Travel | GlobalSalsa: travel writer Belinda Jackson

Nov

Tropical island eats

It’s just on lunchtime and Cheong Liew is wandering the sea
shore, hunting for oysters for my dinner. Oh yeah, baby, we’ve landed in
paradise on earth.

Orpheus Island
is a hilly dot in the Palm Islands group, 80km off the coast of Townsville.
Lashed by cyclonic winds last year, the resort recently reopened, and if it
plays its cards right, will be one of those hideaways where sneaky celebs have
no need for wearing wigs or 80s fashion.

It’s not like there are many crowds.

Orpheus
used to be described as exclusive, taking just 24 lucky guests. While it’s
still being repaired after Cyclone Yasi whipped the roofs off half the
accommodation, the resort can take just 16 guests. That makes us even more
special.

The only
way to the resort is chopper, or sea plane if you’re a bigger group. It’s just
30 minutes from Townsville in the little four-seater eggbeater, and we skim
over uninhabited islands, little atolls, a former leper colony and Palm Island,
with a local population of 2000-3000 indigenous people.

The island
was bought by a Melbourne businessman who also lured Cheong away from Adelaide
to ramp up the menus at the Botanical, in South Yarra, where Arie has also
worked. That same businessman also managed to spirit the pair away for a stint
on the island, which is still being repaired and renovated. So it it is my absolute
great fortune to be one of just five guests (including my wunderkind), on the
island for the past two days. How do you go back to normal life after this?

Nov

On the road to Orpheus

Townsville airport is full of huge men with huge arms cloaked in huge tatts.

Some are drinking stubbies of Bundy rum and coke, and it’s just gone 9.30am. The departures board is full of places you don’t really slap on your holiday list: Cloncurry, Mount Isa, and lots of private mines. There’s a huge ad on the wall declaring “You don’t need to dig deep to find the perfect job”: the mining industry is doing well here.

Our destination couldn’t be further from a coal-cut mine. We’re just waiting for the seaplane to finish refuelling and we’re off to Orpheus Island. Let’s go!

Nov

Grey is the new brown: Colours of 2011

Grey is the new brown.

Wearing my somewhat neglected interior-decorating hat, I received some notes about how we used colour in 2011. Yes, it’s the beginning of that publishing trend to look back over the past year. I quite like these round-ups: books we loved, movies we watched, political and social highlights… just in case I missed something.

Dulux sent through its tips for colours in the home, and this is what they said:

Grey is the new brown. Seven of its top 10 colours are deep, dark browns.
Neutrals are cooler, with grey undertones, rather than warm or brown-based neutrals.
Blue is still hot, but with a grey base: think duck-egg or ocean blues.
And berry colours – fuchsia, indigo and purples – are still hot favourites in 2012, bearing in mind Pantone’s colour of 2011 was Honeysuckle, which it describes as a ‘dynamic reddish pink…that elevates our psyche beyond escape.”

Antique White USA (pic credit: Dulux

Their top colours for 2011 were: Namadji (a dark grey)
Red Box (hmmm, I painted a wall in this lush red, 8 years ago)
Woodland Grey (grey)
Domino (grey)
Malay Grey (grey)
Western Myall
Sea Elephant (sooo grey)
Jarrah
Ticking (yep, grey)

All this lovely (greyed-out) colour. But it’s all still a white-wash.

The top neutrals were dominated by the investor-renovator’s delight, Hog Bristle in full, half and quarter strength, but the number one white was that old fave, Antique White USA, which all you out there in decorator-magazine-land will be more than au fait with, given its dominance for the past decade.

It
reminds me of a story I was told when I first moved into interiors
magazines. A girl leaving the industry said she had to go because she had
run out of ways to say ‘white’.

Nov

Salalah, Oman

We love a ‘top 10’ and the Lonely Planet’s top 10 cities is always good for a spot of cultural biffo.

I’m going to be a snob and say up front that London is a rather ho-hum choice for the number one city to visit out of all the world, and Orlando in the US leaves us cold, but hey, Australia’s always got Darwin. Yes, Darwin. Land of jumping crocodiles and topless barmaids. Sorrrrryyyy, that’s SUCH an awful picture of Darwin. We like our most northern capital.

Happy to see the entire Middle East hasn’t been written off, and we’re big fans of Oman and Hong Kong is perpetually fabulous. Of course, the game is to see how many you’ve already ticked off before the Lonely Planet got there…

Here’s the list in its entirety:
1. London, UK
2. Muscat, Oman
3. Bengaluru (Bangalore), India
4. Cadiz, Spain
5. Stockholm, Sweden,
6. Guimaraes, Portugal
7. Santiago, Chile
8. Hong Kong
9. Orlando, USA
10. Darwin Australia.

In the top 10 countries, Uganda is the ‘too cool for school’ number 1, with Taiwan and gorgeous Jordan in there. Ukraine? Horses for courses, man, and Cuba’s still a goer while the Castros remain in power, with the ever-powerful tagline, ‘go before it changes irrevocably’.

The top 10 regions include coastal Wales, La Ruta Maya (central America), northern Kenya, Arunachal Pradesh (India), Hvar (Croatia), Sicily (Italy), Maritime Provinces (Canada), Queenstown and southern lakes (New Zealand), Borneo and Poitou-Charentes (France).

Oct

Here’s booking with you, kid

Yasmine and her meimei (nanny) Litiana.

FIJI’S air is humid and temperatures a good 20 degrees higher than the home I left five hours ago and I’m ferreting through a daypack for passports, five-month-old Yasmine on the arm. I plonk her on a nearby desk for a hands-free moment.

“Madam!” barks an official-sounding woman. “You need Special Attention!”

She claps her hands and, like a summoned genie, a young
man appears at my side, grabs our passports and runs past the queue of two planeloads of newly arrived Australian holidaymakers. Within minutes, we are bustled through customs, our luggage retrieved, the driver has collected us and we are bundled up in a cool van, turned towards the southern Coral Coast and our resort.

It is the ultimate queue-jump and a delicious taste of travelling in Fiji with a baby. The omens are good.

Click here to read more.

Oct

Luke, Luke, Luke. It’s all about you. Even before you waltzed up to my table last night in the new Hilton on the Gold Coast, in your chef’s whites advertising airlines and restaurants, it was all about you.

I thoroughly enjoyed (and how often can you say this of cheap airline food) the tortilla with roast beef, vintage cheese and mesclun leaves as we flew up from Melbourne to the Gold Coast. There was the branding: Food by Luke Mangan. It was a deliciously far cry from your beef pie I ate with the same airline enroute to Fiji recently. Luke, leave rustic alone, please. It was so rustic, it comprised three enormous chunks of cow, so big that the wibbly plastic airline knife had no impact on it, leaving a plane of diners chewing like the animal they were consuming.

Then, last night, as we tossed over the difference between striploin, fillet and tenderloin, you schmoozed the room, smiling and shaking hands like the best-trained celebrity chef. Your name was on every plate that was laid on our table (and let me admit, there were many plates laid on our table).

Oh, how we ate. We ate the kingfish sashimi, with the most divine crust of ginger, eschallot and Persian feta. We at chargrilled quail on shredded zuchinni studded with pine nuts and currants. We at the tenderloin, we at the striploin. God help us, we went back for desert: chocolate three ways (which does sound a bit pervy) and a strip of sunshine-orange cheesecake.

I need to lie down. I need to run a marathon, or whatever the people of the Gold Coast do each morning. I need restraint, I need to avoid you, Luke.

Oct

Melbourne turns pink for Queen

The crowd in front of Flinders St Station

Today, I put my republican hat aside and went to visit the Queen. Well, technically, that’s not true. She came to visit me.

She was due at Fed Square at 12.15, and, being the queen and all, you’d expect her to be on time. Not so. Even though she had just four hours in the city before nicking off to Perth, she dallied and the crowd spent an hour mooching around the intersection in front of Flinders St Station. It was curiously silent as everyone waited to catch a glimpse of Liz II.

The crowd around me was mostly Chinese tourists and office workers who’d stepped out to do something different in their lunchhour.

Melbourne turned on the sunshine, so all the whiteys turned a gentle pink by the time she turned up. Me, I blame Melbourne trams. They never can run on time. Not even for the queen. If you weren’t aware, the Queen was travelling one leg on a new Royal Tram (or its decoy), complete with the usual vomitous-green seat upholstery that really should be burned.

I can confidently report that the Queen is On Trend. Her shocking pink ensemble was the dictionary definition of colour blocking, which is of course so hot right now. She certainly was the brightest note in a sea of Melbourne black, matching beautifully the newly sunburnt bald heads around me.

“I just saw her!” shrieked a British office worker behind me. “I saw someone wearing pink!” The crowd got collective whiplash following her pointing finger.

We watched as car after car was laden with flowers and teddy bears, then realised we were on the wrong side of the intersection, though nobody really knew quite where she was going to appear. She could have dropped in from the helicopters circling above, for all we knew.

The Queen did pay for her tram ride (with a pre-paid card, so she didn’t have to buggerise around looking for coins). Obviously she’s heard about the crackdown on fare evaders. The question of the day is: was the crowd bigger than the crowd that
turned out to greet the two rival football teams in the grand final a
few weeks ago?

The running joke of this royal visit is that the Queen didn’t feel the need to visit Sydney: there are enough queens there already.

Oct

More icing on the cake: Daylesford

Australia’s premier spa town just keeps getting better – and tastier. Discovers what’s new in Daylesford.

“PLEASE, no mobile phones,” requests the Lake House’s restaurant
menu. And, “Please, no thongs.” Oh, only because you ask so nicely, I
won’t wear my thongs into your two-hatted restaurant for the first
showing of its spring table.

They like to keep themselves nice in Daylesford.

Click here to read more/

Sep

Eat to ease East Africa’s famine

Sunday 16 October is World Food Day, and Oxfam is holding Shout the Horn to raise funds for its East Africa food crisis appeal.

Close to 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are currently facing desperate food shortages following the worst drought in 60 years. Oxfam aims to reach 3.5 million people with life-saving water, food and basic sanitation when people eat out at a participating restaurant.

If you work in a restaurant and cafe, could your place becoming a participating partner? The simple act of collecting donations on 16 October will make a difference to the lives of millions.

Full event details, including a list of participating venues and registration info can be found on Oxfam’s website. Please forward this to anyone who might be interested!

Find a participating restaurant near you – Oxfam will be updating the website daily until the event, so you can eat to ease East Africa’s famine.

My Chinese is a bit shabby, so I can’t give full attribution for this photo, but it pretty much says it all.

Sep

Notes from the back of a Daylesford wine bottle

Good Catholic Girl ‘Teresa’ Riesling 2010, Clare Valley:

‘St Teresa of Avila b. 1515 (patron of headache sufferers) is said to have been viewed levitating during deep prayer. My mother Teresa, prays, but to this point has not achieved levitation. The consumption of Clare Riesling over many decades has not caused her to levitate either. Could this dry crisp Riesling be the one?

Grapes grown by good catholic boys Faulkner and Pearson of Penworthham and Marsson of Watervale. Blessed with 600 dozen. Julie Ann Barry, Maker. www.goodcatholicgirl.com.au”

This excellent young Riesling was sitting perkily in the fridge of Monastiraki (Greek: ‘little monastery), the latest offering from Tina Banitski, the artist and mastermind
of The Convent, in Daylesford.

The forbidding former Catholic nunnery and school is now a cheeky art gallery, as well as Bad Habits cafe and the Altar bar (because the bar contains a chunk of the original altar in it, as well as the tabernacle).

Tina has also recently renovated a nearby house, stuffing it with work from her favourite artists, curios and wine to create Monastiraki, the perfect getaway for a bunch of friends or family.

People, it is officially Out There, from the paint-splattered mannequins hanging from the coat hooks to the scarlet or lime green bedroom walls, the fabulously wild artworks, cushion-tastic daybeds and buttock sculptures, essential, of course, for any self-respecting boudoir.

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