Also, the internet seems to be shoddy here so I'm going to post the text without picture and try to go back and insert them later tonight but if it doesn't work please excuse the prompts and check back for pictures when i get back to Sydney June 21st.
June 9th
The morning started with a bang when Sharon dropped her thermos (which was to hold our hot water for tea breaks, an almost hourly event in Australia) and it shattered on the sidewalk in front of the Unilodge. Choosing not to cry over spilt water, we instead convinced her that it was an apt way to Christian our van which we named the H.M.S. Platypus, partially in homage to Darwin, and partially to the coolest animal EVER. We the travel writing clan decided it was a fitting name since like the Platypus we are “too good to be true.”
Our Faithful Steed
First the H.M.S. Platypus took us to the house where D.H. Lawrence used to live and penned his novel Kangaroo, set in, you guessed it, Australia. After briefly pausing for photos and biscuits (but sadly no tea…) we forged onwards to Rainbow Pie Shop and Lolly Shop annex in Ulladulla where we sampled a variety of pies including Beef and Mushroom (delish), Beef and Burgundy (less delish) and Thai Chicken (not recommended). We were lucky enough to meet Daryl, the owner and head chef at Rainbow and just from talking to him for a few minutes I could imagine him in his kitchen, excitedly creating a new Pie recipe. “Onions? YEAH! ONIONS! Peas? Hmmm…no. What about if I smash ‘em? YEAH! SMASHED PEAS! Beef? obviously beef. YEAH BEEF! Gloppy gravy stuff? YEAH! GLOPPY GRAVY STUFF!!! Seeing how frothy(see surf glossary) Daryl, and most Australians, are about their Pies it saddens me to say that I was not overawed. I guess I’m just not much of a mushy peas kinda gal.
Meat Pie with "The Works": Mashed Potatoes, Gravy and Mushy Peas (oh my!)
I was, however, intrigued by the Lolly Shop in the back. It looked uncannily similar to the candy shop in the opening scene of Willy Wonka. Glass Jars with metal caps jutting off at an angle filled with every sugary confection possible. There were jawbreakers and orange jaffers (chocolate covered orange balls), rainbow sour belts and gummy coke bottles the size of real soda bottles. I was hoping there was some romantic story about how the Lolly shop came to be; that Daryl had loved candy since popping out of the womb and his first word had been “non-pareil”. Unfortunately, however, the truth was not so sweet. Daryl claims the candy shop was simply a sound economic investment. Previously he was using the space as a stock warehouse but after reading Greg Norman’s book was inspired to find an alternative use for it. Ipso facto, Rainbow Lolly Shop was born.
LOLLIES
After gorging ourselves on gummy raspberries and caramels we bade goodbye to the Rainbow complex and headed to Pebbly beach, a beach in Mongo national park. As we walked down to the beach I noticed some curious movement and after a few hazy seconds realized we were staring at a colony of wild kangaroos. It was only then that I fully realized where I was.
Roo on Pebbly Beach
Kangaroos think I'm weird...
Like Platypi, Kangaroos are pretty unlikely looking. I tried to figure out what they resembled but caught myself saying well they look like “part horse, part fox and part….kangaroo. oh wait…” This particular clan was especially docile and even let us scratch their back before they boing-ed away to find a new patch of grass to victimize. Also, in one of the most horrifying scenes I’ve seen all trip (besides the “shark fin” and a man throwing out a perfectly good pack of Arnott’s cookies) we also witnessed two Kangaroos mating. I don’t wish to relive it so I’ll just provide a picture that says it all.
GAH!
After being robbed of our innocence, we silently retreated back to the Platypus where we finished up the last leg of our trip to Braidwood. Our accommodation here is incredible. It’s a huge, stone house that as I mentioned used to be a flour mill so the mill stones are still intact. Besides the fact that its frigid (its unheated and the temperatures have plummeted into the 30s/40s) it is one of the cooler places I’ve ever slept. Speaking of which…my bed (which is heated) calls…
June 10th
After a hearty breakfast in the Millhouse, we sought out stories on Braidwoods main street. I was intrigued by a aluminum trailer marked “Braidwood Driver Reviver and Mobile Kitchen” parked on the corner of the main road, but unfortunately the “reviver” was not in and I will never know why he or she chose such a desolate location to hawk burgers and other road fare.
Next I talked with an avuncular Saddler named Don White about how he got into producing tack (he began as a boot apprentice and then got into rodeos which eventually caused him to cross paths with a sadder), how much his saddles cost (starting at AUS$3,000) and how he manages his business alone (he periodically turns away customers. Making just enough saddles to pay the bills). The most interesting tidbit he shared was that his store had previously been the schoolhouse which was located 2 blocks away. Confused? I was too. Noticing my perplexed expression, Don explained that bought the schoolhouse for $1000 and had the entire 2 building complex lifted onto a flatbed truck and moved to its current home. Not sure there was enough tension for a good story but he was very friendly nonetheless.
DON WHITE SADLERY
As I made my way further up the street I was surprised to find that most businesses were closed. This included 2 stores specializing in oil-lamps, a vintage store, and a store purveying only wooden signs. Additionally, the “Braidwood Times’” sole reporter/editor/manager was at home ill and the police station was deserted when I first stopped in. After confirming that it wasn’t a weekend and brainstorming potential national holidays (Queens day? Nope, Queens Day was last week. July 4th? Nope. And that’s American…Kangaroo day? Doesn’t exist…), I popped into the Visitors Center to see if “Chris” the volunteer on duty might be able to explain. “We don’t get many shoppers coming through here on weekdays…Or at all really…” Not to be discouraged, I sat down and had a coffee and toast (Australians are surprisingly skilled espresso makers and bread bakers, skills which they obviously didn’t inherit from their English predecessors) and flipped over a copy of the local paper.
This picture pretty much sums up the essence of Braidwood. Friendly, but lifeless.
I was struck by the police blotter part of which read: “Friday and Saturday nights saw major issues in Braidwood and Bundendore with fireworks. Not those pretty blue, red and green numbers where everyone oohs and ahhs, but with those infernal “bungers” that bread dead morons insist on throwing from cars, placing in any receptacle their beady little eyes can find. Yeah I know, it makes a big noise. If that’s what it takes to give someone their jollies, well it would appear there ain’t much between the ears, is there? Some idiot thought it would be hilarious to but a couple of bungers in the post boz outside the Post Office. Minor damage to some mail. I just hope the damaged mail belonged to the moron who did it and his dole isn’t paid this fortnight.” Such a firey (pun-intended) sense of humor! I must meet this “Richard Pearce: Braidwood Senior Constable”, I thought and tried the police station again. Richard was unable to talk to me as he was attending to “classified business” but pointed me to Casie, other police officer in town. That’s right. There are only 2 police officers. Guess the incidents with pyrotechnics are infrequent enough that more are unnecessary. Casie told me how sometimes her or Richard will drive up to 4 hours to answer a call (their area of charge is 1200 km) and how the main difference between working in Braidwood and working at an urban station was that people will periodically come to her with “hypothetical questions”. She’s gotten “Could I get in legal trouble if I run away?” and “What should my “friend” do if she’s pregnant?”
An article on the Braidwood police would also be really interesting because Braidwood is part of Kelly country which means that it probably saw quite a lot of crime in the 19th century. To go from being an outlaw stronghold to a town so quiet there are only 2 police is something quite remarkable I think.
After exploring town we headed to the Braidwood cemetery where we got a personal tour from Kat who introduced us as “our medium to the underworld”. I found the actual tour pretty dry but her outfit was incredible so I’ve included a picture here.
Kat our "medium" to the otherworld and her sweet get-up
June 11th
The majority of today was spent driving so there’s not much to report except for how pastoral and beautiful the Australian countryside is. Cows and sheep graze around clusters of craggy boulders that jut up from green hillsides. Cockatoos hang upside down on telephone poles and bunya pines, periodically making a noise that is hard to characterize as anything other than a scream. The presence of Parrots and Cockatoos in the wild makes me feel as though I’m enjoying the effects of a mass breakout from the local pet store.
Australian Countryside
No big deal? BIG DEAL! BIG DEAL!
June 12th
After we feasted on the multiple loaves of bread leftover from the famed Dojo Bakery in Braidwood we headed to Beechworth, one of the most important towns in the Kelly Gang saga. There we took a walking tour from a bloke named Michael with an enviable beard who looked a lot like Ned himself.
Ned? Is that you?
We lunched at the “award winning” (everything seems to be award winning in these towns. Makes you wonder what awards they’re boasting of…) Beechworth Bakery where I tried an Anzac Biscuit, a crumbly brown-sugary coconut cookie recognized as one of the most Australian of Australian Treats along with Pies and Lamington Cake.
After rolling ourselves out of the bakery we visited the Beechworth Honey Flagship store where we sat through a buzz-worthy video series on bees and sampled exotic honeys from “Creamy Honey” (yum) to Ginger, Macadamia, Black Peppercorn Honey (yikes!). Then it was on to the gourmet Cheese, Mustard and Olive shops back in Milawa where the sampling continued. Among the more delicious nibblies I tried were a goat’s milk Parmesan cheese, balsamic mustard, milawa cheese stuffed kalamata olives, and tomato onion chutney.
I wanted to try to ask some of the employees of the shops how Milawa, a town of 260 people came to become such a gourmet center but none of them seemed to have a good answer other than that the first Australian vineyard was founded there in the late 19th century. If I don’t stumble on any other stories I may call some of the stores once returning home to Sydney to try to dig a little more.
Finally, we visited the Brown Brother’s Winery, which as I mentioned previously was the first vineyard established in Australia. After sampling tens of delicious sparklings, whites, roses, reds and “fortifieds” (a euphemism for distgustingly saccharine nastiness otherwise known as desert wines). I emerged determined to continue my tannic education back in the states.
To cap off the night we played a Ned Kelly board game which definitely brought out the outlaws in all of us.
Pure Intensity
We kicked off this morning by visiting “Power’s Lookout” a scenic platform built where Harry Powers, the Yoda to Ned Kelly’s Luke Skywalker, used to lookout for gold carriages to rob or to make sure no coppers (police) were after him. We dutifully checked for both gold carriages and coppers as well but were sadly disappointed.
View from Power's Lookout
Then came more disappointment. Having driven an hour out of our way to see the Sidney Nolan tapestry depicting Ned Kelly’s last stand at the Benalla art gallery, we were informed that it had been rolled up and put away for the year. I found this particularly strange considering the tapestry is extremely famous in Australia and from what I gathered the town of Benalla doesn’t have much else going for it.
Disappointed Travel Writers
But having no other choice, we swept the mystery of the rug, under the rug and moved on to the Benalla Museum where we saw the Green Sash that Ned Kelly received for saving a young boy from drowning. It was sen-sash-ional. Sorry. Small town hokeyness brings it out in me.
Next it was off to “Ned Kelly’s Last Stand” the animatronics stage the 2nd most magical place on earth, next to Disney land. I don’t feel bad about giving it 2nd place to Disney because the owner/manager would undoubtedly agree. I can assume this based on the fact that after the show, the audience is led through his bedroom because he spent so much money on building the puppet house that he couldn’t afford a separate house. Tinkerbell and Aladin snow globes cover every square inch of shelf space, gigantic plush Poohs cover the bed, and a veritable mob Pinnochio puppets hang from the ceiling. In addition to a passion for Disney, the owner seems to have an inclination for cross-dressing, as evidenced by a sasquatch-sized pair of silver heels at the foot of his bed and the sizable sun hat on his dresser. But wait, it gets weirder. After the show was over, he was also so kind to show us his “Perve Hole”, a peep hole he cut so that he could check out audience members with the “best knockers” undetected. “Just keeping it fun,” he proclaimed unapologetically.
Crazy Loon and his "Perve hole" that was literally labelled "Perve hole" on the other side
Crazy Loon's Room
Crazy Loon's Room #2
In any case, I’m hoping to call back and interview Crazy Loon so I can write a profile on him. Characters like him come once in a lifetime.
June 14th
After bidding the delectable wine and cheese of Milawa adieu, it was on to…more wine? It was hardly 10 am and we were off to do another wine tasting. I think Australia’s former prime minister said it best when he called Australia a “land of functioning alcoholics.” This statement was reinforced by our after lunch activity: a beer tasting at a local microbrewery. Not being a big beer gal myself(while a normal persons reaction to a beer sample might be "oo that's rather hoppy" or "needs more barley" while mine would be "yuk, ick, bleh"), I took a sip of each of the brewery’s 6 flavors and passed them off to Cal, one of the program coordinators who skillfully downed both his and my tumblers as if they were Gatorade and he’d just worked out for 5 hours. Seeing that I didn’t really like beer they comp-ed my tasting which prompted me to buy a cookie out of guilt. The cookie was delicious but immediately after I ordered it I realized how infantile it must have seemed for a 20 year old college student to be refusing alcohol and instead opting for a cookie.
From there it was on to the Wandiligong maze – a humongous hedge maze about 10 minutes from Bright. I had been looking forward to the maze for ages and tore through the entrance like a racehorse through the starting gates at the Kentucky Derby but quickly realized something surprising: I HATE MAZES. Being someone who loves puzzles (I’m certifiably obsessed with crosswords), games, quirkiness, and a little bit of healthy competition I was expecting a maze to be right up my alley. Not so. I found myself totally frustrated by the twists and turns, dead ends and cheat doors that we were prohibited from taking. Then I just got bored. You can only walk in so many circles with nothing but monotonous green hedge for scenery before you get fed up and just want to find the exit. After combining forces, Brendan and I managed to complete our tasks (we were to take pictures of ourselves on both towers and in front of both of the maze’s two rose bushes) and find the exit. (see video of Brendan and I finding the last rose bush)
[Technical Note: VIDEO TO COME IN SYDNEY! SORRY!]
Only one small problem: we were separated from the exit by 1 row of bushes. Desperate to be out of the cursed thing we got down on our bellies and shimmied through the hedge marines style (hey, it wasn’t a cheat door, and therefore I wasn’t cheating). The feeling upon exit was less a feeling of gratification at having defeated the maze and more one of overwhelming relief to be done and never have to do another maze ever again so help me god. However the afternoon at the maze did have one redeeming quality: Brendan and I won the race to the exit and were rewarded with Wandiligong maze postcards and magnets. I can now die happy.
As much as I enjoyed sampling ales and even more merlots, I was a bit frustrated by how void our day was from a travel writing perspective. I suppose the microbrewery could make a satisfactory feature and all of the places we went could make decent reviews, I’m not that interested in review writing. For one it seems like a cheap way out of thinking of an angle, and for two: what do I know? (especially when it comes to beer. Cookies, i’ve got. Beer, barely. Or should I say barley. Oh no…) In any case tomorrow probably wont be much better story-wise considering the itinerary has us driving ALL DAY except for a morning tea break and a lunch break. Although we are visiting that cuckoo clock shop I mentioned earlier and if the owner is as cuckoo as his clocks it might make for an interesting profile.
If as of right now I don’t find any more stories that spark my interest I guess I would technically be fine with these:
1) The Very Few, the Proud, the Braidwood Police (Braidwood Police article, tentative title)
2) Profile on Crazy loon
3) Historical Profile on Milawa and exploration into how it came to be a gourmet center (need more of an angle…)
4) Piece on how Whales have always formed the basis of Eden’s industry: First when whalers used to hunt them and now as tourist attractions.
5) Profile on Micheal Beattie, our tour guide for the Ned Kelly walking tour in Beechworth. Ironically he was a dead ringer for ol’ Ned.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
June 15th
Most of today was spent driving but at least the driving was semi-interesting. In the morning we passed over Mt. Hotham, one of Australia’s most popular ski mountains. Even though I knew there obviously had to be snow to ski I was nevertheless surprised to see it. When I imagine Australia, even now, I picture kangaroos bounding across a red sunburned desert and exotic fish a la Nemo and Dory chilling with stoner turtles named Crush among vivid corals. Snow capped mountains, not so much. In any case I didn’t have long to be perplexed by the presence of snow in Australia because it disappeared immediately upon our descent from the mountain.
Confusion at finding snow in Australia
This sign seems pretty unnecessary...
The only other notable occurrence today was a visit to the Cuckoo Clock Shop in Omeo which I have to admit was a little disappointing. The store was not on top of a formidable crag as I’d imagined, nor was the shop itself as I’d envisioned. There was no creepy old man who limped around muttering to himself while his one room shop erupted in cuckoos. Instead there was a sweet old lady who looked like she could’ve been named Dotty who led us eagerly around her sun-filled, wood paneled store engaging us in discussion about baked goods and Obama. Even more upsetting was the fact that Dotty (or whatever her name was) did not even like cuckoo clocks. Her daughter and her had opened the store 15 years ago purely for economic reasons thinking there might be a niche market for such an obscure product.
Cuckoo for Cuckoo Clocks
What is it with people who own specialty stores (like Daryl at Rainbow Pies) having thoroughly unromantic and logical reasons for them. I’m hoping to stumble on someone with more passion for their product soon. Maybe a store owner obsessed with Platypi that sells nothing but Platypi memorabilia? Or maybe I should just open shop…
We finally got into Eden at around 7:30 after about 10 hours of driving and had a fantastic seafood dinner at the local “Fishermen’s Club” where it was apparent the fishermen were awed to see new faces. In any case, I’m really excited for this town which is very clearly a working-class fishing port. There’s even a sign above the kitchen counter in our motel unit that says “please do not gut or scale fish in unit!” Damn it! Now what am I going to do in Eden?
Off to watch “Killers in Eden” a movie on the Orcas, Baleen Whales, and whaling industry in Eden. Later Gators. I’ll try to post once more before we leave Eden 3 days from now but no promises because the internet’s not free.
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