ROMANCING THE REEF
Regular Global Goddess readers will know that she is enamoured with two things: falling in love and Queensland. Combine the two and you’ve got a romantic getaway at the Reef House in Palm Cove. The last time I was in Palm Cove was many moons ago, following a luxury train journey 30 hours from Brisbane to Cairns. The Reef House encapsulates colonial beach-house ambience, personal service and laid-back luxury. The romance package, valid until March 31, 2014 is priced from $549 and includes two nights “colonial beach house” accommodation for two; a bottle of sparkling wine in room on arrival; tropical continental breakfast daily for two on the Reef House Ocean View Deck; Two $25 Day Spa vouchers for use at the Reef House Day Spa; Evening two-course Romantic Dinner for two at Reef House Restaurant; Complimentary “Brigadier’s Punch” in the Brigadier’s Lounge daily at twilight; and Complimentary wi-fi, plus in-house movies with a use of DVD player and DVD library. Phew! Now, I just need to find me a fella. http://www.reefhouse.com.au
CATCH THE LASTEST AT HUKA LODGE
Across the ditch, and at one of her favourite places on the planet – New Zealand – the fine folk at the Huka Lodge are harking back to their past and offering a fun fishing package. Few know it, but the elegant Huka Lodge started out as a simple fishing camp in the 1920s. So it seems only fitting that those who book for a two-night stay, for a minimum of five Junior Lodge Suites (on a double-occupancy basis) will receive a complimentary trout fishing adventure for the entire party on Lake Taupo. Guests will be treated to a two-hour charter on board a private launch with expert fishing guides from Chris Jolly Outdoors. The package is available until December 14, 2013. While The Global Goddess enjoys a spot of fishing (she’s caught her fair share of Mangrove Jacks up in North Queensland), these days it’s more likely to be men she’s hoping to take the bait. Still, fresh trout caught from Lake Taupo wouldn’t be half bad either. http://www.hukalodge.co.nz
FIJI ME
In case you needed further convincing, Fiji has just rolled out a new campaign in which it portrays this idyllic island nation as the happiest place on earth. Using the slogan: “Fiji – where happiness finds you”, the campaign showcases the Mamanuca and Yasawa island groups, Denarau, Nadi, the highlands and the Coral Coast on Viti Levu and Tavenui on the north. In terms of the happiest place on earth, there’s no argument here from The Global Goddess who travelled to Fiji in May. I was fortunate to stay at The Outrigger, Fiji and happiness practically chased me everywhere, particularly when my private butler arrived with canapés and champagne. Oh, and if you get the chance, try the Pure Fiji skincare product range. It’s truly sublime. http://www.fiji.travel.com and http://www.outriggerfiji.com
SPRING INTO SPRING WITH THIS SPA TREATMENT
In winter, The Global Goddess had the good fortune of undergoing the Bamboo Bliss spa treatment at the Hilton, Surfers Paradise. One of her lucky followers (and if you’re not a follower, why on earth not?) also won the same treatment in one of The Global Goddess’ regular competitions. Now, the Hilton is back with a special spring spa treatment. Available at both the Melbourne and Surfers Paradise eforea: spa at Hilton, this 90-minute treatment uses internationally-acclaimed Kerstin Florian products. The $155 treatment includes an organic wildflower foot soak and full body massage with warm rose porphyry stones to clear energy pathways. To book, go to http://www.eforeaspa.com.au/special-offers.html
THE GONGS ARE RINGING AT GAIA
In August, The Global Goddess experienced the peace and serenity that is Gaia Retreat & Spa in the Byron Bay Hinterland. One of her lucky readers even won a two-night package there valued at $1595. It seems the Goddess is not the only one who thinks this is one special place owned by Olivia Newton-John. Gaia has been honoured at Australia’s Leading Boutique Hotel and Australia’s Leading Spa Resort at the World Travel Awards in Dubai. Gaia Director Gregg Cave also received the International Hotel & Property Award “Asia-Pacific Spa Hotel” for his design work at the International Design and Architecture Awards in London last week. For those who haven’t visited the retreat, here’s Five Golden Gaia Guidelines by which to enhance your life:
1. Eat well and drink plenty of water
2. Take quiet moments throughout the day and have plenty of sleep at night
3. Moderation and a little abstinence can go a long way in creating the new you
4. Exercise daily and moving the body is the key to optimum health
5. Do your best and be thankful and grateful for what you have already achieved.
http://www.gaiaretreat.com.au
Tag: Queensland
Camping, Kombis and a Kangaroo or two
AN organised man, my best mate is not. Loyal, kind, and the sort of caring bloke who will take your call at 3am if you are broke, or worse, broken – absolutely – but he was obviously buried under a pile of dirty laundry when the organised gene was handed out. And so I find myself, at the end of our weekend camping trip, straddling the side of a busy highway, semi-trailers brushing past me on one side, snakes in the grass on the other, thonged feet and desperate eyes searching frantically for the tyre to our campervan that has mysteriously flung off as we drove. How did this happen? My mate forgot to tighten the wheel nuts when he changed the spare.
We’ve known each other 30 years, my mate and me, so none of this should have come as a surprise, least of all to me. But each time it somehow does. The ante upped on what could possibly go wrong. Our trip out to Queensland’s pretty Girraween National Park starts late. We’re meant to leave at 6.30pm for the four-hour journey south-west but that is pushed back as my mate is getting his car serviced. The same uninsured car we discover he’s been driving without brakes. He can’t find the camp stove which is meant to be where all the other camping gear has been plonked. Under his house, home to piles of unwashed laundry and a plethora of treasures owned by a variety of people, both living and dead, who may or may not also be buried beneath the rubble.
We eventually hit the road and arrive at the National Park close to midnight. We’re meant to be meeting our mates in their Kombi as they know in which of the two campsites we’re booked. My mate hands me a cigarette lighter in the dark. “What’s this for?” I ask. “I forgot the torch,” he says, as I stare incredulously at the stick which is meant to illuminate the night to allow us to make camp. Just as we pitch the campervan for the night in the middle of the Aussie bush, the Kombi arrives, having come off second best to a kangaroo, with all of its right hand side panels dented. I climb into bed for a restless sleep about angry kangas, and a nagging fear an equally annoyed park ranger is going to shine his torch into our illegal impromptu campsite in the death of night.
Things are looking brighter the next morning and we decide to move to a proper campsite where we don’t have to wee in the bush in the dead of night in the middle of snake breeding season. My mate decides he’s not going to put the pop top down on the campervan, instead driving the short distance to our new site with protruding beds still made. Things are going well, until my mate turns a tight corner and the van crunches into the back of his expensive black jeep, denting not only two corners of the four-wheel-drive but putting the pop top out of alignment. All of a sudden, our cheap camping weekend is looking expensive.
But troopers that we are, we set up camp, drive into the nearest town to pick up eggs (my mate forgot the eggs), and the four of us regroup over a few beers on one of those all-Aussie bush hotel verandas. We spend the next day walking the tracks for which this particular park is known. It’s three hours of solid bushwalking and food for the soul among the blooming spring wild flowers. It’s my job that evening to cook dinner – Beef and Guinness stew in a camp oven – while the others take a second hike. I’ve never cooked in a camp oven before and I’m nervous. What if the hungry hikers return and I’ve burned the beef? There’s not exactly a pizza place out here in the bush.
It’s a stunning afternoon as I stoke the fire, sip on a beer, and the others set off on their walk. And then the weather changes, rapidly, dramatically. Angry thunder starts grumbling in the distance and I have just enough time to put my beer (first rule of camping: save the beer) under some shelter before the sky erupts. I jump around like a mad marsupial, simultaneously racing to zip up the campervan, close the Kombi, the car windows, save the fire wood from a soaking and most of all, salvaging dinner. The storm is raging all around me, my friends are somewhere in the blackening bush, but there’s no way the stew on which I’ve spent the past 3 hours is going to spoil. I stand in the cold, wet, dark, hair plastered to my face, stoking my fire and stirring my stew like a wild witch.
The storm blows over as quickly as it arrived and my friends are swept back into camp. The camp table is set for dinner, red wine is poured and my stew is sumptuous, all tender and smoky and made with a kind of frenzied love. We wake up the next day, our cars and bodies a bit bruised and battered, feet and faces dusty and ready to hit the road. It’s only when I’m standing on the side of the highway with my mate several hours later, looking for our missing tyre, that his words of earlier that weekend hit me: “This doesn’t happen sitting around at home, you know.” We never do find the tyre and instead, limp into the tiny town of Aratula on the original shredded spare, and abandon the van there, until we can return the next day with new tyres. We stop further down the road and crack open a warm beer from the back of the car and laugh outrageously. And that’s the crux of this story. In life, sometimes you come off second best to a proverbial roo or two, you get dinged and dusty, wet, hungry and tired. Things don’t go to plan. But, like a kangaroo, it’s how you bounce that matters most.
Of Men and Manure
I RECKON they were good signs. Literally. I’m out in the Queensland countryside on a man hunt. Well, I’m actually meant to be doing a story on polo. But I know bloody bugger all about horses, contrary to what I told the editor of a new horse magazine whose title sounds suspiciously like the tome for which Hugh Grant pretended to write in the film Notting Hill. And so I do what Hugh did. First rule of journalism: fake it till you make it. Second rule: hope like hell you figure it out somewhere along the way. (For the record, I’ve been doing this for 25 years now and suspect any day now I shall get caught).
But I wasn’t entirely lying. We did have a pony when we were children which one of my sisters ridiculously called Fairy Twinkle. I’d never call a pony Fairy Twinkle. Particularly a male pony such as ours. Unless it was gay. But no one was gay in 1970s Queensland. Not even my two uncles who wore tight white shorts, as many rings on their fingers as Liberace and lived with other men. They were the only men back then who crossed their legs when they sat down. Which in my opinion gave the game away. Mum insists to this day it was because they lived in New Zealand.
But I digress. My sister most prone to nostalgia believes it was she who gave the horse such a stupid name. Fairy Twinkle died on the eve of one of our sports carnivals, and our parents didn’t tell us, because they feared it would “upset our performance”. Just for the record, there was no “performance” to upset – the girls in my family more apt in scholastic than sporting abilities, only just beating the fat kid to last place. The day after the sports carnival Mum sat us all down and simply said: “Fairy Twinkle has gone to the glue factory”. And then she went all Senate Estimates Committee on us and refused to take further questions.
So here I am, on a sunny September reminiscent of my sports days, out in the country about to write about a polo game. I’m told there will be men. Plenty of stallions. I’m driving to country Canungra and the first sign is a good one. It simply says: “Boyland”. I drive a bit faster and sing along to Katy Perry. Five minutes later, I past through another town: “Wonglepong”. If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is. Canungra’s Café Metz is full of men in army fatigues when I arrive, but men in uniform scare the anti-authoritarian in me. Instead, I grab a coffee and sit under a sign which simply states: “Today Is My Lucky Day.” Another sign.
I’m here to interview Australia’s top polo player and my photographer friend Cathy is here to shoot him (not literally, as my accountant Shaun thought recently when he saw that I was claiming my phone on my annual tax return for “shooting” jobs). Cathy and I both like a bit of eye candy and the prospect of spending the warm afternoon with a bunch of hot men and getting paid to do so is all rather attractive. If only we could get to the men. You see, there’s the issue of the horses, who seem to have taken a liking to both Cathy and me. At one point I feel some rather rapturous breathing down the back of my neck, followed by a slow, sticky, unmistakable slobber. It seems Mr Ed has gone all horny and has found the back of my head a rather attractive prospect. Meanwhile, Cathy isn’t faring any better, and with each click of her camera, the mob moves in and she’s flat out photographing the subject.
But professionals that we are, we spend six hours on this job, Cathy shooting it till it’s dead (again Shaun, if you are reading this I don’t mean murder) and me, tiptoeing through the tulips of manure and interviewing every human I can find. Which is where I stumble across 72-year-old Jim MacGinley. Jim’s been playing polo for 52 years and he’s my go-to man about how to find a fella on these fields.
“Well, it would be best to be a player…you can take that whatever way you want,” he chuckles outrageously as his naughty joke.
“The Aussie boys are there for the games and want to play polo. Go to England or the US if you are looking for a fella with money and Argentina if you are looking for a playboy.”
And hence we two fine fillies leave the polo field. Hot, a bit bothered, with no fellas but a nice story, some great pics and a good tip on how to find a polo player. Don’t be surprised if next time you read me, I’m off to South America. Chasing a story about a horse, of course. Just don’t tell my accountant.
What did I do with a drunken sailor?
FACT ONE: there are 74 islands in the Whitsundays.
FACT TWO: there are also 800 horny sailors in town.
IT’S a Whitsunday Wednesday and I am aboard the 80ft yacht, Brahms and Liszt which I am informed is sailing rhyming slang for pissed. Somewhere, in the shimmering waters around me, are 800 sex-charged sailors. Or so I’m told. What I do know is that every second salt is called Fitzy, so I’ve just taken to singing out “g’day Fitzy” when I walk down the dock of the Abell Point Marina each morning and hoping that my greeting lands on the right shoulders. What I am yet to learn is that crusty old salts like their calamari young, so to speak, and I have a better chance of spotting a whale in the Whitsunday Passage than hooking a man. Me, I’m more of a barracuda.
Airlie Beach Race Week and every man and his dinghy is in town, lured by the warm trade winds which sweep the Australian sailing fraternity north along the Queensland coast. The weather is perfect except for one thing. There’s no wind and so, somewhere out to sea, sit 800 frustrated sailors, the lack of breeze keeping their sails limp, so to speak.
I, too, am frustrated. I am meant to be writing a story about Airlie Beach and sailing, but it’s difficult without any wind in the sails. In these parts, it blows every week of the year but for once, Mother Nature is refusing to co-operate. Bored sailors circle each other like sharks, jokes and jibes tossed across bows, until early afternoon, when enough breeze picks up to warrant enough of a race. It’s not perfect, but it will do.
As for me, a great story I eventually find, but it is one borne from dredging rather than smooth sailing. A quick quip here, a chat there, a day out on a tallship, a spot of snorkelling, a few drinks at the yacht club, a wander down the main drag. Some stories are like life. You have to wait for them to come to you, rather than force them. And so it is with this one.
Sure, I could shout superlatives from the bow of a boat about how wonderful the Whitsundays is, but it’s all that and more. It’s the crinkly smiles behind the sunglasses as experienced eyes look out to sea, searching for a hint of a breeze. Just like I look frantically to the horizon for a story. It’s recognising boats – Fifty Shades of 50, Rum Gutz, Malice – like they are all old friends. It’s the unexpected.
I came to Airlie Beach expecting some wild winds and, if I’m a little bit honest, hoping I might meet a man. In between grasping for my story, I fantasise about what I would do with a drunken sailor. I’d be fibbing if I didn’t say the thought of sailing off into the sunset with someone held great appeal. But life’s not like that. You can’t just rig up the sails and expect the wind will arrive at your command. Instead, you sit, you watch, you wait. You drop anchor. And you laugh. At life’s perfect imperfection.
The Global Goddess travelled to Airlie Beach Race Week as a guest of the Whitsunday Sailing Club. Next year, Airlie Beach Race Week will celebrate its 25th anniversary. And with a bit of luck, there will be a breeze. http://www.airlieraceweek.com
The Princesses of Queenstown
A WHILE back I won a trip for two to Queenstown – the adventure capital of New Zealand – which would have been lovely except for one thing. I am not adventurous. Well, not in the conventional, law-abiding sense. To add to this particular journey, I decided to take with me the second-least adventurous person on the planet, my second-oldest sister. To paint you a picture, our idea of a catastrophe is if the bar runs out of Sav Blanc. Now, I don’t want to point any fingers but: Mum, it’s all your fault. You see, the woman who brought us into the world is as neurotic as they come, and when we were growing up, she would prevent us from doing anything. She’d catch us up a tree and scream out “you’ll fall out and break your arm”. Put out a hand to pat a stray dog, and there she’d be hissing “it will bite your arm off”. Eat a Dagwood Dog at the Ekka and she was convinced we’d contract Ebola. Oh yes, I can still hear her, even on a good day.
So imagine the two of us, Scooby Doo and Shaggy, trekking off to Queenstown in the middle of winter, New Zealand’s most adventurous city and in its most exciting season. Never let it be said that our lack of life skills actually stops us from doing something. And I had already concocted a plan. While we were there, we’d try to discover what there was to do for unadventurous types. The idiots guide to Queenstown if you will. So while everyone else was up on the snow fields flaunting their ski bunnies beautiful, we’d be downtown, wining and dining. But just in case of an extreme emergency, as we dashed through the Duty Free store enroute to the plane I grabbed a bottle or two of whisky on the way out, and my sister actually said with that certain scoff of disdain that older siblings have perfected: “What are you doing? We’re not going to need them”.
And on our first afternoon it all went swimmingly. How hard can it be grabbing a taxi, finding your hotel – in this instance the Novotel Queenstown – and having dinner?. Easy, peasy. It was the next morning when it all started to go downhill rapidly, like that skiing we would never, ever be doing. We caught the Skyline Gondola to Top Station, 790m above sea level, my sister holding on for dear life the entire way. I wasn’t too bad, as I was more worried about the next event. Apparently we were both then supposed to take the Skyline Luge down an 800 metre, slippery winding downhill track. We took one look at what we could only describe as a “death trap”, read the word “hurtle” on the itinerary and went and had a hot chocolate instead. Hey, you can get a burnt tongue drinking a hot chocolate.
Things were still going pretty well, in fact, I like to think we came into our own on the Appellation Central Otago Wine Tour. Yes, if there were two stars of that show, it was my sister and me as no one can put it away like the two of us. But little did we know what the next day would bring. The itinerary said Snowshoeing, and described the activity as “experiencing the serenity of the spectacular back country”. We both pictured an undulating alpine walk with something akin to tennis rackets on our feet. Perhaps a charming little restaurant serving Schnapps among the pine trees. Wrong. Instead, something resembling crampons – those claw-like shoes you see on climbers on the Himalayas – were clamped to our feet. And then we started climbing, all the while I’m thinking rather airily: “I wonder how we get down from this mountain?”. Next thing we know, we’re in the middle of a white out and hiding out in an igloo. But the worst was yet to come. Our guide then announced we were just taking a short stroll back down the mountain. It was slippery, it was cold and it was white. And I was terrified. So terrified, I grabbed both the male guide and his mate and made them carry me down the mountain, while my sister soldiered on quietly behind me with the female guide. To this day, my sister still jokes about my personal sherpas, who frankly, I nearly killed with my hysteria causing them to lose their balance and footing on several occasions, making the three of us almost slide into a deep ravine. (I might have made the last bit up about the deep ravine). My hysteria, however, was embarrassingly real to the point when we did eventually arrive at the base, the guide suggested I take up indoor rock climbing to conquer my fear.
We got back to our hotel room, lay on our beds speechless, not able to look each other in the eyes, and cracked open that whisky. But, as we are apt to do, we came good that afternoon when our itinerary suggested a visit to the Onsen Hot Pools. Sitting in a steaming pool, overlooking a mountain, sipping tea and looking at the jet boats below, my sister suggested we could probably try one of those next time. Was she serious? How much whisky had she consumed, exactly?
But our adventurous non-adventure didn’t end there, as the next day we had a 4X4 tour with Nomad Safaris. Again, we were both picturing 4×4 tours we’d done in Australia. In the Outback. Where it’s flat. There’s nothing flat about New Zealand and before we knew it, we were on the edge of a precipice with one wheel of the 4×4 spinning over a deep ravine (this one was for real), on a slushy road. We were so frightened we couldn’t even look at each other. Instead, I focused intently on the Russian couple in the front: the husband suffered from serious narcolepsy so every minute or so his wife had to smack him over the head to wake him up. It was at that point in our program I wished I, too, suffered from narcolepsy. Somehow we survived, went back to our hotel room, and sat speechless on the bed again. Hands tightly clasped around whisky glasses.
On our last afternoon we had a leisurely tour on the TSS Earnslaw to Walter Peak High Country Farm. Given we grew up in the country we were pretty confident this was one activity we could conquer. What could go wrong watching a bit of sheep shearing? Again, it was all going so well, until they decided to round up the sheep into the yard and one particular feisty ram took one look at the two of us, and decided to charge straight at us. Yes, if calamity could happen, it would happen to us. I hate to admit it, but what if mum was right?
We laughed ourselves stupid all the way back to Brisbane and have continued laughing about this adventure for years. Any day now New Zealand Tourism is going to call us both and offer us a role in one of their 100% pure New Zealand ads. Yes, as Crowded House sings in the theme song: Don’t dream it’s over.
The Global Goddess travelled as a guest of Virgin Australia and the Novotel Queenstown.
Beautiful One Day, Perfect The Next
ONE year ago today I stepped off the plane in Brisbane after 14 months of living in Singapore. People sometimes ask me how long it took me to adjust to being back in Queensland. I knew I’d arrived the moment those two tiny Qantas wheels left Changi’s tarmac.
I moved to Singapore one month after Queensland’s devastating 2011 floods. I was battling a personal torrent of my own and needed to shake off those last, pesky, stubborn crumbs of my broken marriage. I, like Queensland, had some healing to do. Suffice to say, it’s been a rocky road for both of us, plagued by potholes and the occasional melt down. That’s the thing about healing, it takes its own damn time and you can’t rush it. And then there’s those inevitable relapses, as Queensland saw again in January this year when the flooding rains returned. As for me, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still have some crawl back under the doona days.
But I’ve just spent the past two weeks on assignment out in the Queensland countryside in which I grew up. We were barefoot through the bindi patch kids. Dirt on your cheeks types who didn’t come inside until after dark. Cycled our daggy pushies without helmets, rode in the Kingswood without seat belts, got a scratch and fixed it with a bit of good old-fashioned spit.
And in the past two weeks, I fell in love with my state all over again. Southerners often mock Queensland. They say our weather is too humid. Humid to me is living in Singapore – 100km from the Equator. They say Brisbane is a big country town. If sitting outside by the river on a temperate evening eating food designed by world-class chefs makes us a big country town then yes, we’re epic. Sure, we don’t have daylight savings and our politics are ridiculously conservative. But that just breeds the underground movement of creatives and larrikins I so love here. In Brisbane, strangers still chat to you in the street. Thank the bus driver when they alight. Let your car squeeze in during peak hour traffic.
In the past fortnight, I experienced in spades the friendliness for which Queensland is renowned. In the South Burnett – Joh country – I stumbled across characters, entrepreneurs and optimists. Shirt-off-your-back people where dogs with names like Merlot are the stars of an Australian book about Wine Dogs. A place of dappled sunshine and dimpled smiles.
I met wine makers and farmers’ wives. Ate the local smoked pork, drank the new world Italian reds they are planting out there. Stayed in century-old cottages on hillsides overlooking charming valleys. Did I mention it’s emerald green out there? Yep, after all that rain that so scarred our state, it’s left a legacy of lushness. I took the time for a good old chinwag.
Last week, my travels took me to the Darling Downs. But not the Toowoomba I knew from my childhood – one of haberdashery shops and picnics in the park. Sure, they still exist, but walk past an inner city lane and there’s graffiti art and pop up coffee shops courting the trendy set. Toowoomba is finally embracing its organic food scene. I ate salty olives, fancy French cuisine and slept in an elegant mansion. I stumbled across eclectic art galleries and small designer stores. Had a cuppa with the locals. They keep me honest, no room for egos out here, just kookaburras, galahs and king parrots.
Queensland and I are both a little older and wiser after the past few years. Sure, we’ll always carry our scars, but we’ve also got fire in our bellies. Yes, people sometimes ask me how long it took to adjust to being back in Queensland after Singapore. To be honest, I don’t think I ever really left.
The Global Goddess travelled through Southern Queensland Country as a guest of Tourism and Events Queensland. To plan your own escape, go to http://www.queenslandholidays.com.au
Keep your Vegemite in the fridge
THERE were frogs in the pond, pigs in a blanket, a gaggle of geese and a gargle of girlfriends. White cockatoos sat at arm’s length over the back fence and Joe the dog slouched under the table, barely able to conceal his bemusement.
We arrived in the one-horse, one-pub Queensland country town in the height of the noon-day sun. The girl we like to call Jodi (who has insisted her friends stop naming her in blogs, so for the sake of this story let’s call her Clarky) had packed ice blocks for the 45 minute drive west of Brisbane. Things were going swimmingly, until I drove the wrong way into the town’s drive thru bottle-o. Clarky swore she heard a banjo play somewhere in the distance and I thought I saw a tumbleweed blow past, until I realised it was just Corina stumbling out of the bottle-o with some lemonade. We kept the engine running…just in case.
It was Retro Sunday lunch at Dame Alison’s where a mob of top sheilas, six of us in all aged between 39 and 72, gathered on the verandah for a good old chinwag and some fine food. Except this year the food wasn’t so much fine but funky. We harked back to the 70s, clutching at the recipes of our mothers and grandmothers. I pulled out old faithful: my spinach cob loaf and some sausage rolls. Mr Lee brought cheer and cheerios. Clarky baked some chooks, Heaney tossed a salad, and Alison, a Shepherd’s pie which mysteriously contained no lamb.
But the piece-de-resistance was Corina’s nana’s jelly salad. Imagine, if you possibly can, yellow jelly, carrot shreds and, wait for it… mustard, and you’ve got the salad. Unfortunately for me, who’d spent the week suffering from a gastro virus, it too closely resembled what I’d been trying to keep down and from the looks of the others, they were about to join me as fellow passengers on the proverbial porcelain bus. Nana would have be turning in her grave if she could have heard our comments, that is, if she wasn’t so preserved from all the mustard she used to consume.
But it wasn’t so much about the food, as friendship. Feisty femme fatales dining on the deck to swap stories and secrets, swatting flies and egos. There’s no bullshit with Brisbane women – they’ll slap you down if you get too big for your boots, but are the first to pick you up when you break a heel. That’s what I love.
As the perfect Pimms afternoon wore on, we braved the gamut of conversations. Should Vegemite be kept in the fridge? Would you look after your cheating ex-husband if he was dying of a terminal illness? We spoke of death and dating (sometimes, for me, in the same sentence). Three of us had boyfriends, three of us didn’t. Those of you who remember the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era will enjoy the irony of a group of journalists and PRs standing, side-by-side in the back yard, feeding the chooks. We collected fresh eggs from the chook pen to take home.
We spoke of sex, travel and work. That’s another thing I love. In a town like Brisbane where you have to compete furiously for the work, our foes are our friends. There’s no room in this river city for small-minded competitiveness. What goes around, comes around. And so it is with these girls.
They keep me honest, they rough me up, but they are the first to be there when I need it. A group of us were recently up in Lombok for our annual travel writer’s conference. Someone from Sydney paid us one of the nicest compliments we’d ever heard. “You Brisbane girls are just so friendly and fun. You’re down-to-earth. You’re earthy.”
And she hadn’t even seen Nana’s jelly salad.
Surfers Shenanigans
I’VE awoken in a Surfers Paradise hotel room and I have a swollen eye. The Surfers Paradise part I can explain, even to myself who takes a few minutes to remember what I’m doing on Australia’s Gold Coast. But I have no idea how I’ve acquired the swollen eye. I check my hotel bathroom for a baby, a tiger and Bradley Cooper.
The last thing I remember was playing Putt Putt golf with some friends before having a few drinks. Unless things have changed in the past 20 years, Putt Putt, from memory, is a pretty tame affair which doesn’t result in swollen organs.
I decide to take Quasimodo out to breakfast, acutely aware this shall not the morning I will be meeting the man of my dreams. When I head back to the 22nd floor my room key is no longer working. Which would not be such a problem were it not for the strange grumble my stomach has just made. Just when I think my morning can’t get much worse, it does. The cause of my swollen eye suddenly becomes apparent. I’ve overindulged in oysters at the seafood buffet the previous evening, I’m having an allergic reaction, and now my gut is about to explode. In the lift. Full of women attending a beauty conference.
I break into a cold sweat. By now, I’m frantic. It occurs to me that I’m about to resemble an Australian footballer, and crouch on the carpeted hotel hallway with my swollen eye and do the unspeakable. I telephone my friend whose room number I can’t remember. “Open your door,” I scream down the line, “O-p-e-n. Y-o-u-r. D-o-o-r!” A door swings open down the hall by which stage, I am crawling like one of the crabs which is causing all the commotion inside me. I burst into what I hope is her hotel room, and not that of some poor Japanese tourist, and dash to the toilet.
My retro weekend in Surfers Paradise has begun with a blast. My friend, Corina, has decided our next adventure should be cycling along the beachfront to the Southport Spit. It’s going to be so simple, bikes are even delivered to our hotel room. Corina is wearing her trademark high heels, tighty whitey pants, and a koala backpack we’ve nicknamed “fluffy”. I am having visions of my own loveliness, dressed in a long white skirt, hair blowing in the sea breeze, riding along the oceanfront like something out of a feminine hygiene ad. Dame Alison, our other friend, has wisely decided to take a limo transfer to meet us for lunch. I take off and make it to the first corner when my skirt becomes entangled in the bike chain. Corina falls off her bike. We are covered in grease when we limp in to lunch at the old Southport Bathing Pavilion which is now a café. A bloke called Chico offers us a Chicko roll. Things are looking up.
That evening, Corina has planned a special surprise. A trip to the Wax Museum. The operators resemble the Adams family which is more than we can say for the actual wax exhibits. Barack Obama is white. Michael Jackson is black. Whitney Houston looks like Bobby Brown. The whole display is creepy and just little bit scary. We leave abruptly. We need a drink.
We decide our trip to the glitter strip isn’t complete without a Chinese banquet and head to the Focus Chinese Seafood Restaurant with our new-found friends, Cade, Caitlin, Shae, Grant and Maggie. Full of Peking duck, we decide to eschew a trip to the old haunts – Melba’s and Cocktails and Dreams – in favour of an early night. I go to sleep smug in the knowledge we’ve had a pretty tame night. Even my eye has almost returned to normal.
On Sunday morning I awake to find a game of Two-Up in last night’s handbag, a Meter Maid’s business card and bum muscles I didn’t know I had, courtesy of our bike ride. I ponder this as we board the Aquaduck for an amphibious adventure on the Broadwater. There’s no suspension on the vehicle and we bounce along the Esplanade, as do our boobs. Corina tells me to “get ducked”. I tell her to “duck off”. Back at Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Dame Alison sits near a farting man exhibit while the museum owner catches me stroking a male fertility statue. “Be careful, you’ll get pregnant,” he warns, before adding, “but of course you have to have sex to do that.” Just my luck to be the second woman in history to conceive by immaculate conception.
By the end of the weekend, I realise something I’d long forgotten. Surfers Paradise is tawdry, tacky and terrific, just like my friends. It will pick you up, twist you around, dance with you and gently put you back down. But dull? Never, ever.
The Global Goddess travelled as a guest of The Outrigger, Surfers Paradise, whose carpet, she is pleased to report, remains intact and whose bathrooms are to be commended, in whichever room you may find yourself in a panic. To experience your own retro weekend, go to www.outrigger.com.au
The Global Goddess 