perfect. I reconnected with friends and with my broken city and without wanting to sound annoyingly new age, I have come away again feeling grounded and calm.
As one who abandoned Christchurch and came to Melbourne to breathe, it was humbling to be back with those who stayed. Those who, in the five months since I left, have absorbed into their everyday life road closures and detours, an increase in shipping container walls around the city, a lack of places to go and things to do, further demolition of properties and decisions on the particular colour and shade of their zoning. My Christchurch people are so resilient and optimistic, but they are also tired.
I, on the other hand, felt happy to see the progress. The Christchurch water is back to its delicious pre-quake and pre-chlorinated wonder, bars and restaurants and shops and businesses are re-establishing themselves…largely in containers…I was glad to be there.
Sumner
Deans Bush Market
Cashel Mall, CBD
Sumner again
Taylor’s Mistake
Addington
Sydenham, Wayne Youle, Shadowboard Mural I seem to have temporarily misplaced my sense of humour.
Sydenham, cnr Wordsworth and Colombo. Back of the rdunit, a horse float. Newsgirl for 6 mornings felt good. Mine was the last voice to be heard from the Student Union rdu studio at the University of Canterbury on 22 February. I had been up doing some training with Spanky, the rdu Breakfast With Spanky host, in preparation for a Tuesday lunchtime current affairs show. I had just done a voice break when the earthquake hit. Spanky and I stood under the doorframe and then we all had to run down the stairs out of the building. But rdu keeps trucking on.
. Christchurch Aiport. Departure day under blue sky. Lovely Christchurch. Thank you ALL x
I had a very unimaginative (on my part, given the vast array of other possibilities) croissant and coffee. The croissant was just like in France! Which is what I was after!
First day off in 10 days. 33°. Hot. Note to self…must get a fan. It’s pretty heady stuff in my room on the third floor. Maybe because of the heat, maybe because of all the coffee coursing through my veins from one of the new guys at the cafe practising his coffee-making yesterday, I awoke with the sun and went for a walk down the beach towards St Kilda.
Not that I needed more coffee in my system, but feeling the need to have someone else serve me food, I wandered down to Jerry’s where the Jamaican barista always remembers I speak French (from being in there with French Karen) but doesn’t remember that I don’t drink soy lattes. I must look like a soy latte kind of woman, or something. Every time.
Errands in St. Kilda, swim in the outdoor pool in Albert Park, Christmas shopping in Elwood.
Then, buoyed by my successful independent-Jo Jo-dines-solo-and-also-does-cultural-stuff-alone Friday, I decided to go to my sister-in-law’s brother’s play in a pop-up theatre in Abbotsford. By pop-up, I of course mean temporary, and by theatre I mean primary school classroom. And seeing as I was over there, it seemed like a good option to try Huxtable, which is in Collingwood and so, just around the corner from the aforementioned pop-up play.
I looked at the online description for Huxtable and I am going to include it here. As far as I can tell, the following is just a collection of words…I find it very hard to know from these words what exactly the idea of the restaurant is or the kind of food one might expect…
“Huxtable is a collection of practices, observations, beliefs and experience accumulated over a many years in the industry and squeezed into one business model. When deciding what to apply to this model the brief was simple ‘All the things that work and none of the things that don’t.’
I started with tempura eggplant prawn fritter with shiso. Shiso is a little like a japanese basil, except it is a little more fierce looking than the innocuous basil. The fritter was crunchy on the outside with a delicious moist and flavourful filling.
Next was the quail with a green mango and cashew salad and roasted chilli dressing. Clean, fresh flavours. Melt-in-the-mouth little bird.
Dessert was a deconstructed version of cheesecake: creme fraiche cheesecake, strawberries, citrus crumbs and mango sorbet. Divine. Taste sensation. Over too quickly.
Then on to Abbotsford and possibly the world’s first dramatization of Anders Breivik’s massacre in Norway. The writer, Tobias Manderson-Galvin, who deserves fame, if only for his name, based his play on Breivik’s 1500 page manifesto. Actually, T M-G deserves fame anyway. Some might say, “too soon” for a play about the events of Breivik’s life which led to his shooting and killing young people at a summer camp on Natoya Island, and yet, The Economist successfully raises questions and addresses issues of the media’s role in atrocities as well as the racial prejudice with which people view the world. Clever cast, completely in role and in the moment. Bravo.
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