Travelgal on the move

Accommodation, Australia, City stays, History, Road trip

Tasmanian ancestral home beckons

June 18, 2018June 15, 2018by bmalzardLeave a Comment

It was a dark and stormy night. How often do you get to say that and it’s true?

And it was a dark and stormy night as Hobart, the Tasmanian capital was lashed by one of the worst storms in decades.

We drove from Freycinet into Hobart as the weather picked up momentum – rain and wind worsening as we closed in on the city.

And then to find our accommodation. The gps took us up a winding road and we were high above the city that was starting to look like it was disappearing under a blanket of swirling mist.

And here we are. At Corinda.

This glorious old home was built by Alfred Crisp, a well-to-do timber merchant who rose through the social ranks to become Lord Mayor of Hobart. And when Julian Roberts and Chaxi Afonso Higuera recently bought Corinda in Hobart’s Glebe, they were doing much more than simply acquiring a new business. Alfred Crisp was Julian’s great, great grandfather, so when the opportunity presented itself Julian brought Corinda back into the family.

After the Roberts bought the Victorian property, which was built on land previously used for a convict-run vegetable garden, they spent several months refurbishing and adding their personal touches. Guests stay in sumptuous heritage rooms featuring exquisite joinery crafted from fine Tasmanian timbers, such as huon pine and blackwood, as well as luxurious textiles and one of a kind antiques.

We fell in love with Corinda straight away, and not only because we were given shelter from the storm.

We carried our bags upstairs to the sound of our footsteps clashing with the well-trod stairs, just a few creaks to remind us that our feet were among hundreds that had climbed up over the years.

We could hear the rain pounding the windows as the wind from the south punished the front of the house. Our bedroom was warm and cosy and the bathroom was a stylish addition to the closed-in side verandah. And that’s where the force of the weather showed itself. The wild wind had found tiny openings and was pushing the rain under the door and between the window panes.

It’s an old house and is in excellent repair but this crazy storm tried every trick in the book to disturb its equilibrium.

And the best it could do was to try to flood our bathroom, but we stopped it in its tracks with old school shoring up – towels. And that did the job.

It was hard to leave our room as we had settled in but we had to head down town for a dinner. We parked in the Salamanca area and ran through mad rain til we reached our foodie destination. It wasn’t until after dinner that we realised that we were in a critical situation – the road was beginning to flood. We shot through then!

The next day as we loitered over our eggs and bacon and barista coffee we heard the news that the roads were closed, and the schools in the immediate vicinity of the city were closed too.

The storm had run its course and left a heap of damage behind. I wonder how many storms Corinda has witnessed – and survived to tell the tale.

Next night we decided that the house was too good to leave so we had drinks in the elegant drawing-room. Without a reservation desk and staff bustling around, it feels as if you have the grand home to yourself, we didn’t but it seemed so.

We even had a pizza delivered to Corinda rather than leave our precious comfort behind.

While Julian and Chaxi were new to Corinda, they are far from new to hospitality. Between them they have more than 20 years’ experience in hotel management, gained in establishments in the UK as well as Australia. Now settled in Tasmania, they’re using that experience to their advantage on home ground. For example, they source the finest local produce for the Corinda breakfast table. Guests can wake up to fresh free-range eggs and organic bacon, served with home-made bread and locally produced jams.

The property is famous for its lush landscaping, with many mature trees and shrubs as well as European-style parterre areas. The garden has always been maintained in the style in which Alfred Crisp created it and provides a verdant outdoor setting for weddings and other events (weather permitting). Group walking tours of the garden can be booked on request.

Corinda is the perfect base for those wanting to explore Southern Tasmania’s world -class attractions including MONA and World Heritage-listed Port Arthur. Corinda’s sister property, boutique country house hotel Brockley, is situated on the spectacular East Coast of Tasmania, and is ideal for those wanting to extend their Tasmanian break to include Maria Island and Freycinet National Parks.

We continued the act of loitering around the breakfast table, having yet another excellent coffee. Then out for a drive to Richmond for a little more history and hopefully, a sunny day. And it was.

Writer, Bev Malzard was a guest of Corinda. And it wasn’t her who ate all the nuts at the bar in the drawing-room . . . or maybe it was.

www.corindacollection.com.au www.brockleyestate.com.au

Note from the owners

‘We’re excited about welcoming guests to Corinda, which truly epitomises the beauty of unspoilt historic Tasmania. It’s our ancestral home, so we were thrilled to be able to buy it, bring it back into the family and refresh it. Now that the hard work is done, we’re looking forward to sharing Corinda’s heritage and history with our guests.’

Special offer: Guests can stay for four nights in the house and only pay for three from April – October 2018. Direct bookings only and date exclusions apply. Please check www.corindacollection.com.au for more information.

Cooking School: Later in 2018 Corinda will be launching its cooking school where classic, authentic Spanish/Canary Islands cuisine including paella will be shared the way they should be. Recipes Chaxi learnt sitting on her grandmother’s knee will a part of the curriculum. Lunch will be served in the dining room at Corinda with Tassie fine wines to accompany the feast.

Uluru – for light and love

June 11, 2018June 12, 2018by bmalzardLeave a Comment

Field of Light Uluru - Landscape (1)

About 20 years ago I caught a bus from Alice Springs, a town in the heart of Australia to see what was then called Ayers Rock, the grand monolith that sits in the centre of Australia like an anchor – tied to the ground holding the continent in place.

For some reason the area was in my head as somewhere I had been before but like many Australians who think they have seen it – I was fooled too by the mystery and pictures in my head that had been pasted into my brain for decades. I hadn’t seen it until I did see it.

Voyages_291117_246266

Shhhhhhh, Sounds of Silence dinner setting.

I had been in the bus trundling long for about three hours, nodding off along the way when I looked up and across the flat terrain, empty except for a few wan She Oak trees, a light breeze wafting through their scrappy, spiky tendrils . . . and there was the rock.

A sight for hungry eyes, the great red blister on the horizon beckons. Also known as Ayers Rock but now officially gazetted as Uluru. The monster rock is an ‘inselberg’, literally an island mountain. Uluru is sacred to the Pitjantjara Ananagu, the Aboriginal peoples of the area.

Voyages_291117_246485

The area around Uluru hosts waterholes, caves and ancient paintings.

(Uluru is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Uluru and Kata Tjuta also known as The Olgas are the major natural features of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta Ntional Park.)

So if you have not visited the beating heart of Australia, or maybe long to return there’s no better time than the present.

Following are three fab reasons and experiences to head to the Outback now.

INSIDER’S GUIDE TO EXPLORING ULURU

Uluru’s ultimate dining experiences

Silence is golden

It’s hard to believe that 25 years ago some bright spark created the unique experience of fine dining in the Australian desert, under the stars in a world of silence.

Yes, the Sounds of Silence is celebrating a quarter century anniversary and since the beginning privileged guests encountered a vast and glorious canopy of stars that look down on Uluru, the resorts, visitors, local clans, soft silent sands and a few gently chattering diners.

ARR_DIN_SOS_ASmart_Stars

It is at this ultimate dining experience, with toes in the sand, where guests are surprised by fine food and wine and then, if they are lucky, they’ll have their first sighting of the Rings of Saturn via a telescope in a cloudless black-sky night. And here be welcomed to country by the haunting sounds of the didgeridoo. And here let your heart swell as you acknowledge that you are in the centre of Australia and are immersed in an experience of a lifetime.

The Sounds of Silence dinner continues to thrill . . . and yes, the stars still twinkle, the food, wine and service shine and celestial beings murmur the quiet, spiritual surround sounds.

Visit: https://www.ayersrockresort.com.au/experiences/detail/sounds-of-silence

Dessert in the Dunes

You will pinch yourself. Just sit quietly and take it all in – all is the unusual, the wonder and the awesomeness (and that word isn’t used lightly here). You are about to tuck into a brilliant, gourmet meal beginning with canapés while the light holds, then on to a particularly amusing bouche, then an entrée of Moreton Bay Bugs (can it get any better?) followed by wagyu beef. And in anticipation of a dessert on its way of rosella & lychee petit gateaux you draw breath and take in your surrounds.

UKTNP_DIN_TW_ASmart_01 (Rosella and Lychee Petit Gateaux)

You are in the middle of the ultimate dining experience of Tali Wiru in a natural setting in the Red Centre.

Tali Wiru means ‘beautiful dune’ in the local Anangu language and that’s exactly where you are.

Under the crisp night sky this is an open-air, exclusive restaurant like no other. Uluru and the distant silhouette of the Kata Tjuta domes are your walls.

And as each course is delivered, with carefully matched wines to your table, just imagine the unseen chef – who is cooking this splendid feast by the light of a lantern . . . true.

No dining feast matches Tali Wiru and the impeccable service comes with a smile – or are they just smiling at your bewilderment at being here. Lucky you.

Visit: https://www.ayersrockresort.com.au/experiences/detail/tali-wiru

Let there be light

At Uluru, the lights are on. At the spiritual heart of Australia, as the sun sets at twilight the remote desert area within sight of ‘the rock’ is illuminated by 50,000 globes that have been ‘planted’ in the sand and they glow by the strength of solar-powered optic fibres.

This extraordinary installation is the brainchild of British artist Bruce Munro (pictured below), who with his team of locals installed thousands of slender stems crowned with frosted glass spheres.

Be in the light and for an unparalleled experience, ‘A Night at Field of Light’, combines the Sounds of Silence dinner experience with the once-in-a-lifetime Field of Light art installation. The soft lights spread across the desert floor behind you, and you’ll tuck into a tasty three-course buffet menu before you’re invited to immerse yourself in the Field of Light with its pathways glistening with rhythms of coloured light inviting you to explore.

Field of Light Uluru - Orange Sky

This monumental work of art was created and produced by many. The other-worldly feeling here evokes an emotional response of joy and maybe a little melancholy – perhaps that was Munro’s aim.

Ayers Rock Resort Aerial

Ayers Rock Resort.

Visit the Red Centre to see Uluru now, and win the trifecta – these three ultimate experiences will satisfy the soul.

The Field of Light installation will be happening until December 2020.

Visit: https://www.ayersrockresort.com.au/events/detail/field-of-light-uluru

http://www.brucemunro.co.uk/installations/field-of-light/

Writer, Bev Malzard managed to fit this terrific trio of Outback experiences over a three day trip. She also ambitiously rode a pushbike around Uluru. There was a lot of puffing and grunting. She completed the circuit – and doubts she’ll ever do this again. Once was enough,

Uluru’s ultimate dining experiences

Silence is golden

It’s hard to believe that 25 years ago some bright spark created the unique experience of fine dining in the Australian desert, under the stars in a world of silence.

The Sounds of Silence dinner continues to thrill . . . and yes, the stars still twinkle, the food, wine and service shine and celestial beings murmur the quiet, spiritual surround sounds.

Visit: https://www.ayersrockresort.com.au/experiences/detail/sounds-of-silence

Dessert in the Dunes

You are in the middle of the ultimate dining experience of Tali Wiru in a natural setting in the Red Centre.

Tali Wiru means ‘beautiful dune’ in the local Anangu language and that’s exactly where you are.

Under the crisp night sky this is an open-air, exclusive restaurant like no other. Uluru and the distant silhouette of the Kata Tjuta domes are your walls.

And as each course is delivered, with carefully matched wines to your table, just imagine the unseen chef – who is cooking this splendid feast by the light of a lantern . . . true.

No dining feast matches Tali Wiru and the impeccable service comes with a smile – or are they just smiling at your bewilderment at being here. Lucky you.

Visit: https://www.ayersrockresort.com.au/experiences/detail/tali-wiru

Let there be light

At Uluru, the lights are on. At the beating spiritual heart of Australia, as the sun sets at twilight the remote desert area within sight of ‘the rock’ is illuminated by 50,000 globes that have been ‘planted’ in the sand and they glow by the strength of solar-powered optic fibres.

This extraordinary, unique installation is the brainchild of British artist Bruce Munro, who with his team of locals installed thousands of slender stems crowned with frosted glass spheres.

This monumental work of art was created and produced by many. The other-worldly feeling here evokes an emotional response of joy and maybe a little melancholy – perhaps that was Munro’s aim

If you have never visited the Red Centre to see Uluru, there is no better time than now – and to win the trifecta – these three ultimate experiences will satisfy the soul.

The Field of Light installation will be happening until December 2020.

Visit: https://www.ayersrockresort.com.au/events/detail/field-of-light-uluru

http://www.brucemunro.co.uk/installations/field-of-light/

Architecture, Art, History, Road trip, Travel

Where the art is – try a country town

June 4, 2018June 2, 2018by bmalzard2 Comments

What was guerilla art is now great art. Walls become artworks and sleepy lanes and behind the scene walls and silos the grand canvasses of rural towns. Once was graffiti, is now urban engagement and licence to paint the town red.

It probably began 45,000 years ago in Australia; community minded fellas worked their magic art on to the walls of caves to let passing nomads see what food was available, attractions in the region and objects to be found or maybe just to show off their talent. Rock art galleries started it all.

For thousands of years, human beings have made their mark upon plain surfaces, from stick men to tag-style graffiti.

And when someone criticized the wall vandals of the 80s with the sentence “Punks can’t spell Cappuccino”, that phrase became official graffiti and the wall expression medium had arrived, evolved and gained acceptance by the less-than-art-critical-public.

Melbourne art works.

Pre ‘acceptable’ wall art in New York City, of the 70s gave birth to excessive public graffiti – think subway trains. In one of his essays back in the day, Norman Mailer said New York subway graffiti is “the great art of the 70s”. And it burned brightly until Mayor Ed Koch. elected on a clean-up-the-city every which way platform, scrubbed clean the city. By the mid-80s NYC graffiti had faded quietly and what was left or came later became the acceptable norm.

Melbourne outdoor art.

Across the Atlantic, enigmatic artist Banksy launched his wall art career in his home town, Bristol. Stencils became his medium as his art gained notoriety on a big scale in the late 1990s.

Banksy’s work sneaks up on you. Characteristic of the works are the obvious digs at hypocrisy, violence, greed and authoritarianism but pathos and whimsy are in the creative makeup too.

And at home, wall art has changed the urban ‘artscape’ and rural regions. Australia is engaged with a stunning variety of wall/outdoor art that crept in stealthily during the late 90s too. Melbourne had the wall art advantage first up because of the surviving laneways in the inner city. And some of the most creative artists have emerged from the southern capital.

Sydney was a slow starter but every week another piece of excellent art appears on the walls in and around the inner west and on the edge of the CBD. Without a lot of laneways remaining due to concentrated development, the older suburbs snatched the prize.

The big winners for wall art are the small cities and rural towns of Australia with their untouched walls.

In previous blogs I have attended the amazing First Coat Festival in the Queensland tidy town of Toowoomba. I’ve followed wall art festivals to Wollongong south of Sydney, wandered the lanes of Melbourne and followed the fabulous Silo Art Trail in Victoria.

And once you get an interest in wall art/outdoor art there’s no turning back – you see it everywhere and become fans of certain artists. And when you see them at work and converse with them, you’ll find a group of young people who are modest, amiable and happy to share the love of this medium.

My last excursion into the rural artistic enclaves of Australia was to Benalla in Victoria for the /Wall to Wall’ Festival last March, the second one held there.

Benalla is a small city located on the Broken River in the High Country north-eastern region of Victoria, Australia, about 212km north-east of the state capital Melbourne. At the 2016 census the population was 9,298.

We drove from Sydney and overnighted at the pretty town of Rutherglen just over the border after driving through Albury.

Benalla is a town of character with great coffee shops a bakery that boasts numerous wards for having the best Vanilla Slice in Australia, good restaurants, beautiful Botanic Gardens and a splendid regional art galley.

We hit the street running to take in as many artworks as possible. Best view was watching the artists at work. They seem so small against the large canvasses they work on.

Benalla Art Gallery.

Outside of Benalla is a slip of a siding town called Goorambat where there a silo has been painted and in a wee Uniting church Matt Adnate has created the portrait Sophia’ which has become a local attraction.

‘Sophia’ by Matt Adnate.

I would encourage anyone to take the time out to get outta your city and explore our wonderful country towns as they are leading the way to colour in the bland residue of the dusty past. The towns are coming back to life and with the extraordinary support of the locals and visitors, they are more than an Aussie country town – they are performing on the world stage where art trails and maps are exposing the talent of the new breed of artists painting the town red!

Writer Bev Malzard nearly expired in the heat of the Benalla Wall to Wall weekend and hopes it might be a little later than March next year. BUT find out for yourself and keep in touch with what’s going on throughout the year in the town of the great vanilla slice – and yes, of course she ate one.

Visit: http://www.enjoybenalla.com.au Wall to Wall

Architecture, Glampring, History, Travel

Sydney: gets its glamp on!

May 15, 2018May 13, 2018by bmalzard1 Comment

Mmmm, damn traffic first thing in the morning. It’s only 7am. I open my eyes, crawl out of bed and check what is outside my accommodation. It’s a hydrofoil gliding past me on Sydney Harbour.
Waking up on an island in the harbour is a world away from one of the great cities of the planet. I’m on Cockatoo Island a mere ferry ride from the ‘mainland’ and the gateway city to Australia, Sydney, and sitting in a tent on an island that is chock full of history, a multi-layered past, a modern invitation and the odd ghost or two.
It is the largest island in the harbour (UNESCO World-Heritage- listed) that is up for a visit, a stay and the past and present to explore.
I’m in a cool little two-person tent on stretch bed, covered in a fluffy Donna, windows / flaps up to let the sunshine and the moonlight in. I’m ‘glamping’.

With winter almost upon Sydney, it’s the perfect time to come glamping on Cockatoo Island. Cool nights and sunny, blue sky days lend themselves to walks around the island to see each site where the history is on display. Nights are spent around the fire pit meeting new friends before zipping up for the night.

Glamping tent, Cockatoo Island. Credit Geoff Magee

Inside the glamping tent, Cockatoo Island Credit - Geoff Magee

There are lovely apartments to stay in too up on the top of the island and a home for families to fill.
Cockatoo Island was called Wareamah by the original people, of the Eora Nation.
The Eora people would paddle canoes from the mainland to the island to perform sacred ceremony. After colonisation the indigenous people were relegated to remote parts of the mainland.

During the years of early colonisation the island was a convict precinct with an horrendous prison history and you can see the amazing work done on the huge sandstone cuts done by hand by prisoners living on water and one meal a day between 1839-1869. Explore the sad, solitary cells and be grateful you weren’t around then – especially as a villain.

Convict Courtyard, Convict Precinct, Cockatoo Island. Credit - Zakarij Kacmarek

The precinct also housed some unfortunate girls in the reform school. The Biloela site is where you might meet your first ghosts.
The island was a productive and important as a major shipbuilding centre. There are fascinating tales to be read here of the dockyard workers.
The industrial, colonial and maritime history are part and parcel of the wonderful Cockatoo Island experience.

It’s also a fab venue for special events and festivals ( check out the website).
Visit the Dog Leg Tunnel Cinema and see historical videos of Cockatoo Island; activities for hire include tennis, basketball, quoits and croquet; you can watch volunteers bring the island’s machinery back to life at the Restoration Workshop; get your camera or your phone out to capture the gritty and grunty industrial buildings and the beautiful vistas of the surrounding harbour – share the images #cockatooisland; enjoy cafe life in one of the cafes and there are free electric barbecues near the Visitors Centre.

Fire Station Studio Interior 1. Credit - Geoff Magee. Courtesy Sydney Harbour Federation Trust

Garden Apartment Kitchen and Dining Area. Credit - Geoff Magee. Courtesy Sydney Harbour Federation Trust

It’s free to enter the island and the ferry is caught at Circular Quay.
So what do you fancy? Cosy glamping or perhaps luxury accommodation in a heritage house or apartment. Maybe a night in each . . . . for a million dollar view.

Writer Bev Malzard was a guest of the Harbour Trust’s Cockatoo Island. She walked the island during the day but was a scaredy cat and didn’t do the ghost walk.
FACT There are no cockatoos on Cockatoo Island.

Visit: Cockatoo Island

NSW transport

Travel

Bali: then and now

May 1, 2018May 1, 2018by bmalzard1 Comment

Our car swept into the hotel’s large arrival pavilion, and we walked into a vast, endless gallery of light and space, a breezeway of extraordinary proportions dotted with chairs of differing design and wonderful hanging objects of light shade designs.

This was the recently opened Hotel Indigo, Seminyak Bali. A five-star beauty. In the heat of the day we were offered a cooling drink, wet towels and sincere smiles of welcome.

Our room’s hero was the enormous bed, the bathroom had a shower with a nod to old Bali with a large, gold pitcher mimicking the ‘mandi’ style of the simple Bali way to bathe.

It was then it hit me, how things have changed, Well, of course I have changed in 30 years and so has Bali! I arrived here with a presentable piece of luggage and not a world-weary backpack. I was wearing linen pants and not a long cheesecloth skirt. And I was immediately unashamedly in love with this hotel.

Bali for a beginner

An earlier visit for me was a spontaneous decision to go to Bali when I found I had a secret stash of $500 in an old bank account. I had been back in Sydney for 10 months after living in Europe for three years. I was restless and needed to get away again. Bali it was. That $500 was a bloody fortune then.

I stayed at el cheapo places along the way when on the island; motels. guesthouses and losmens (a bit like homestay but in a family compound). The places cost no more than $2 a night. Came with a room, simple furnishings if any, a bed, overhead fan and a mandi. A mandi is a divine way to clean yourself. Usually round about a square metre concrete tub filled with clean water. You stand outside the tub, soap up then dip a pale or pitcher in the tub, scoop up the water and pour it over your head and body.

Cheeky monkey, and a minute later he grabbed hold of the top of my dress and dragged it down about my waist.

Travelling solo I met up with other girls and we ate together, went to the beach and one of them (from Canada) and I ended up in a tiny truck, sharing the back with large bundles of bamboo, a pig and an old lady with large holes in her pierced ears that held her rolled up money (notes). She kept on plucking at the blonde hair on my thighs and chuckling for the long journey

We arrived in Singaraja, an old Dutch port in the north of Bali to see a river crowded with rubbish and filth. This was my first encounter with a polluted river. Not much has changed in Indonesia.

River pollution in the 1980s . . .and it gets worse, right into the 21st century.

The beaches along the coast up north have black sand and the sea is warm. There were few tourists in town back in the day and most restaurants were tiny shopfronts selling basic but good nasi goreng and sates. But there was always a good breakfast even at the cheapies, fresh fruit, strong Bali coffee and flakey pastries.

Back down south to what was to become known as Bali’s cultural heart, Ubud. It was a sleepy village then, where bullock drawn carts crackled though the dirt roads, someone would be churning ice in a roadside cart making ‘icejuices’ (ice, condensed mild and fresh fruit) and where women still comfortably walked around with bare breasts as they went about their daily chores and placed pretty Hindu votives on the side of the road and at entrances to homes and shops.

Hardly another tourist in sight.

After two weeks in Bali I had $150 left over and ended up giving it to a guy with a motor bike whom I had hired to drive me to all the sites in and around Ubud. His response surprised me, he said that the money would keep his two daughters in school for a year. Sometimes you don’t know when you do a good deed.

Years on and $500 wouldn’t go so far. But Bali is still quite inexpensive.

And no longer do I sleep under rickety fans, eat for 50c at the beaches or get a baby oil massage on the sand and fry like a hot chip!

Ready to roast. What were we thinking?

At Hotel Indigo I swam in beautiful pools, sat in the shade under tropical foliage around one of the pools and the sun didn’t stand a chance with my 30 plus sunscreen.

Instead of drinking ‘java’ on the roadsides I sipped on Earl Grey tea in the beautiful Pottery Cafe at Hotel Indigo. Here all types of coffee is roasted and served. Choose from the wide variety of beans grown throughout Indonesia. But for me, it has to be tea in the afternoon because you have to eat scones, jam and cream with your soothing cuppa. The main restaurant is large and inviting with a visible kitchen and after experiencing dinner and breakfast (lunch was lazy hot chips by the pool), I could see how the hotel has lifted Bali’s culinary offerings. Beware the breakfast menu! After fruit, toast, eggs, and a few other delights, you think you’ve finished, then a sneaky fella turns up at your table with fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolat au pain – what can you do? And with the coffee roasting next door, a large cup is mandatory!

The hotel is opposite the beach at Seminyak, separated only by the road. So, with local design ambience and colour, the hotel has a typically local feel, but . . . everything is better on this side of the road.

Time flies, and my early hippie days were fun and frivolous, but older and not wiser now, the comfort of a beautiful hotel, the kindness of Balinese staff and the indulgence of a five-star experience beats the past. And if I feel nostalgic for the old days, I’ll just fill my elegant pitcher in my shower and pour water over my head.

Writer, Bev Malzard was a guest at Hotel Indigo Seminyak www.hotelindigo.com/Bali

And despite age and moving on from the past, she can still rock a cheesecloth skirt, but refuses to have an afro perm – one of her appearance fails in the early 1980s.

Travel

The Other Side of Everest

April 27, 2018by bmalzard2 Comments

I don’t usually share my blog with anyone else, but this one is powerful and I want to share this clear and honest piece of reporting – and this is about travel too. Shocking? Yes. A regular occurrence? Yes.

The Global Goddess

“Human trafficking is the second-most prolific organised crime on the planet after the weapons and the drug trade. But unlike drugs, a woman can be sold more than once and often many times in one day,” Sisterhood of Survivors, Kathmandu, Nepal
IN a pastel pink court building, the colour that little girls all over the world like to wear and a deep shade of irony, less than two per cent of Nepal’s human trafficking cases make up the Supreme Court caseload.
In the country’s District Court rooms, it’s less than 0.3 per cent. But there’s a blinding bullseye, one case that stands out from the rest. In March this year, in Nuwakot’s District Court in the country’s centre, one of Nepal’s sex trafficking ring leaders was sentenced to the nation’s harshest jail penalty in history.
Back in Kathmandu, in a basic brick structure adorned with hope, the women who helped…

View original post 1,305 more words

Travel

Anzac Day – Lest We Forget

April 24, 2018April 24, 2018by bmalzard3 Comments

In Australia (for my overseas readers) we honour the soldiers who fought for their country in past wars that they were involved in. On the 25th of April it’s Anzac (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) Day.

I’ve serendipitously arrived in countries that have similar traditions, Veterans Day in the USA, Ochi (No) Day in Greece plus Greece’s Independence Day and Armed Forces Day in Britain. And there must be many marches/processions around the globe – as there would be a rare country that wasn’t involved in a minor political skirmish or a major. all out war in the past or in the present..

Australian 1st Division troops march through the London streets on the anniversary of the first Anzac Day in 1916. Big Ben and The Houses of Parliament can be seen.

In Sydney in 1916, one year after WWI ended, wounded soldiers from Gallipoli attended the march in convoys of cars, attended by nurses.

I have a complicated emotional history with Anzac Day. When I was a child it was a tradition that we went to the march (always called ‘the march’) in Sydney – my mother, myself and my little sister. We would watch the veterans from the WWI on through to Korea march by or be transported in the back of an open car. We, and the thick crowd would clap and wave our flags. Waving at our father – for we knew not what. He had never spoken about the raid on Darwin which I found out he had been under serving as a young lad who lied about his age to join the army.

Darwin being bombed – 9 February 1942.

At the end of the long march, we would head to Hyde Park to eat sandwiches and drink cordial that my mother had made. Our father would join us before he headed off to the pub to meet up with his army buddies. To me this was a heady thing. Who were these men, what did they talk about. As a kid I had no concept of war and participated in Anzac Day like it was Christmas Day or the Queens Birthday – some sort of celebration.

Two young men went off to war, one went to the army (my father Bill Wroe) and one went to the navy (uncle Bert Wroe).

While my father was in the pub involved with secret men’s business we went up to Kings Cross – notorious for Bohemians and gangsters in the late 50s. My colourful aunty Jean had a flat there and somehow my mother and the aunties disappeared and us cousins just roamed the Kings X streets. We hung around the pubs as every space was taken up with blokes playing two-up. There was a lot of change dropped by careless punters and we cleaned up. The Greek fish’n’chip shop in Darlinghurst Road got most of the booty as we feasted on chips, scallops, and battered savs.

These were idyllic days. And never an inquiring mind when at my grandmother’s as I gazed at the oval picture frames holding images of my great uncles. My nan said that she “lost four of her brothers in the war” – and all I thought that how could you lose four men. Where did they get lost?

Marching in the 1950s.

But as I grew older and the Vietnam War was front of mind and claiming space in the nightly TV news, I became enraged at the idea of a lottery, a barrel full of names where a young man of 19 years of age would be stamped on a ticket and they would be conscripted into the army to go fight a war in Indochina where nobody of their tender age even knew where it was. So I turned my back on Anzac Day and protested in the streets against the war. This wasn’t about the soldiers, who when they returned to Australia were unfairly spurned and were given a hard time, it was about our engagement in this terrible war. When Gough Whitlam was elected to Prime Minister he declared that the war was over for Australian soldiers in Vietnam and they were to be brought home.

Sadly it was a few decades until the returned Vietnam vets were recognised and honoured for their service. And through those decades, many were fighting for compensation and assistance with the cancers they came back with from Agent Orange – a deadly poison dropped across the south Vietnamese paddy fields to starve the enemy. And many of those young men who came home died from cancer and now men into their late 60s are still suffering from PTSD.) What a dirty little war it was.

I softened towards Anzac day about 20 years ago when I was in Winton, a little town in the middle of Queensland – out the back of beyond. I had a few days there and one of those days was Anzac Day. I wanted to see how it played out in the country town.

I woke before dawn and walked to where the town’s War Memorial stood. There were probably about 30 people there. Two kids from the local Scout troop stood sentinel at the memorial, and a couple of soldiers who had driven down from Townsville (600km) were here. A couple of old guys in wheelchairs were attending wearing their best suits and rows of medals pinned to the left side. A ratty old tape recorder played a creaky version of the Last Post and as the final sound faded out a huge flock of budgerigars took to the sky as dawn was breaking. I felt my heart stop and a great sadness come over me. What were those old guys remembering?

Winton War Memorial.

Along the way I asked my father about the bombing of Darwin and he always kept it light but said “the bastards kept on coming”. Dad was on the Ack Ack guns, he found Darwin very hot and his mates a good bunch . . . that’s all I got.

It’s funny that in the mid 60s when my parents separated that my dad went back to Darwin to meet up with his foster-brother (our Uncle Alf) and except for rare visits to Sydney he lived in Darwin until he died in 1995.

With the constant barrage of news we suffer every day from television and social media it seems like the world is on fire with war hotspots. People going crazy with grief, going crazy with rage, going crazy with a lust for blood. Will it ever end? I think not.

Dad to Beverley and Dianne – Bill Wroe.

So for this coming Anzac Day let’s make it a day of remembrance for the fallen and for those who served and suffered. And importantly, remember the current/contemporary victims of war and how they flee their ragged and war-corrupted lands for a better and safer life – remember the grand deeds of our past – but there are less than grand and kind deeds occurring now. Lest We Forget.

Writer Bev Malzard does not attend ANZAC marches in Sydney now and cannot watch it on TV as she tends to tear up. Does this happen because of age, sentimentality, empathy or a greater understanding of the world? Who knows, but as she slips back into hippiedom, she’s back on the streets crying out “make love, not war”.