Wine, cheese and 12 big apostles
June 24, 2005Sorrento, Victoria, Australia,
7:21 pm
Back at the Daisy Cottage after a similarly wonderful day. It ended with a sunset ferry back from Queenscliff, and after some grilled cheese and soup, we are grimacing about the amount of money we spent.
But whatever, I am coming to terms with trying not to be as pragmatic after we spend the money, while being such a loose goose during the spending sprees. I also have to perhaps seek out ways to help our financial cause while we are here. It still feels like a big vacation and I have to change my way of thinking. Problem with Australia is it seems we are not in one place long enough to actively look for some work. I may try and pitch a story back at home. Any suggestions from people back home are appreciated and welcomed.
Today we woke up and got on the road quickly, our goal just to get to Port Fairy, have lunch and make our way home. On the highway this time, not along the windy ocean road or we would never made it back for the last ferry. Yes I used the words fairy and ferry in the same paragraph. I am a writer you know.
We stopped at another rock formation, the Arch, and it was hardly as magnificent as the apostles or we are truly being spoiled by our daily views. What goofs we are.
Our next stop was one you just cannot turn down. It was Cheese World. Yes Cheese World. Where everything is cheese and cheese is everything. I had visions of people walking around saying “How are you today?”
“I am pretty Gouda, but I was cheddar yesterday” Tee hee.
We bought a small Parmesan and a nice spiced cheddar and some crackers along with some fudge for good measure.
Port Fairy was yes another quaint town along the coast, although we could not see the ocean from Rebecca’s, a local café where we had lunch. Steph has a fettuccine with braised spinach and roasted pumpkin. I had a cheddar and salami melt with mixed greens and Hud had a vegetable soup with bread. Everything was so fresh and wonderful. I can’t tell you how great the food is here.
The drive back was boring farmland, Hud not sleeping and but being very funny and not complaining one bit of the three hour drive. We ate our fudge and cheese and crackers and drank bottled water. Steph sang and cows and sheep toppled in ear pain. I tried to sleep but it was in vain with all the car activity going on.
We made the 5:00pm ferry and watched the sun set over Queenscliff on the top.
We retired to the inside of the ferry. I had a tea and sat next to my wife near the window.
Hud ran around in circles, not unlike a psychotic dog.
What a journey.
Love to all,
J.
June 24, 2005
Port Campbell, Victoria, Australia
4:46am
A road entry.
Yesterday was a day of complete wonder and awe.
It started at 6:45am, Hud waking us up and me convincing Steph that we take the 8:00am ferry to Queenscliff instead of the 9am one as originally planned. She agreed, sacrificing basically nine more minutes of quality sleep. So the mad dash began. Getting dressed and packing bags. My packing consisted of pulling a pair of sweat pants from the bumoire and stuffing it in a knapsack. Steph is wearing them right now as she forgot pajamas. So I will be repeating yesterday’s outfit sans boxers.
Today I will go commando and Australia will be better because of it. Prrrrowrrr.
A ferry between Sorrento and Queenscliff runs every hour for both cars and passengers. It covers the distance between the two heads in only 45 minutes, so Port Phillp Bay is actually quite protected from the mean and nasty ocean. This is another reason why the coastline of the Bay is quite popular, both with humans and all sorts of sea creatures, dolphins and seals included.
So basically the day began by watching the sun begin. We huddled on top of the ferry and witnessed the peninsula we have discovered by land, pass us by sea. Hud was pretty thrilled by it all, although his sea legs took a while to kick in, and demanded we hold his wee little hand.
Before we knew it, the announcement went off for us to return to the car. And with couple of shakes and clanks, we were driving off the boat and through Queenscliff to hook up with The Great Ocean Road to begin our adventure.
The Great Ocean Road is a road, that goes along the ocean, and is great.
Our goal was to travel this road to Port Fairy, about 300 km from Queenscliff, stopping at various locations along the way, the highlight being the 12 apostles, massive rock formations that sit together on the coastline.
The first stop was Torquay, surf capital of the world. We drove to the beach (Port Danger, oooooo) and watched kite surfers do their thing. What an amazing sight. These guys motor at about 20 knots attached to what looks basically like parachute attached to a surfboard. They hit the waves at this speed and get serious air. There were four of them, tacking back and forth with ease, falling into the water and letting the air whip them back upright, to cut through the water once again. You could almost feel the giddy adrenalin chugging through their veins like an impossible train.
This was today’s first moment of awe.
After the first beach we went to Surf City, a touristy shopping area that houses some of the surf shops that originated in Torquay. Billibong, Quicksliver, RipCurl to name a few. Steph bought a t-shirt, beginning her slow transformation to a surf Betty. Hud danced to the hip-hop in front of the store while I longed for an egg and bacon sandwich and a coffee.
After my egg and bacon sandwich and a coffee we drove to Bells Beach, one of the most famous surf beaches in the world. There were a couple of surfers on small swells so I got Steph to take the most touristy picture possible and we were back in the car to gain some more ground on our destination.
Now I have driven some windy roads in my five long years of being a licensed driver. But nothing will compare with the hairpin, coastline action of the 50km between Torquay and Apollo Bay. It was insane. Up and down, back and forth, it was like being on an amusement park ride with an evil operator who won’t let it end. Steph was as nervous as I have ever seen her, telling me to watch my left every six or seven seconds. It was pretty hairy. And somewhat fun to drive after you get the feel for it. We stopped at some of the more beautiful vantage points and soaked the scenes in. Hud slept through the whole thing, his head moving side to side with each sharp turn. What a funny egg.
The drive eases away from the coastline after Apollo Bay. We were going to stop in this beach town for lunch, but Hud was just waking up and not complaining so we ventured on. The landscape changed to farmland. Cows and sheep peppering the green. The air so clean you wanted to lick it off a spoon. And then trees started to hover over us and we entered Ottway National Park and suddenly the foliage felt very familiar, like driving through Algonquin, or northern Vancouver Island.
We stopped at Mait’s Forest, an Australian rainforest with trees as big as life, and prehistoric ferns surrounding us like street gangs. Hud was awake and vibrant, hiding in the caves carved out of these massive trees. Sadly we arrived at the rainforest at the exact same time as a tour group, so it didn’t feel like we were only three people on the planet.
The path is a big circle and as we were finishing another tour group was starting. Hud stood at the entrance and hissed like a dragon at everyone entering the rainforest. Like he was guarding it like a cute, not scary at all, troll. Even the Asians laughed at him.
Back in the car now, all of us very hungry, we found a small café about 40km from the 12 apostles so we stopped for a late lunch. Steph had grilled fish and chips, I had a foccicia with ham, cheese and tomato, Hud had a vegetable soup and a scone. Steph also had her glass of red and I had a cold Coopers Pale Ale. Hud stuck to milk.
Suddenly we were there. A national park sign told us so. We pulled into the parking lot with some tour buses and other cars with passengers already holding their digital cameras. Down a ramp and over a hill and there they stood. Limestone rock formations the size of buildings. There are twelve of them but not all are visible from the vantage points and lookouts offered by the park service. We stood and stared at these massive hunks of rock, the sun just starting its descent. Sure others were there, sure it’s a little vanilla, as secretly I wanted to climb over the rails and stand on one of the cliffs screaming until my retinas popped. But it is still one of things I will remember seeing as Hud holds my hand in the hospital bed.
Steph felt the same sense of awe. Hud of course was fascinated by the taste of the wooden railing. Funny, after about an hour of looking out at these apostles, Hud stopped running around in circles and came over and sat right between us.
“Hey look at the rock!” He said. Duh I thought and kissed his forehead.
Off to Port Campbell to find a room, which we did with relative ease. Another quaint town with general stores to spend money in. We ordered a pizza and got settled in our motel room. A motel room with brick walls and a wooden paneled ceiling. A little jail-like, but the television worked and we all were sound asleep by 11:00pm.
I, of course woke up to talk to you.
I had to tell someone about what I saw today.
Love to all,
J.
June 22, 2005
Sorrento, Victoria, Australia
I shot a 117. A net 97.
Once, I was stuck in gnarled fescue so deep that I took four swings at it before squirting it off the toe across the fairway into more rough. Another time I hit my second shot out of a deep pot bunker and landed it on the green, only to have it roll back and stop in the rough about six inches from rolling back into the bunker. The next shot I duffed the chip and it traveled far enough up the slope to gain enough inertia coming back to actually make it through the rough this time, and land back to the bottom of the pot bunker. I cut under the sand two more times before finally hitting an ok bunker shot on my fourth try.
An eight on an easy par three.
An appropriate snowman from the Canadian chuckled my playing partner.
Ha ha very funny fuckball.
It was actually great. The course was spectacular. A true dunes course. Grass planted in sand. Near, but not on the ocean. You could smell the fish in the air. It was all rolling countryside, with black cows grazing, and greens the size of postage stamps tucked into corners and bends.
I played with Joe, our Irish cottage host, and Barry, a retired insurance man who lives in Melbourne, but has a holiday home on the peninsula. One thing about this trip, we do hang around a lot of old people. There were numerous conversations about groin tumors, and goiters, and thyroid cancer. Barry informed us both that the club’s flag was hanging at half-mast for the third time this year. I nodded and secretly longed for some bubble gum to pop and a sprinkler to run through.
Needless to say, the old guys beat the hell out of me on the course, so my longing to be 13 again has nothing to do with golf.
I had a beer after with the gang, and I refrained from explaining my recent ear infection just to be cool. I did meet the club president who had eyebrows like the caterpillars that infest trees. He was off to NZ to golf in the summer. The guy beside him was at least 80 and would giggle randomly and girly at things that were not that funny. I laughed along with him once, but really, I was laughing at him.
I bet he posted a better score than I did.
Love to all,
J.
June 22, 2005
Portsea, Victoria, Australia
I just wanted to add to Mr. Graham’s golf report, that Hudson and I also had a marvelous day in Portsea. This is the next town over and the last on this side of the peninsula.
We spent the say at the park, beach and then a walk on the pier where we saw a baby seal! Hud spotted it first, saying, “mom, what’s that?”
The baby seal played by the pier for about fifteen minutes and then on his way off, he did a jump and a wave of the flipper right in front of Hud.
It was indeed a cool moment.
S & H xoxo
June 21, 2005
Sorrento, Victoria, Australia
7:19 pm.
It’s not that you have a small ________ it’s that you have huge _______.
Words just uttered from my wife’s mouth. The blanks are yours to fill.
Today is the shortest day of the year in Australia. At home I am sure it’s one of those patio nights, where it starts to get dark around 9:30pm. The air is thick and wet and hot. The pints are clear and cold and sweaty. I would have my feet on the chair across from me, about six pints in, piling in the smoky darts at a rapid pace, my throat raw and red, my speech slurred, profanity spilling from my mouth like saliva before vomit, more animated, less inhibited, smiling too hard, eyes arcane and bloody.
This was my life. On top of the world Ma.
Here the sun went down around 5:40pm. We had just returned from Sorrento after picking up various additions for tonight’s dinner of Chicken burritos. They were awesome and now I am stuffed. I am slurping the Chardonnay given to us by Joe and Ellen, the owners of the cottage. There are no darts, no gathered profanity, no tense smiling. I am relaxed and relatively toxin free, minus my returned affection for Diet Coke.
You hear that? That was Coca Cola’s head office in Atlanta high fiving.
Today we went to the beach in the morning, as we are both never tired of hearing and watching the aggressive waves smash into the sand. A great part about living close to an ocean is the ability to return, at different times of the day, and witness different tidal sequences, and therefore different waves slapping different areas of the shore. You would think it is mostly the same, but the four times I have now been to our particular beach, I have witnessed the squirting and ejaculating of water as it finds a new cranny to rumble through. It is so real and raw and random. Although the tides are predicted months in advance. There is so much to learn.
Lunch was spinach and ricotta ravioli with basil, Parmesan, and broccoli. Yes it’s a familiar meal in the house of carb. But we all like it and we needed some hearty fuel before heading out for our afternoon of wine tasting. We planned on hitting three vineyards and then find a place for a dinner, maybe one of the vineyards.
First up, T’Gallant Vineyards, about 30 minutes northeast of our cottage in a small town called Red Hill. We had no idea what to expect. Neither Steph nor I had ever been to a winery before, although I am pretty sure we have drank twenty times our weight in wine at random dinner parties and at my mothers.
So we know what we like. We know that you are supposed to swish the wine around the glass and then place your nose into the glass to experience the bouquet. We know to hold it in our mouths for longer than a second to let the wine fill the nooks. So when Gabby, the handsome host of our tasting, poured us five different types of wine, we nodded and asked good questions, while not feeling too ignorant of the whole process. She talked of the acid level, the good cellaring, the fall harvest, the vibrancy, the bursting, and the hollowness of all the flavours.
We talked of our vacation, our selling of the house, our quitting of the job, our basking in the glow of the unemployed. Gabby beamed and poured us a Pinot Gris, a wonderful white that is harvested later than the Pinot Grigio and is bolder and heavier than the traditional Italian afternoon wine. We loved this one and dished out thirty bones to have her wrap it in tissue and put the same sticker to seal it as the one she gave Hud to stick on his head.
Gabby and Steph exchanged Yoga experiences and she gave Steph a name to look up in Byron Bay. Hud and I played with a cat that looked a lot like Charlie, a cat we had back on Glenforest. The one that died of a brain tumour. It waved its tail like it was going to attack, but it didn’t, and Hud remained fascinated by its feline ways.
Next up, Tuck’s Ridge, a winery down the road about ten minutes for another round of tasting. This one had a nice, big sandbox for Hud so we slipped in the Cellar Door and were greeted by Pat, a broad women who looked like Steph’s mother’s friend Wendy. She was expressive and friendly as she poured different wines and described them with colourful bon mot as “Tastes like the bottom of a forest floor”. Or “So vibrant, the moment you take a sip you want to burst into song” Pure gold. Their tasting menus were equally descriptive and made me think there is a job for me in this region.
Another couple slipped in at the end of our tasting and we were able to sneak out without feeling obligated to buy a bottle of wine. Especially since Steph’s favourite wine was a Chardonnay that cost $50 a bottle.
Hud was getting wingy, so we passed on the last planned winery visit and started driving around looking for a restaurant that was not closed on a Tuesday. We failed, but we did find a number of little shops that sell little cheeses, and little jars of jams and chutney. This area, and Melbourne in general, is built for people that like wine, cheese, bread and fresh produce. Mom, seriously, get here, it is a foodie’s fridge door’s wet dream. We bought a local cheese that cost nine dollars, but it melted in your mouth like meringue. Expensive, but so good it becomes the cheese you compare others too. So worth it.
The shortest day is ending soon. We read way more books in Fiji with two channels. Now we have four channels, with all the shows, and we are reveling in them.
Oh well. Whatever.
I am sure it will be over soon. And we can go back to being passively pseudo intellectual.
Love to all,
J.
posted by Jason @ 4:09 AM
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