Update: a beach, a barbeque and Bondi

The reality of moving to the Hunter Valley, is, almost unbelievably, becoming a reality. This is good. Yet my situation still feels unreal. I live everywhere but no-where. This is bad. I yearn to set down new roots, to begin a new life in a new place. It can’t come soon enough. But in the meantime it’s time for a few updates and an anniversary story.

Update no. 1: The Great Newcastle Beach Search. The Country Mouse and I recently took the opportunity to hit the sand on probably the last warm Sunday or summer. He took me to a fantastic unnamed beach (a quick check with the National Parks and Wildlife Service seems to confirm its unnamed status) which is just around the southern headland of Merewether Beach. This gem of a spot has a rocky enclosed swimming hole, natural bushland right behind the beach and is free of the tasteless take-away food shops which blight the NSW coastline.

Memo to Newcastle Council: please re-lease the take away food venues at your beaches to professionals who know how to serve decent café/deli style food (as opposed to bad, overpriced junk); employ staff who know something about customer service (as opposed to the present staff whose idea of ‘service’ is a permanent sulky pout) and paint and re-design - or preferably pull down and rebuild - the ugly cement buildings (was the Council inspired by Soviet-era summer holiday camps?) which mar the Newcastle oceanfront from Bar Beach to Merewether. I’m begging you - some buildings in concert and sympathy with their beautiful surroundings please!

But back to the unnamed beautiful stretch of beach, a coastal strip between Merewether and Dudley beaches, which the NPWS explains is the ‘last remnant of coastal temperate rainforest in the Newcastle region’. As this beautiful beach abuts the Glenrock State Conservation Area, surely this beach is, or should be, Glenrock Beach? If it isn’t it now is to me. Regardless of its possible namelessness, I love it, love it love it - this beach is absolutely making my Newcastle beach short list.

Update no. 2: Sausage Sizzle Saga - the sequel. Recently the Country Mouse and I made our first visit back to Bunnings since the great sausage sizzle saga. I was somewhat relieved to be back, thinking that the Country Mouse had possibly put me on a Bunnings no-go list after that particular culinary debacle.

We had no sooner pulled up in the car park than the Country Mouse, no doubt emboldened by his starring role in the SSS, headed directly to the ever-present Bunnings sausage sizzle, immediately and loudly engaging the group of men running the stall on my desire for a sausage sandwich minus the bread. Actually I hadn’t even decided that it was sausage time at all, but there was no holding back the Country Mouse – he was in his element.

“She” – I assumed this was me – “wants a sausage sandwich but… (rising crescendo) with NO BREAD! Did you know people in Bronte – in Sydney – eat sausage sandwiches, without the sandwich?"

The men, of course, thought this was hysterical, laughing conspiratorially in a kind of ‘Women! Who can understand them?’ male bonding way. But one sweet man, no doubt concerned that I was struggling with a weight problem, earnestly assured me that the sausages they were selling were low-fat. I explained that the fat wasn’t the problem, I was actually trying to avoid the carbohydrates in the two slices of nutritionally challenged white no name bread wrapping around the greasy meat.

Carb consciousness is definitely a major city-country divide. My country cousins don’t realise that for many city gals carbohydrates are the Anti-Christ; more feared than a Middle Eastern dictator, they are the Gaddafi of the kitchen. Quick - run, hide the carbs are coming!

I try not to engage in this hysteria, remembering all too well how full fat food was the ‘devil’ of the 1990s and watching as people religiously consumed only low fat or no fat products, despite the fact that these products contained double their own body weight in sugar, this amount of sweetening being necessary to make the products palatable.

Given that the carb debate certainly doesn’t seem to have moved beyond the Sydney CBD to regional areas, my attempts to explain ‘it’s the carbs not the fat’ to the by now confused, yet still very earnest, barbequing man fell on deaf ears. He stared at me blankly. But the gauntlet had been laid down. Laugh at me? Watch this! I grabbed a sausage, TWO pieces of bread and an overgenerous squeeze of tomato sauce. And I stuffed the whole lot in my mouth.

Anniversary adventures

There is a wisdom in the saying ‘the couple that plays together stays together’ (actually a corruption of the Christian saying ‘the couple that prays together stays together’) and certainly the Country Mouse and I make having fun a priority in our relationship. But we have another kind of peculiar bond, ours is more medical – the couple that migraines together…understand that hideous headache like no other. It’s not quite as catchy, but it certainly proved the background to our first anniversary together. I woke on the morning of 21 March, barely able to utter “Happy Anniversary – we are one!” before sinking into the pillow with an “Ice pack! Painkillers! Quick!”

By the time we made it to Sydney, where we had planned to spend the night dining romantically by the ocean before spending a special night at a swish Bondi hotel, my splitting head had stopped and I was feeling vaguely normal. But proving that a deep bond means that your pain is my pain I had no sooner come to than the Country Mouse suddenly went down with a migraine all of his own.

Our anniversary dinner ended up being takeaway beef ribs in bed, and our planned blue sky, blue ocean vista and sandy sunbake on the Bondi Beach ended up matching our pain: from the hotel window dark grey clouds filled the sky and set-in rain beat against our window. It was a study in various shades of grey. But as we lay in each others arms and administered pain killers we could at least see the irony and promise each other ‘there’s always next year’.