Under Milk Wood. My first play ever. Never been to a play in Holland, so going to one in Canberra was quite exciting! Had no clue what to expect. Just knew that the play “Under Milk Wood” would portray the life in a Welsh fishing village.

Well, it didn’t take long before I understood it would be a long evening. It was just to difficult. Not the story, as there wasn’t a real one, more a view into the life of the people in the fishing village. But the language. It was in English, but some strange version of English and together with a funky accent I didn’t understand it at all… For a painful 2 hours I was lost. Lost and annoyed by the man sitting next to me who kept laughing very loudly and as I failed to understand any of the jokes it wasn’t helping…

I could get some things of what the play was about, but most of it was pure hocus pocus. And I always thought my English was pretty ok… How wrong was I! Next time I will have to try a play that matches my English language skills a bit better, maybe one for children, as this one was definitely out of my league…

Play: Under Milk Wood
The Canberra Theatre Centre, July 27

Written by: Dylan Thomas
Directed by: Don Mackay
Staring: Michael Craig, Kristy Child, Dion Mills & Allison Byrne

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On one of my last days in Canberra, we felt like eating out and while driving through “the strip” at the shops in downtown Dickson we passed an Ethiopian restaurant and both being hungry we thought: “Why not! :-)”. And so it happened. We walked in, found a table and were ready to be surprised! We both never tried Ethiopian food before, so a true surprised it would be.

And a surprise it was. A very pleasant surprise! As with most countries in the world I would have no idea what people in Ethiopia eat on a normal day. So I tossed the menu card aside quite quickly. No point in looking for something, when you don’t know what to look for. As always in restaurants with an exotic cuisine, it’s best to ask the waiter. He suggested the combination plate. A little of everything, always a brilliant way to discover an unknown cuisine. Good choice. “For 2 please! :-)”.

As I already gave away by telling you it was a pleasant surprise, yes, the food was great! Bit of an Indian meets Asian, Middle East and Southern Europe kinda mix. As you can tell, it’s hard to describe… Guess the best way to describe it is by telling what it is: Ethiopian. ;-)

Anyway, if you are in Canberra, and ready to try something new and exciting, give this place a visit! It’s great food at a very reasonable price! And when you do go there, try it with an Ethiopian beer like I did, good stuff! :-)

Fekerte’s Ethiopian cuisine
74/2 Cape street
Dickson, ACT 2602
Australia
Telephone: +61 (02) 6262 5799
Internet: No… or at least unfindable!

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A couple of days ago the news reached me that my birdy had flown away. Out the front door into the wide world. After about 17 years of taken the best care we could of the little birdy, he is no more… Flown out of our lives by accident, unable to find his way back… It’s such a strange, sad and empty feeling I will be going home next week and he won’t be there to greet me anymore…

I can only pray somebody out there will find him, take him in, bring him back to us or take care of him like we did… Worst feeling is that he must be so scared out there. Not used to flying great distances, hiding from danger, finding food and water…

The picture of my birdy my brother send me a couple of weeks ago all of a sudden is not just a sweet view from home anymore… it’s the last picture taken I will ever see of him…

I will miss you… *snif*

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Even before starting on the pea soup, Australia had already met another Dutch (??) tradition: apple pie! After a failed bake-off in Holland (Bastiaan had to withdraw from the competition) my apple pie submission was still received with great smiles and demanded a re-try Down Under.

And the re-try wasn’t just because it was nice, it was also to put the sultanas back in the apple pie! Sal’s good friend Robin (the Girl Wonder!) had for questionable reasons removed the sultanas from her apple pie… “A bloody shame!”, I hear you think. Indeed. So it was time to bake her one with sultanas and show her where the sultanas belong! :-)

It wasn’t that hard to find all the right ingredients, except for one, and unfortunately the most important one… the right apples. If you ask anyone in Holland what apple goes in an apple pie, the answer will be unanimous: “De goudrenet!!”. But although they offer quite a wide selection of apples in Australia, the “goldrenet” is not one of them… So I was forced to bake my apple pie in Australia with the sourish apple they got… the Granny Smith… Not half as sour as the goldrenet, but I had no other options…

I did add some more lemon juice to make it a bit more sour, but even so, you could still taste the difference from an apple pie with the right apples. But even so, the result wasn’t bad at all! Ok, pushed by the circumstances, I did try to serve the apple pie a bit to fast and hot, after just being out of the oven for 10 minutes, so the presentation was quite bad… but luckily the taste and smell were still enough to make the people smile! :-)

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Last “Dutch” winter I wrote about a great Dutch winter tradition: pea soup. Much earlier then expected I am eating it again! Never thought I would ever eat pea soup in July, but as I find myself now in “Australian” winter, the time was right to give Australia a taste of Dutch tradition! :-)

Although that did sound a bit easier then it actually turned out to be… My mamma was so sweet to email me the recipe, but finding all the right ingredients proved to be a little challenge, but thanks to Australian deli’s we were able to find almost all the ingredients! Even a Dutch smoked sausage, although not from Unox.

The trick of letting the soup “sit” overnight with the lid half on the pan worked wonderful and my joy was so great when the next morning the big wooden spoon stood up proudly straight in the pan! Yet my disappointment was so much bigger when I tried to heat up a bit at lunch time and it became a very thin soup… that was not good! Pea soup needs to be thick… Again, my sweet mamma saved the day by telling me to add more split peas… so I did and so it became a success after all! And just as important: People seemed to like it! :-)

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How to get to Mallacoota? Fairly easy, just toss a coin! :-) Well, that is what we did when we had a weekend to spare, wanted to get out of Canberra and didn’t know where to go. We would let the coin decide where to take us. So we looked on the map and decided to either go North or South and then toss the coin and every big split of the highway to determine our further course. Worse case we would toss ourselves in a circle and end up in Canberra again, but what were the odds of that happening?

First toss of the coin was at home in Canberra. Heads for North, tails for South. Toss. Tail. South it was. Next toss was a the first mayor split of the highway at Cooma. Here the road went West or East, and so our next toss was there! This way we tossed our way through Australia and finally ended up in the most South-Eastern corner of Australia, in Mallacoota.

The drive down there was a lot of fun because of the tossing and not knowing where we would end up, but also the endless quiet roads surrounded by the emptiness of the land, made it quite impressive. The last stretch of the trip turned out a bit stressful though. Because even though there is not many cars, there is a lot of kangaroo’s! Especially around dawn… And judging by the number of dead kangaroo’s we saw on our journey along the roads, that wasn’t something we would like to experience… But we nearly did…

To get to Mallacoota we had to turn off the Princess Highway and follow a smaller, quite bendy road for 25km to get to Mallacoota. The bush was quite close to the road and dawn was there so we had to be very sharp on possible kangaroo’s sitting on the side, or just right on the middle of the road. And so it happened. Little hill. Soft right turn. “KANGAROO!”. Breaking. Kangaroo hopping onto the road, probably scared by the sound or lights of the car. More breaking. Peeping tires and a sliding car. Relief. The car stopped about 5 cm in front of the kangaroo. I looked him straight in his scared eyes and off he went, hopping back very quickly into the bush! Pfffff… we got lucky! Thanks to some amazing breaking and car handling from Sal, we avoided impact and let the kangaroo, which after close eye contact turned out to actually be a wallaby, live to fight another day. Adrenaline was pumping and with our hearts in our throats we continued the last bit of the trip. Luckily we didn’t have any more of those close encounters…

The toss that let us to our accommodation in Mallacoota turned out to be a brilliant one! The toss brought us to the Karbeethong Lodge. A very cute little B&B in an old wooden house, with a great view on the bay and run by very friendly people. Breakfast included and with very reasonable rates. A clean and nice room, and a lovely big fireplace in the common area to drink wine and play Stratego at! :-) Definitely worth a visit!

Besides the weather, the weekend turned out to be great! Even the rainy days didn’t bother us so much. Went up the coast for a drive to Eden, a walk and a nice lunch. Furthermore we just relaxed and enjoyed our weekend. The drive back was long and it turned out nearly impossible to find a place for lunch, but we had fun as well. Although I do promise not to scare Sally anymore with my improvised car-haka when she starts overtaking! ;-)

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Oi, keeping update with the blog is very difficult when you are having a great time and not often near a computer… And even this post won’t be the novel I have in mind to tell you all about my experiences from Down Under. So a short summary will have to do for now.

First amazing thing for the journey was the jet-lag. Or actually lack off… Amazingly enough the jet-lag didn’t seem to bother me at all! Very strange… I remember last time I flew over here I was exhausted and felt tired for at least 2 to 3 days… but this time… nothing!

After I arrived Sally and I went up “north” to Cairns and Port Douglas. Amazing 2 weeks! First with snorkling at Green Island and seeing so many pretty fishies and other underwater life that when we arrived in Port Douglas we decided to do a dive course to see even more of the underwater world! After a very nervous second day in the pool (first day was just in the classroom) with panicing under water at a number of occasions and swallowing quite some pool water, day 3 out on the Great Barrier Reef proofed to be challeging, but after every dive (we did 6 in total) we got more and more confident. At the last 2 dives I was finally able to relex a bit more and really enjoy the underwater experience! So even with the stress of the first days, it was more then worth it!! And now I am a PADI open water diver! Already looking forward to my next dive! :-)

Right now I am enjoying life in Canberra where I fill my time with sightseeing, bit of cycling, bushwalking, great food and enjoying myself very much! Quite sure I will have a great time for the time that is left! :-)

Will try to catch up with the blog soon again! So much more to tell… Until then, take a look at some of the photos I took and posted on flickr, see the Australia set.

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Last time I was in Australia I did some little bushwalking, loved it a lot, but it was nothing like I did this time. Now I can say I truly enjoyed an Australian bushwalk! :-) Ok, wasn’t going far in the unknown outback, where no man has gone before, we just stayed in a Nature Reserve and National Park, but still, amazing bushwalking!

The bush is beautiful. Just gorgeous. Quiet as can be. So quiet it’s hard to imagine, coming from such a densely populated country as Holland, it can really be that quiet! Well, it can! It’s an amazing feeling. Just stop walking for a second, stand still and listen. Nothing. Maybe some birds, the wind through the trees… but besides that: nothing.

First real bushwalking we did was in Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. Home of Lucky the Koala, who was the only Koala to survive the devastation at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve during the 2003 bushfires. I guess that’s lucky… but when all your Koala relatives, Koala friends, Koala children (??) and Koala neighbours die, can you call that lucky? Either way, Lucky is famous, but we didn’t go see Lucky. She was on the initial plan, but first we went for a walk up to the Gibraltar rocks.

Gibraltar rocks is a large rock formation on the top of a hill with a great view on the surroundings. Turned out to be a great, but hard and steep, walk up and even harder (due to the steepness) walk down. Took us 2 and a half hours, but it was more then worth it! Lot’s of kangaroo’s, extraordinary vegetation, huge boulders and amazing views!

After the walk we decided to skip Lucky, we didn’t wanne push her luck! ;-), and go see the platypussy’s. Well, they are not on display, in the wild and unbelievable shy, so we didn’t see any… A bit disappointing, but the big black swans we came across and were followed by a couple of little ones made up for a lot!

Second big bushwalking adventure was done close to Canberra as well. In the Orroral valley in Namadgi National Park. Sally had a book full of bushwalking trails in that Park. The book was written by an old handicapped man with a great love for rocks, who drove the tracks in his early version Jeep Grand Cherokee, somewhere in the 1950ies. What I am trying to say, things had changed quite dramatically ever since he wrote the book. The first half of the trail we chose was on a dirt road with no view to the left, nor to the right. A lot of trees along the dirt road had been chopped down, there was a lot of young 2 or 3 meter high vegetation, probably all results from the bushfires in 2003, but it didn’t make the first half to the trial as enjoyable as promised in the book…

But! The second part lived up to all expectations!!! The way back was through the Orroral valley and was just an amazing walk! Hundreds and hundreds of kangaroo’s all over the place!! Great views on the endless grassland in the valley and hills surrounding them. We stopped many times on the walk back just to enjoy the view, kangaroo’s and the silence. Did lost the track a couple of times though… even had to struggle through a swamp and when we finally reached the other side of the swamp we had to smile when we saw we completely missed the boardwalk along the swamp! :-)

We couldn’t have been more happy when we finally reached the car after a good 4 and a half hours of walking… Tired, hungry, sore muscles and feet but all that with a big smile on our face! :-)

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