Sydney City

-->

I wasn’t going to write another blog in Australia and then I heard this conversation in a tapas bar in Sydney’s business district.

“What’s Jamon mate?”

“Don’t know mate, I think it might be pronounced Hamon, so it could be Spanish for ham.”

“What mate, Hamon, like ham on the bone?”

“That must be it, mate.”

“Sweet, we’ll have some of that then.”

We’re having a few days in the city to reacquaint ourselves with the hustle and bustle before returning to London. We started in Manly; we took the ferry across and stayed a couple of nights in a hotel on the ocean side. There was a minor problem when we showed up at the Novotel where we discovered that Mags had booked us into the Novotel in the city centre and not Manly. All I could think of is “At least it wasn’t me.” While Mags was wondering “How can I make this Gary’s fault?” Anyway, no problem. The wonderful woman on reception cancelled the other booking at no charge and gave us a room with a free upgrade. We walked along the beach and over the point at Queenscliff to Freshwater beach where we met Alan and Karen for a leisurely lunch at the Harbord Hotel.  Many beers, wines, and spirits later we had to cab it back to Manly. This was the weekend that just kept giving; next day, after a morning stroll, we lunched at a small Italian restaurant near the wharf. It looked unpromising to start with, just one table occupied during the busy Sunday lunch period. We just had a good feel about the place so wandered in. The old guy in the kitchen was from Sicily and, once he found out that we’d spent some time in his home town of Cefalu, couldn’t do enough for us. Despite having run out of most things last night, what he prepared for us was superb; Garlic prawns, snapper fish cakes, Sicilian pasta and spatchcock chicken. He topped up our wine glasses with vino on the casa and sent us off thoroughly replete and feeling warm and fuzzy. Later, we partied in the four pines brewery with some live music and stumbled into a small bar on the way back to the hotel and caught the end of a very fine set by a young guitarist.

We ferried across the harbor to circular quay and hung out in the city centre for a few nights, centering ourselves in Kings cross. / Potts Point. Lots of walking around the city including a trek to Woolamalloo, into the botanic gardens and across to the Opera House. Disappointed to discover that we couldn’t roam around the inside of the iconic Opera House without forking out 37$ for the guided tour, so went to Watson’s bay for lunch at Doyle’s instead.

I spent a morning at the maritime museum in Darling harbor while Mags was catching up on some sleep. Really great museum including in interesting exhibition of aboriginal art reinterpreting Cook’s landing and legacy; but the highlight was clambering around the replica of the Endeavor that is docked there.

In between, we had time for dinner with Fliss and Mon in Surrey Hills / Lebanon after their evening at the theatre. BYO and lots of falafel – What’s not to like?

We rounded things off with a martini in the very now Tank Stream bar and Spanish in Tapa Vino where, to our fellow diners’ disappointment, the ham didn’t come on the bone.

Off for a lie down before heading back to the Shire.

Hamilton Island

-->

We’ve been camped out at our friends Kev and Jane’s place in Caringbah. Kev’s even gone off on a six week bush tour leaving Jane to look after us – lucky Jane! It’s like he planned his walkabout while we are here - Hmm. Anyway, all this travelling is exhausting so we’ve jetted off on a well deserved holiday to the Whitsundays in Queensland; Hamilton Island to be precise.

 The island is the holiday destination in the Whitsundays as its been extensively developed for tourists leaving the other islands largely uninhabited. It’s approximately 900 km north of Brisbane and a 2 hour flight from Sydney.

We were picked up by a surly chap called Vince who, if he ever had any cheek muscles with which to smile, they have long since withered away. He is the only grumpy person on the island as everyone else is smiling all the time and happy, and why wouldn’t you be in this beautiful part of the world. Everyone you meet stops to have a chat and ask you what you’ve been doing today, and what your plans are. This might be a tad annoying if you were in a rush, but hey, this is paradise and everyone is uber relaxed – all there is to do is have fun and chill out.

We chose Hamilton to meet up with our friends Lyn and Rudy who unbelievably live in this paradise. They moved into their new apartment while we were there overlooking the marina, which is the hub of the island, and the yacht club, an extraordinary building that manages to look like a fish, a manta ray and a helicopter depending on where you view it from and the time of day. Despite its name it stubbornly refuses to host any yacht club, but contains an empty gymnasium and a very fine restaurant.

Happy go lucky Vince showed us into a golf buggy that was our transport during our stay. These are everywhere on Hamilton. Everyone zips around in these between beeches, resorts, the marina and the hill top views. The speed limit for the island is 20km which I don’t think is threatened by the buggies, but they are great fun and a god send as it is extremely hilly.

We were soon joined by Mags’ sister Kazza and our friends Helen and Barn who flew in from Melbourne. Next day we booked a tour and headed off on a fast catamaran to the outer barrier reef. The trip out was a little choppy and some of our group arrived a little shaken if not stirred.

All was soon forgotten as we transferred to the permanent platoon anchored there and donned fins, stinger suits and masks and snorkeled away. There were thousands of fish in all colours, coral, clams large and small, and even a turtle spotted checking out the pontoon. There was an option to scuba dive but not necessary as the reef was only in a few feet of water so we saw everything snorkeling.

Lyn and Rudy took us out sailing to Cid harbor at the nearby, larger Whitsunday Island that is now a national park. (Yes, they have a boat too). Another perfect day. We whiled away a few blissful hours with a short walk on the island through Hoop pine that is now recovering from previous logging activity, and a quick swim in the calm turquoise waters before lunch on board. Doing it tough again.

I couldn’t resist the opportunity to play the Hamilton Island Golf course that is actually situated on nearby Dent Island. So I found myself on the short ferry trip over there at 8am one glorious sunny morning (another one) and was soon installed in another buggy heading off to the 10^th tee. Well, I think the best we can say about the experience is that the views are magnificent. Let’s just say that the pro shop sells a lot of golf balls and I contributed my fair share. The rough is three feet high and as thick as a cabinet minister. It borders all the fairways and greens, so you either hit it on the fairway or it’s a lost ball; no chance of finding it even if the snakes didn’t deter you from looking.

A popular evening activity is to head to the local out point near us at the Pinnacle apartments to watch the sunset. There’s even a pop up bar that opens for business at 4:30 pm. We all headed up there and were treated to a very spectacular and rare sight, an iridescent sunset, where water droplets of uniform size diffract sunlight to produce opalescent hues. Notice the science there. Yes, I had to look it up. It really was amazing with all the colours of the rainbow painted across the clouds in a slightly metallic, wavy caress. 

On another night, as we approached the Bommie restaurant in the Yacht club for dinner with Lyn and Rudy, the moon was surrounded by a thin white sphere of light, a halo. This is another rare phenomenon caused by ice crystals deflecting moonlight. The dinner lived up to the spectacular intro as we had great dishes of slowly poached hen’s egg with asparagus and reef fish with sag aloo, interspersed with an amuse bouche of cerviche with tomato consume served in a test tube and a mouth cleanser of textures of melon. Sounds a bit pretentious but really superb.

We were wisely guided by Lyn and Rudy to pre-order a Coles supermarket delivery from the mainland for our stay, as the food choices on the island are limited by what is stocked in the one general store. The delivery was there when we arrived, hurrah, or at least someone’s delivery was. I think they just give you assorted stuff so what you actually order is somewhat irrelevant – but still, a lot cheaper than buying locally.

Alas, after a superb week, smiley Vince helped us transport our bags to the airport. It suddenly became clear to me what Vince’s purpose is – to gently acclimatise us back into the real world where we mortals live.