It is fourteen years since I first met David Peabody; fourteen years since I sipped my first Craggy Range Sauvignon Blanc; and fourteen years since I first wrote an article about this inspirational family-owned winery. Since then, Craggy Range wines have continued to develop and mature, and this iconic winery is now considered one of New Zealand’s best.
I got to know David Peabody, his family, and the Craggy Range wines rather well over the next few years, often gathering for a casual BBQ in their tropical Manila garden, for a party at our 39th floor apartment overlooking Manila’s Pasig River, or at a favourite restaurant that sold Craggy Range wines. But it was not until this month that I finally managed to fulfill a long held dream to visit the winery.
As we drove down the Waimarama Road from Havelock North, it suddenly became apparent why the winery is called Craggy Range. To our right, the rugged Te Mata hills towered above us, their rocky outline sharply jagged. To our left lay a softer landscape of vineyards and orchards, neatly arranged on the banks of the Tukituki River, tucked beneath the Ruahine Ranges that lie between the river and the sea. Tranquil and remote from the hustle and bustle of city life, the serenity was captivating.
I have told the story before, but to recap…
David Peabody is the son of Brisbane-based entrepreneur, Terry Peabody, the man responsible for establishing the Craggy Range winery in 1998, at the southern end of Hawke’s Bay, on New Zealand’s North Island. It all began in 1993, with a gem of an idea to start both a winery and a family legacy. The idea took hold, and the family joined forces to explore the possibilities.
According to David – and the Craggy Range website – their search for the perfect location took them through Europe, America and Australia, before finally crossing the Tasman Sea to New Zealand. Here, Mr. Peabody Senior found the perfect opportunity to realize the dream, and pioneer some truly elegant wines, with the renowned Master of Wine, Steve Smith. Terry’s only proviso? They would not buy an existing vineyard but would start from scratch. On virgin soil so to speak.
Together, they chose two prime locations: farmland at Gimblett Gravels, an ancient river bed near Havelock North, where they would plant Chardonnay and Syrah grapes, and another piece of farmland in Martinborough with the perfect soil for Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc. And so, the legend began.
Today, the Craggy Range cellar door and restaurant is a popular destination for wine connoisseurs and foodies alike, situated in the oldest wine making region of New Zealand. Driving through the impressive gates, we are greeted by the sight of a substantial edifice, a monument to Peabody’s dream to build a legacy he hopes will last a thousand years. The collection of stone buildings includes a wine cellar, a cellar door – more of a tasting venue than a sales area – and a top notch restaurant, ‘Terroir.’
On a more domestic scale, a family of oversized charolais cows now lie on a manicured lawn beside a small the lake. These bronze bovines are the work of acclaimed British sculptor Paul Day, who has been reported as saying that, while the winery can appear imposing, the family grouping ‘softens the experience’.
Wandering into the tasting room, we were greeted by the Wine Experience Manager, Michael Bancks, who offered us a glass of wine, and a table near the window, where we could sit and admire the surroundings before the tour. The One & Only chose a rosé, and although I usually opt for the CR Chardonnay, I decided to revisit their Sauvignon Blanc instead. While I’ve never been a huge fan of Sauvignon Blanc, I do love the Craggy Range version. And, as the 2023 Te Muna Sauvignon Blanc was recently named 11th in the World’s Top 100 wines, I decided it was time to veer from the road most travelled. It was worth the detour. It is indeed a beauty. Glass in hand, we followed Michael through the building, pausing in the chilly wine cellar to admire the neat rows of barrels of their Bordeaux style blend and flagship wine ‘Sophia’.
Apart from wine making, there is also a focus on regenerative farming and providing wild-life corridors through the vineyards. And in 2020, Craggy Range embarked on a project to plant over 100 hectares of native trees on the Martinborough vineyard to improve the biodiversity there, and the quality of the land.
The label beside one photo in the entrance hall states that ‘our ambition is to create wines that comfortably sit alongside the great wines of the world. We were humbled to be included in the Decanters 2015 “worlds best Syrah” tasting, alongside a handful of the world’s most iconic producers.’ In the photo, the Craggy Range 2011 Le Sol stands between a La Landonne and a Penfolds.
Then it was time for dinner.
In 2018, Terroir, the Craggy Range restaurant received 2 chefs’ hats for its top quality food. (Awarded by the Australian Good Food Guide the prestigious ‘hats’ have been given to the best restaurants in Australia and New Zealand since 1982.) The restaurant was also named Winery Restaurant of the Year in the 2020-2021 Cuisine Good Food Awards, in recognition of Head Chef Casey McDonald’s fabulous use of seasonal Hawke’s Bay produce alongside Craggy Range wines.
With such outstanding recognition from our most noted critics, where else were we going to celebrate my birthday, as we travelled through the Land of the Long White Cloud?
We decided on the shared menu – five courses for only $95pp – and our taste buds were indulged beyond belief. I heard someone mention the new Craggy Range ‘Giant’s Estate’ gin. So,‘yes please’ to one of those, garnished with juniper berries and a slice of dehydrated orange. We decided it was safer to skip the wine pairing, or we feared we might have found ourselves sleeping among the vines – which might have proved a cold, damp end to a lovely evening! Our abstinence also allowed us to concentrate on the food.
As we walked into the restaurant – packed to the gunnels even mid-week – we spotted more of Day’s bronze sculptures. This time, it was a family of chooks – or, more specifically, a group of Rhode Island Reds, seven times their natural size, the rooster standing about seven feet tall. And Day was right, they do soften the otherwise formal landscape of the Craggy Range grounds.
Our waiter guided us to our table, at a window overlooking the kitchen. Perched on surprisingly comfortable bar stools, we were introduced to the chef and the waiting staff, who promptly delivered a serve of the extremely moreish potato focaccia, which I could happily have eaten until filled to the brim, but then I would have missed out on several mouth-watering dishes, all created from local produce: from figs with buffalo curd and shiso (a herb from the mint family) to a fresh and zesty ceviche, to roast halloumi with a burnt honey dressing. More than a degustation ‘taster’ but not so large that we quailed at the thought of ever getting through the menu, we were indulged with a toothsome array of tastes and textures. In retrospect, I’m sorry we chose not to savour the matching wines, but then we didn’t really need reminding of how much we enjoy the CR Chardonnay or the glorious Sophia, and the One & Only was perfectly happy with a large glass of CR Riesling while I sipped on my G&T.
The main course was a mouth-watering shoulder of roast lamb, accompanied by crispy roast potatoes and Brussel sprouts, an almond cream and the last of the sugar snap peas from the kitchen garden. Colour, aroma, taste and texture, this dish had it all.
Sadly, dessert proved to be my Waterloo, but I did manage a teaspoon or two of the lemon posset (a cold, creamy dessert, flavoured with lemon), which provided a lovely tangy note on which to finish a truly superb dinner. Dashing through the rain, we both swore we wouldn’t need to eat for a week. At least. But it had been a momentous introduction to the various wine regions of New Zealand where we hope to discover a few new friends and favourites!
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.” ~ JRR Tolkien
When Peter Jackson decided to make a film (sorry, three films) based on Tolkien’s book, ‘The Hobbit’, he went back to the farm in New Zealand where they had created Hobbiton for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The original set had been a temporary structure and had included only the exteriors. Hobbiton II has become a much more grandiose and permanent affair. In 2023 they even added two ‘real’ Hobbit holes that can be entered and explored at leisure (n.b. tall humans aka ‘wizards’ should duck.)
For those of you who did not grow up reading the Hobbit, or have somehow missed the movies, here is a brief summary:
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again was published in 1937. Unlike its sequel ‘Lord of the Rings’, it was written for children, a fantasy adventure by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. The tale is set in ‘ancient time between the age of Faerie and the dominion of men’ and it begins in the ‘The Shire’, the rural homeland of Hobbits, set in a remarkably peaceful corner of Middle Earth.
‘Hobbits are – or were – a little people about half our height and smaller than the bearded dwarves’. The Hobbit in question is Bilbo Baggins, a ‘well-to-do’ and ‘respectable’ Hobbit whose family had lived ‘for time out of mind’ in the Shire. Bilbo is a sedate and sensible Hobbit, a wel-fed homebody who is happy to sit by his fire with his pipe. That is, until his sedentary life is rudely interrupted by an elderly wizard, Gandalf the Grey, and a company of bumptious dwarves, who are on a journey to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and all its treasure from the fierce dragon Smaug. An who have inexplicably decided that this small, unadventurous Hobbit is the perfect addition to their company. In the manner of all good fairy tales, they succeed in their quest, but not before encountering many adventures. Of course.
I have long wanted to visit Hobbiton, so when we finally settled on a time to visit New Zealand, I made sure to include a trip to ‘the Shire’. Serendipitously, it coincided with my birthday.
Hobbiton is only a two hour drive south of Auckland, near the town of Matamata on New Zealand’s North Island. The entry site includes an expansive car park, café, shop and bus stop. At our designated time, we boarded the bus with about twenty other keen Tolkienites and were driven through the farm to ‘the Shire’, an area somewhere in the middle of the property. Our guide, Aimee, an enthusiastic young lass from Lincoln (the English one) and was full of interesting stories about the creation of Peter Jackson’s Hobbiton set and its evolution into a tourist attraction. On a short video, we were welcomed to the property by the owner, Ian Alexander, and Peter J. himself.
For the next hour we rambled across the gentle slopes that comprise Hobbiton, with its wee round doors set into the hillside, a scattering of chimney stacks perched precariously atop, of which several were smoking. Miniature vegetable gardens, flower beds, orchards and ponds helped to create the image of a bucolic world in miniature. And eventually our path wound to the top of the hill, where sat Bag End beneath a huge, gnarly (fake) tree, a bench seat in the front garden on which rested Bilbo’s diary and his ‘enormous, long wooden pipe’, perfectly made for blowing ‘beautiful grey rings of smoke’.
The pièce de resistance, however, is the relatively new addition to Hobbiton, a pair of Hobbit Holes through which visitors may wander and explore the home of a ‘real’ Hobbit.
Oh! the delight of strolling down a rounded passage into a comfortable Hobbit hole, where no detail has been omitted, no comfort overlooked. Like a grand doll’s house, there is a real fire in the grate and the mantlepiece is topped with the Bagginses family tree. In the children’s bedroom is the cosiest of bunkbeds built into the wall. Circular windows look out over gardens and in the bathroom, a child sized copper bath. Down another passage to the kitchen and you step back in time to a kitchen before the fitted variety took over the world: a wooden table where someone has just finished baking pies, a wall hung with copper pots, a blackened range, a walk-in pantry filled with kegs of beer, boxes of vegetables, baskets of fruit, jars of pickles, and large rounds of cheese. On the dresser, a tray has been prepared for afternoon tea.
The whole tour is a joyous return to childhood fantasy; a world in miniature; the three dimensional recreation of a favourite book. The only thing missing – sadly – is the Hobbit himself. And yet, the whole time there is a feeling that somehow… if you don’t blink… just around the next bend in the path… you might bump into him.
Each tour is perfectly choreographed so that, despite the continuous flow of buses, one tour never overlaps another, and you feel that it is all being done just for you. At the end of the tour, we cross the bridge by the mill to reach the Green Dragon, Hobbiton’s own public house. Here we are offered a glass of ale, stout or cider – or ginger beer for those below the drinking age – from a kindly barmaid. If the sun is shining there is seating in the garden. If it is wet, there are plenty of comfy sofas and chairs within.
On arriving a little while later at our B&B, we were delighted to find DVDs of all the Peter Jackson movies, and watched with glee as Hobbiton came to life, filled, not with tourists but with real, furry-footed, jolly, diminutive Hobbits.
It is also the name of a rather gorgeous little Italian restaurant in McLaren Vale.
And on a hot afternoon during this Indian summer, it was the best place to spend a wedding anniversary.
The restaurant is situated at a great little winery on Binney Road, at the foot of the Mount Lofty Ranges, ‘Down the Rabbit Hole,’ and the path from the carpark befits its name, as it winds between the trees and into the magical space overlooking grapevines, an unexpected double decker bus parked stolidly on the edge of the lawn, and an array of wrought iron seats and tables, colourful cushions and shady trees around the edges.
Fiore itself is reminiscent of an upmarket beach house: white, timber-clad walls, the décor crisp and unfussy with natural wood chairs and tables, each table dressed with a glass of freshly picked flowers. There is also a bit of a poppy theme going on.
Through one large picture window, we could see where the flowers came from: a meadow filled with late summer wildflowers. Another fitting name, then. We were ushered to our table overlooking a wooden deck, and the double decker bus that is used for wine tasting. I hope that he has an appropriate name, too!
Mangiamo is Italian for ‘Let’s eat!’ and for $95 per person we didn’t even have to make choices – we just sat back happily, and the chef prepare a four course meal for our delight and enjoyment. Our lovely waitress explained that dessert was extra, but to be honest, it was an unnecessary extra – and more icing on the cake than I really needed. (Yes, of course I had one!)
You may remember we brought the family here for a casual lunch just before Christmas. This involved sitting on picnic rugs, sipping glasses of Chardonnay, and waiting for the gourmet pizzas to arrive. This time we sat gleefully in the coolth of the air-conditioned dining room, sipping a glass of Chardonnay, and waiting for the gourmet feast to arrive. Over the next hour or so, our lovely waitresses brought out a fabulous array of flavour-filled Italian dishes. I was keen to take notes so that I wouldn’t forget a single mouthful, but the waitress kindly told me not to worry, she would give me a copy of the menu before we went home.
So now, a few days later, I can recall every mouthful…
First to the table was two beautiful slabs of sourdough focaccia with a crunchy top served with half a dozen slices of beautifully aged San Danielle prosciutto and homemade vegetable pickles known as ‘giardiniera’ (literally: ‘from the garden’). These arrived with a dish of butter whipped to a cloudy lightness and topped with a blood red blackberry, beetroot and lavender salt. We did try to eat it slowly and savour every mouthful.
Next, a pizzetta – a mini pizza, obviously. The base was quietly crispy around the edges and the soft, doughy centre was filled with stracciatella. Until that afternoon, I knew stracciatella as either a chicken broth with filaments of egg stirred through it, or a gelato with chocolate sprinkles stirred through it. This version was a soft, creamy burrata-like cheese from Puglia stretched into strings, like a soft mozzarella without the rubbery chew. This was topped with Parmigiano Reggiano curls, a dollop of honey from Kangaroo Island’s Ligurian bee, and a side serve of figs and plums doused in aged balsamic vinegar. It felt like a heavenly cross between entrée and dessert. All too soon we had licked the plate clean and were pausing hopefully to let that settle, when everything else turned up in a rush: a pasta dish – tagliatelle amatriciana – a plate of charcoal chicken in a scrumptious sherry jus and salsa verde, a generous serve of crispy kipfler potatoes tossed in a crème fraiche, lemon and mustard dressing and a bowl of heirloom tomatoes mixed with peaches and basil. The flavours in each dish were mouth-watering, so I really don’t mean to complain, but perhaps we could have had just a soupçon of something to cut through the prodigious richness of all those wonderful dishes. A light green salad perhaps? Or a bowl of steamed white rice? It is something I find all too often in menus these days – a luscious array of intense flavours that overwhelm the palate and bloat the stomach. May I humbly suggest a little balance?
Having said that, did I turn down a single dish, or leave a bowl untouched? And when dessert was offered, could I deny a deconstructed – or is that re-invented? – limoncello tiramisu? Not in a million years! But we did pause for breath, and went for a slow meander through the garden to inspect the interior of the bus, and examine the outdoor dunny – a very elegant version of this iconic Australian bathroom, I must say.
We also inspected the wines on the bar. I was always going to rate the Chardonnay, Joy & Bliss, but it did get extra points for its label, which sported a VW camper. Actually all the labels were eye-catching and I would have been hard pushed to pick a favourite – above and beyond the previously mentioned Chardy, of course. (Needless to say, it won my vote for the best wine too, but I can assure you that the rest are excellent, including the Friends & Lovers Rosé and the Secret Garden Grenache.)
We had planned to drop in on the newly opened cellar door at Fleurieu Gin on the way home, but sadly, that would have to wait another day, as I needed to be horizontal on the sofa and let all that glorious food digest…
‘It’s Easter Sunday in Sydney. Boats gently nudge pontoons, tall masts point up at soft blue skies smudged with the odd wispy cloud. Trees creep down to the water’s edge, hemming the small bay in deep, lush green. A teasing breeze flits around our ankles and a family of Beatrix Potter Puddleducks “pit-pat-waddle-pat” over the sand and slip into the water. There is the creak of a comfy chair and the glorious smell of frying bacon drifting past our noses. As tiny waves lap gently below us, we gaze out over the tranquil water…
‘Overlooking the Marina at Roseville Chase, Echo on the Marina is an informal family friendly outdoor cafe, open Wednesday to Sunday for breakfast and lunch our waitresses are busy but friendly efficient and obliging the service is prompt and cheerful the atmosphere convivial.’
Thus, I began a review for my favourite north shore restaurant some fifteen or sixteen years ago, while I was studying Gastronomy. Today, it may have changed hands, but Echo on the Marina all seems achingly familiar, even though we haven’t been here in years – although this time I didn’t spot any ducks! (But that may have been because I was too busy talking to watch out for them.) As we did back then, we have arrived by car, but what fun it would have been to come up from Middle Harbour by boat and moor in the marina below at Roseville Chase. Or perhaps we might have paddled up in a kayak, planting it on the miniature beach before clambering onto the dock for brunch.
‘Echo’ is still open from Wednesday to Sunday for breakfast and lunch. And it is indeed the perfect place to meet old friends, as we have done on this calm, clear Saturday morning in late Summer. Tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the main drags of the north shore, thick vegetation cloaking the hills opposite, a mild breeze gently disturbs the humid air.
The menu has changed but the food is still excellent. Then, I described the creamy scrambled eggs and salmon being ‘neither too sloppy or too firm, but like Baby Bear’s porridge, “just right.” Today, I start with a sprightly Mojito Mocktail, then toss up between an omelette and smashed avocado, and opt for the latter.
Two hours pass in a flash, as we indulge in a hearty brunch, reminisce and share news. The staff remain busy, efficient, friendly and obliging and the cost is still reasonable. Last time I was able to walk briskly up the hill to the car (and it’s quite a steep climb). This time, almost two decades on, we rise to the surface in the tiny inclinator, squeezing ourselves in to its maximum capacity. There is also a stairless access along the waterfront to Echo Park on the Two Creeks Track. And dog lovers may bring their dogs on leads – but do book ahead for a dog-friendly table!
***
On Sunday we drive north along the Pacific Highway and back to our old haunts of the noughties. We pause for coffee at Patina, a beautifully restored house built in 1894, and overlooking Wahroonga Park. Today, the park is filled with picnics and birthday parties. After our dry sandhill garden on the Fleurieu Peninsula, we gaze in awe at the fertile profusion of plants and flowers. We had forgotten the sub-tropical splendour of Sydney.
Then we head off to Bobbin Head in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. For $12 per car, we could while away the whole afternoon bushwalking, fishing, paddling or picnicking. We pause to chat with the ranger at the gate, and again at the visitor’ centre, where we study the maps and a plethora of stuffed animals – an albino wombat, a selection of lizards, a small rock wallaby, to name just a few.
Down in Apple Tree Bay, the tide is out. We order a light lunch at the Bobbin Head Inn Café, and then take a stroll – pausing to chat with a large iguana thumping purposefully across the lawn – to the board walk across the mangrove swamp, where we peer into the mud for the tiny swamp crabs, waving their bright orange claws at the giants above their heads.
Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park was declared Australia’s second National Park in 1894. It encompasses 13,500 hectares of thick Aussie bush and deep waterways. A zig zag access road was built in 1901, from North Turramurra. Another road crosses Cockle Creek and clambers up the rocky escarpment to meet the M1 to Newcastle and beyond. Much of the credit for this beauty spot must go a heavily bearded nineteenth century Turramurra resident, Eccleston du Faur, who was keen to protect the gorge from haphazard developers.
Most of the facilities enjoyed by visitors today were created during the Great Depression of the 1930s, including the lovely “Bobbin Inn” on Apple Tree Bay, which was officially opened in the autumn of 1937. Bobbin Inn soon became very popular, and, after WWII, there was even a popular dance hall here.
The marina has grown over the years, its latest incarnation completed in 2008 as the Empire Marina. It is a wonderful place for a family picnic, a spot of fishing, a swim or a few laughs in a paddle boat. And the new adventure playground looks like fun for the littlies. Interestingly, the website suggests that it is a local secret – almost 90% of the visitors here come from the surrounding suburbs of the Upper North Shore. So I’m sharing the secret!
Sitting among the detritus of the Christmas season – a season of love, laughter and chaos – I have finally come up for air, with time to sit and admire the world around me. The weather has scuttered between broiling and breezy over the past few weeks. The lawn is looking parched, but the watering system (implemented by the One & Only to great effect) has kept the flower beds blooming through the summer – so far at least!
Normanville held its New Year’s Eve pageant – reinstated last year after a Covid driven sabbatical – to great acclaim from large crowds of locals and holiday makers. Light-hearted and fun, the parade travelled across town and down Jetty Road to the beach, where hoards had gathered to soak up the atmosphere. On the foreshore, the kids found bouncy castles and face painting, and there was a variety of food trucks, as well as the usual offerings from Aqua Blue and the foreshore kiosk. We even got coverage from Channel 7 News! Then, at 9:30 pm, there was a tremendous fireworks display that effectively dislodged every bird from its nest and set the local dogs barking vociferously.
A grand offering from a small seaside town punching well above its weight.
And now the crowds have dispersed a little, and a stiff breeze is blowing away the cobwebs, after days of melting our brains in the sun. I always used to laugh at the juxtaposition of northern hemisphere Christmas images when we lived in the tropics, but Normanville also had its fair share of snowmen and warmly clad Santas on display this summer. My own Christmas tree is inundated with angels we have collected from around the world, and I must admit that I have a good selection of free-standing Santas who look more impressive in cosy robes than they would in board shorts and sunburn.
Decorations aside, there has been all the ubiquitous drinking and eating to extreme that occurs at this time of year, with the odd meal out to provide relief for the Resident Chef (me).
One family outing over the Christmas season took us to McLaren Vale for a spot of wine tasting. While the trip included a couple of old favourites I have mentioned before, it also introduced us to Down the Rabbit Hole, with its nod to the fabulous tale of Alice and her dream-like adventures in Wonderland. This relatively new cellar door, adjacent to the vineyard and winery, was opened in late 2019, and is owned and operated by Domenic and Elise Palumbo. Here we enjoyed some great pizzas on the lawn, beside a double decker bus that is used for wine tastings. No booking is required for al fresco dining, but as the wait time for service and food was much longer than we had expected, particularly as our picnic spot was out in full sun, I recommend that you get there early, and place an order for food and drink immediately, unless you have plenty of time to wait and a spot in the shade. Obviously popular, and unavoidably overrun so close to Christmas, some warning would have been appreciated nonetheless, especially as we had a little one with us.
However, we spent a relaxing couple of hours exploring the property and trying a glass of Chardonnay or two. Our small person was happy to be distracted by the playground and the alpacas, and while the service may have been slow, the staff remained cheery, despite being rushed off their feet. They certainly put in their steps that day, and from what I hear, it is often busy here. I would certainly revisit this glorious garden among the vines. In fact, I have already booked an anniversary lunch at Fiore, the fine dining Italian restaurant there.
So, watch this space for a review in a couple of months!
And I do hope no one will mind that I borrowed a couple of photos from the respective Facebook pages of the Normanville New Year’s Eve Pageant and Down the Rabbit Hole, as mine were rubbish!
My title comes from the words of South Australian suffragist Catherine Helen Spence, who once described herself as a new woman, awakened to her sense of responsibility to both family and community, that ‘the world may be glad that she had been born.’ She also declared that the most interesting life for both men and women was one of ‘gratified activity,’ or, in other words, a rewarding sense of purpose.
Matthew and Elizabeth Goode came to South Australia in the mid-nineteenth century. Soon established among Adelaide’s wealthy, middle-class merchants, they were deeply involved in both the Congregational Church and the London Missionary Society. By 1880, they had eleven children – three sons and eight daughters – all with a strong sense of responsibility to both family and the Church, and a determination to lead fulfilling lives.
But it is the eight daughters on whom I am choosing to focus for my PhD, eight sisters to whom I introduced you over two years ago when I was writing my honors thesis on the penultimate sister, and my great grandmother, Christina Love Goode.
All the Goode sisters were born during Queen Victoria’s reign, in the infant colony of South Australia. As I have mentioned before, Edith and Clara went as missionaries to China with the London Missionary Society, and later, Clara was thought to have been killed during the Boxer Rebellion. She wasn’t. Christina was a doctor in England, Shanghai and Renmark. Lily, the artist, travelled the world with her paint box and easel. Edith and Clara, Mabel and Annie ended up migrating to Canada. Two married in Peking, two in Manitoba, one in Tokyo, one in London. One married an Adelaide boy and remained for most of her life in South Australia, and only one never married.
Relationships between siblings, particularly sisters, has long been popular in fiction. Many English-speaking readers will have fond memories of the five Bennet sisters in Pride & Prejudice, Louisa May Alcott’s four Little Women, and Ethel Turner’s Seven Little Australians. Yet historians have shown little interest in the effects of sisterhood, unless of the Feminist kind. Philippa Gregory wrote about the Boleyn sisters and Henry VII’s daughters, Margaret and Mary Tudor, but until recently she focussed primarily on royal women who make a big splash on the pages of history as wives, sisters and daughters of Kings.
In 1993, Drusilla Modjeska compiled an anthology about sisters, including writers such as Helen Garner and Elizabeth Jolley. Sisterhood, they suggest, is ‘a complex network of shifting alliances,’ something I plan to explore further in my thesis. Shifting alliances aside, in an era long before telephones or the internet, these sisters would maintain a close rapport, despite the tyranny of distance – and ages – between them. Jane Austen certainly saw nothing unusual in that when she wrote in Mansfield Park:
Children with the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply. Modjeska writes that she finds such proximity to one’s sisters a little hard to fathom.
Historians and psychologists (think Freud!) have certainly preferred to dwell on more fathomable parental bonds. Matthew and Elizabeth may have had a strong moral influence over their large brood, but the Goode sisters’ letters illustrate that their sororal relationships also played a significant role in their lives. Raised in the family home on Wakefield Street in the city of Adelaide, the sisters appear to have been a strong unit from the beginning, and remained close all their lives, providing emotional support and exerting considerable influence on one another, whether they were living in Adelaide or Melbourne, London, Peking, or Portage-la-Prairie.
In the Victorian era, children from middle class and aristocratic households were generally raised by nursery maids and nannies. Parents remained emotionally distanced from their offspring, often sending them to boarding school as soon as they left the nursery. Whether or not the Goodes had household staff, it is apparent from their correspondence that the older sisters helped to raise and teach the younger. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that the older siblings played a crucial part in their development of the younger ones.
Katie Barclay wrote that ‘family histories… are not only about the family but about the family’s role in the events of the nation.’ She also says that to understand our ancestors, it is necessary, ‘to interpret them through a wider historical context, through the motivations and emotions of [wo]men like them.’
These two points are both relevant to my research on the Goode sisters, where I will be looking at their contribution to the early years of settler-colonialism in South Australia and the impact of the colony’s unusual take on female education, family, and religion.
In Britain, a middle-class woman in the Victorian Era was generally defined by marriage and motherhood, financially dependent on her spouse, the moral keeper of the keys, and this attitude followed the colonists to Australia, as we can see in a quote I found in The Advertiser from 1896. At a meeting of the YWCA, a Church of England minister, the Rev. F. Webb stated that ‘he liked to see women the figureheads of home life, and he did not care about them taking too prominent a position in public matters.’
However, due to the strong influence of many liberal thinking, non-conformist citizens here in South Australia, the attitude was changing more rapidly than the Right Rev. Webb cared to admit. Already women had the right to vote, to stand for parliament and to attend the University of Adelaide, which began admitting women to degree courses in 1881. The first Australian university to do so, I might add! By the end of the century, a few privileged women had taken the opportunity to reinvent themselves as educated, financially independent, mobile young women. This would include the daughters of Matthew and Elizabeth Goode…
…which brings me to the matter of biography. Once the domain of the grand narrative, interested only in heroic male leaders or significant male politicians, biography has, in recent times, become more interested in the lives of ‘mere mortals’; to examine, as Barbara Caine explains, how ‘an individual life can reflect wider patterns within society or show the impact of social, economic and political change on ordinary people;’ a perspective that has swung even Philippa Gregory away from her passionate interest in Tudor and Plantagenet queens. Since I began research for this thesis, I have explored biography’s many sub-categories from microhistory to memoir, ego-histoire to life-writing. But the most significant to this project, are speculative and collective biography.
‘Speculative Biographers,’ says Donna Lee Brien, ‘diligently work from the available evidence, but …make what might be termed educated guesses to fill biographical gaps,’ adding that any conjecture must be evidence based and clearly signalled. Collective biography, according to Barbara Caine is a biographical study with more than one subject, often dealing with professional or social groups, or, as in this case, siblings. The business of such biographies, Caine says, is to portray the nature of the connection by focussing on the shared relationships and experiences, rather than the individual.
So here I sit, aiming to write a collective, speculative biography about eight first generation, settler-colonial sisters from South Australia; to recover their untold narratives through letters and diaries; and to explore the creation of their new identities away from their Adelaide origins; to speculate on the inspirations and motivations that led many of them to choose paths diverging from Victorian expectations of middle-class women. I also hope to uncover the ‘complex network of shifting alliances’ between these eight women and to assess their contributions to the history of South Australia.
By examining their lives through the combined lenses of settler-colonialism, Imperialism, and First Wave Feminism, I will analyse the intersecting contexts of class, race, religion, education and family that informed the life choices of the Goode women; to consider the broader structural changes to society during this period that provided them with increased opportunities to work and travel, and to acknowledge the privileges of race and wealth that allowed them uncommon freedom to follow their dreams.
My research has led me to the archives of the State Library and the Special Collections of the Barr-Smith and Flinders University Libraries. Earlier this year, I travelled to Canada and the UK to meet other Goode descendants, who proved wonderful sources of information, sharing boxes of unpublished family histories, photographs, letters, notebooks and diaries, family memorabilia, artefacts and ephemera that have added enormously to my understanding of the family history.
In Canada, a local library in Manitoba helped me unearth details about the sisters who settled there after 1903. In the UK, The Bristol City Library and the Bristol City Archives also helped solve several small mysteries about Christina’s working life in England. And the archives at the School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London provided a wealth of information about the London Missionary Society, including numerous reports written to the Secretary of the LMS by Clara and Edith Goode, and Edith’s husband, John Allardyce.
As historians tell us, letter writing became a crucial tool for women once it became possible to get an education like their brothers. It not only gave them the opportunity ‘to reach out for the advice, support and sympathy’ of their absent mothers and sisters, it also gave them a voice, a chance to develop a sense of self, to express themselves beyond the limits of the drawing room and to create new identities for themselves.
Also, importantly, those letters provide us, the modern reader, with a window into the past.
And it isn’t just letters that provide a link to our ancestors, but also inherited objects. In researching the Goode family, I have uncovered, among other things, several of Lily’s paintings and a wooden spinning chair she carved at the Adelaide Art School; Chinese porcelain and Chinese robes that Edith brought from Peking; a cedarwood chest that Christina brought back from Asia; a Russian silver samovar; and a family Bible.
I have explored the nineteenth century genre of female missionary biographies, giving me a fascinating insight into the world Edith and Clara would have encountered in Peking. And I have attempted to decipher a multitude of letters the sisters wrote to each other.
For several of the Goode sisters, mission and medical work abroad, and philanthropy at home gave them a socially acceptable means of claiming a voice in the public sphere. Also, by drawing on family letters, diaries and documents, public archives and the theories of speculative biography, I hope to gain a better understanding of the sororal relationships that supported their endeavours. Together, these women provide a unique insight into the social and cultural changes that affected a South Australian settler-colonial family in the Victorian era, and a window onto the lives of eight sisters who remained closely knit their whole lives, despite spending many decades – and thousands of miles – apart.
Donna Lee Brien writes that ‘A common feature of many speculative biographies involves the biographer openly acknowledging their research and writing process’. In the role of biographer and descendant, I am considering how to acknowledge my presence in this process. Also, as no living relations really remembers any of these women, I must rely heavily on my primary sources, in which I will undoubtedly find many gaps. Do I have enough information to ensure informed speculation does not become historical fiction? How will I discover the intimate details? Did they laugh together? Were they competitive? Or protective? Were there natural pairings within the collective? Was there an innate leader? A Black Sheep? A Favourite? There is also the problem of my own 21st century perspective on 19th century lives. I can research the facts, but can I reproduce the thought processes of the time, hugely significant in uncovering the motivations and aspirations of these eight women?
Another more practical problem I have encountered is that their handwriting is often extremely hard to read, especially when the sisters attempted to save on postage and paper by writing crossways over what they had already written on very fine paper! While I am certain the story is in the details, it is proving quite a headache to decipher their writing and unravel those details.
Finally, will such a biography prove hard to define and delineate, as I try to disentangle so many interrelationships in this sprawling, female-centric family? I suspect the answer is ‘undoubtedly’, but then life is made up of the kind of dislocated minutiae that are found in archives. And perhaps it is those intimate details that engage our attention and affection more deeply than a sparse timeline and ‘chronicles of major political and military events’?
Virginia Woolf, writing at the end of an era when biographies were predominantly about renowned male leaders or high achievers (again, mostly male), wrote that ‘the question… inevitably asks itself, whether the lives of great men only should be recorded.’ Conversely, biographies about the lives of ordinary individuals at grassroots level have gained popularity in recent years. This narrative, however, will focus on a respectable, middle-class family who, as Penny Russell wrote, ‘seemed destined from the outset to historical invisibility’; a family who neither moved mountains, nor rocked boats. Yet this true story is as engaging as any 19th century Bildungsroman, as it traces the formative years and development of eight settler-colonial sisters ‘from childhood to full productive citizenship…[that] in many ways… [reflects] the sense of national development.’
I have, however, found limited references to collective biographies about such middle-of-the-road sisters– probably because such epithets don’t make them seem very interesting to study! This makes my project challenging, but also provides an opportunity to address a research gap in this area, and to demonstrate the value of combining history and speculative biography to record the lives and aspirations of a generation of settler-colonials that will make, to paraphrase historians Curthoys and McGrath, readable history.
These were eight unusual, but not exceptional women. They did not lead the march of feminism but were rather the foot soldiers behind the heroes. Nonetheless, by incremental steps, and by quietly retaining their image as responsible, respectable Victorian ladies, they helped to expand horizons and build foundations from which future women would benefit. Yet, despite their contributions, these women have been overlooked by writers of South Australian history, something I hope to rectify as I delve into their life stories.
This theory for interior design also applies to the use of chilli in Bali. And if there isn’t enough chilli in the dish already, there is always sambal. This Indonesian red hot chilli relish will ensure that food in Bali is never boring.
(This table decoration was not originally intended as a spice rack, but is one of the oldest known games in the world. Congklak can be traced back to Ancient Egypt, and was probably brought to Indonesia by Arab or Indian traders. It is a challenging, strategic game, played with about a hundred small cowrie shells or beads, divided evenly between the indentations.)
The heat of the day had accumulated on my skin in much the same way that chilli does. You know, that frog in the pot scenario, when the water heats up gradually until – suddenly – it is overwhelming and you are being boiled alive. A day in Bali’s dense and humid heat has left me feeling like I’ve hit a brick wall. So, the fact that our friends have chosen a modern, airconditioned restaurant for dinner makes me immensely grateful. For half an hour I relish the fact that my body heat is slowly dispersing in this cool haven.
Then the food begins to arrive and the heat from my skin quickly becomes centred in my belly, as almost every dish has fresh chilli, chilli paste, chilli sauce… chilli, chilli, chilli!
At some point – too late – I remember that wine never reduces the effect of chilli but rather exacerbates it. Water is not enough, either – I have guzzled two large bottles to little effect. Finally, I resort to stealing gulps of beer from the One & Only’s glass. Beer has never been my drink of choice, but as it turns out, it is incredibly effective at quenching the heat in my mouth. And unexpectedly, in this moment, it my favourite drink in the world!
Which is not to suggest that there is anything wrong with the food. The food is fabulous. Just hot.
Nusantara, it transpires, is the name of the new capital of Indonesia, based in East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. It is also the name of a great dining experience in the heart of Ubud. Nusantara is an Old Javanese word derived from nūsa – ‘island’ – and antara – ‘between’. It means “outer island” which seems to make more sense in relation to Bali than to Indonesia’s new capital. However, in modern Indonesia, nusantara reflects the country’s status as an archipelagic state of islands between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Enough with the geography lesson, back to the subject at hand. Food.
Nusantara is a high end Indonesian restaurant, a sibling of the popular Restaurant Locavore. Focussing on Indonesia’s culinary heritage, the band of talented chefs at Nusantara introduces visitors to wonderful flavours from all over this equatorial archipelago.
Having been warmly welcomed into the delightfully cool and airy Nusantara Restaurant, we are asked to choose between the set menu or à la carte. We all feel that à la carte means too many choices and decisions are too hard to make when my brain has melted into a claggy mess, so we cheerfully opt for the set menu. Let the show begin!
Our lovely waiter emerges with a tasting platter consisting of nine small dishes – Berbagi Rasi – complete with a descriptive chart to ascertain what we are eating.
Wafer thin potato fries and peanuts marinated in chilli and kaffir lime leaves; tiny, salted fish like crispy whitebait, and ‘young’ bananas braised in gulai spice paste, all served in small, round dishes. (Gulai spice is a complex paste that consists of turmeric, coriander, black pepper, galangal, shallot, garlic, fennel, and lemongrass. And chilli pepper, of course. There are pineapple pieces dipped in dried chillis, shrimp paste and palm sugar (my favourite blend of heat and sweet) and a rather surprising deep fried tapioca served with sambal and leek. Surprising, in that tapioca does not usually curry favour with my taste buds, but this morsel is delicious. In the centre of the platter, large, crispy amaranth leaves have been marinated in turmeric, chilli and coriander seeds and deep fried – a most sophisticated and tasty papadum. And are you seeing a theme? Barely a single dish escapes a chilli invasion in some form, be it dried, fresh or paste, sambal or sauce. And the theme continues through the main courses.
After indulging in a bowl of delicately flavoured soup broth filled with slices of fresh coconut meat, I dip into a hearty meat dish: goat leg braised in coconut milk, a divine array of spices and a sprinkle of candlenuts to thicken the sauce. And, of course, the ubiquitous chilli.
Moringa leaves I remember from the Philippines as malunggay. Native to the Indian subcontinent, this plant is used extensively in South and Southeast Asia and is packed with potassium and anti-oxidants. Tonight, it has been cooked in a young coconut over an open wood fire with a base genep – a traditional blend of 15 local spices, including chilli, that gives Balinese cooking its distinct flavour.
Then there is an array of seafood. Pacco Tuna from South Sulawesi is the Balinese version of sashimi, although this adaptation is marinated in a chilli and garlic paste, which adds spice, but does rather blot out the delicate flavour of the raw tuna. Nonetheless we all dip in for more.
From Western Sumatra, a prawn dish known as Udang Bakar Padang. These King prawns have been marinated in a light, satay-style sauce, then grilled over an open wood fire. We can peel them from their shells with ease. Fabulous.
And Sambal Cakalang from Manado, North Sulawesi is, in English, shredded smoked mackerel, with chillis and shallots.
The other ubiquitous ingredient in our Balinese feast is rice. Steamed with pandan leaves, lemongrass, and salam leaves – an essential ingredient in Balinese cooking, apparently – this heritage rice from Central Bali is subtly flavoured, cooked al dente and served in a pretty pot.
Then we are introduced to Babi Masak Dibulu. This dish from North Sulawesi consists of pork shoulder marinated in turmeric, kaffir lime leaves, kemangi leaves (a lemon basil) and coconut milk, cooked in a bamboo tube on an open wood fire. This one is surprisingly mild – but the sambal sauce is at hand if you feel the urge to season it. For the vegetarians, there is a snappy corn fritter, which we are kindly invited to share. We finish up with a light coconut milk pancake flavoured with pandan.
And there it is. A meal that engages all the senses: flavour, texture, colour, aroma, the crunch of the teri goreng and a tendency to pick out a piece of pineapple or an amaranth leaf with my fingers so I can engage all my senses with a final flourish.
Bali. An island of contradictions and contrasts. Modern technology and ancient crafts. Modern tourism and ancient rice fields. Modern shopping malls and ancient temples. Spicy food and soft smiles. Up in Ubud for the Writers & Readers Festival, I have found the perfect haven on this volcanic island, to escape – just occasionally – from the Madding Crowd.
It is early morning and still dark. I am sitting on our veranda with a cup of tea when a tiny, palm-sized tree frog appears, jumping tentatively along the balcony rail, all her daylight vibrancy muted by the shadows of early dawn. Hearing my voice, she raises her head cautiously towards the sound, pauses, then leaps – a spectacular leap – up onto a thin rope two feet above her head. From there, she jumps sideways onto the pillar, her legs splayed, suction-pad toes glued to the brick. I glance away towards the sunrise… and she is gone…
Somewhere behind the veil of cloud cover on the horizon, the golden sun emerges, and it is as if Helios has flicked a switch, as the shadowy landscape suddenly brightens…
…and I am facing a lush landscape of vibrant, intense colour, mostly tropical green, so at odds with my homeland of sparse, khaki eucalypts and sandy soil that repels the rain. Here roots do not need to burrow deep for a subterranean water source. The bushes amass in a thick hedge of huge, shiny leaves, dense and luxurious. The air is soft and damp like a warm hug, not remotely resembling the sharp, dry bite of a north wind blowing off a red desert, leaving grit in your eyes, a harsh red burn on your skin…
Here, many miles north, small birds swoop and dive over the rice paddy playing hide and seek among the feathery panicles, small kids in a viridescent playground. One pair settles quietly on a cable across the field, still as statues, almost touching…
An irregular white dish of frangipani flowers, white petals tinged with pink and yellow, leak a light scent of summer into the air, teasing my nostrils, welcoming me to a breakfast table set with fat omelettes, fried rice, inky porridge and strong, grainy coffee…
A long and winding road through jungle as familiar as Mowgli’s, full of sacred Banyan trees whose aerial roots hang like loose threads to the forest floor, and worn, overgrown Hindu temples. Up and up to rice terraces that climb in tidy fashion out of the gorge, each bank packed neatly with rice plants like a well-made broom with its individual clusters of brush while the upper slopes are thickly thatched in jungle. Single, lanky coconut palms sway precariously in the mild breeze and the noisy burr of cicadas radiates discordantly through the quiet stillness of the early afternoon…
It is late afternoon, and the heat builds like a wall and sucks up my energy. The smoky aroma of a Korean barbecue wrestles with the cloying fumes of car exhausts, leaving an invisible imprint on my clothes fresh from the laundry…
…and I am floating in bloodwarm water beneath the lacy filaments of a giant tree fern and watching gloomy grey clouds chase away a sanguine blue sky as frangipani flowers drip into the pool leaving barely a ripple on the surface as the sound of a gamelan, like wooden wind chimes, drifts over the wall – no melody, but a gentle waterfall of sound trickling into my ears and blotting out…
… the noise of the scooters and trucks hurtling furiously along the main road where footpaths, unfit for unwary feet, threaten weak ankles with up-turned bricks, miniature earthquake chasms, cracked and crumbling concrete, thick tree roots escaping the earth. Torn and tatty rubbish bags beflower the bushes, and thick electricity cables loop and tangle overhead like long strands of skipping rope…
…and the sun sinks behind the trees, and the heat fades with the light.
I realize I have already told you a lot about our Canadian trip, but while presenting a talk to the Lyceum Club about our trip, I realized how much I had left out, and for my own benefit,at least, will record it here.
When considering a trip to Canada, it is wise to think about the weather. We didn’t.
In 1993, (as I may have mentioned), we drove across Canada with a small baby, a two man tent, and an olive green Chevrolet Caprice we had bought in the USA for $800. It was early spring. Our first campsite beside Niagara Falls was so cold I spent the night worrying that the baby would freeze. As I poked icy fingers down the back of her neck every hour to check she was still alive, I seriously considered moving to the heated bathroom block for the rest of the night.
In 2024 we flew to Canada in July – and the heat was oppressive. Everyone said the humidity was unusual, but with the profusion of lakes and rivers in Canada, we probably should have seen that coming! So, the best time to visit Canada? Late Spring to early summer. Or early Autumn… sorry Fall. We’ll take our own advice next time.
Nonetheless, travelling through Canada was a never-to-be-forgotten experience. Both times. So what were the biggest differences? Most notably, in 1993 we had a small baby. with a lot of parphenalia. This time it was just us and our suitcases. In 1993, we only had a small Kodak camera, and going on the limited number of photos, only one roll of film! This time, we took a squillion photos on our phones. Our first trip was made on the smell of an oily rag, so we were either camping or staying in cheap motels. This time, absent a kind friend or relative to provide a bed, we made good use of Airbnb . Interestingly, this often involved basement accommodation – an ubiquitous part of Canadian housing which we kept saying might have been a sensible addition to housing in South Australia, to escape our hot summers!
Back in 1992, we were living in Ireland and expecting our first child. Having decided we should probably head home to show her off to the family, we planned a three month road trip en route to prove that a baby was not going to change our nomadic ways.
So, the One & Only started writing to every National Park in North America, and for weeks, he had been accumulating hefty piles of brochures and maps with which he carpeted the floor of our tiny cottage. No internet back then!
Initially we had planned to drive across the States. Given the comparative cost of petrol, I’m not sure why we changed our minds, but it was not a decision we regretted. It was going to be a long drive, but I was prepared, too, and had collected a large pile of novels to read aloud to my chauffeur, while the baby – who had slept little for the first weeks of her life – slept like an angel on the back seat. In 2024, we considered a train trip, but decided it would be quicker – and cheaper – to fly. So, thus, we used West Jet to fly between cities, from Toronto to Vancouver. There was less capacity for luggage, but I swear my one suitcase grew heavier at every airport!
In 1993, we drove north from Pennsylvania, where we had bought the car, through New York State to Niagara, where we boarded the Trans Canadian Highway and headed east. The Trans Canadian Highway claims to be the longest national road in the world, stretching almost 5,000 miles from the North Pacific in the west to the Atlantic coast in the east, passing through every province on the way. (Actually, Highway One around Australia is almost double that, but who’s competing?) In 1993, we drove from Montreal to Kamloops, and this year, we picked up the trail in the Okanagan Valley and made it down to Mile Zero Park on Vancouver Island, but we have yet to make it all the way across to its eastern-most point on Cape Breton Island.
On that first trip, we knew virtually nobody in Canada, apart from my grandmother’s first cousin in Ottowa, a family friend just north of Toronto and a bloke in Montreal. Thanks to their hospitality, we got a bried look at those cities, but with a tent and a baby in tow, we largely kept to country towns. This time, we were able to visit several cities we had missed in 1993, namely Winnipeg, Regina, Vancouver, and Victoria.
Another big difference between Trip One and Trip Two. With a baby that was still waking for a meal every three hours, round the clock, a lot of that first trip passed by in a blur of sleepless nights that felt like chronic fatigue. In Montreal, I can vaguely remember inspecting the Olympic Village from the 1976 Games. In Ottawa, I remember a wonderful story about the businessmen who would ice skate to work in winter, along the frozen canal, briefcase in hand. Just north of Toronto, there was an amazing rocking chair, where I sat up every night, calming our colicky baby. And I think there may have been an ice hockey match…
This time, I got to sleep a lot more, so my memories are clearer! This time we were able to catch more than a glimpse of Toronto, as we went down to the city for a couple of days, to visit a cousin. This meant the chance to see the fascinating extension to The Royal Ontario Museum. First opened in 1914, the ROM is a museum of art, world culture and natural history, and has been regularly expanded and reorganized over the past century. In 2007, the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal was opened, although sadly, when we were there, it was wrapped in scaffolding for renovations. Instead, we had a long and beautiful walk through all the green park lands surrounding the university and parliament buildings.
My cousin lives in a pretty area to the east of the city. Church and Wellesley is known affectionately as “The Village” which has become the heart of Toronto’s gay community. In Canada, homosexuality was punishable by death until 1869, and gay men were branded as “criminal sexual psychopaths” until the 1960s, and once upon a time, not so long ago, homophobes would frequently attack known homosexual businesses, But by early 1980s there were many openly gay bars, clubs, and businesses in this pretty area of Toronto, and even an annual drag queen contest. Today, it is a cool and friendly environment where people can live, work and play safely, whatever their sexual orientation. And my cousin, although not gay himself, is more than happy to give the queer community all the credit for gentrifying the area and restoring its beautiful old houses that had become horribly rundown. This, and its historic significance as one of the oldest surviving corners of Toronto, has fortunately kept the neighbourhood largely free of all the modern high rise apartments that have swamped the rest of the city.
Back to 1993, we left the outskirts of Toronto to head north west, following the edge of Lake Huron and Lake Superior to Thunder Bay. Where there was snow. In late April. So we stayed in a lovely B&B. From Thunder Bay we drove on through Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, barely pausing for breath, the flatline that was the horizon broken only by the occasional silo beside the railway track. My Ottowa cousin had provided the name of another cousin in Portage, where we paused for two or three nights and learned a lot about canola, a relatively new crop on the Canadian prairies. It certainly added vivid splashes of yellow to the landscape, when we flew across the prairies thirty years later…
… to land in Winnipeg, where we had organized to meet a handful of ‘new’ cousins. Winnipeg is flat as a pancake, and threaded with rivers, which has led to terrible flooding in the past. Fortunately, flooding has largely been averted since the government spent millions to build a giant floodway around the eastern edge of the city. And while the outlying prairies were as flat and lacking in trees as the Nullarbor, the inner city suburbs were full of pretty weatherboard houses and tree-lined streets, especially around the French quarter of St Boniface, on the eastern bank of the Red River, or Riviere-Rouge. Across the river, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, and an area known as The Forks, for obvious reasons. This has been a meeting place for indigenous hunters for over 6,000 years and was similarly used by the European fur traders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the 180s, it became the site of the railway yards of the Canadian railroad companies and the immigration sheds for new migrants.
Over the last 30 years, the abandoned railway yards have been transformed into museums and accommodation, food and retail outlets, playgrounds and parks. The Forks Market – once horse stables and haylofts – now contains a Food Hall with two dozen restaurants and cafes, where you can find anything from Filipino to Caribbean cuisine, Sri Lankan to Greek, and various bakeries and coffee shops. There is a River Walk, through parks full of ground squirrels racing about and burrowing beneath the lawn. And just beyond this playground for rodents, stands the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which came highly recommended by all the Winnipeg cousins.
Portage la Prairie is about an hour’s drive west of Winnipeg. Since our last trip, and now on a concentrated search for family history, I had learned that this is where my extended family had first settled in 1903. So, we drove out one day to search the cemeteries for my ancestors and to knock on the door of the farmhouse that was built by my great great aunt and her husband, when they first arrived in Manitoba.
Then it was up, up and away in a small prop plane heading for Regina, which we had by-passed in 1993, en route to Jasper. Then, we drove north west, past the record breaking shopping mall in Edmonton, that covers 49 hectares – the equivalent of 104 football fields – and which has become not only the prime shopping area for locals, but a significant tourist attraction. Given the long, severe winters in Canada’s most northern city, where better to build such an extravaganza?
By the time we reached the Rockies, the season was warming up at last, and we were finally able to resurrect the tent. Our first camping site in Jasper National Park was closed for most of this past summer, due to extreme bushfires. In 1993, I was a little nervous about camping here. Not because of fires, but because there had been so much talk of bears. And moose. In fact, the campsite was awash with moose pairing up to make baby mooses. How would we escape a hungry bear with a baby strapped to our chest? Or get out of the way of those enormous antlers, angry to be coitus interruptus by unwary walkers? Luckily, the moose preferred their own company to ours, and the bears were presumably still hibernating. So, we saw nothing more threatening than the dams and detritus from the logging efforts of a colony of busy beavers.
We drove on unmolested, heading south down the Icefields Parkway past Lake Louise – as pretty as the pictures – to Banff, passing several glaciers en route. We stopped half way to clamber up the Athabasca glacier – the largest and most accessible of the glaciers in Glacier National Park – with one small bean snuggled inside her papoose.
From Banff we turned west again to the Okanagan Valley, where pink and white blossom was in full bloom. This lake-filled valley was first settled by Europeans in the early 19th century, and was quickly recognized as a great place to plant fruit trees. The 180km-long Okanagan Valley is now home to orchards of peaches and apricots, apples and pears, nectarines and cherries and – more recently – scores of wineries. Unfortunately, this year, a late cold snap resulted in the loss of their annual peach crop. The frost also affected the grapevines, and many farmers were preparing to start over with new, hardier trees and vines.
Since our last visit, thirty-odd years ago, the suburban sprawl has expanded exponentially, roads and bridges have been widened and the rural areas have been planted with acres of grape vines, an industry that was only just starting up in 1993. Now Okanagan wines are sold across the country. Tourism has become a major industry in Kewlona, too, both in summer, for sailing and golf, and in winter, for skiing and snowboarding. Despite the pall of smoke from a huge bushfire to the north, we spent a lovely afternoon swimming at a sandy, lakeside beach near the aptly named Summerland, and a wonderful evening dining at the Sailing club in Kelowna, overlooking the water and hundreds of boats. On our last night, a fresh wind finally blew the curtain of smoke aside, and we could see the stars – and the eagles – as we sipped a local wine on a balcony above the lake.
We never made it to Vancouver in 1993 but headed south from Kelowna and crossed into Washington State. This summer, we had a few days to explore this last Canadian city before reaching the Pacific. We spent a wonderful day on the water, exploring False Creek, named by surveyor George Henry Richards, because the creek proved to be a dead end. Having bought a day pass for False Creek Ferries, we boarded a pocket sized boat beside the Maritime Museum. The ride gave us some spectacular views of this surprisingly high-rise city. By fluke, we exchanged the little ferry for a beautiful launch on the way back, and a young captain eager to tell us all he could about his wonderful city.
From Vancouver, we took another boat trip, this time on a large ferry across the Salish Sea to Vancouver Island. This is a beautiful trip that weaves through the Gulf islands and made me long to have another month and a sailing boat up our sleeves.
456 km long and 100 km across at its widest point, Vancouver Island lies off the south coast of British Columbia, and is home to Victoria, the elegant capital city of British Columbia. Around half the population of the island live in Victoria, but with only 45,000 inhabitants, it has the easy-going calm of a large country town, despite the daily influx of tourists from mainland Canada and Washington State.
Our first stop was Nanaimo on the east coast of Vancouver Island. When the Europeans first arrived here, the major industry was coal mining. By the 1960s, this had been supplanted by forestry. Today, the largest employer is the provincial government, with retail, hospitality and tourism not far behind.
We spent one sunny morning strolling along Nanaimo’s Harbourfront Walkway to the Bastion – an octagonal wooden tower built in 1853, to defend the Hudson Bay Company’s coal mining operations. Just down the road, we stopped for coffee and tried the incredibly sweet eponymous Nanaimo Bar. The Nanaimo bar requires no baking, and consists of three layers: a wafer, nut, and coconut crumb base; custard icing in the middle; and a layer of chocolate ganache on top. It was way too sweet for me, and even the One & Only, who doesn’t mind the odd sugar fix, could only eat half!
A few days later, we moved down the island to Victoria for our last days in Canada. On Fisherman’s Wharf, we considered living on one of the pretty floating homes, and decided the volume of tourists peering through the windows would probably put us off. Wandering back across town, we strolled across the lawns in front of the handsome Legislative Building, that was opened in 1898. In front of it stands the Knowledge Totem Pole. This was carved by Cicero August, an indigenous sculptor from the island, and raised on February 2, 1990. The pole refers to the oral traditions of the Indigenous peoples of the northwest coast. The top figure, the loon, represents “the teacher of the speakers” as well as an interpreter of all the Indigenous languages spoken. The fisherman represents the traditional way of life of coastal Indigenous peoples. Below the fisherman is the bone player, who represents a non-verbal game that can be played by people who do not share the same language. The bottom figure, the frog, is a symbol of stabilty and is also used used on Haida house posts for that purpose. Frogs also represent wealth, abundance, ancient wisdom, rebirth, and good luck.
I was sad to leave this welcoming, wonderful country. but luckily there are plenty of good reasons for going back. Not least to do that last stretch of the Trans Canadian Highway to the Atlantic Coast, to visit Anne of Green Gables territory on Prince Edward Island!
*With thanks to the One & Only for allowing me to use a few of his squillions of photos – and for finding a couple of the old ones rom our original trip!The oneof the ROM is an artist’s impression from the internet, as it didnt look this good wrapped in plastic!
This Japanese saying encourages us to live in the present and not worry excessively about the future. And as Japan is our final stop on this year’s circumnavigation of the globe, I am happy to take advantage of such useful advice during our week in this fascinating country. We are spending our last week away in Tokyo for a conference at the Tsuda University. Founded as one of the first institutions of higher education for women in Japan in 1900 by Umeko Tsuda, a pioneering woman educator, it is a fitting venue indeed for the International Federation of Research in Women’s History!
To my surprise, the most populous city in the world is not in India, nor in China, but is in fact Tokyo, with a population of 37 million people. This becomes apparent as we learn to navigate the vast and incredibly efficient rail network, often passing through Shinjuku Station, a huge terminal station that was certified by the Guinness Book of Records as “the world’s busiest station” with an average of 3,640,000 passengers per day. Busy it may be, but everyone is calm and quiet, queuing patiently behind the requisite lines for their train. There may be a little pushing at rush hour, but most of the time commuters are polite and unobtrusive.
I have booked a tiny, shoe-box apartment through Airbnb, in a suburb on the outskirts of the city. It isn’t as close to the university as I had hoped, but it is a super area to stay: easy to get around, and far quieter than a more central location, with the feeling of a comfortable village. And despite the fact that almost no English is spoken in the neighbourhood, and we have barely a word of Japanese to offer, somehow there is always a kindly soul happy to stop and point the way, as soon as they see us looking bemused. One elderly lady simply puts out a hand to say, ‘Welcome to Japan, I hope you enjoy your stay.’
Our kind host, Kenji, sends endless messages to let us know the best places to shop and the best places to eat. His tips include a shopping mall with plenty of anime stores ‘for BIG Anime Fans.’ We’re not. More usefully, he mentions a great little supermarket-cum-deli right next to our nearby railway station at Tanashi. Seijyo Ishii proves to be a great spot to pick up ready-made Japanese dishes on our way home. Oh, and a bottle of Japanese gin…
Kenji also provides daily weather reports, and the offer of umbrellas.
Two of the local restaurants he has recommended are only a few minutes’ walk from our apartment. We by-pass the first, unable to fathom fresh, live fish from the tank where they apparently serve ‘still living’ sashimi. I hope to heaven that is a mistranslation, but we haven’t been brave enough to check!
However, the little place next door does take our fancy: a genuine sushi and sashimi restaurant, where we can sit at the counter and watch the chef at work. Kenji explains that to eat high quality food like this in the centre of Tokyo would cost three times the price.
Sushi Tamahachi is only a two minute walk from Tanashi Station. This authentic Edomae sushi restaurant has its ingredients delivered almost daily from Toyosu, one of the largest wholesale fish markets in the world, on the Bay of Tokyo. With only three or four tables, and six stools at the bar, there is no sense of rush and flurry, just a calm, peaceful atmosphere. One man is seated beside us at the bar, enjoying his soup: snapper head in clear, dashi broth, rich in vitamins, minerals and healthy fats. Two women sit by the window, chatting quietly as they tuck into a huge platter of assorted sushi and sashimi. And a father and his young son sit behind us, sharing their delight in the food.
Sushi dates back to Japan’s Edo period, (1603 -1868) when the Tokugawa family ruled Japan. Edo was then the name of modern-day Tokyo, where the Tokugawa shogunate had its government. The previous Sengoku period was a time of chaos, but the Edo period was characterized by economic growth, strict social order, isolationist foreign policies, a stable population, perpetual peace, art, culture… and sushi. Today, this is one of Japan’s most popular fast food options.
At the bar, we communicate with the chef surprisingly well using “Google Translate.” Bit by bit, he provides a succession of simple, fresh and delicious dishes. Every time we guess the fish successfully, he beams at us, as if we are clever children. He also goes to a lot of effort to advise us that we have no need to season our food, as he had already done this for us.
Initially, he gives us a platter to share, then one each, then he simply adds anything we ask for. Having long ago decided the best way to eat scallops was by searing them on a hot skillet, this version, marinated in lime is a joyful discovery. Ceviche is basically raw seafood that is marinated in lime or lemon juice. The citrus acid cooks the seafood without heat and tenderizes the scallop at the same time, so it almost melts in your mouth.
The squid, similarly, had been ‘cooked’ in lime juice, and is served up with caviar. Then there is a piece of sashimi tuna accompanied by a pile of sliced ginger. Known as gari shouga or ‘pickled sushi ginger,’ it is preserved with vinegar, salt, and sugar, giving it a sweet, sharp taste. This sharpness makes it exceptionally good as a palate cleanser, as well as a tart accompaniment to sushi and sashimi.
The next plate has a selection of fish, sushi style, wrapped over rice: red snapper, squid, shrimp and three varieties of tuna. Delicious! Then there is a seaweed wrapped sushi topped with bright orange, lustrous salmon roe, much larger than the tiny, orange tobiko or flying fish roe used to garnish sushi rolls.
I’m afraid to admit that I avoid the sea urchin. Well, that’s not entirely true, I do try a bite to see if I loathe it as much as I remember. I do! Texture, taste, colour – I find the whole thing unappetizing, and would much rather have left it to live out its life in a rockpool or reef. So, moving quickly along…
… to the tamagoyaki or Japanese omelette, made by rolling several layers of fried beaten eggs together. Prepared in a rectangular omelette pan it has an unexpected sweetness that makes it less of a savoury dish and almost a dessert.
The One & Only has chosen to drink beer with his dinner, but I have a long-standing love of the silky, smooth saki. And this one has been warmed and served in a pretty, blue and white carafe with a small cup. At last we have had an elegant sufficiency. (A very appropriate term in Japan, where every aspect of life seems elegant.) And I have lived in the moment and enjoyed every mouthful.
*With thanks, as ever, to the One & Only for sharing his photos.
