Toast will do it to you.

Only moments ago I was going through photo's of our recent trip to the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, and squealing at the pure simplicity of jam on toast. Sourdough raisin bread with homemade strawberry jam and apricot marmalade. And of course the goodness of butter. Clearly the ultimate paring with toast.

You have to close your eyes and imagine that we've just taken a stroll down the side of the Three Sisters, three tall and slender rock formations at the edge of what is one of the most beautiful national parks you'll ever experience, it's 7am and as chilly as Seattle, let it be known, in the middle of June. So toast with butter and jam was literally a slice of heaven.

Though a little arctic, the skies were as blue as the mountains that surrounded us and the sight of smoke coming out of chimneys as we passed by sleepy houses was almost enough for me to leave my raining life in Seattle behind. Did I mention the leaves that were still clinging onto the tree's for dear life had turned the colour of red wine, with nothing but sun shining from behind to light up their day? That at seven in the morning, the light in Australia that shines on your face has you closing your eyes and just smiling?

Now with the feeling of morning light shining on your cheek, you should know a little about how we found the Elephant Bean Cafe. Thanks to my many years of accumulating random food magazines that I didn't even realize I had collected, until mum let me loose in my old bedroom when we arrived in Australia and I was in crap collecting bliss. I happened upon an article all about the Blue Mountains, knowing that we were headed that way, at the last minute before jumping in the car for the airport, I ripped it out, shoving it in my bag for more dust to be homed.

It wasn't until we were parked on a slope in a leafy neighbourhood in Katoomba at ten o'clock at night, trying to sleep off our pizza coma from dinner, that Glenn was searching for something to read. Since I was happy with whatever book I was reading at the time, never getting on the road without one, I rummaged through our suitcase, annoyed, and reefed out a bunch of mismatched articles.

Nestled in amongst those recipes and dreamy places to eat, was an article on the Elephant Bean Cafe. And there you have it. Four years later, a boxed up heap of food magazines served a purpose. The purpose of delicious house made bread, jams, and hot, brewed coffee.

This delicious little number had a few breakfast choices, one of them hosting white beans and chorizo sausage. Though I found it really hard to veer away from the purity of toast, so toast it was.

We were sitting on the rickety old miss matched tables and box seats out the front, watching the world of uniformed awkward teenagers and nonchalant bums wake up. This is was life is all about, I'm thinking, eating toast on a crisp Autumn morning, the brilliant light on your face leaving you speechless and wanting nothing but more of what you're feeling right at that moment.

Home is near the roses

Has anybody actually stopped and smelled roses before? Driving along, pulled off the road, found a park and plodded over to some happy, bright rose bushes and taken some long hard whiffs. I got my nose right up in there and just smelled away. "Glenn, look, I'm stopping to smell the roses". Well I really just smelled a little bit, jumped onto the next rose bush, than gave myself two points for stopping to smell the roses. Like when you think you're taking time out to meditate but you're actually just wondering how long you have to sit, before getting up guilt free.

We stopped and smelled the roses in a little town called Cowra. Growing up, we lived about an hour or so from Cowra, one of those places you detested going to as a kid because it wasn't your town and you usually went there having to ride in the back seat of the car next to your younger brother, complaining the whole way about him sitting two inches too close, or travelling there with your friend from school, her mum driving slower than yours, on the way to a Netball carnival in the middle of winter at 7am on a Saturday. Doing this was bad enough, let alone not missing a day of school.

Stopping here as an adult, able to make my own decisions and pass my own judgements, Cowra welcomed us with open arms. Just a quiet little town with a very bustling main street and along with the endless paddocks of sheep, it came with endless paddocks of grapes. Those grapes came with an endless supply of juice to make such an endless supply of wine.

 We could have spent a week stopping only at winery's from the Blue Mountains to Young, which was where we were headed, though with only five days left in Australia we were definitely not bound for the many winery's that whispered to us, 'this way, and stay the night in our home while we cook dinner for you and serve you endless glasses of red wine from our endless supply of grapes'. No, that was not our destination. Our home for the next four nights was supplying us with T-bone steak the size of your head, cooked on a George Foreman Grill and accompanied with four potatoes each, in mashed form and bread, of course. Thanks Nan, I love you. You're a gem.

We were only 45 minutes drive from giving my Nan a big cuddle. That means we were not very far from the place I grew up in and hold close to my heart, yet had ventured elsewhere in hopes to find something. I really don't know what it was all those years ago, but it just seemed to be in my blood, so I went happily with it. I guess when you're a teenager living in a small country town in the middle of whatever universe you're in, you really do just want to leave. To find anything, whether it's trouble or a stray dog, it's adventure right?

 Thankfully, that doesn't happen to all of us, because who would we come back to see? There are the escapees and there are the lifers. Without the lifers there would be just the postman to come back to. That tiny little town in the middle of somewhere, all alone, because not only did you leave, but the lifers that make it your home, your only home, are just lost out there, never really wandering aimlessly, because that's just not what they do. They are the one's that hold their arms open so wide for you when you come back, that you wonder why you left in the first place.

That is where I shall fish from at dusk

My brother Mark, is mad and keen for fishing. Some people go running, some people take pottery classes. Mark fishes. It's really that simple. So of course when we were staying with him in Australia, he was bulging at the seams with eagerness to get us out on the water.

Although it's just another day in paradise, paradise too has a down side. A side that will have your devoted to the water brother sing-songing F's and other inappropriate swear words that I wouldn't want my mum to read on here, than of course let me know that I had in fact, swore. That unwilling side would be wind. Wind is a little hairy at the best of times, so being out on the water with your brother, whom may I say is a perfectionist, and your husband, like me, who can't bait a hook, was all to adventurous without even the possibility of even catching a fish.

After Mark backed in the boat, Glenn was there holding on to it, knee deep in water, while I was sitting in the boat, taking advantage of getting some shots of Mark trying to explain to Glenn which way to push the vessel. My husband is a literal man, so when Mark doesn't tell him to get back into the boat after pushing it into deeper water, Glenn by this point, is chest high in water, with Mark and I wondering if we didn't tell him to get back in, would he have pushed us over to the other side of the river?

Although there is wind, it's still out of this world. We only had to drive around a few corners than down a road to get to the there. This was only my second time out on the Tweed River, and I had lived there on and off for about 12 years. Glenn and I were just looking at each other thinking, 'how the hell can we go back home, we need to stay here'. Besides fishing, we got to see this entirely different perspective of the area, an area I thought I knew really well. I seriously fell in love with a place I thought I already loved.

Not only did I discover that I want to do more fishing and live on the river in a shack that I've already picked out, but there is a Protected Rainforest Reserve, Stotts Island, running along the Tweed River only four minutes away. Stotts Island is the home of Mitchell's Rainforest Snail. The largest single area of the remaining habitat. Just picture, all that magnificent subterranean rain forest, surrounded with boats and cars and fields of sugar cane, there and only there are these tiny little snails the happiest.

Hello snails.

Hello lunch.

Which brings me to our my first destination of our maiden voyage together. To catch what would be lunch in three days time, we needed better bait than what we were using, which was frozen prawns, as we discovered Mark detested and were for the soul purpose of back-up bait in case the tide wasn't right for us to go catch our own fresh bait at a near by sand bank / island.

For a large portion of the journey, so far, Mark was telling us stories about different fish and other river dwelling creatures, also known as inappropriately sized sting rays, he or others had captured. So, upon arriving at the sand bank, Mark lets me know that there shouldn't be any sting rays under the mud. As you can imagine I'm doing everything in my power to tell myself to toughen up, thinking I've been in the city way to long if I'm freaking out over sting rays. Eventually I just scream at him and tell him there is no way I'm getting off the f'ing boat. Than he yells back at me and makes me feel guilty for wanting to stay on, reluctantly I get off and tread the two feet of water to land.

Seriously though, being female and boating with your brother, at times in need, such as relieving yourself, you just need to suck it up and hope that he is too busy at the other end of the island pumping for live yabbies. Which, I discovered, no matter how big the island, white bum cheeks will always stand out. This I learned as we were leaving the island and Mark told me he had turned around at the wrong time. Sorry about that.

Of course I'm not a great fisherman, I'm not even a fisherman at all, but I did manage to catch the only TAKE HOME AND COOK fish of the day. Sorry fellas, we don't like to eat sticks and leaves where I'm from. Flathead will do just fine. I'll stop gloating, now.

One more.

Once we disembarked, after waiting in an imaginary line on the river, behind other impatient fisher people, Mark did a quick gutting and beheading of the fish where I frantically rummaged to get my camera out.

Mark was practically mortified that I was snapping away, making us look like tourist. I on the other hand was excited. It's not everyday I get to go fishing, catch the fish, watch it be gutted and than filleted, cook it and than serve it with fresh, peppery rocket from the garden.

And that, my friend, is how you do it in the next world, an off-course and unassuming habitat.

Taste my banana away

For some people, to name a town Chillingham, is just to good to be true. For me on the other hand, it really just sounds right. So finally, after a week of little half day trips here and there, we were headed into Queensland via the Natural Arch, which only meant that we would be driving through the edible village of Chillingham.

You should first of all know that there are endless, rough around the edges kinda villages in the whole area. The whole area being the Tweed and Byron Shire, venturing into the South East Queesnsland Hinterland. Once you arrive, you can pull to the side of the road, open the door, stretch your legs and head into the infamous Chillingham Banana Cabana.

           

This is a place where travellers seeking that something a little bit different, can just wonder amongst the plantation where tropical fruits thrive, afternoon thunder storms erupt in the skies, and of course, the washing  on the line, for all to observe, drying before the rains set in.

Before we decided that we needed to buy every kind of fruit and vegetable, homemade jams and spreads and other delicious snacks, we headed out back where I realized that we were indeed in Australia and the snakes were quiet happy to tell me to piss off if I were to step on one. Luckily there were no snakes, just massive black ants that were sleeping on their backs and enough mozzie's to give me and the rest of northern NSW Ross river fever.

This quiet massive piece of tropical heaven in the midst of mountainous, rural mecca, is where one grows bush tucker. Bush tucker, for those who don't speak authentic Australian, means food grown native to the land. Foods such as Lemon Myrtle, Yuzu Fruit and Buddas Hand just to name a few, are all grown here, hand in hand, making this place a shrine for anyone who has even the slightest interest in food and the land.

Gerald 'Buck' Buchanan has been at this for over 25 years, not only serving as a home for hundreds of tropical fruit trees and plants, but decided to throw in a couple of bottle trees all those years ago and see how they took to the wetter than usual climate they like.

I guess they like it since we got to see them, though they had probably seen better days. There was only one left fully standing, the others had eventually given in and just toppled over in storms. Bottle trees are characters to say the least, especially when you're walking down the street in the middle of a city and there is this stumpy, prehistoric looking tree beast in close view.

Being from a land where you have easy access to banana paddle pops, I was pretty excited when the Banana Cabana had mass produced by hand, FROZEN chocolate covered bananas, ON a paddle pop stick. Attractive? No. Delicious? Yes.

I wonder if Glenn is OK with me posting these photos?

                         

He looks too happy not to be.

I left my old man friend in the trees

For one to savour a pleasing taste of the arts when bumming it by the ocean for a month with feral's and the elderly, one heads to the Murwillumbah Art Gallery. Here you will find a little cultural perspective, along with wonderful over-priced coffee in the cafe that sits mostly outdoors in amongst the trees.

It was only after I gasped at the answer to my question, 'how much is that?', that I heard my name being called. A kick ass lady who I use to know, one of those people you fancy to be around, is the busy owner of this dreamy place of great smells. I don't think I told her that I almost choked when hearing how much the coffee was. Gazing out at Mt Warning though, I really could see past such trivial complications.

This is what you get to see from the Art Gallery, whatever window you're looking out of. Let me just tell you that the ocean is only 20 minutes away, heading east, and every other way there is more of this. Also, on the way to the ocean, you're surrounded by sugar cane. Tropical and rural. You really must understand why we want to move back there. If you don't, than you soon will.

If you soften your gaze, you will see that Mt Warning looks like an old man sleeping. To me she looks like the top of a cassowary has been lodged there, to make her only more proud.

These slow moving sheep let us come right up to them and take photos. They were super quiet and looked a little like over-grown turtles. They have such have such a docile grace.

 Strolling through the gallery, we got to meet some pretty fair dinkum' Aussie's.

I didn't know if I should weep or go retrieve a second case of beer for him.

As it turns out, he just wanted to be left alone.

There were others though. It was nice when Glenn was able to play a little one on one with Australia's very own, Joe Blow.

I know he has something to say, yet, nobody is listening. Just like in real life. How about that.

You, my old man friend, will always be with me.

I'll never forget you.