A new blog for travels in 2016

Check it out at http://judithclark.blogspot.my

For this trip I am using the blog I set up when I went to New York. Enjoy - don't forget to bookmark!

Back in Port

So, back to real time. A job application, and research for travels in France. Which way will it go?

For this month, February, I'm staying in Jan's townhouse in Port Macquarie with Sasha the poodle. I'm in a great location, not far from the beach. I can hear the surf at night. 

I'm loving walking the dog morning and evening. There's a coastal walk along to the next beach, Flynn's Beach, where there's a surf school in the mornings. Or I can walk around the headland past the local little little beach (below) to the imaginatively named Town Beach where there is usually a bunch of people surfing at least one of the two breaks. 

Road trip/s

From New Zealand, Port Macquarie on the map seemed like a good place. Not as hot as Brisbane, good rainfall, within striking distance of Sydney. Not too big, not too small. "Good fishing", everyone would say. At Margaret and Keith's in Hamilton I met Jan and Francois, who lived there. "It has a great arts and cultural centre", they told me. Yep.

So when the time came to move on from Cairns I put word out and yes, Jan did need a house sitter in December, and also in February. An opportunity to try out the town, see what it would be like to live there. Next stop, Port Macquarie.

Packed up the car again (doesn't take long), off south. This time with Jess the bear for company -- thanks, Annie Jean! 

Six and half hours from Brisbane. 

The weeks before Christmas I stayed at Jan and Francois' canal-side house. On Christmas Day there was a pod of about seven dolphins, cruising by with gentle splashes. House-sitting duties included becoming the slave of a black toy poodle called Sasha who reminded me relentlessly about walks twice a day. I set too, finding the best places to have my daily coffee; and took up reading the Sydney Morning Herald every day (failing at the cryptic crossword).

Matt rode up from Sydney just after Christmas. Yes, on his bicycle. Here he is at the lighthouse at the well-names Lighthouse Beach.

So began an epic road trip - Port to Melbourne, exploring the beaches and small places along the way, including a drive around the Hunter Valley. 

New Year's Eve we were in Sydney (local fireworks only), and we spent a couple of days at Thredbo. Matt rode up to Kosciusko. 

I stayed in an apartment in East Melbourne and pretended to be a Brunswick local, sipping soy flat whites at pop-up garage cafes. 

I revisited the lovely people at the Peter Macallum Centre, and went through the usual stuff - camera up the nose, finger down the throat, all good fun. Nothing unexpected there, and so life continues. Yay! The streets of Melbourne have never looked so good.

Back on the road again. just me and Jess-the-bear-not-a-rabbit this time. I drove back to Port via the coast, stopping off at many of the smaller country towns just a bit inland, and camping along the way, even a couple of nights of car sleeping. Yes, there are still service stations with free hot showers. 

I indulged at Readings in Hawthorn on the morning of departure and along with my coffee bought a talking book to ease the byways, The Rosie Project. 

And so, back again in the small town of Port Macquarie. And an enthusiastic welcome from Sasha. 

Next stop - Mudgeereeba

From Buderim it is a short hop to the Gold Coast where my brother lives. I stopped in Brisbane on the way down, and paid more for parking than I usually spend in any one day.

This from Neil and Di's garden.

Before Christmas we had a girlie weekend at Woody Point, back in Brisbane. Suzie hosted Janet, Helen and I for the weekend and fed us like VIPs, which we are of course.

And I made a short trip down to Murwillumbah and met up with Felicity at the Tweed Regional Gallery. The view from the gallery cafe is delightful.

There was a special installation that was spreading around at least three rooms, all made from cardboard. This is the In-Habit Project, which

"considers the idea of ‘place’; and addresses themes of journey and diaspora; settlement and resettlement; home and land; plight and displacement. Using the process of collecting and collaborating to express ideas of migration, family and memory, the artists work with the community to construct small houses using recycled cardboard and found materials. These houses contribute to a growing community of dwellings installed on scaffolding within the gallery, resembling a sprawling construction site continuously evolving and always in transition."

But the highlight of this visit, other than seeing Felicity again, was the Margaret Olley Art Centre.

The MOAC celebrates the career, life and legacy of its namesake, Margaret Olley – Australia’s most celebrated painter of still life and interiors. 



I had a Margaret Olley print on my wall in my house in Cairns, and there was the jug of cornflowers featured in that print, sitting on the kitchen windowsill just as I had so often imagined. This is an exhibition I could revisit again and again.

But a few days later it was off on the next road trip, a short one this time - a 6-hour hop down the coast to Port Macquarie, with a breakfast stop in Byron Bay.

Buderim

This is a bit of a retrospective review of my travels down the east coast. From Cairns I took 3 days to reach Buderim which is on the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane. I practised camping, and apart from realising on the first night that I had forgotten to buy a pump for the lilo (luckily the camping ground at Home Hill had very thick, springy grass and I slept comfortably without it) all went well. At Home Hill I paid $10 for a campsite, entry to the municipal pool, AND a Magnum icecream. At Noosa the campsite was $32. An expensive hot shower, that one.

So to the next house sit. Deb and John were away and I spent a week at their mansion.

Not just a pool, but a sewing room, and permission to use the machine! I made a couple of cool dresses and a skirt.

Last time I was staying at Deb's I could hardly walk around the block. This time I was able to walk much further afield. I missed the jacarandas but the flame trees were resplendent, shading the streets and making it very pleasant to walk into the town for coffee. Buderim may be small but it has four bookshops and a great selection of cafes.

I discovered a block in Buderim designated as Food Street. All the kerbs have been given over to vegetables and fruit trees. Sweet corn, bananas, limes, zucchini, sweet potatoes and more. The produce gets shared between the residents. There was a stand of sunflowers that was attracting the birds which seemed fearless.

How to leave Cairns?

I lived in Cairns for nearly 15 years, and in so many ways it was the perfect place to live.  I remember back then when I accepted a job in Ballarat saying to friends, how can you possibly leave Cairns? John Metcalfe (who is still there, living in the same house and riding his old bike) said, it's easy to leave - you just drive to the big fish, and you keep going. And that's what I did last week.

The Big Fish is the marlin that used to be at the southern gateway. These days it marks a shopping centre that has quadrupled in size from out days of living up the road - we used to have a game when Matt was in a carseat in the back in his nappies, I'd have to look the other way and he'd shout out 'I see wish worse!' (I see the fish first).

Farewell Trinity Beach - no more moonlight swims now that stinger season has arrived. 

Off on a 2000km drive south....

Rusty's Markets in Cairns

The Friday and Saturday markets at Rusty's Bazaar are still going strong. The noise and the smells take me back to any southeast asian market, but the people and the produce are distinctly Cairns. Some of the atmosphere of old has disappeared, but its still a great experience. Just for old times I had to combine my visits with a coffee and cake at what we always called Paris Croissants, now the Swiss Cake and Coffee Shop. Not much has changed here except it is not Terry and Sally behind the counter any more.

Probably the main change in the markets is that there is a stronger PNG and Islands presence. Otherwise there are still the Italian farmers from the tablelands, Cambodian families and local organic foodie artisans.

Can't you smell the mangoes, coriander, basil, vanilla coffee and incense?

Tropical garden

Just some more photos from the garden today.

The big mango tree at the driveway is loaded with baby green mangos. That is a very steep driveway actually. Scale can be deceptive when used to plants like the birds nest fern as seen in NZ, maybe the size of a dinner plate, this one has grown to the size of a kid's paddling pool.

 Yesterday there was a dead baby black snake just by the car. It had been freshly killed, in fact while I was having breakfast because it wan't there when I came back from my walk. I'd love to know how it died. Is there a nest of them? Since I have been here there have been three snakeskins - all of them outside my bedroom - yes, there are screens on all the windows. This would be a python maybe 2 metres in length.

I see quite a few of the beautiful iridescent blue Ulysses butterflies flashing by. This is not as stunning as the Ulysses, but was obligingly still.

The butterfly matches these day lilies.

 A bare twig in a pot has burst out into brilliant colour in the last week.

 Another example of something that in another climate would be an indoor plant.

Garden tour

This morning a bit of a tour for you, of the garden that Frances Boyd has created at their home in Freshwater. I am really enjoying staying here while they are in Madrid. Watering is a chore that I am only too happy to do. Their block is high up the hill (though there are two blocks higher up, one was cleared last week ready for building soon). So here is the view from the verandah.

Last night there was smoke from bushfires burning over on the other side of the inlet, hence the pink sky.

This morning it is lovely and clear and I can see the Coral Sea. That's Earl Hill in the background, at Trinity Beach.

The canefields across this area are set to be changed dramatically if the Aquis development goes ahead. A Chinese developer has well-developed plans for a hotel-casino complex that is said to cost $8 trillion. It would impact significantly on this view, creating 8 hotels and 2 casinos, theatres and an aquarium.


But back to the garden....

Bromeliads. Lots of them. Growing up palm trees and in pots, clinging to rocks and branches.

Beautiful and bizarre plants. Frances has lots of Tillandsia, too, more on these air plants later. Moving on to the gingers. A bare patch of hillside has burst out with pink flowers in the last few weeks.

This is a native turmeric, brought back from Cape York by Ian, and now happily thriving here. I recognised it from one of the exquisite paintings in the current exhibition at the Regional Gallery. It is a wonderful exhibition called Capturing Flora: A passion for the Exotick.

And this is a ginger flower. You can buy these from a stall at Rusty's market, along with equally huge and colourful heliconias. You need to have HUGE vases when you live in Cairns. Frances has red heliconias, they are just coming out, I picked some this morning for the kitchen bench. Though when you look out onto such a lovely garden, you don't really need flowers inside.

The other flower that has just emerged is the amaryllis. These cheer up my day - how could they not?

Aren't they stunning?

The garden is mostly foliage actually, but I am having trouble getting good photos. So here's another plant that is flowering at the moment. And there are paw paws, but I found I need to be quick to beat the birds or bats. 

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