World Beating

A new Verdant beer to try, always an exciting time round our way, I even hosted it in a new glass gifted to me by my Son and his Girlfriend from their recent trip to Vietnam, 7Bridges is a brewery based in Da Nang and have taprooms throughout the country. The beer was delicious a 4% pale ale with Citra and Nectaron hops, tropical, citrus and pine were my take-aways, presented with the characteristic murk from all the oats and flaked wheat that the Verdant guys use, having recently sampled some top ales in Asia and Australia this one is easily up there with them if not a nose or two in front, a world beater.

Friday Smirk

The boys this week talking about making use of religious spaces for other things. Sounds like a good idea to me, might as well use them for something useful before they are re-absorbed by nature and crumble away.

Hops of my dreams?

While out for my daily walk today I came across these fellas. I had to do a double-take, but yep, they're wild hops! I grabbed a couple of cones and sniffed them, the yellow lupulin glands were there but I don't think they were quite ripe just yet. Still, they smelt like hops, slightly citrus, earthy with some kind of spice edge I couldn't quite place. Fascinating, I wonder how they got there? Maybe I should harvest them and make a beer, perhaps they're some new hybrid that's going to take the beer world by storm and I'll make a fortune, or maybe not..

Asian & Antipodean Adventures - VII

 

Having used up our time in Melbourne we hopped on a flight to Perth WA, it's a longer flight than I thought, I snapped the picture of the seat-back screen I was watching (above), about half way across the Great Australian Bight, overall the flight  took around three and a half hours. I hadn't realised before we went there but Perth is one of the most isolated capital cities in the world, it's nearest large city is Adelaide over 1300 miles away, only Honolulu is more physically isolated but isn't as remote if you look at the sheer distance-to-population ratio.

We took a few trips from Perth, one of them was out to a place called "Caversham" (I guess named after the place near where we live in Berkshire) There we visited a wildlife park, my wife is very keen on Koala Bears, having held on at a park in Queensland back in 1998, so we had to see some Koalas. Fortunately the park had loads of them and uber-cute they were too! I snapped quite a few pictures while we were there but I think the one below captures the lazy-life of this popular marsupial, it's food is do energy poor that it has to sleep around 20 hours per day (a bit like Human teenagers then?)

We saw quite a few other Australian critters while at the park, the picture below shows a Kangaroo mum, you can just about see the joey (and its long legs!) in her pouch..

One of the rarer and more elusive of the mammals that we saw was a Red Tree Kangaroo, I hadn't even known such a thing existed but there it was, climbing up and down the trees. The light seemed to catch the fur at the edges and illuminate the hairs so that it looks like the animal was photoshopped onto the scene, but I can assure you it's real! (see below)

There were a ton of other interesting animals to be seen so I've assembled this little collage (below) to summarize them, it was a great day out at the park and at the end we hailed an Uber to take us back to our hotel for a quick shower before heading out to our adopted beer bar for a cold one and a bite to eat.

While in Perth we also took the ferry up the Swan River to Freemantle, originally a separate community it's now been absorbed into greater Perth but it still has a very "Victorian" colonial character, home to the major container port for the area it's also an education hub with a couple of universities located there. I also managed to find a little craft beer spot to sample a couple of brews while waiting for the return ferry.

In Freemantle there's a really good Maritime Museum, we spent a good hour wandering around that looking at the exhibits, everything from immigration to fishing to whaling as well as some cultural artifacts from the original inhabitants through to the Americas Cup winner as well as more recent waves of arrivals from Europe, Asia and Africa, it was an interesting place that covered a lot of ground. I snapped one of the buildings on the high street in Freemantle, I don't think I ever saw a more Victorian/Australian looking building (below).

There was quite a good craft beer scene in Perth as well as some stunning wines from the Margaret River area which is a couple of hundred miles to the south of the city, more about that in the next part.

Asian & Antipodean Adventures - VI

There's a fair bit of "art" in Melbourne, street art in particular and the city centre is made up of narrow "lanes" between buildings (think Brighton) some of these have been handed over to graffiti artists to decorate, some of it is amazing. I particularly liked this Koala, more on Koalas later.

So, while eating lunch on our bike tour I got chatting to our guide, a really nice young chap called Leo, I was saying how crazy the price was for our hotel to provide a car to take us to the vineyards in the Yarra valley and he offered to do it for a third of the price in his own car, the only caveat was that he wanted to bring his girlfriend, of course we said and the date was booked!

Leo dutifully picked us up from our hotel and we drove up to the winery that we wanted to visit, Yarra Yering one of my favourite Australian wine producers. We had a great chat with the youngsters in the car, they were the same age (roughly) as our kids and were really engaged and interested in hearing about their lives. Leo was one of these people who work hard but also have an adventurous life, he worked at least 3 jobs (including bike tour guide) but occasionally took six months off to travel, he told us all about his latest trip to the "Stans" in Asia, sometimes he climbs a mountain (to cycle down!) He had a keen business head too, I reckon he'll go far, and if he doesn't it won't matter, he'll have thoroughly enjoyed the ride. It made us think about things, perhaps Leo had it right, maybe being a slave to salary and career (like we were) isn't the best way to go, anyway we quickly sidelined the philosophical stuff once a dozen glasses of delicious wine were plonked in front of us!!

In the photo above you can see our empty tasting sheet, each one of the circles would be covered by a glass of the wine whose name appears in the circle. Of course (as is normal with private tastings) we had a couple of extras, interesting stuff that was open and our host was keen for us to try.

Here's the same tasting sheet full of glasses, proper glasses too, none of this thick cheap stuff, lead crystal from Austria, Riedel in fact even though they had been etched with the name of the producer. You can't see it in this picture but we also had a plate of lovely cheeses (and crackers) to pair with the tasting, and again, I was really impressed with Australian cheese, I reckon it would even fool a Frenchman!

Here are some of the wines we tried, combinations of Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay plus a few other varietals and blends, a splendid selection. I also loved the vertical of their flagship wine (imaginatively named "Dry Red Number 1") which is a "Bordeaux Blend" i.e. Cab-Sav, Merlot and Petit-Verdot, the head wine maker changed during the vintages that we tasted, and you could really taste the effect on the style, both nice but personally I preferred the older style.

The view from the tasting room was pretty spectacular, in the foreground the vines and in the background the rolling hills of the Yarra valley, we even saw a Kangaroo hopping around, I snapped the picture below to show this view.

Once completed (2 hours later) Leo drove by and picked us up, driving us back into the city and dropping us off at our hotel. Later that evening we treated him to a slap up Chinese meal in the City (which only cost 20 quid each) and bid our farewells, what a nice bloke. Street art of Koala bears and Kangaroos hopping around whetted our appetite for some wildlife viewing, we'd run out of time in Melbourne so that would have to wait until our next destination, Perth was calling, more on that in the next part.

Asian & Antipodean Adventures - V

 

I must say that I hadn't expected Melbourne to be such a high-rise kinda place but there were a ton of sky-scrapers in the city including the hotel we were staying in. The reception was on the 80th floor! It was slightly weird, felt like being in an aircraft. I snapped a picture from the reception window (see above) it was one hell of a view! What you can see is the "Marvel Stadium" and the docks behind, the railway station in the foreground is the "Southern Cross Station" (the largest in Melbourne apparently) the thread of water winding its way out to the sea is the Yarra River, more on that in later posts.

On one of the days in Melbourne we took a bicycle tour around the city, it was around 15 km in total with a nice long stop for lunch. We covered a fair bit of ground, mostly flat but with a few hills, fortunately the bikes had "power assist", i.e. a battery and motor that kicked in as you peddled which helped a lot. One of the sights that we passed was the MCG or Melbourne Cricket Ground, a holy place for cricket fans, I snapped a picture from afar (see below) although we did have a little peek in from one of the stands a bit later in the tour.

I was surprised to learn that the stadium holds more than 100,000 people and the locals refer to it as "The G", very impressive, no wonder the Aussies more often than not beat us in the Ashes!

I liked Melbourne, it wasn't as "pretty" as Sydney but I think it had more character, a little rough around the edges but the pubs and restaurants seemed a little more "organic" if you know what I mean. The city is well known for it's love of craft coffee, but it also loves craft beer! We visited quite a few little craft nooks and crannies, I snapped one of my favourites below,  "Beermash" in the Collingwood district.

On one of the days in Melbourne we took a little tour of one of my favourite Australian wineries, Yarra Yering, it was only an hour out of the city but the tasting there was fab, more about that in the next post.

Asian & Antipodean Adventures - IV

 

After the food tour we dropped into the Sydney Brewery tap room for a cold one, classic craft beer vibes, friendly staff, good food and tasty beer, couldn't want much more TBH. Sydney was clearly quite keen on it's craft beer, there were a several breweries in the city, and most of the pubs/bars we tried had some kind of craft offering, probably a higher percentage than most UK cities. As previously mentioned there was even a brewery down the road from our hotel in "The Rocks"; while there I snapped a picture of their beer board (see below)

"Aussie Draught" was simply a Pilsner style lager and the prices were similar to London, i.e. the conversion from Australian Dollars to Sterling is about 2-1 so the top beer on this list is around £7 a pint. We also had a little day trip out to a town called Manley, a beach town located around 45 minutes away from downtown via a regular ferry. The town itself was a little scruffy (think Blackpool but with Sunshine) but the beaches were pristine.

The photo above shows the town beach, really clean and well life-guarded the water on the right hand side is the Southern Pacific rather than Sydney Harbour, it looked really warm and inviting but unfortunately I didn't have my trunks with me! We walked around the headland to another secluded beach where there was a well known beach bar/restaurant; we sat in the Sunshine eating delicious fish tacos, drinking a nice cold XPA and watching beach-life in full swing, if you are a fan of beaches and the surf life-style you could do a lot worse than living here!

Just around the headland from our hotel was a place called "Darling Harbour", this inlet used to be called "Long Cove" but was renamed bay in 1826 by Lieutenant-General Ralph Darling who was the Governor of New South Wales at the time. Today its an entertainment hub and borders onto the Financial District of the city, very modern, lots of restaurants and museums along with a large sea-life centre and aquarium etc. we spent a whole afternoon walking around with a stop for lunch.

Pretty soon it was time to move on, we'd had 5 days in Sydney and loved it, the weather was good, the food and drink various and tasty and the people super friendly but Melbourne beckoned. Our last day arrived and we hopped in a taxi to the airport and a short flight down to Victoria and it's capital city, more about that in Part V.

Asian & Antipodean Adventures - III

 

On our third day in Sydney we headed out to the Surrey Hills suburb for a food tour, it's a district that's kind of like Camden or Peckham in London, expensive but still with a bit of an "edge", lot's of pop up restaurants and hipster bars a good location for a little food tour! We met up with our guide and discovered that she wasn't Australian at all but a French lady who had married an Ozzy and settled in Sydney, this was quite good as I reckoned that French people know a thing or two about food and she was originally from Lyon, probably the food capital of France! 

Anyway, we had a nice walk around in the sunshine, stopping off at 8 different locations to try typical Sydney fare. I think it's fair to say that the main thrust of the food there is "fusion", a melding of different food traditions from the various waves of foreign immigration that have built the city over the last 200 years. For example in the picture above (left to right) we have prosciutto (Italian) layered on top of a donut (minus the sugar) with herbs and Tapenade, a nice lunch bite! Then we have deep fried Courgette flowers (kind of like Tempura) finishing with custard tarts with Pistachio nuts a mix of Portuguese and Greek influences.

The tour was a big success, we had great fun trying the different dishes, the guide was interesting and knowledgeable and the weather was kind!

Next up was a boat trip out to Manley, a small town on the edge of the harbour facing the South Pacific Ocean, there's a few shops there and some wonderful beaches. With a regular ferry into Circular Quay (downtown Sydney) that only takes 40 minutes it's also a commuter town. We visited on a Saturday so the place was packed with people, the weather was great and the beaches full of folks enjoying the weekend. We walked along the coastal path to a beach-front restaurant where we had some great seafood and a couple of ice-cold craft beers, idyllic!

On our penultimate day we walked around to Darling Harbour, the financial and entertainment district. We visited the aquarium and had some cold ones in one of the many harbour-side restaurants, the place was buzzing and full of Chinese people attending some kind of conference. After a final dinner in one of the French restaurants in "The Rocks" we slept soundly and awoke to packing up our suitcases and heading to the airport for a flight to Melbourne, more about that in part IV.. 

Asian & Antipodean Adventures - II

 

We arrived in Sydney early in the morning and couldn't properly check into our hotel so we left the bags there and headed out to explore. We were staying quit close to the Harbour and so the most obvious walk to take was down to the water and along the footpath surrounding the wharf. I snapped the classic view of the opera house as we walked past (above) and then the harbour bridge a little further round (below) It was quite surreal, having seen these landmarks hundreds of times on TV and in magazines etc. to see them in the flesh didn't seem real, it was a lovely day too and quite warm even though it was their Springtime and temperatures can get as low as 10-15 centigrade.

After a long walk, a couple of coffees and a look around the shops on George street I got a text from the hotel saying that our room was ready and so we headed back to unpack and settle in. I paid extra for a "Harbour View", and it certainly didn't disappoint, the photo below is the view from our room, something that I would imagine would be hard to get bored of.

The scene above shows "The Rocks" which is a small area next to Circular Quay that was the original Sydney settlement, it has a bunch of old buildings, mainly Victorian but some dating back to the early 1800s, and is now a tourist hot spot with plenty of restaurants, bars and boutique shops, I even found craft beer taproom (Endeavour Tap Rooms), somewhere we frequented a several times since it was only 5 minutes walk from our hotel (more on that later). It was a busy area but the vibe was friendly, we had a couple of meals there which were good albeit quite expensive. On one of our evenings in Sydney we didn't feel like a full meal so we visited a little wine bar nearby, we had a lovely bottle of Torbreck Barossa Shiraz called "The Struie" and a cheese platter (Australian cheese was a revelation!), it was singing, pure red fruit forward, classic Ozzy flavours with a slight spice edge, really good stuff, must look out for this producer when I'm back home! I snapped a picture of the bottle for future reference, see below.

While in Sydney we took a tour of the Opera House, I wanted to see what it was like inside and up close, it's an amazing building with a rather sad story of political meddling. The original Danish architect (Jørn Oberg Utzon ) was fired by a politician (Davis Hughes) half way through the build owing to costs overrunning and arguments about the final design, he never returned to Australia and died before he could visit his masterpiece. It's an amazing building, the sail like structures are composed of pre-fabricated concrete blocks and fitted together like Lego (see picture below) all these elements were original and new at the time, a truly unique structure.

The outside of the building is covered in ceramic tiles, a novel solution to the problem of discoloration due to pollution, the tiles are self-cleaning, I snapped a picture of them (see below)

We had some great times in downtown Sydney, good food, wine and interesting tours but after a couple of days we felt  the need to explore a little further afield so we booked a little food tour of one of the suburbs and a boat trip over to Manley, a beach town on the South Pacific Ocean, I'll tell you all about these in the next installment Part III