Marenella’s Concord

Actually this one’s homemade – but you get the picture …

Recently I went to Marenella’s at Concord. I’ve only just discovered Concord and I like it, although the initial lust at first sight has died down and now we’re just good friends.

Marenella’s is good value – mains are around $24 and entrees are good, there’s pizza and pasta at around $20 a pop, so it’s not an expensive night out. It’s nicely decked out inside and looks a bit like a furniture showroom. However the outdoor seating area doesn’t cut it in winter so make sure you book an inside table. Service is a bit on the don’t-care side, but like most things, because they are Italian, they get away with it.

But the toilets are a bit crappy and, just like grandma said, if you want to know what a restaurant is really like, check out the toilets. It’s a mantra I live by.

But restaurants with good food that don’t cost the earth are a rarity in Sydney, so I’m going to bypass grandma on this one, and go for a thumb’s up.

 

Liquorice Factory, Junee – palace of dreams

It looks kinda haunted … but it’s the place of dreams

Junee might seem like a long way to go for a stick of liquorice and a chocolate ball, but it’s really worth it. Around a five hour drive from Sydney on the NSW south west slopes, the Junee Organic Liquorice and Chocolate Factory has been around for a decade now, churning out liquorice, chocolate and other old-fashioned sweets.

It looks a bit Adams Family from the outside, located in an old flour mill. A fire swept through the mill and it has been converted to the current liquorice factory, or rather patched up. It’s austere brick at the front and the back is kind of zincalume sheet. But the stylists have done a great job with the rest of it. There’s a lovely Italian style eating area under the vines, the restaurant is light and airy and the coffee shop is quite cozy.

But back to the main ingredient – liquorice. They produce spelt and wheat liquorice plus organic chocolate product and have branched into chocolate covered goji berries, ginger sugar and crystallised choc ginger. We took the $4 tour, which goes through the history and you see the choc and the liquorice being made. I couldn’t believe how hand-made it was. It is automated in a clunky Fred Flintstone kind of way – there’ even a ruler to measure the liquorice. It’s surprising but kind of good to know that a product that can end up in Woolworths can be so hand-crafted.

If you are doing a roadtrip you should definitely factory and hour or so in to visit the Junee factory. And if you’re not planning a roadtrip, it’s probably worth doing one, if nothing else it’s good to see what people with a bit of ingenuity are doing out there. Plus there’s chocolate.

http://www.greengroveorganics.com.au/

Australia’s best leaf peeping places

Australia may have the world’s best beaches, the best big rock and the second best coffee in the world (Italy’s always going to win that one), but as for autumn colours … well, it just doesn’t cut it.

Our temperate climate and lack of native deciduous trees made us dependent on the early settlers to plant seedlings in appropriate places. But many of them were too busy building pubs then celebrate the building of the pub at the pub to do much else. Thankfully there are a few places in Australia where leaf peeping can be legitimately done.

Tasmania – the whole island really, take your pick Hobart, Launceston, Richmond, but just steer clear of national parks, otherwise Taz does Autumn colours like a place that knows it is in for a mean winter and needs to cheer itself up.

Tumut – slotted between Canberra and Yass, Tumut is a little bit of high country in a non-alpine area. The Festival of the Falling leaf in early May is a highlight of this town’s autumn festivities. Besides, Tumut is cute and it knows it – and a nice place to visit in any season.

Bright – the best example of small town leaf peepery surely has to be Bright. Located 3-4 hours north of Melbourne, Bright rakes in the tourists without feeling tatty. Glorious high country views, providores all over the place and cute cafes make it the standout in my Big Book of Aussie Autumn.

Southern Highlands - only a few hours from Sydney, it does a nice line in ye olde worlde Englishe charme. Including trees. It’s a bit spread out and you’ll need a car, but it’s nice and accessible and has planted all the right trees.

Bright puts on colourful autumn

Bright in northern Victoria’s alpine area (around a 3-4 hour drive from Melbourne) puts on a great autumn spectacular show. Best of all it’s free. (Well – you just have to add accommodation, food, a beer at the new microbrewery, coffee, providore produce and petrol). Aside from those pesky details – gratis!

Take a walk down the main street and thank the early settlers who had the foresight to turn this lovely valley into one of Australia‘s best leaf-peeping destinations when they planted deciduous trees.

There’s something quite un-Australian (and I mean it in the nicest way posssible) about Bright in Autumn. So leaf-peepers, grab your camera and your best leaf crunching shoes and take a look:

Who knew leaves on trees could look this good

Bright is apple-pie cute

You can't say Bright's not well-named

Leaf-peepers are everywhere

Aussie Roadtrip – no cheap thrill

(pic Stock.xchng) Yellow pigs might fly before Australia offers cheap travel

Last week we had a mini roadtrip.  Not an all-Aussie, drive around Australia kind of thing. More along the lines of country NSW and dipping into Victoria.

It was certainly great to get away, and get a bit of country air into the system. The Autumn colours in Bright were fantastic, as was the weather, and Narranderra was as graceful a country town as ever, and Junee (on the way to Cowra) had a great organic licquorice and chocolate factory and a fab big breakfast.

But driving around for a week staying in 3-star joints, eating pizza for dinner and the odd RSL meal was expensive. (OK, we did stop for coffee frequently, we did imbibe in the road trip tradition of fivvies, but still).

I’m not begrudging it – people who live in country towns have the right to overcharge for coffee like city people. They’ve got the right to be able to pay off their mortgages and save up for their own roadtrip.

But I guess for a quick country getaway, it cost about the same as skiing in Japan for a week, or going on a cruise. Both are things I’d like to do.

Travel in your own backyard (if your backyard happens to be Australia) is expensive these days. Maybe it’ll pass, maybe it’s a sign we are economically healthy. But I wonder how much the high cost of travelling locally is putting people off to more exotic locations where there is more bang for the proverbial buck.

 

Secret Waterfall Business is a bitch for men

It looks benign ....

What is is about a waterfall that motivates us to drive way off the road, park the car in a potholed carpark, get out, walk down a bush track where flies are divebombing your head, and vampires masquerading as mosquitoes are oppostunistically hovering.

And in the Northern Territory, quadruple all that – distances, potholes, flies, moquistoes and add an extra two zeros to the kilometres to get to the nearest ice cream.

But that is exactly what we did. Wangi Falls in Litchfield National Park, may not get the same youtube time as Jim Jim Falls, but in its own way it is a sight worth getting out of the car for.

Even in the dry it is a gushing tall spurt of water teeming over sheer cliffs. There’s a choice of two walks, one is a several hour epic, and the other (which I did) is a 40 minute walk around the waterfall, which offers great views of the falls from every direction and a good bird’s eye view at the top. It’s also surprisingly lush vegetation, a real little jungly oasis.

The other good-to-know thing about these falls is that they hate men.  Any time of the year they are said to have mysterious deadly properties for male swimmers. The area’s aboriginal tribe used it as a sacred women’s spot for eons. In recent times male swimmers have occasionally died here and been caught in freak tides and whirlpools, including men who came to the aid of women. A waterfall is a waterfall but this adds an air of danger.

That didn’t stop anyone the day I was there – it was a hot day, but the water felt icy, and men and women were in, splashing around. 

I reckon the NT is an acquired taste. I’m not 100 per cent sure I’ve acquired it yet, but for my money Litchfield is better than Kakadu, with better scenery. And Wangi’s worth visiting, walking, swimming. Even for men.

Bike Olympic Park

Gleaming facilities - and not a white elephant in sight (or on site!)

And then you can have fun cooling off after the ride

 

The Sydney 2000 Olympics was a seminal moment for Sydney. Happy athletes, volunteers and gleaming new facilities. But what happened to the faciltiies afterwards? Many Olympic cities report being lumbered with white elephant facilities – used once and then not used again once normal life resumes.

Not so Sydney.

Olympic Park in Homebush Bay has the advantage of being located in the geographical heart of Sydney and authorities have done a very un-Sydney thing and turned the park over to public space.

Amidst tennis courts, concert theatres, football stadiums and a restaurant and accommodation precinct, are cycleways.

Tour de France this isn’t – there’s a variety of cycling trails which vary mostly in length and difficulty. There are a few hills here and there but essentially this is strictly a leisure cyclists zone.

If you don’t have a bike, bike hire is available at several hubs. You are never far from a café either, but the real beauty is that you can lose yourself in bushland and then get the river breeze on your face. There are a number of trails (or safaris as the Homebush Bay marketing peeps call them), some taking you past Olympic memorabilia and old navel sites.

Here’s the link http://www.sydneyolympicpark.com.au/whats_on/cycling

Happy cycling, exploring and eating!