For The Love of Travel

18 of us gathered for Xmas lunch at Jacqui and Mike’s (my cousin and her partner) place on the edge of the Kinglake National Park.  A hot day of 38 degrees in Melbourne, you can always take off about 3 degrees in Castella, and then there was a southerly breeze – so lovely to celebrate the season in the shady garden. Delicious food, great company and a fun time for the kids….perfect! And the new addition to the Castella household, Tich, needed a kip…..

Visited my brother and sister-in-law on the Fraser Coast, Queensland in the days leading up to Christmas. Hot and humid at this time of the year, Maryborough boasts a relaxed atmosphere and is nestled upon the Mary River. With beautifully preserved colonial streets, visitors have the chance to soak up some of Queensland’s richest history and heritage architecture by doing a historical walk through town, guided by knowledgeable local government staff. Once one of Australia’s largest ports, the original wharf district is now home to vintage restaurants, pubs, museums and art galleries.  Maryborough is also the birthplace of Pamela Lyndon Travers, the creator of Mary Poppins. I did the touristy stuff when I visited earlier in the year, so this visit was an opportunity to relax with Stef and Sue.

Flew into Hervey Bay, rented a car and drove to the promenade for lovely ocean views. On the way to Maryborough some 40 kms away, saw beautiful flame trees in bloom.

We spent a leisurely time together  – visiting the Rustic Emu Gallery and enchanted Garden with Sue;

    doing some fine dining with Stef and Sue at the Coast restaurant, Hervey Bay (delicious mocktails; yummy chicken, quinoa salad and banana split)

….and travelling 50 kms! to see the historic town and for some delicious Mammino ice-cream at Childers, in the region of Isis (as you do on holiday).

Undulating hills, bright green sugar cane fields and reddy brown volcanic soil. There is conjecture about whether the region was named after the isis River in England, others say because its such a fertile red soil plateau, it was named after the Egyptian goddess of fertility.  

We had a great time that night doing ‘drive by’ in Maryborough, sampling Christmas house decorations …

 

 

 

Good friend Lyn and I headed off in my little convertible on a 12 hour road trip to the Hunter Valley, to see the legendary “Sugar Man” Rodriguez in concert at the Bimbadgen Winery. A wonderful group of fellow music luminaries –  Xavier Rudd, Russell Morris, Archie Roach and Mark Wilkinson joined Rodriguez under the stars.

The self-taught guitarist’s love affair with Australia is no secret; Rodriguez first toured Oz shores in the late 1970s, long before the rest of the world caught onto his talent thanks to Malik Bendjelloul’s Oscar-winning film “Searching for Sugar Man”.

He still ‘had it’ – there’s no mistaking that voice, which, unlike the frailty that saw him escorted on and off stage, belies his 74 years. Close your eyes and you might as well be listening to the young man who recorded Cold Fact nearly five decades ago.  Sugar Man, that wonderful ode to the neighbourhood drug dealer, was greeted with gusto from the mostly baby boomer crowd.  “You know, Sugar Man is a descriptive song, not a prescriptive song,” he said afterwards to an audience that was clearly old enough to know better.  “Stay off the drugs.”

Thanks to glaucoma, Rodriguez’s sight is all but gone, so there was no set list from which he could read. That meant some long pauses between songs as he conversed with his touring band.On a day that saw the world say goodbye to music legend Leonard Cohen,  it was a privilege to see another one in the flesh in concert.

As it was to see an Australian legends, Archie Roach and Russell Morris, in support.

Lyn and I decided to drive back along the east coast

road, stopping off at Pambula beach to break up the road trip. A lovely sunrise the following morn.