Category Archives: Fleurieu

2

Time on a Myponga Hill

|

Claire and I stand side by side on the ochre path, a splash of red and a patch of navy against the panoramic landscape. Her coat flares like a small flag of likable boldness, while beside her I carry — optimistically — the casualness of weekend ease.

The land unfurls in layers: first the pale grass sprinkled with dew, then a row of shrubs in muted gold, and behind that the uncompromising wall of dark pines, straight as sentinels. Beyond, the green hills roll upward, their ridgelines softened by distance and a sky pressed with a haze of placid, reassuring cloud.

The coloured cones at our feet — blue, yellow, scattered like afterthoughts — are relics of the parkrun, yet in this setting they appear ornamental, like petals casually dropped along the path.

Together, we seem anchored but at peace with the vast quiet extending out all around, an image of warmth set against nature’s wide canvas.

It’s a moment on our annual Carrickalinga escape with dear old friends during which certain traditions have taken happy hold. Pizza Friday night, Saturday morning market, evening cocktails. As with most traditions, the joy comes largely from shared anticipation although the rituals remain delightful in their luxury.

That the photo was taken by Trish is special. She has known us both so long and so well and caught this moment as a gesture of kindness, an unspoken but mutually understood gift. The picture isn’t of us alone; it carries Trish’s affectionate eye.

Photos make permanent the ephemeral, and cryogenically freeze us all, sometimes against our will. Are these images dishonest in their fleetingness or quiet protests against life’s cruel acceleration? We look eternal but already the past has fled, with tempo like a chariot.

After, we ambled back down the hill in our chatty knot and past the retreating parkrun crowd of huffing participants and hovering volunteers.

Saturdays, at their best, spread out from dawn with kaleidoscopic possibility, hours to be coloured, festive windows through which to view self and others.

We go from forest and reservoir to coffee and toast. Like time, we are never still — least of all when we believe we are — and I consider that boundless, comic truth. I feel this thought prickle, until for a breath, I outpace it.

0

Sausage Roll Review: Live N Let Pie

|

Sitting outside this small bakery in the brisk and dazzling afternoon, I take in the view across to the Goolwa Shopping Centre. A key tenant is an especially attractive Foodland. Over-sized and ridiculous vehicles — ‘trucks’ in the US of A — crawl in and out of the car park.

I study my sausage roll. Mum used to make sausage rolls — with help from my sister, Jill and me — and the best job was to make indentations on the pastry with a fork. I was always amazed how these little rows of bumps were still there when they’d come out of the oven. It’s virtuous to preserve a sense of wonder, even when beholding freshly baked, meat-encased foodstuffs.

Glancing at the commercial real estate to the south, I note it boasts a Smoke Mart. I consider swinging by but then decide against buying Dad a novelty glass bong for Father’s Day (this Sunday).

My roll is enormous and I’m immediately suspicious. Munch. Look up again at the Smoke Mart. Munch again. Tasty and surprising. Look at sausage roll gizzards.

Capsicum. Oregano. Pepper. The new holy trinity of additives.

The bakery’s name is a pun on the theme song of Live and Let Die, the 1973 film and eighth in the Bond franchise, starring Roger Moore. Written and performed by Paul McCartney and Wings, there’s been five decades of controversy around this grammatical howler-

But in this ever-changing world in which we live in
Makes you give in and cry

Yes, (at least) one too many inclusions of in. Redundancy city. Maddening. Did this bloke write ‘Hey Jude?’ Covering the song, other artists have repaired the lyric. Macca himself is unsure. This, during an interview-

He starts to sing to himself: “In this ever changing world. . . . ‘ It’s funny. There’s too many ‘ins.’ I’m not sure. I’d have to have actually look. I don’t think about the lyric when I sing it. I think it’s ‘in which we’re living.’ Or it could be ‘in which we live in.’ And that’s kind of, sort of, wronger but cuter. That’s kind of interesting. ‘In which we live in.’ I think it’s ‘In which we’re living.’

As I continued my lunch, I thought about this a bit more. The shopping centre was still there. I wondered how many glass bongs had been sold in Smoke Mart since I sat down with my engorged sausage roll.

There’s a dog bowl out the front of the bakery. I like this. Should you feed a sausage roll to a sausage dog?

Mancunian types, Oasis, have reformed and are touring. I think the Gallaghers are funny in a scowling way. Clearly influenced by the Beatles, one finally met Paul McCartney and asked what he thought of this, he replied, ‘It were fookin’ great. How amazing to meet your idol! I mean, Wings are my favourite fookin’ band.’

My sausage roll was highly satisfactory, and I considered if the Gallaghers eat them. Macca’s a vegetarian so probably not. Did Bond ever throw one at a villain and fell him? Unsure, I drove off past the shopping centre thinking of grammar, dogs, and post-Beatles careers.

I needed to clear my head. Father’s Day would be here soon.

0

What the Photo Knows

|

Whether it’s a repeated holiday, yearly lunch, or the lame recurring joke I inflict upon Claire, I reckon tradition offers psychological warmth. Do you have your own conventions that you repeat over and over again?

My rituals unfold like this: the deliberate or accidental start, the adhering — however long it endures — and the anticipation for next time, commencing immediately once the event’s done.

I’ve known Claire since we were thirteen so with much to consider and scribble, head to Port Elliot for a few days to immerse myself. At the beginning of my now biannual writing retreat, I conduct an opening ceremony. This is done by arranging a tableau of items on the townhouse deck’s wooden bench, overlooking Knights Beach. As is our modern way I then take and share a photo, mostly for self-amusement. Like the youngsters.

So, what’s in the photo?

I include my Kapunda Cricket Club hat; the Greg Chappell version (c.1982). It’s my oldest piece of apparel and a life-long companion. It represents youthful frivolity and fellowship. Having been on my head during many summers, I hope it inspires a sunny, grateful tone in my writing. Or at least not a golden duck.

It’s well-worn—perhaps even an heirloom. It’s certainly a talisman from another era—something with personal gravy gravity. Just this week, my eldest, Alex, wore my other beloved cricket cap (Kimba CC) while playing an old, broken-down PE teacher in his Year 12 drama performance. It was a star! Upstaged everyone. So maybe I can pass various cricket items down through the generations. Surely, there are more miserable inheritances. I reckon they’d prefer this to a house.

We can all learn lots from a hat.

Also in the photo is Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter. Paired with the cricket memorabilia, it suggests a longing for past versions of masculinity—or the shifting seasons of life. The Sportswriter is the first in a series of five stories I’ve read three times across this past decade. It’s about loss, introspection and hope.

As I’m striving for enlightened forms of myself, I want both hat and novel, as personal texts, to be illuminating. To work like flares in the fog.

This writing retreat is for contemplative isolation —not loneliness. I generally seek no company — not even during my late-afternoon pub visits — but see the time as an opportunity to swim in words. Not drowning, waving. My sentences take shape from memory and its attendant considerations. Being beside the glittering, pounding Southern Ocean and adrift in language and reflection is spiritual.

The horizon line on the glass balustrade is enlightening. Did Frank Lloyd Wright once say this? Though it sits near the top third of the photo’s frame, it suggests both elevation and humility—the viewer just above the sea, but not grandly removed from it. I hope this projects gratitude for the occasion and the painterly environment, and encourages the idea that these are combining together, in serene concert.

This tableau proposes that through the laptop and novel, I’m straddling the border between writer and reader. Additionally, I’m fluctuating between labour and leisure and ultimately, thought and the expression of it. My retreat is simultaneously and indistinguishably all of these.

It’s my idea of fun.

Lastly, this is a portrait of myself in retreat— not from life, but toward something. Maybe a particular reckoning with age, or self, or meaning. The animating idea is that we harvest the past to better command our present.

4

No Bullshit Bakeries of the Bush: A Willunga Sausage Roll

|

Is there a more fetching architectural feature than a bull-nosed veranda? it’s wholly inviting how it curves down to the approaching guest and beckons you inside for a cuppa and a Monte Carlo (goodness, what a biscuit). Does the sloping iron suggest submissiveness? Or on this early afternoon, a very attractively priced sausage roll? The Willunga Bakery veranda is at once confident but also modest and I wonder if this is reflective of Australia’s idealised self-image. After being overseas, a bull-nosed veranda can welcome you home with a hug just like the song Flame Trees and then being cussed at spectacularly in a nasal twang by a dear friend.

At $3.90 I was stunned and wondered bleakly if I wasn’t still in Sco-Mo’s Australia. A quick slap to my own face and I was returned to 2025. How was the sausage roll? Pretty good. Decent size and flaky pastry. The taste was initially uncertain but finished with a pleasant zing. And which Wednesday isn’t improved by a pleasant zing? Like a member of the Barmy Army attacking a late-night kebab, I woofed it down pronto. I then remarked to myself, not unlike an English cricket tourist that my sausage roll was, ‘dead good.’ I stood proudly, allowing the flakes to fall onto the ground. Small marsupials would enjoy these tonight.

Sitting on a bench out the front of the bakery is a visual feast. The handsome pub’s across the road, promising cold Pale Ale, and clots of tourists wobble up and down the hilly street. Like a diminutive Smithsonian Institute, there’s a random but artistic assortment of objects on the bakery footpath, festooned across the walls, and dangling from the iron ceiling. I found it diverting, just like a Test match crowd after tea when the full theatrics unfold. I would never wish to use one but there’s deep aesthetic comfort in an old (are there new ones?) typewriter. Do these and Betamax video players weep together in lonely old church halls and console each other?

I love a community notice board. These are often rich texts laden with intrigue and narrative clout. Willunga’s bakery adheres to this. When was the last time you saw a sheep pose for a photo with such grace and composure? For a recently lost livestock the unflinching way it’s staring down the camera seems uncharacteristically calm and accepting of its bleating circumstances. A Current Affair could do worse than to interview this lamb. Found: Lost Dorper Lamb could be an animated Wes Anderson film, 70’s agrarian concept album or minor Roald Dahl short story. Our sheep contact and agricultural hero, ‘Margret’ has a curious name. This rare variant of ‘Margaret’ sounds Welsh and is therefore entirely appropriate for one collecting and saving stray sheep like a Fleurieu shepherdess.

In 500 words (or fewer) discuss how this image is emblematic of a small town, nostalgic Australia. Ken Done should put this on a tea-towel. Blue and white fly strips fluttering in the warm breeze. A daggy Open sign that’s rusty and worn. A bright yellow chair that’s cheerful and retro, promising no nonsense, 1950’s values inside. It’s charming and unpretentious. Stick Bill Hunter on it. If this doesn’t already exist, the photo could feature in a calendar called, ‘No Bullshit Bakeries of the Bush.’

4

Carrickalinga, Abbey Road, and the Visionary Pub Schnitzel

|

During our annual Carrickalinga getaway I took some conscripts to parkrun at Myponga Reservoir, and I think we all enjoyed our ensemble endeavour. With water, stern hills, and forest it’s a fetching but searching physical test. Leonard rambled over the finish line and Claire and Trish then came down the final hill, legs whizzing not unlike the Tasmanian devil (Taz) in the Looney Tunes cartoons. It was a succession of warm moments across a brisk morning.

*

Cindy Lee is a Canadian band who’s come to recent global attention with their remarkable album Diamond Jubilee. It’s not on Spotify or vinyl but available as a single two-hour track on YouTube. Hypnotic and haunting, it evokes 1960’s girl groups and also features jangly guitars bouncing across its thirty-two songs. It put me in mind of buskers you might happen upon somewhere off-beat like Boise, Idaho.

*

Alain de Botton is an author I love to re-visit and this year he’s been in frequent demand. With Claire and I in an unbroken, anticipatory conversation about overseas trips, I was keen to purchase a book of his I’d previously appreciated. On level two of Adelaide’s Myer Centre is the most excellent Page and Turner, a sprawling second-hand bookstore and from here I bought The Art of Travel. The exquisitely observed prose possesses a deep, almost meditative fluency, and early in this work, he depicts the wonder of flight:

This morning the plane was over the Malay Peninsula, a phrase in which there lingers the smells of guava and sandalwood. And now, a few metres above the earth which it has avoided for so long, the plane appears motionless, its nose raised upwards, seeming to pause before its sixteen rear wheels meet the tarmac with a blast of smoke that makes manifest its speed and weight.

*

The glow from Glenelg’s SANFL victory continues. Given the ultimate margin of five points and with only one score in the final seven minutes, the tension was sustained at stratospheric levels. The sole behind came from Tiger forward Lachie Hosie hitting the post; itself among our game’s most theatrical events and a unique scoring outcome among world sports. Contrastingly, in rugby, soccer, and American football if a goal post is brushed, the ball’s destination is all that counts: inside the goal is good and deflected away means nothing. The notion of the behind as a reward for goal-kicking inaccuracy seems distinctly Australian and effectively announces, ‘That’s not a goal, but good effort. Here, have a point!’

*

Amidst the Carrickalinga escape, we spent a stout hour aboard the Yankalilla pub beer garden. This was an instructive text with the conversation moving from Asian and European travel to domestic matters. Returning to the holiday home, we’re welcomed by an array of aromatic curries which had been patiently preparing themselves in that most spiritually comforting of appliances: the slow cooker.

*

One Hand Clapping is a new Paul McCartney documentary I saw one Sunday with Max and his mate Ethan. It includes songs recorded in the Abbey Road studios for Band on the Run and we witness him playing the guitar, the bass, the piano, and singing in his honeyed, jubilant tenor. He appears ignorant of his own seemingly easy genius and captivating enthusiasm, and I was reminded of this: when his former band split, McCartney was devastated for more than anybody on the adoring planet, he loved the Beatles.

*

Alex and his school friend Judd camped in the Adelaide Hills to make a found-footage horror film for which Alex wrote an 8,000-word script. A chief challenge over the three days would be keeping phones and video cameras charged at their powerless camp site. I overheard Alex explaining how to solve this problem they would, ‘go to the pub for a schnitzel and plug in their devices there.’ First words, first steps, first day at school. Add to the accumulation of milestones: first pub schnitzel.

0

My favourite annual pub visit

|

It’s 5pm, on that first Wednesday in September.

My Dunlop Volleys bundle me into the pub and across the dark floorboards of the front bar. Happy Hour started at 4.30, but today this is too early.

Up to the altar to order my favourite beer of the entire calendar. Mine host smiles and asks, ‘What can I get you?’ I scrutinise the taps. Coopers? Something European? This changes from year to year. I’m flexible but decide. ‘I’d love a Pirate Life.’ It’s an occasion ale.

I’m in the Royal Family Hotel on Port Elliot’s main drag and (in Dale Kerrigan voice) this is my favourite pub visit of the year.

There are other much treasured annual beers such as the introductory ale of the Adelaide Test, Christmas Day festive cheer, and that nostalgic one in Kapunda at the Prince of Wales but tonight’s is especially elevated. It’s warm and familiar like a Beatles record.

2023

This is my annual retreat during which my hobbies come together: writing, reading, listening to music, and running. My established 5k route is across to The Strand and past the boutiques, and book and record shop then along Main Street with its brief knot of businesses and out to the hardware store on the Victor Harbor Road. Turning around I cut up Rosetta Terrace and then slip home by the booming surf.

The Royal Family’s beer garden is broad, with spongy lawn pushing out towards the low perimeter fence. There’s an immense pine so evocative of the salty coast and vast wooden tables have congregated around this tree, almost as if in prayer. Alongside are accompanying benches while above these are boxy umbrellas, leaning at jaunty angles as their blue and blackness smears across the pale sky.

I’ve spent the afternoon on the townhouse deck overlooking Knight’s Beach and its tumbling, roaring waves. Immersing myself in some words I’ve located a few obedient ones and invited these onto my page.

Peering across the pub grounds with lager in paw, I’ve gratitude for my gentle surrounds as well as our lengthening days with the sun now setting beyond six. Like so much of life, the encompassing context shapes the experience, and so it is for this restorative pub visit.

All is sunny.

These three days represent the longest unbroken stretch I have annually in just my own company and it’s productive, refreshing, and introspective.

But by Friday I’m keen for Claire to arrive. We’ve much to discuss and I’ll have a story for her.

2022
2

Sausage Roll Review: Ocean Street Bakehouse, Victor Harbor

|

Of course, I’m here for a sausage roll but my problems are immediate for the menu board has two categories: plain or cheese and bacon.

This strikes me as a curious and oddly compelling way of organising us sausage roll-eaters. Those who know me well won’t be surprised to read that I’m in the plain camp (now, don’t say anything nasty).

Further menu scanning reveals differentiation between pies and steak pies. Does this infer that steak pies are somehow inferior? I’ve no appetite for apartheid.

And quiche. Let’s not start on quiche for quiche, dear reader, has its own category. It was always an attention-seeking food.

Purchase in hand, I claim a footpath (not pavement or sidewalk) table. There are signs taped everywhere begging me to not feed the birds. Baked goods, I learn from these instructive texts, are not naturally in the diet of birds.

So, if a magpie eats a pie, does it make him (or her) a cannibal?

Next door to the OSB (as I’m hereafter calling the Ocean Street Bakehouse) is a Subway. Suddenly, I feel as though I’m surrounded by conflict and longitudinal tension. I’m in a lunchtime warzone and can imagine an 80’s music video featuring a (soft-focus) dance off between the bakers and the sandwich artists.

With a seagull now menacing, I open the bag and there’s my sausage roll. It’s big and hot. Easing it out, I take a bite.

I’m disappointed to note that the record store across the road has newspaper all over its windows. Victor Beats had vast stocks of vinyl and a good array of guitars too. But it appears done. My bleak ponderings continue. Will physical shops even exist in a decade?

I look up and see the Thirsty Camel has a series of advertisements draped on the pub façade. These uniformly claim various, ‘Unseriously good deals’ for assorted drinks. Between sausage roll bites I try to fathom how ‘unseriously’ works in this slogan. I can’t grasp it and doubt that anyone on Gruen or within the grog or marketing industries could either. What does it mean?

My sausage roll is satisfactory but little beyond this. The pasty’s too flaky and I wear much of it on my freshly laundered shorts. The roll’s innards need some zing courtesy of a spicy additive like a waft or two of pepper. No, it shouldn’t hide (shamefully) behind some bacon and cheese.

Near my table stands a bicycle which could belong to one of the Famous Five. You know, the Enid Blyton books. Probably, only George, Julian, Dick, or Anne might own the bicycle, and not Timmy, for as clever as he is, he’s a dog. In self-pleased and conspiratorial tones, I think Julian would’ve said this about my sausage roll:

‘I won’t say it’s beastly, but Aunt Fanny makes sausage rolls that are far more splendid. Hers are tasty and it’s no wonder Uncle Quentin can’t keep his professorial hands off them. Don’t you think, Dick?’

And then they’d all row over to Kirrin Island and apprehend some rough-voiced smugglers.

The noon breeze urges the Norfolk Pines into waving about on the esplanade. A Putin lookalike exits the bakery.

Nanna and poppa are on a bench with a grand kiddy.

Ocean Street is a one-way street and despite their problematic nature, I quite like the unique charms of a uni-directional thoroughfare. This is good because we live on such a street.

I drive off to Port Elliot with crumbs of contemplation clinging to my shorts. I’ve stuff to write.

2

Sausage Roll Review: Platy Pie Bakery of Mount Compass

|

BREAKING: Do sausage rolls have inherent meaning, or is their significance a construct of human perception and interpretation?

More to come…

September brings witness to my quest in locating the Fleurieu Peninsula’s finest sausage roll. It’s my higher earthly purpose. Heading to Port Elliot for my annual writing retreat, I call into the Platy Pie Bakery.

Strolling in I announce myself with the chirpily invitational, ‘Hello there. How are you going?’

Behind the counter the woman serving stares through me with the dead eyes of a cyborg and allows my words to hang in the air before they die shamefully, undeservingly, on the scratch-resistant, modestly industrial flooring.

This is not how I wanted our relationship to begin.

I press on. ‘I’m pretty keen on a sausage roll.’

‘Sauce?’

Ahh, she speaks.

As my task-oriented, chit-chat averse comrade digs about in the warmer I wonder. Beyond physical sustenance, what nourishment does a sausage roll offer to the human spirit, if any, and how does it contribute to our overall well-being?

Dodging a delivery man by the door I slip out to the front veranda of the bakery and pop onto a chair. The breeze is pushing the trees about with considerable energy, and I reckon it’ll turn into a typical spring day: windy and warm.

I then unleash the beast and It’s the most colossal sausage roll onto which I’ve ever clapped my blinking eyeballs. Its girth reminds me of the weapons used by the chimps in 2001: A Space Odyssey to cause violence to each other, thus signifying the vital evolutionary leap when our progenitors began to assert control over their world and, tellingly, each other.

As is often the case I was then distracted from my reflections upon Stanley Kubrick’s cinematography by some carrot.

Yes, my mega-sausage roll was happy host to sizable chunks of carrot. This constituted rare, positive, orange-hued news. Despite the pastry being somewhat flaky and on the cusp of oiliness it tasted, as the man once said, good.

Of course, a key thematic omission in 2001: A Space Odyssey is that none of the dramatis personae ask the following question of themselves or the villainous computer HAL 9000: Is a sausage roll more than the sum of its parts, and if so, what metaphysical properties might it possess?

Coming from a small family I’ve never had to tear competitively through my food with any urgency (although my wife Claire enjoyed her childhood tucker with an almost cricket team of nine gathered around the table her meal-time etiquette doesn’t reflect this at all). Today, on this gusty patio I inhale my lunch with primeval, almost disturbing haste.

I next contemplate the thoughts of Aristotle or maybe it’s Jeffrey ‘The Dude’ Lebowski. I can’t never remember which. He might’ve remarked, what role does our appetite play in our enjoyment of a sausage roll, and how does it relate to our broader desires and cravings in life?

My lunch now done, I walk about town before pressing on towards Port Elliot.

The Platy Pie Bakery serves up a mammoth sausage roll and for carrot-lovers it’s a double treat which gives clear rise to this eternal, epicurean conundrum-

How do sausage rolls symbolise cultural identity and heritage, and what can their evolution over time tell us about cultural change?

Dunno.

2

Royal Family pub, Port Elliot

|

The year’s first Tuesday. Alex, Max and I are in one of my favourite beer gardens.

In each of the last two Septembers I’ve come down here to a townhouse overlooking Knight’s Beach for a writing retreat. After each big day of introspection and prose, I enjoy a late afternoon ale in this glorious pub.

The beer garden’s coastal and festive in that loosely shared sense, with ten or a dozen big wooden tables scattered on the lawns. Today, as a mark of familial solidarity we’ve all decided upon a chicken schnitzel but with varied toppings (parmigiana and Kilpatrick minus the sea boogas).

My ridiculous generosity continues as I treat myself to a Pirate Life South Coast Pale Ale which seems geographically appropriate down here on the south coast, masquerading as the Fleurieu Peninsula. Increasingly, it’s my occasion beer. Fruity and summery, these are fine qualities in a refreshment.

The boys are hugely grateful for their tumblers of room temperature tap water.

Strolling into the airy and light and old front bar we’d noticed opposite how the queue to the (doubtless award-winning) Port Elliot bakery stretches a decent drop punt along the footpath. Hopefully, the bakers have prepared well for the masses so that most accusatory of rhetorical questions need not be asked, ‘Who ate all the pies?’

Between claiming our booked furniture and ordering, some folks have mistakenly pinched our chairs so upon our return I merrily shoo them away. I’m sure they welcome my inserting them into their correct place in our messy universe. At least that’s how I interpret the audible absence of their cussin’ at me.

The boys and I plan our week.

Jetty-jumping. Ascending The Bluff. Exploring Goolwa and Hindmarsh Island. There’s also the Murray mouth, which I can reveal, for the hydrologically unexcitable like me, lacks a little star power. I had hoped for towering waves and deafening crashing and Niagara-like power. I wouldn’t invest any coin in a Murray Mouth theme park just yet. But it was important to view it during these times of biblical flooding.  

While waiting monk-like for our poultry Alex and Max pop next door to the surf shop while I peer at the racing form with Stony Creek and Maree gallops on the menu. Nothing takes my fancy, so I wander back outside.

As the late Victor Lewis-Smith often asked in his restaurant reviews, what made me pleased to be here?

The food was honest and tasty. My beer was great as is always the case with early-January-on-holidays-beers. The boys’ excitement at the beginning of our languid week with busy days and cricket nights ahead of us. Our tremendous fortune and the soft charms of this inviting pub.

Schnitzels inhaled; we drive back to Victor Harbor for our Granite Island pilgrimage. We’ll follow the horse-drawn tram out along the new causeway.

Our week is underway.

5

Sausage Roll Review: The Goolwa Bakery

|

It’s a snaking and demanding ribbon of tar from Glenelg to Goolwa along and across the Hills and between the vines until the great arc of the Southern Ocean appears like a pale blue relief.

It was supposed to pour down but instead just spat with appalled apathy on my Korean car’s bonnet. I’ve the best part of three days overlooking Knight’s Beach to write and think and read for which I’m enormously grateful.

But I need to open my holiday with a sausage roll, as one should.

My now annual writing retreat is largely predicated on nostalgia and other investigations of the past so exiting the Southern Expressway and ignoring the radio I push in a CD on my hugely old-school car stereo.

The Eagles accompany me on my trip down to the gushing, green Fleurieu. Although my tiny brain is prejudiced happily to the past, I reckon they stand up well. It’d be easy to mock them as symbols of 70’s American excess but the songs and the musicianship are peerless. Eagles Live was enormous in my youth, and it might’ve had the be-jesus overdubbed out of it, but ‘Seven Bridges Road’ and its climbing harmonies still arrest me.

The Goolwa Bakery is located on a side street, and I was instantly smitten by the cosy interior. Some modern bakeries tend towards supermarket dimensions, to their consequent detriment. The atmosphere was also buoyed by a fishbowl in TV, sitting on a table near the door, as it always is in a rural baked goods emporium.

Ordering my $5 sausage roll my thoughts meandered towards Pulp Fiction’s Mia Wallace and her famous $5 shake, a speciality at Jack Rabbit Slim’s. Initially expressing disbelief Vincent Vega then takes a socially inappropriate sip and exclaims that it’s a ‘pretty expletive good milkshake!’

And so it was with my sausage roll.

Claiming a chair on the early afternoon footpath and withdrawing (careful now) the lunch from its brown bag it appeared as a freshly busted hunk of axe handle in both girth and approximation.

My first bite met with peppery whiffs and pleasantry. There was flaky, tasty pastry and it wasn’t sweaty which the medically alert among you will know is the biggest killer of over 55’s in this antipodean country.

Looking about my environs I note that the bakery shares premises with the Goolwa Health Centre and hope that all the kiddies reading now grasp the attendant irony.

The woman serving the baked grub was effervescent if somewhat resigned; I wondered about her life but not for long.

Munching on I was acutely aware of my enormous privilege as I was soon to drive to my beach accommodation. I’d be on a balcony with long, glorious hours in front of me.

Five quick minutes later I’d finished my lunch, scanned the surroundings, and pointed my motor west.

The Goolwa Bakery is over a century old. They know how to craft a sausage roll.

I’m unsure but they might even serve them (sauce if required) with ‘pink champagne on ice’ in the Hotel California.

0

Running up that Carrickalinga Hill

|

Claire and I trudge through the soft sand of the beach and then nurse a coffee at the village green. How daggily cool when from the barista’s van bursts, ‘The Pina Colada Song?’ Of course, I’m not into yoga but may have half a brain.

We’re in Carrickalinga with old friends. It’s Saturday morning and our day reaches out with electric possibility.

Planned equally with science and enthusiasm, my run’s to the Forktree Brewery and back to our accommodation. It’s my daily four kilometres. But up a hill.

How tough can it be?

Round, emerald knolls watch over Carrickalinga and making my way up the road a herd of sheep encourages my ambling by bleating in charitable ways. Last night’s pizza is now unwelcome ballast.

On the outskirts of town, a council election poster urges participation in this democratic event. Texas-sized utes and rattling 4WDs pass and some swerve away from me in vehicular acknowledgement of my ascent. Or not wishing to bloody their gleaming bull bars.

There’s several twists and the road’s undulating. Accustomed to the flat esplanade of Glenelg North, my thighs protest this topographical change to their jogging routine.

Finally, the brown tourist sign I’ve been seeking for excruciating minutes:

Forktree Brewery.

Despite being presently incapable of having a beer, I’ve never been so pleased to arrive at a brewery.

I’m soaked. My ears popped on the way up and my legs are so convinced of an alpine elevation that they expect a few twirling snowflakes.

A woman and her dog survey the beer garden. We exchange a few only-one-of-us-is-in-a-brewery words. With her hound marching her tree-ward she asks, ‘Where have you run from?’

Still in the carpark and puffing I reply, ‘Our holiday house back down the hill.’

She replies, ‘Awesome! Great job!’ Her husband appears with two pints. She’s an American but they live on Kangaroo Island. They both take a sip.

‘How’s the beer?’

‘Pretty good,’ they nod.

‘Lovely,’ I say, ‘We’re heading to Myponga later. Might go to the Smiling Samoyed Brewery.’ They both offer a glowing critique.

The brewery’s 151 metres above sea level. This might seem numerically unimpressive but having extracted a personal toll each of those demanding centimetres now generates a handsome reward.

Hands on hips, I drink in the wide vista up and down the Fleurieu coast. Gentle, green ranges. Sprawling white homes hugging the shore. A seaweedy tan smears the shallows and then the gulf deepens into a marine blue.

Tumbling down the hill. It’s almost controlled falling. Again, the vehicles are generous, and the sheep are softly supportive. A couple rotund blokes nod at me from a front lawn.

The cotton wool clouds loom as if they’re daubed on a God-sized canvas and although it’s mid-winter these pledge imminent awakening. Spring could almost be ready to say, ‘Boo!’

Our double story digs swim into sight and wondering what’s happening inside with Claire, my friends, and the boys, their past thirty minutes is unveiled: toast, hairdryers, and teenagers still in bunks.

I crunch up the gravel driveway.

0

Sunday lunch review: J & F Pizza at 58 Cellar Door and Gallery, Port Elliot

|

For me life’s biggest dilemma remains: is Friday or Sunday the best day for a long lunch? Saturday is often hijacked by sport, shopping, and lawn-mowing but makes up the trifecta. I’m also a fan of strapping on my boots for a Friday lunch marathon that concludes dangerously close to the first appearance of twinkling stars.

But let me tell you about last Sunday’s lunch.

It was set by a leafy vineyard. There were families with kids on the balcony enjoying the mottled sun and a boisterous, happy group was gathered inside for a 60th birthday. We were close to the woodfired pizza oven, and a great vocalist and guitarist in Pat Ramm accompanied our meal and conversation.

We were guests of 58 Cellar Door and Gallery and particularly J & F Pizza run by two local mates, Josh and Frazer.

With champagne, two Meechi Pale Ales (brewed in nearby Langhorne Creek) and a bottle of Thunderbird Cabernet Sauvignon the refreshments were sorted, and our formidable batting lineup was set.

Frazer and Josh are always looking to keep their pizza menu dynamic and so offered us a Four Cheeses pizza as entrée. It was zesty and subtle, and I hope it finds a long-term place for it was an excellent start to our lazy afternoon.

Throughout, we spoke of footy and family and friends and art.

After a digestive interval the main event was upon us: Prawn pizza and one that was half Hot Salami and half Margherita.  At this point there might’ve been mutual food envy. All looked and smelt appealing, and the Hot Salami was especially delicious with the olives and pickled chilli working with and not against the salami.

The acoustic music continued with covers of Neil Young and The Eagles providing a relaxing soundtrack while over at the birthday gathering those good folks were settling into a rhythm too.

Back in my foggy uni days there was a local joint that did a dessert pizza, and I was once tempted although like many student culinary experiences it was horrible.

However, J & F Pizza do a Lemon Curd pizza which with its delicate blend of curd and basil is a fantastic way to round off a lunch at 58 Cellar Door and Gallery.

Moving toward summer and balmy holidays, when you’re next down around Port Elliot on the Southern Fleurieu, I urge you to sample the fine work of J & F Pizza. Find them on (08) 8554 3149 or at no58pizza@gmail.com.

It’s Sunday lunch (and afternoon), done right.

*disclaimer: we luncheoned with Frazer’s parents, Chris and Letitia

6

Sausage Roll Review: The Port Elliot Bakery

|

It’s a curious and startling world that offers up the first Abba songs in four decades.

And, of course, both tunes feature immaculate vocal melodies, a pretty piano line, and lyrics that are at once sad and grimly triumphant.

But are they really any good? Or do we cut them extra slack just ‘cause they’re Abba?

What if they were a fresh Scandinavian pop outfit, trying to break into the moo-sic business? Would they make it?

Imagine driving to work with the radio tuned to your local Wacky Crew on 99.9 FM. You know the recipe- two guys and a girl all laughing way too heartily at their own jokes and endless torrent of stories about their goofy spouse and madcap kids. Alongside the city’s widest mix of old and new musical slop. Our Wacky Host announces-

“And that was our sixth song this hour by Pink. Up next is a new track by a group from Sweden called Abba.”

I wondered about all of this as I drove to the Port Elliot Bakery and speculated on the connection between Abba and sausage rolls, as I often do.

In the world of South Australian regional bakeries its reputation is colossal, and I imagine, unrivalled. But is it justified? I’d never been in there but just like the Famous Five on Kirrin Island, I was about to find out.

Departing the Southern Expressway, I was suddenly stricken with that ancient fear. What if I arrived and the warmer was devoid of sausage rolls? In forsaken earthly bakeries, no-one can hear you scream. A phone order and all was sorted.

I put on my favourite sausage rolls are a-comin’ playlist (actually a CD of Tame Impala’s Inner Speaker) and stepped on the gas, as they say down south. Doubtless, there’d be gas a-plenty by mid-afternoon if my baked goods form held up.

My Korean kar pulled in across the road from the Port Elliot bakery. Actually, it was outside the Royal Family Hotel. I peered in the window and couldn’t see Charles or Liz or Phil (in an urn above the fireplace). However, I bet Harry was out in the beer garden in a boisterous shout of Sparkling Ale with some old rugger types and soon to request, “Eagle Rock” to his grandmother’s limitless horror.

My sausage roll was huge and if frozen solid, could be used to rob a servo. The pastry was suitably flaky (like Port Power in a home preliminary final as folks other than me might suggest) but not sweaty. Sweaty Sausage Roll Syndrome (SSRS) remains one of this province’s biggest killers of the over 30’s.

I glanced up and saw their sandwich board on the footpath. It self-confidently declared, “Freshly Baked Daily on the premises.” This seemed a minimal achievement to me and should probably be a given in the bakery caper. But how would you react to a sign saying, “All Goods Baked last July in a Distant Anonymous Country”? I thought so.

And while we’re applying some critical thinking to country bakeries, can anyone tell me if there’s a one that’s not award-winning for pies or lamingtons or vegetarian pasties? Yes, they all are because each has signage festooned on the window telling you. It’s like the egg-and-spoon race at a church picnic. Everyone wins a prize even if it’s Best Mushroom and Goat Meat Pie- Barossa District, C Grade, 1994.

The sausage roll innards were peppery and delicious while hinting at delicate spice. It was a most excellent late lunch for a Wednesday. I actually bought two so Claire could sample one later, and that my research could be peer-reviewed. But she’s only coming down on Friday and It’s unlikely to survive until then.

So, you’ll just have to take my word for it. I’m off to listen to “Chiquitita” and the rest of Abba Gold.

2

24 Hours in Carrickalinga

|

When Claire, Trish and I were in Year 12 at Kapunda SA-FM had Triple Track weekends and these were organised by artist or theme.

I’m sure irony or satire were never playlist drivers at the fledgling radio station, as I don’t recall a ridiculous mid-70’s theme, but late Friday night in the upstairs lounge at Carrickalinga – after charades was done (with Claire in Eddie McGuire mode as both compare and a team captain), and the boys downstairs with Perchy the blue heeler being boys – for us there was dancing (OK, not all) and wine and nostalgia and laughter, and these three were played on Trisha’s phone-

S-S-Single Bed by Fox

The Way That You Do It by Pussyfoot

Jeans On by (Lord) David Dundas.

It was a moment of shared history and evoked a joyous time from our childhoods and cloaked the room in safety and deep privilege. Inside, it was warm and for a few hours just before midnight the outside world of lashing rain and lurking adult responsibilities ceased to matter.

I thought of the comfort of old friends and our forgiveness and acceptance, quiet encouragement and unspoken gifts to each other, given freely and often.

Saturday morning and we arose across a few languid hours and gently started our days, a bit like the characters in The Big Chill and as JB noted, each boy had cereal, slopped milk on the bench and table and then, of course, left the milk out. The fridge was too far away from them, an impossible bridge.

After Brett, Leonard, Alex, Riley, Oliver and I enjoyed a diverting quiz –

Who was the first Republican president?

Who performed “Waterloo Sunset?”

Where does port wine come from?

and then board games.

Some of us watched Muriel’s Wedding (Abba was a constant weekend companion) and then went to Myponga beach. It was invigorating and the tide swallowed much of the sand and just as we left the rain began. Riley and Max were in shorts and the apparent temperature was 4.9 degrees.

Thanks to JB, Leonard and Oliver for an excellent 24 hours in Carraikalinga.

On our way home it hailed as we drove through Sellicks Hill, but was warm in the car.

alex

Myponga beach

beach 2

boys mucking around on the beach and no-one gets wet!

beach

wintry beach a treat; as much seaweed as you can eat!

brett

Brett about to do his Michael Caine impersonation

charades 2

Claire and Max mid-charade, doubtless something equine

charades

the triumphant charade team

lounge

Saturday afternoon

max

Max

muriel

Saturday matinee: Muriel’s Wedding

sky

from the balcony looking south towards Yankalilla

0

Pub Review: Hotel Victor, Victor Harbor

|

DW 1

Iconic Australian cricketer, leviathan punter, beer inhaler and former Rothmans enthusiast Doug Walters famously said, “When in Victor Harbor be sure to swing by the Hotel Victor. It’s really good.”

Actually, he didn’t say this, and I just made it up.

Doug is a fabulously cool cat, and once went to bed in Perth well after dawn and well-oiled before mere hours later, going out to bat for his country. He possesses a remarkably mild temper, but I wonder what even he’d make of the Hotel Victor.

taps

The boys and I were in town and as the Tuesday sun was setting, all autumnal and fetching, we suddenly had a dinner dilemma. I won’t say it was poor planning on my behalf but our holiday cabin menu read: half a raw sausage, two bread crusts and nine grapes.

Among the safest beer choices in this land of plenty is Coopers Pale Ale, but happily sat in the front bar and peering across the park, my first sip was, as they say in beverage circles, putrid. Mmm. Something not right here. All metallic edges and prodding screwdrivers, and not the fruity, plentiful palate so richly celebrated.

Eleven patient slurps later I cleared my poisoned throat and rasped at the innkeeper, “Excuse me, young man with the hipster beard, my ale is poorly.” He replaced it, but the second was equally miserable. It lay in the glass like a sad, Liverpudlian puddle.

bistro

Occasionally, the first beers poured daily from a keg can be, as Doug himself describes, a little sharp. However, this was beer o’clock in Victor Harbor during the splendid guts of school holidays. There were punters nursing cups all over the boozer. I was no pioneer.

A pub unable to provide a crisp gargle is like a frisky pup not wanting to reproduce with your bare leg: inexplicable.

We should’ve decamped to the fish ‘n’ chippery, but I persevered with the cold-eyed application of the Never Dead.

I’d a discount meal voucher and was singular in my wish to redeem it. “No, you can’t use it in here, only in the bistro,” announced the pig-tailed girl with cheerful senselessness. “What difference does it make?” I blinked. “Do the meals not come from the same kitchen? How can it matter where we sit?”

She blinked back.

In the apparently magical bistro with the boys gawping at their devices I ordered, but the pub again gave the rude finger. “Sorry, you can’t use this coupon for kids’ meals, only adult ones.”

I was tempted to use Aunt Edna’s favourite expression, the elegant and timeless, Fuck me.

I was getting extra good at loosing arguments, and my will to live was about to drown itself in my rancid ale, so naturally I continued. “But the discount here is ten bucks. Should I return, and buy the adult-only lobster and save thirty dollars? Would that be better for you?”

Hotel Victor 3, me 0.

lobster

I admit my roast beef was terrific. Tender, exquisitely flavoursome and a treat to eat. The carvery vegetables were also delicious; especially the cauliflower, although as Aunt Edna used to suggest, “If you somehow manage to fuck up cauliflower we’re all in deep shit.” She had a shocking mouth, Aunt Edna.

Upon arrival we were promised water and glasses, but the four wait staff were so stressed attending to the excessive, punishing demands of the six other diners that this didn’t happen. Mercifully, humans are only 60% water so replenishing with H2O wasn’t important, and at no stage were we in significant biological danger.

They were also busy dwelling on Doug Walters’ famous century made entirely in the final session at the WACA in 1974. He bought it up with a six off the day’s last ball.

For the Hotel Victor to have also hit a six off their last delivery would’ve required free Coopers Sparkling Ales for me, and buckets of chocolate ice-cream for both Alex and Max.

The wait staff (yes, we’re still waiting) were consumed by their own ridiculous rules for acceptance of vouchers; an unwavering commitment to shagging up the country’s finest keg beer; and avoiding minimal levels of table service and so, with eyes shut, flopping about at the crease like a wounded sea mammal, and failing to offer a cricket shot, were bowled middle stump.

DW 2