Australia Day adventures

Australia Day adventures

The Country Mouse came to the city for Australia Day. I was so proud. “You want to see fireworks???? Sydney can show you fireworks!!!!”

Australia Day also prompted one of those ‘Green Acres’ moments the Country Mouse and I are known for. Are you ready city readers? It was AUSTRALIA DAY. We were going to the EASTERN SUBURBS BEACHES. I let the Country Mouse know we should allow an hour to get there. “Why?” he enquired “Will there be much traffic?”  It is AUSTRALIA DAY. We are going in the direction of BONDI BEACH. Oh dear Country Mouse.... will there be much traffic? Only half of the resident population of Sydney and the entire backpacker population of NSW.

After a wonderful day introducing the Country Mouse to my dear cousin and her husband and trying to stay cool in and by her pool we joined a sweltering crowd in the Hordern Pavilion’s melting humidity for Jimmy Buffett’s final Australian concert*.

Well it was actually less a concert and more an indoor beach party, complete with inflatable sharks, the world sartorial record for the most Hawaiian shirts worn by middle-age men in one confined space and a crowd well lubricated with frozen margaritas.

Much to my surprise the concert prompted the Country Mouse to unleash his inner parrot head. Who knew? As he sang “fins the left, fins to the right” complete with shark fin movements, his face lit up with a boyish glee. It's moments like this I look at him and I go to mush, I was a goner again.

*Yes, it was that concert! Yes, we saw him fall off the stage! It scared the bejesus out of us – wishing Jimmy B a full recovery.

Beach search update

On my last visit to the Country Mouse we continued our beach search. You might recall from earlier posts I have been on the hunt to find a beach to call my own (like MY Bronte) in the Newcastle area. 

So far I have loved Caves Beach (especially the caves) and am pleased to announce - queue drum roll - I have now settled on my Newcastle home beach - and the winner is.... Nobby's Beach!

Whether Nobby's has an apostrophe or not seems a bone of grammatical contention, but whether it is Nobby's or Nobbys it's a gem, home of the Pasha Bulker beaching, a fabulous lighthouse and a wonderful headland.

Nobby's Beach here I come.

Coal train running

The Hunter Valley is defined by a number of contradictory industries. Lush vineyards and olive groves coat the landscape in various shades of green, bringing a sigh of “It’s so pretty here!” from visitors. And then there is its counterpoint, the coal industry.


I am fascinated by the way that the influence of this ‘black gold’ is ever present in the Hunter Valley, absolutely defining the area. Black and brown coal is dug from open-cut mines, beds, or more evocatively from ‘veins’, in the earth. The heavy machinery associated with the coal industry is just my thing, I love oversized graders, caterpillars and other digging tools, they appeal to my inner tomboy.


For this reason I love industrial history, industrial architecture and industrial machinery – it is way, way more interesting than Federation sandstone buildings and Victorian villas. For this reason Cockatoo Island is one of my must-go-to destinations for visitors to Sydney.

I once spent a fabulous night camping there with my friend Wendy-from-Maui who was as enthralled as I am by the island’s enormous decaying cranes, which seem to loom menacingly over the campground.


Sunrise on Cockatoo Island is extraordinary. A pink, lilac, lemon-streaked morning sky rose behind the Sydney Harbour Bridge, providing a perfect backdrop for my Hawaiian friend to greet the dawn with her Tai Chi moves. OK enough enthusing about Cockatoo Island (but if you haven’t been – GO!) and back to the subject of this post.


One of the interesting things about staying overnight in a new place is becoming acquainted with its night sounds. When I began overnight visits at the Country Mouse house I used to lie awake listening to the unfamiliar night noises.

One of the most puzzling was one which came either very late (around midnight) or in the early, early morning (1.00-2.00am-ish), a noise which sounded like a deep and rhythmic ‘thum, thum, thum, thum’. I thought for a while it might be trucks on a nearby highway, but it went on for too long and was too regular. It turned out to be a coal train. I have come to love the sound of the coal train and even listen out for it. Thum, thum, thum, thum.


The coal train is a key part of what is known as the Hunter Valley Coal Chain whereby the export coal from the Hunter Valley gets from the mine sites to the port of Newcastle. The rail line follows the route of the Hunter River moving south-east from inland to the sea. It makes me want to break into song …‘Chain, chain, chain’.

Recently one of the Country Mouse’s mouseketeers had a significant birthday and we celebrated at a local hotel with a balcony view of the railway line. Late in the evening we were out on the balcony and I heard that familiar sound. My coal train was coming past. This was the first time I had actually seen it, rather than just heard it and I was transfixed. It sped past into the night, going south to the sea, wagons full of coal.

Coal freight wagons can be up to two kilometres in length - astounding! You can see a good picture of a coal freight train here:   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Valley_Coal_Chain

Despite being a musical Mouse, the Country Mouse resists my requests for him to sing to me, but the coal train briefly inspired him to break into the chorus of Doobie Brothers classic ‘Long Train Running’:

Down around the corner

A half a mile from here

You can see them long trains run

And watch them disappear

Well the pistons keep on churnin’

And wheels go ‘round and ‘round

And the steel rails are cold and hard

For the miles that they go down

Late at night I lie awake with my head on his chest, listening to his sleeping breath and to the coal trains; and I softly sing the song’s chorus:

Without love

Where would you be now?

Organic ecstasy

I believe in signs. As my plan to live in the country and do a work commute to the city has now fallen over, I have been on the look out for a sign that I was meant to move to the country (apart from, of course, that I am truly, deeply and madly in love with the Country Mouse).

Recently on a drive to our nearest large regional centre, past cows grazing in paddocks of course (for more on cows = country see the last post), there it was, the sign I’d been asking for. On an otherwise unremarkable street I spied a large barn of a building wrapping itself around a corner block, its signage read ‘Organic Feast’. I squealed to the Country Mouse “Stop the car, stop the car, stop the caaaaaar!”

I couldn’t get inside the Organic Feast building fast enough. It was oh so wonderfully familiar, my favourite kind of foody establishment - chunky wooden communal eating tables with books and magazines to pour over while savouring your wholefood-wholeseed breakfast or lunch. A guitarist in the corner played a Joni Mitchell classic, giving it just the kind of hippy ambience I love. It had a slightly Sydney Inner West health food café vibe, enough of a vibe that I knew it was a sign - I AM MEANT TO BE HERE.

Oh happy day!

As worked my way through the store, “oohing” and “ahhing” over the product line and giving the establishment my biggest compliment “this shop is just like a Sydney shop!” Even the Country Mouse got in the spirit, despite his deep suspicion of any food he hadn't previously encountered, he consented to try lemon myrtle yoghurt (my favourite) and to his surprise found he liked it.

Organic Feast, it turned out, had only recently moved to this new location, and it was right near the Country Mouse’s lair. I have weekend visions of cycling to the store, drinking coffee, eating organic food and reading the paper. On its website it says: Our retail Shop is located in the Heart of the Agricultural belt of the Hunter valley, an area that is re-birthing agriculturally through Organic / Biodynamic farming after being crushed by the supermarket industry.

An organic shop with politics, it’s all too perfect – and so obviously it’s a sign.

Mind you one drawback is that Organic Feast still has very country hours of trading – it closes at 5.30pm on weekdays, 2.00pm Saturdays (bad luck if you are late getting going on your first sleep-in day of the weekend) and is, wait for it city cousins, closed, on Sundays. Hmmmm…..shops closed on Sundays in the country!!!!!!! – that will be a posting, or probably an almost incoherent rant, for another time. 

But back to the good news…

As we returned to the car I felt triumphant. I had found a café to call home, I did belong here. The Country Mouse was quiet; he looked regretfully at the Organic Feast building, “It’s a tragedy; it used to be our local hardware store.” I tried to console him, “You will always have Bunnings”, but he remained unconvinced.

This is my current conundrum. Can you be philosophically opposed to gentrification until it works for you, thus making you a complete hypocrite? I have spent decades railing against gentrification of the inner city of Sydney, sneering at upper middle class interlopers who have turned my radical, sub-cultural and alternative pockets of the city into a whitewashed (and now very expensive) version of their former gritty glory.

Am I now like one of those obnoxious Lower North Shore first-home buyers I watched emigrate to the inner city in the 1980s and 1990s? The ones who subjugated the best of the city’s inner suburbs, renovating away all signs of their former idiosyncratic vulgarity until the long-time locals fled? A state of bland became victorious across the inner city landscape. 

Now as I drive around the Lower Hunter Valley I want to scream out the window “Gentrify, gentrify, gentrify!” Is this what all us tree changers secretly want, to go to the country and hope like hell that soon (very soon) we can recreate everything we love, miss and value about the city in our new rural community? Can’t we just let the country…be the country?

My conscience is troubled. What do you think?

Country = cows

Here’s a regular debate I have with the Country Mouse. When is the country…the country?

On our regular drives from the Country Mouse’s home-sweet-home to the nearest regional town (maybe it even has the status of a city, but don’t even think about any Sydney CBD comparison) we pass large green fields with various country-style animals, predominantly horses and cows. Very picturesque.

I usually exclaim at this point, “Wow, we are really in the country!” Country Mouse disagrees, “This is not the country.” I counter, “But there are cows.” He counters, “Cows do not equal country.” And there you have today’s definition challenge – and blog question.

Now city folk have horses, I pass stables regularly on my way to work in the Eastern Suburbs. And horses also move in and out of the Equestrian Centre near Fox Studios (officially now called the Entertainment Quarter, does anyone even recognise – or use - Fox Studios’ new moniker?) and into Centennial Park opposite. So clearly horses do not equal country.

I am an unabashed City Mouse, but surely there is no debate here. Horses may not equal country, but cows definitely equal country. And country equals cows. What do you all think?

More from Izzy

More wisdom, lucky me, from my friend Izzy.

"The other thing that helped me throught the big move, was study. Sign on immediately to a course - lady tradie or brainy birdy. Take your pick. You'll make friends (or at least have other people to talk to) aside from your one and only life line, your beloved. And find a group, committee or cause to volunteer for, same difference.

"The trick to the big tree change is to expect loneliness and take every step to alleviate some of the feelings of isolation when you are feeling a bit blah. It happens, but it helps if you know it will be on the menu at some stage. But a friendly Wendy like you should have no problem creating an intersting new environment for herself. Keep me posted."

Emerson wisdom

Have re-discoverd Ralph Waldo! That's been an interesting literary diversion. Am currently loving this quote which seems very apt to my journey:

"Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage."