Jan. 16 - The blog is way behind, quelle surprise. In real time, we are in Cambodia right now after having spent a full month in China and 5 days in Hong Kong. We are about to rent an apartment for a month and help out at a local school for street kids. By about mid-February we'll explore SE Asia and then head back to China for the month of April. Back inAustralia, however...
Sunday Oct. 2– Spirituality, Street Markets, and the best Ginger Beer ...
It was Meg’s B-Day, so we were greeted by a chorus of kookaburras serenading her on the verandah and an entourage of dancing wombats were tumbling about for her pleasure (huh?ed.). After that performance, she could only top it by attending service at the Uniting Church, which she went to after we packed up. I headed up to a farmers’ market which ended up being a nice walk to a park only to be advised by a park attendant that the market had moved to a location far across town. There was nothing to do but sit on the hostel patio and read my book, which I avidly did.
Upon Meg’s return from her spiritual enlightenment we headed downtown along the main commercial street, which was closed for a Sunday street market. There were the usual accessory stalls and food places but a lot more alternative healing kiosks than we’d see in Canada, where you could watch a client having her aura caressed by an earnest-looking expert. We waded through fairly thick crowds and passed a man who droned into a didgeridoo, simultaneously playing blues guitar. At the end of the market was a well stocked used-book store where we had a good browse and Meg found a Gerald Durell book (My family and other Animals) that she had started in Vancouver and desperately wanted to finish...
Back through the market, we hunted down lunch which consisted of a mediocre burrito and an excellent bottle of homemade ginger beer, a product they produce with gusto in Australia (in contrast to their alcoholic beer, which has rarely turned out to be anything interesting). Full of food, we headed off to Brisbane on an uneventful drive (I can't remember a single thing as I am writing this a solid two weeks later). We found our Bed and Breakfast (B & B), Annie's Inn, and were given a large room in a charming old house close to downtown.
Brisbane Birthday Dinner Delights Dynamic Duo
We strolled downtown, which was less than ten minutes away and all downhill. The centre of Brisbane is a busy pedestrian street with mall and shops as well as music and big screen television for people who just want to hang out. We had a mission to see a movie at the city cheapie theatre, so we blazed through the commercial area, across a brown river on a pedestrian bridge and down the main arts street. Brisbane is very well set up for tourists, with the major museums and art centres all connected together along the river beside a green park with floral gardens and multiple swimming areas. At the theatre we discovered the reason they can charge such good prices is that it has a solid 15 minutes of obnoxious commercials mixed with 2 or 3 movie trailers before the actual movie starts. This made us nervous that we’d be late for our dinner reservation, fortunately the website’s running times for the films took the commercials into account. We checked out Crazy, Stupid Love which we had zero expectations for but turned out to have a few laughs. The reason seemed to be that it was written by the same fellow as Thank You for Smoking, a really funny movie. We popped up out of our seats as soon as the credits started and speed-walked to our restaurant in the nick of time.
We were the last seating of the night at Tukka, which specializes in taking bush cuisine and tarting it up for the gourmand scene. The service was very attentive, with the Scottish maître d' /co-owner being very helpful. We wanted to try as many different things as possible, but the tasting platter was for two people and Meg worried that it was mostly red meat and therefore left little for her. Our Scottish friend overheard this and said that he'd ask if the chef could alter the platter to be for one, allowing Meg to order a plate of “bugs”. These were not insects but a charming name for a creature in the scampi/shrimp/crayfish family. They arrived cooked with lemon myrtle, a fragrant local tree.
My platter (which we shared) included bread based upon Australia bannock served with dukka, a nut mixture that you dip your oil-soaked bread into. There were also homemade preserved meats, with smoked and dried kangaroo, sliced emu and marinated alligator. There were also vegetable chutneys and sauces and a selection of berry-sized apples to eat. Everything was excellent and Meg still waxes poetic about her beloved bugs (have since had none to match them). To go with this we had a local wine with an irreverent label paying homage to skate-punks. The mains were barramundi for Meg and grilled emu for me. Emu is a very strange bird, as you would swear that the meat was a grilled beefsteak in smell, taste and texture. For dessert we had a beautifully presented tasting plate with tiny servings half a dozen desserts which were all wonderful.
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| Fine dining, Brisbane style. |
At the end of meal there were just two tables occupied and the chef came out of the kitchen to chat with them, then us. When we started asking questions about the ingredients he invited us to the garden behind the kitchen where he grew many of the plants he used in the dishes. There was the lemon myrtle bush as well as an anise and cinnamon one, several other trees and bushy herbs. Tukka was one of the best restaurants we have ever been to;a great place to visit if you are a “foodie”.
Monday – Street Art, Serious Art,and Trashy Television...
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| An example of the common museum ibis. |
We got up and had a simple but fine breakfast talking with the very chatty caretaker,Wayne. Several other guests were eating as well but kept to themselves, which we weren't used to in a B&B setting. We walked through town to the Europcar rental office to do some paperwork. Along the way we walked along nice streets with some quirky public art, dalek-like copper structures (think Dr. Who) and a leopard dressed as a human, with a hole in his stomach,hailing a bus. Meg went to the post office and while I waited outside some people were handing out free samples of fruit juice, so I picked some up. It was mango nectar and tasted pretty good, but when I read the bottle I saw that one serving of the stuff contained 2/3 of my daily sugar intake. Nasty. After being so diligent with getting our chores done, we headed over to the arts area to check out a gallery. The Museum of Modern Art was supposed to be the best but it had started to pour rain so we went in to the Queensland Art Gallery to hold us over. It turned out to be the superior gallery, with a huge collection of Aboriginal Art, a nice space with lots of water pools, an artist -curated area, some excellent 1930s photos of Indian fakirs sitting on beds of nails,etc. The big draw was a retrospective of the photography of Henri Cartier- Bresson. We didn’t actually see the show, but we saw documentary films about his work and looked through some large books of his prints, nice. We lingered at the Museum café and had coffees; but all of the inside seats were taken so we huddled outside under an umbrella in the rain watching ibises and lizards scour the area for morsels.
We headed back to our room in the drizzle and wondered how we would cook pasta for dinner without a proper kitchen. The internet provided the answer and the managers (Wayne and Trudy) had a microwave steamer. It was an experiment that worked and we had our beloved pasta puttanesca with wine. After that we watched some trashy television, called people overseas using Skype and then headed off to bed.
Tuesday – The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: Buddha Trees, Hollywood Trash, and Barbie-Meets-Edward Scissor-hands Decor...
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| Brisbane's riverside gardens. |
I arrived at the Museum of Modern Art an hour early for meeting Meg so decided to case the joint. They had just finished a huge surrealist show and were still taking it down so there was only one floor and a few rooms open. I went to the media room as I figured I could watch some movies to pass the time. Their media room had one film showing people’s reactions when they were asked in China if they knew what day it was on the anniversary of Tienanmen Square. Another film had various people addressing the camera saying, “I will die.” A third had films of sacred places, including the crucifixion table (where people press their ears to hear the hammers) and the devil’s footprint. One wall had a display of pictures of the artist’s mother with stories about their lives and relationships written on them.
Meg was also early and I caught her stalking me in the gift shop (I almost surprised him, but he's too quick for me-ed.). We had the picnic lunch she brought and then joined a museum overview tour. There was just us and a Chinese woman with the guide, so the ratio was excellent. She started by going over a tree on the grounds that was taken from a cutting from a tree cut from the original tree that Buddha sat under, which was interesting. She pointed out the unusual neon motel sign in front of the museum (people often walked in to the building looking for rooms) and had a nice explanation for the antique table with a log jammed through it that sat in the main lobby. There were some modern headpieces from the Torres Straight Islands and some new takes on textiles and she spoke engagingly about them. She covered most of the remaining galleries in the museum, so after she left us there were only a few galleries left to browse through. After about half an hour we headed back to the B & B.
We went for a late afternoon run in the nearby Botanical Gardens, which was nice enough but was in an extremely hilly area of the city (hard work!). We then headed downtown to the expensive movie theatre to see Horrible Bosses, a film we had tried to see many times but it was always on the wrong day or time. The movie was disappointing, a few laughs but too many bathroom jokes aimed at 13 year olds.
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| Meg battles with a local dalek-like statue. |
Weds. – Rendez-Vous at Rainforest Mountain
Today we were meeting the first of Meg's cousins, (also a Megan) and her husband Michael. They lived in a fairly remote hard to get to place, near Coolangatta so we were getting escorted there by Michael this afternoon. We had lots of time after we got up, so we went through the Botanical Gardens for another run, this time looping through little labyrinths meant for strolling and heading across a large training field that was part of the park. We then packed and hung out at the B& B for awhile. As we sat there, Wayne made a good point that we were going to New South Wales which was now on Daylight Savings Time, so was our meeting time was an hour earlier than we originally thought. We decided to head out early, but not until we went downtown and tried to get Meg’s cellphone working. The people at Vodaphone verified that Meg’s Solo phone had no removable Simcard, so we quickly recycled the piece of junk. We then went to Harvey Norman and found a bin of cheap unlocked phones for $30. Back at Vodaphone we got a pay-as-you-go account that ended up serving her well.
We had a quick lunch before leaving and drove off to the gas station rendezvous, which was easy to find. The time change still had us worried, as we were about 15 minutes late for the new time but 45 minutes early for the old time time. Unable to get Michael, who was to guide us the rest of the way, on the phone, we waited in the glamorous parking lot. Of course, we didn’t even know if the new cellphone was working properly which further added to the uncertainty.
Michael then pulled up in his white truck, gave us a big hello, and all was fine (he explained that because they live on the border they use Queensland time). He led us on a half hour ride where the roads kept getting narrower and twistier until the final 10 minutes were along a pitted dirt road that we had to slow down to a crawl to navigate. We made sure to honk around tight corners to avoid potential head-on collisions. Finally we were at their house, which was a stone cottage tucked into the mountain rainforest. (There Megan, whom my mum always called the beauty of the family, waited to meet us with open arms. It was amazing to finally meet her after all these years,and she still is a great beauty with awesome Farrah Fawcett hair, the kind I always wanted to have but alas I inherited my stringy hair from my dad's side,darn-ed.). It was a lovely place, very homey with high ceilings and big rooms downstairs and cosy bedrooms upstairs. We got a tour of the grounds, with one of every kind of tree imaginable, including an avocado tree heavy with fruit. We tasted a coffee fruit from which the bean is made(surprisingly nice) and smelled many aromatic plants. We heard of plans to create a small lake on the property and build a bungalow for people to have a private retreat. Meg and Megan got caught up with family talk and were disappointed that a misty day meant that the usual view wasn’t there. We changed into warmer clothes, as the mountains were quite a bit cooler than Queensland. Over beer and wine we heard about how their daughter Freia was doing well studying film and Michael shared some ideas on how the Australian/International political world is structured. They seemed very happy and enthusiastic, and living in this area seemed a great choice for them. Their neighbours were an eccentric mix of people living off the land, many on state assistance, as well as some wealthy types, both from legitimate and more shady sources. Apparently the CIA decided that this area was one of the most survivable places in the world after a global military attack and then picked up some land here. If you could handle the isolation, this was an awfully nice place to spend time.
Dinner was an excellent lasagna with more wine and chatting about movies. Michael has a high belt in Kung Fu (or was it Karate? ed.) and so extolled the virtues of The Last Samurai, which we were skeptical of due to it starring Tom Cruise. We watched the movie and weren’t convinced of its greatness but still found it to be better than we expected. After that we curled up in our bed at the crook of the a-frame and slept very well.
Thursday – Bananas, Avocados, and Fond Goodbyes
We woke up to a drizzly mountain morning and went down to a hearty breakfast and more good conversation. Megan apparently always gets up early so she was ready to go and we were well fed as a result. After that I went for a ride with Micheal to meet one of the neighbours. We drove further along his local road and I definitely saw that it was far too rough for our little 2 wheel drive rental car to deal with. We headed down to a rough-looking building, propped up with a great view of the valley. We met a friendly fellow with an equally friendly pit bull. He apparently was living off disability after a bike accident and had a noticeable limp. He had wanted some help harvesting bananas, but in the end didn't really need it. He cut a large plastic bag-covered bunch off of a tree with a machete and took them down, startling a few large, black, spiders away. We did a tour of the property and it was interesting how similar his approach to land- use was to Micheal’s. He had about one of each type of tree on his property, most of them tiny and a few of them probably not going to make it. He also had a small vegetable patch that was doing quite well and a fair bit of the the weed flourishing around the house. Michael said that it was always the same thing when he went there and he probably wanted company more than help, but we all enjoyed the visit.
Before we said goodbye to Cousin Megan and her hubby, they insisted on picking a bunch of avocados for us to take. It was fun watching Michael get the picker and pluck these lovely fruit (technically they are) from the tree- talk about freshly picked! Loaded up with avocados, we said goodbye to the perfect little cottage in the mountainous rainforest and started on the road back to modern civilization. We retraced our path from dirt to paved roads with little difficulty and were soon back on the Bruce Highway.
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| Two Meghans at a lovely cottage. |
