I was born on the same day (21st May of May 1956) as very first airborne hydrogen bomb was dropped on Bikini atoll.
Bye, bye paradise.
Amazingly, despite the odds, considering the trouble and strife the world has been through since then, plus all the dumb things that I’ve done, 53 years later I’m still here!
Woo hoo me!
Tonight I’m having a bunch of friends over for dinner to celebrate. Because I’m getting ready for tonight, I don’t have enough time for much of a post, so for all my friends out there, here’s the Four Tops singing one of my favourite songs, “Reach out”, that I dedicate to you all.
Sapa is a small town in the far north of Vietnam, close to the Chinese border. Ever since the Vietnamese government have opened up their country to the west, money and western influences have poured in. About two years before I went to Vietnam, a friend of mine (Doug) who’d been there, advised that I go there soon as possible because the country was changing at a break-neck speed.
What makes Sapa special is that there are a few hill tribes there that have clung onto their culture and distinctive dress. Of course such sights are an irresistable magnet for tourists.
From what I saw there, with the pressure of increasing tourism and the prosperity with the head long dash towards the future it brings, I’d say that it won’t be long before the only place that anyone will see the Hmong and Yao people in their traditional dress with be at performances in large hotels. I can’t blame them; after all, it sucks being dirt poor. It’s just a pity that their culture is going to be swallowed up and absorbed by western consumerism.
I think the video below is a good metaphor, for the bland homogenous world we are all heading for.
This shot was taken before Cocker had made his comeback with “You can keep your hat on”. The Commodore was an old ballroom (it was demolished years ago) with a springy wooden floor and it only held several hundred people. The crowd loved him and the whole place just pumped up and down to his music. Joe seemed genuinely surprised at the audience’s warm and enthusiastic applause. He put on a great show and I feel lucky I saw him at that time in his life.
Because of the smallish crowd I was able to get up fairly close to the front and take this shot with my trusty 135mm f2.8 lens. Almost unbelievably this shot was taken using Kodachrome 64!
Here’s a video from a live performance with Joe Cocker in 1981
My mother was very young when she had me and as a result popular music was a big part of my childhood back in the early 1960s.
My last couple of posts got me thinking about how I would characterise my musical tastes. I usually tell people that I don’t like country and western, rap, disco and that I’m a bit tired of rock. The more accurate truth is that I like all kinds of music, it’s just that some types, to my mind, have more crap in them than others.
Here’s some of my favourite music from my early childhood. Much of this music was in my mother’s vast record collection and I used to love listening to it on the weekends when my mother put it on while she cleaned the house.
This first song is “I remember you” by Frank Ifield
What a voice!
Talking about voices, Della Reese is someone I still listen to. Here she is singing “Don’t you know”.
The platters also caught my attention. Here they are singing “Twilight Time”.
No mention of the Platters can go by without a nod to the eternal classic, “Only you”
Doo Wop was a particular favourite when I was growing up and I still like Dion and the Belmonts. Here’s the classic, “The Wander”.
I guess that being a kid that liked Doo Wop, left me being open to enjoying “novelty songs like “Mr. Bassman” by Jonny Cymbal.
In my childish mind at the time, “Working for the man” was almost as good as Mr Bassman. Of course, nowadays I realise that “Working for the man” is way better. Here’s a video of the song with some guys clowning around to the music.
Along the same lines, I also loved “16 tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford. I’m starting to see a pattern emerge here; heavy on the bass, simple rythm and folk-country influenced. Here’s a little video of “16 tons” with some Warcraft animation in it.
Then of course was the great Ray Charles and “Hit the Road Jack”.
After hearing “Hit the Road Jack” I’d be humming it all day.
In a class of his own was Screamin Jay Hawkins with “I put a Spell On You”
Can you imagine someone getting up in such a get up nowadays? It’s hard to belive that he still performed the same way until his death in 2000.
Mum was a great fan of Elvis and had just about everything the guy ever did. My mother once told me that I was nearly named Elvis by my father, after him. I would’ve hated that as a kid, but as an adult I think it would’ve been pretty cool. “Hi, my name’s Elvis”.
Here’s the king singing “Jail House Rock”.
Then of course was the wild man himself, Jerry Lee Lewis. My mum had seen him in concert as a kid and she’d told told me how he’d pushed his piano off the stage at the end of his performance. I thought that was sooo cool! Here is a video of him singing “Great Balls of Fire”.
Although I liked Jerry Lee’s music my mother didn’t and this is what she had to say about him.
“I absolutley loathed Jerry Lee Lewis, I couldn’t stand his screaming/singing or piano playing, antics, and I thought he was just plain ugly! Years later when I was working in Sydney airport when it first opened, he and his entouage came into my lounge bar , yahooing and cursing and swearing , a real bunch of crackers, they were. He also had his wife with him, she was his cousin and only a young teenager, and when he snapped his fingers and yelled at me to “get your ass over there and get me a drink”, I told him to “be quiet and hold your language down, or I will have you ejected”………….he didn’t listen, told me to “go and screw myself”, so I had security remove him and his clan”.
Of course Australia had it’s own, “Wild One”, Johnny O’Keefe, and here he is doing a cover of the Isley brother’s “Shout”
Mum also had very little time for Johnny O’Keefe and this is what she had to say about him.
And then there is Johnny O’Keefe, what a jerk too! He reminded me of an ugly blond version of your father and I couldn’t stand his ’singing antics’ either!
I met him at an event I went to once, (can’t think of where.) He was strutting around , like a little bantam rooster, and he said to me “Do you know who I am?” And I replied “No, who are you?” he walked off in a huff, ha, ha, ha! Girls were following him everywhere……why I’ll never know!
Sure there were heaps of aging punks and rockers in attendance,
but there were also plenty of bright shiny things strutting their stuff on Cockatoo Island on Saturday as well.
It’s so typical of the shallow mainstream media to focus on the superficial and to try and create some kind of division where there isn’t one.
The acts at “All Tomorrows Parties” attracted a very wide spectrum of people and I’d even go so far as to say that the crowd on Cockatoo Island were a pretty good indication of how an interest in non-mainstream music transcends age groups.
Now that I’ve had my little rant, here’s some more pictures of some of the stylish people that I met on Saturday.
When I asked the woman above if I could take her picture, she asked me, “what’s it for?” I replied, “I’m taking pictures of people I think look fabulous”. To which she replied, “I don’t feel fabulous, I was up until 2 this morning playing a gig in Newcastle”. Unfortunately I didn’t pick up on the cue to ask her what band she was in. Yep, I’m about as sharp as a bowling ball. When I photograph strangers (particularly women) I try not to talk to them too much as I don’t want to freak them out and make them feel uncomfortable.
This next fellow wouldn’t have looked out of place in a longboat 1000 years ago.
These next two women were very extroverted good sports.
Very nice people and when they adopted this next pose I thought of Pommeroy’s post.
Not everyone was dressed for the weather and for some, style was everything. When you think about it, guys in suits at alternative music events are the real rebellious iconoclasts.
These two were a lovely couple with a very intersting mix of styles. Sort of gothic meets western.
Then there were other people who were into colour.
And last but not least, the man with the nicest smile and sweetest T-shirt.
Here’s a few photos, videos of and thoughts about the acts I saw yesterday on Cockatoo Island at All Tomorrow’s Parties which is a part of the Sydney Festival.
All Tomorrow’s Parties(according to their website) is an organization based in London that has been promoting festivals and concerts throughout the UK and worldwide for almost ten years. The line-ups are chosen by significant bands or artists,which combine performances by legendary and influential acts with appearances by the latest crop of experimental artists from any (and every) musical genre.
The All Tomorrow’s Parties here in Sydney was curated by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
The day started off cloudy, windy and cold and the first act we saw was Hunter Dienna at the “Barracks” which is an old ruined army barracks from the early 1800s.
It was a perfect venue and the weather seemed as though it was made to order for their moody bass driven music. I would’ve loved to have put up a video link to one of their performances but there aren’t any, but here’s a link to a page where you can listen to some of their music.
Hunter Dienna was very good act to start with, even if did start at 11:15 in the morning.
Just after noon we went and checked out the Stabs. They were OK but nothing great; the same old same old. Their voices were flat and they just stood there.
From some of the press about them and their video, one could be forgiven for thinking they were a bunch of hard arses.
From what I saw on stage they looked like some limp dicked wanabees. I guess that’s the problem with live performances, you can’t hide the difference between the hype and reality. We didn’t stick around for long.
At about 12:30 went and watched Bridezilla.
Now they were good!
They played an entertaining set and the cherry on the top was when Jack Thompson came on and played harmonica with them.
When Bridezilla finished we drifted over to the Beaches and caught the last of their set.
The Beaches music is a faster driving type of rock that sounds like it’s been influenced by late punk-pop music. I would’ve thought that the music they played was fine if it wasn’t for the fact that it sounded like so much of what one already hears on the commercial radio stations. A pity really, because they were pretty good. If you want to hear some of their music click here.
The next act we caught was Conway Savage who is a member of Nick Cave’s band, The Bad Seeds. Conway is a very confident, laid back and funny man.
Conway started off the set asking the crowd to give him some drugs (he wasn’t kidding) and strangely enough the were none forth coming. What is with the youth of today? There was a time when such a request would’ve showered the performer with a veritable pharmacy.
In the middle of Conway’s set some of the audience started to leave (in fairness, there was so many acts to see), so he called out to them, “hey you cunts, where the fuck do you think you’re going? This is a good one!” Then he and the audience cracked up. It might sound harsh but it came across as good natured and I don’t think many people minded. All very rock and roll. Both my wife and I watched all of Conway’s set and enjoyed every moment of it.
After Conway Savage we had a quick look at Dead Meadow which didn’t hold our attention and then we checked out the last of the much hyped Afrirampo, a Japanese female duo from Osaka. There were a lot of people in the audience making a big show of how into the band they were but I thought they were just plain old cacophonous most of the time and derivative the rest.
The emperor has no clothes!
The clouds and wind went away and summer returned in it’s full fury, so after Afrirampo, we chilled out in the shade and waited for Harmonia to come on.
Harmonia are a German supergroup made up of Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius from the seminal electronic and ambient music band Cluster, with Michael Rother from Neu! The band sound like a mix of Kraftwerk and dance rhythms.
Harmonia aren’t much to watch but I found the music to be like cool drink on a hot day. So beautiful and clear.
It’s a real pity there aren’t many Harmonia videos on Youtube and this is the closest I could find to what I saw, but it has voice in it, of which there was none yesterday.
Harmonia was my favourite group of the day and I’d love to see them again and own some of their music.
Both Engogirl and I were so chilled out after Harmonia that we just didn’t feel like listening to anymore rock music for a while so we went and checked out the very venerable Psaradonis.
All I can say is wow!
He was amazing and it’s a credit to the curators (people so heavily influenced by rock & roll and punk) to see such a performer at such a concert.
His music was so completely different to anyone else’s on the island and the audience who had come to see much more modern and raucous music, loved him.
I love this city!
The next act we checked out was James Blood Ulmer.
What can I say? Other than, he was fantastic! Old style blues that is almost impossible to hear live anymore, here in Sydney.
The only down side to his performance was that there was a very loud and inconsiderate group who were talking at the top of their lungs all the way through. What a bunch of jerks! I can’t understand why such turds go to live performances.
By the time that Mr Ulmer had finished his set it was getting dark, so we went over to the main stage and watched the influential legends of the Aussie proto-punk scene, The Saints.
Since they are such a hugely well known and popular band I didn’t even try to get near the stage to take photos, so all I have to offer is this video from 1978.
They are still a great band.
Actually, they rock!
Then finally Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds came on. Nick and his band have a huge following of hard core fans and his concert was packed so of course I hung back and just enjoyed the show.
This is how he was about 15 years ago.
This is how he is nowadays
Here’s the words to the song in the video above.
What we once thought we had we didn’t, and what we have now will never be that way again
So we call upon the author to explain
Our myxomatoid kids spraddle the streets, they shunned us from the greasy-grind
The poor little things, they look so sad and old as they fuck us from behind
Wel I ask them to desist and to refrain
And then we call upon the author to explain
My friend died with tubes up his nose
And a cabal of angels with finger cymbals chanted his name in code
We shook our fists at the pumping rain
And we call upon the author to explain
Everything is messed up around here, everything is banal and jejune
There is a planetary conspiracy against the likes of you and me in this idiot constituency of the moon
I know exactly who to blame
And we call upon the author to explain
Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix!
Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix!
I go guruing down the street, young people gather round my feet
They ask me things, ah baby I don’t know where to start
They ignite some kind of power-trail straight to my father’s heart
And once again we call upon the author to explain
Who is this great burdensome slavering dog-thing that mediocres my every thought?
I feel like a fucking vacuum cleaner, a complete sucker, it’s fucked up and is a fucker
But what an enormous and encyclopaedic brain
I call upon the author to explain
I said Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix!
Bukowski was a jerk off!
Berryman was best off!
He wrote like wet papier mache, went the Heming-way, weirdly on wings and with maximum pain
I call upon the author to explain
Ah yeh I call upon the author to explain
Hey baby I call upon the author to explain
I call upon the author to explain
We call upon the author to explain
Prolix! Prolix! There’s nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix!
It was an excellent set and great way to end up the night.
We left Cockatoo Island just after 10pm. 11 solid hours of live music with most of it in the blazing sun. It was a great day but by the end of it, I was shattered.
I’ve just come home from 11 hours solid of live music at All tomorrow’s parties which was a multi band concert curated by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for the Sydney festival.
I’m shattered!
Must sleep.
I’ll be posting more about the concert tomorrow but for now I’ll leave you with one of the last images I took tonight of the crowd at Nick Cave’s performance.
What I want to cover in this article is the dynamics of being on a charter yacht for two days in the tropics.
About a month ago my wife (Engogirl) and I went up to Surfers Paradise to attend a conference on large dams. Engogirl had never been up to far north Queensland, and she wanted to go scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef. I hadn’t been up to Cairns since I was about 14, so I was quite amenable to extending our trip by travelling up north by train.
A fact that many people aren’t aware of, is that the Reef is actually about 20 or 30 km offshore and if you want to visit it you will need some kind of boat. Because the Great Barrier Reef is such a well-known tourist destination, there are plenty of options to get out there for visitors wishing to go diving. There are huge catamarans that hold hundreds of people complete with a helicopter pads on top through to charter yachts catering to much smaller groups.
Due to the facts that my wife and I can’t stand large crowds of people and that it’s easier to go missing at sea on a large boat, we decided that a smaller boat would be more suitable. We booked tickets on a boat called the “Vagabond“, which is crewed by three people (captain, diving instructor and cook) with nine other passengers.
We boarded at about eight o’clock in the morning and straight away it was obvious that the cook (who I suspect was the captain’s girlfriend) and diving instructor didn’t get along. The cook (an American woman from Virginia) made it obvious that the diving instructor got on her nerves by snapping at him a few times about nothing, in front of us.
The diving instructor (Frank) was one of those happy go lucky guys that obviously has a great time, doing his work and chatting up any of the female punters who might mistake him for a legend. I’ve known plenty of guys like him. As matter of fact, a few of my friends have been trekking guides in Nepal and white water rafting guides, so I know what their headspace is like and I’ve heard all the stories about their gormless punter conquests. Unfortunately for our diving instructor, Frank, he was a German, and although he wanted to have fun and joke around, there was a little bit of cultural dissonance happening, which cruelled most of his attempts at humour. Which was a pity because he was a nice guy.
I’ve got real soft spot for Germans and there have been very few Germans that I’ve met, that I haven’t liked. I think that many non-Germans think that Germans are rude, because they are so direct. I’ll admit that it can seem confronting at first, but once you get used to the way how Germans interact, it’s a real pleasure to be able to relax and be so straightforward. No fragile sensitivities or gameplaying, just direct communication, and I love it.
It was an absolutely beautiful clear day with a good offshore breeze that allowed us to make good time (12 kn) under sail.
There’s nothing like being on a large yacht that has all its sails and spinnaker up in a good stiff breeze. To add to the general feeling that we were partaking in something special we were accompanied every now and again by pods of dolphins. It took us a couple of hours to get out to the reef, but by about lunchtime we were already in the water snorkelling.
About half the people on the boat where experienced scuba divers with their certificates. I on the other hand, learned how to scuba dive when I was 14 years old for $11 at a local YMCA with a high school friend of mine, Stephen. That was back in the bad old days, when they basically just said, “make sure that you exhale when you surface and don’t come up any faster than your bubbles”. Of course, things are very different nowadays and I couldn’t in all good faith tell the diving instructor that I was properly qualified to scuba dive. Never mind having to produce a certificate that would be recognised today.
Fortunately my shonky scuba certification and Engogirls girl’s complete lack of experience wasn’t an issue because the Vagabond offered an “introductory course”, which basically meant that the driving instructor went over the basics with every one and then escorted us on the dive, ensuring that we didn’t go any deeper than 10 meters (about 30 feet) and that we exhaled as we resurfaced slowly. I won’t talk any more about scuba diving and I will leave that for another post.
When a yacht is under full sail with a good wind, sailing can be sublime. Of course it’s not for everyone, because a good wind means that there is usually fairly choppy seas, and that means the boat leans over and goes up and down in a way, that people who aren’t used to it, may find alarming. I’ve been on various water craft on the ocean many times and I’ve never been sick, even in large storms. Although I’ve never been seasick, I know that it can strike anyone and I was a bit worried that I might get nauseous, and I was doubly worried about Engogirl because I wanted to her to have a great time. Luckily both of us didn’t even come close to getting sick, but one unfortunate passenger did. According to common wisdom, one can avoid seasickness by staring at the land or the horizon if there is no land in sight. Another strange thing about seasickness is that the nausea completely stops when the sufferer enters the water.
Strangely enough, it’s very hot and humid in the tropics. Since you can’t or don’t want to scuba dive or snorkel all day, you end up sitting in the shade on deck, sweating your arse off drinking. Being on a boat means that you can’t get away from the heat and humidity and your only relief is to jump on the water every now and again to cool off, then drink some more.
With such a small group, interpersonal dynamics are important. Most of the people on our trip were very nice (we met up with a couple from Mexico and Brazil who live in Sydney and we’ll be having them over for dinner this Friday), with the exception of an older surgeon (who’s wife was lovely) with an unfortunate god complex. He used to own a yacht charter business himself at Airlie Beach and he was the sort of guy that saw himself as the font of all knowledge. He constantly contradicted people. If somebody said black he’d say white. He was just ridiculous. I guess he was used to pushing a bunch of terrified underlings around without any comeback, and his personality had suffered as a consequence. So our little tin god held court in the cockpit and bored the shit out of me. Unfortunately the captain, who was quite capable at his job, seemed to be in his thrall and basically encouraged him to pontificate.
Another interesting thing was that none of the passengers smoked cigarettes but all three of the crew did. I asked the captain, ” what’s the matter, do you guys get too much fresh air?”
As the day passed, I found myself noticing how fatigued the crew looked. They go out as often as they can, day after day, without much time off. They go out for two days to come back in the afternoon, and then they have to clean up the boat ready for the next day’s group first thing, the next morning.
In such heat and humidity it was no wonder they looked so exhausted and jaded. The diving instructor was new to that particular boat, and he obviously hadn’t been ground down by the routine yet, but the captain and cook could barely disguise how, over, the situation they were. Constantly being out in the heat and humidity whilst having to make small talk with people they know they’ll never see again, must be completely draining. They were too busy to go scuba diving and snorkelling themselves (the captain said he hadn’t been scuba diving for over a year) and were constantly at everybody’s beck and call. I can completely understand why the captain seemed so disinterested and fake in his conversations, but I do wish he had have been a bit more professional and not shown it so openly. Then again, us Australians are like that in general.
The food on board, whilst being quite plain due to the fact that they have to cater to so many different palettes, was perfect, as it was mostly light and fresh salads with cold meats. One of the guests asked why they weren’t serving fish on board, to which the captain replied, ” we bring people out here to see the fish, not to kill them”. Then the captain went on to explain to us how much damage fishing does to the reef. Not only do the fish stocks get depleted, but the coral also gets damaged by boats dropping anchor in areas they are not familiar with. He had a very low opinion of sports fishermen and boats that took such people out onto the reef to fish. After having spent a little time diving on the reef, I completely agreed with him on that matter.
It was so hot and sticky all day, that nobody really spent any time in their dark tiny little cabins. Our cabin was up at the front near the head (boating talk for “toilet”), which was a drag because our cabin had two doors; one to open into the passageway, and one into the toilet. The toilet was shared by other people who could enter through another door.
During the night both of the head doors were to be left open because there was a hatch directly over the toilet that was left open to let fresh air in.
Much to our chagrin and disgust, we found out that our cabin was so hot at night, that we had to leave the toilet door open so we could get a small rank smelling breeze through to us. To make matters worse, when I asked the captain how to turn on the fans that were in our cabin (the switches didn’t seem to be working), he looked at me as though I had just asked him if I could have my way with his mother, and curtly replied to me, ” I’ll do it in a couple of minutes”. So went back to my cabin and lay in the sweltering heat, and waited for him for about nearly an hour. I figured he must have forgotten, and he looked so irritated when I asked him, I thought I’d probabley be better off asking the cook how to turn on the fans. She told me the captain hadn’t turned on the power to the fans that she would speak to him, and it should be sorted out pretty soon. Another half an hour passed on the fans weren’t turned on, so I went out and asked the captain again, if he could turn the power to the fans on.
He said he’d get right onto it.
It never happened.
I laid there fuming for hours. I was so angry thoughts of violence crossed my mind.
I was still angry in the morning, but I thought, that there was no point in kicking up a big fuss as I would be off the boat later on in the day and I might as well enjoy the rest of the trip.
The second day was calm and the wind had gone away. My wife and I spent the day snorkelling together, and all my anger at the captain just drained away as I enjoyed being in one of the most amazing places in the world.
After lunch, we headed back into Cairns, but unfortunately there was no wind and we had crawled back at a snail’s pace under power. Sailing is great, but motoring along in a sail boat sucks!
The sun just beat down on us, and there was no breeze to give us any relief. I was starting to think that one of those catamarans with a helicopter pad seemed like a great idea. I’m pretty sure that Engogirl and I would have been happy to spend a couple hundred dollars just to get off the boat. Again, I found myself thinking about the crew, and how they did this day after day. On the surface of things, it might seem to be a dream job, working on a charter yacht on the Great Barrier Reef, but I’m pretty sure that the nitty-gritty, salty, sweaty, stinky reality, would pall pretty quickly.
On the way back, I was chatting with the diving instructor (Frank), and he told me about some of the jobs that he had. He had worked in Mauritius and in Thailand at resorts before he’d come to Australia. Frank had said that there was a high burnout rate with diving instructors in Cairns working on the large boats. Apparently, the large boats work like assembly lines, with all of the different parts of the dives divided up amongst the various instructors. The multitude of divers on board are broken up into smaller groups, and there is one instructor checking their group’s gear on board, plus two more in the water, checking on the punters as they enter the water. Then there are two other drivers who act as guides for the groups.
It all sounded like an expensive nightmare to me.
By the time we got back into port, all of us couldn’t get off the boat fast enough. It was obvious that everybody had, had enough of the heat, and just wanted to go and have a shower and cool down. As we left, we were asked to sign the guest book and make a comment, so I wrote, ” it was hot….. in so many ways”. Later on in the day I found out it was one of the hottest days recorded.
Both Engogirl and I are glad that we went and dived on the reef before climate change completely destroys it, but would we do it again?
I spent about two years in South-east Asia travelling around in the tropics, I’ve been to Tahiti, Central America, Florida, Peurto Rico, The Virgin Islands and now that I’ve dived on the Great Barrier Reef, I can safely say that, “if I never visit the tropics again, it will be too soon”. Both my wife and I know we don’t belong in the tropics and it’s gotten to such a point that when I see those sandy beaches fringed with palm trees and clear blue skies all I can think of, is physical discomfort.
It was so good to go to an air-conditioned hotel to have a shower, cool down and have a decent nights sleep.
This last weekend, my wife and I went down to Wombeyan Caves, 180kms south of Sydney to meet up with some friends and go camping. Instead of going down the freeway via Gouldburn we went down to Mittagong, and then cut across to the west along 60 km of winding dirt road. We like to take the back roads, but in this case, I think we made a mistake as the road is very narrow, and quite dangerous due to poor visibility around corners. The next two photos will give non-Australian visitors to this blog an idea of how dry most of the countryside is in this area.
All the same it was an interesting trip to pass through an area covered in dry sclerophyll forest that is in rain shadow caused by the Great Dividing Range. To call the Great Dividing Range, “Great”, is a bit of a joke because it only rises to about 2,000m at its greatest height, but it does affect rain reaching further inland from the coast. Although many of areas along the eastern coast of New South Wales have received a lot of rainfall lately, there are still many areas that are quite dry.
On Friday night, we after we had set up camp we sat around the campfire with our friends, Brad and Linda and my wife’s uncle Ray. All of us love camping, and we don’t care what the weather is like so when it started to rain we just got out a plastic sheet and sat under it.
To be honest, I don’t really care much for caves, as I feel once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.
But Wombeyan Caves has a very good camp ground, and it was great to get out of town for the weekend and catch up with some friends. One of the things that I really love about camping is sitting around a fire at night. Ray brought along a guitar and kept us entertained with well played hits from his youth.
He did a very passable rendition of Peter Sarstedt’s classic hit, “Where do you go to my lovely” (about the easiest way to find this song is on the soundtrack CD of the movie The Darjeeling Limited)
I have a friend called Brett, who lives in Adelaide, South Australia, near some of the very best wine producing areas in this country.
Several months ago, Brett contacted me because he was in a bit of a bind with a purchase of a second hand guitar that he had made over the Internet. The guitar was an Epiphone Explorer bass that didn’t come with a case and it was sold on the condition that it was to be picked up by the purchaser. Trouble was, Brett lives in Adelaide and the guitar was in Sydney so he rang me up to ask me to go and have a look at it, to inspect its condition; pick it up, and then wrap it up for shipment by air to him.
The guitar was in the excellent condition that it was advertised and so I picked it up. Being a bass guitar meant that it had an extra long neck and to be honest, it was huge. Another thing that caused me concern was that the headstock bent back further back than the very back of the body of the guitar so that when it was laid down, the headstock was supporting the weight of the guitar. I just didn’t think that wrapping it in bubble wrap and cardboard was going to get it to Adelaide in one piece, so I rang Brett and told him about my fears for his new guitar. Unfortunately, because the guitar was so big, the carry cases for them quite rare, and therefore they cost quite a bit more than normal cases, so I offered to make him a wooden carry case for it.
Brett’s father owns an upholstery business, and as such, Brett has access to the materials to cover the case with, and the hardware to hold it together.
In the meantime, my friend Mark was going back to his home town of Adelaide (Mark and Brett grew up together) for a short trip, so he offered to take the guitar in its case to Brett.
Brett was very happy with the job that I did for him and he rang me up to thank me and to see if there was anything he could do for me.
I know that Brett has a large wine collection of very high quality Australian wines, so I said to him, half jokingly, just bring around a bottle of ”Hill of Grace” (one of very the best wines made in Australia, at any price, which I know he has quite a bit of) next time he is in Sydney, knowing full well that probably wouldn’t happen for quite a while and that would let him off the hook feeling obliged.
Brett surprised me by replying that he would be coming to Sydney at the end of October for Mark’s upcoming wedding and that he would be bringing a few bottles of wine with him.
As a rule, I don’t really have that much time for the whole wine wanker scene. I consider myself a bit of a wine philistine in that I don’t believe that one should spend a lot of money on things that one probably wouldn’t appreciate anyway, just for a pose. Having said that, I have three friends who have extensive knowledge about wine and large collections who have patiently dragged me, kicking and screaming like the low class trailer trash that I am, into a better understanding of oenophilia.
Over the last couple of years, my friend Peter (who collects wines), has been generous enough to share his knowledge and wine with me. So it was with great pleasure I was able to invite him to a barbecue at my place on this coming Sunday with Brett and his wife to enjoy the wine that was coming.
Last night, Brett sent me an e-mail with a photograph of the wines that he is bringing, so I looked them up on the Internet to find out a bit more about them, to try and gauge what I should cook to go with such wines.
I got the shock of my life when I found out more about the wines that Brett is going to be bringing along.
The wine is worth at least twice as much as the guitar and one of the bottles, the 1992 Wendoree Shiraz Malbec is quite rare, and is considered by many to be a spectacular wine.
The 1994 Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz is of such quality and fame that puts it in a price range that I thought I would never ever get to taste.
The 1993 Turkey Flat Shiraz is made from some of the oldest shiraz vines in the world. Apparently, the original Shiraz vines in France were wiped out by phyloxia (a nematode) , and that modern French shiraz vines have been grafted to the root stock of a native American variety of grape from the Mississippi region. Which is ironic because the nematodes were first brought to Europe from America. It seems that the French had to import their current shiraz vines from here in Australia, South Africa and South America.
As I write this, it makes me think about the famous Australian bush walker, Paddy Pallin, who once said, something along the lines of, “if you know the names of a few trees, when you look at the bush, it’s not just bush any more”. I’m starting to feel that way about wine, in that the more I know about it, the more interested I become in it and therefore, the more I enjoy and think about it when I drink it.
So to make sure that I do justice to Brett’s generosity in sharing his fabulous wines (that I don’t deserve), I will be going out and buying the absolute best piece of meat to barbecue for us this Sunday. Probably the best meat to barbecue (I have a kettle style Webber barbecue that burns charcoal) that you can buy here in Sydney would be a whole Scotch fillet of organically grown, aged Angus beef.
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