Brisbane: eating out and street art

I have only been to Brisbane a couple of time before for business and not seen much of the city.  I had another brief trip there for a work event in March.  There was no sightseeing but we stayed in the busy inner suburb of South Brisbane area so there were some fine cafes and street art. 

I stayed at Rydges South Bank Brisbane Hotel on the 11th floor but didn't have much time in my room.  I felt like I spent a lot of time in the elevator getting confused about which floor I was on because the display showing the floor number was broken.  The breakfasts were also very good with a (vegan) fry up from the buffet on each of the two mornings to keep me going during busy days.

On the first afternoon I had lunch with my manager.  We walked to the Cordelia Sourdough Bakery (47 Cordelia St, South Bank).  I had the Vegan Bagel (avocado, sundried tomatoes, tomato, balsamic reduction and rocket). which was just what I needed.

It was quite warm when we arrived in Brisbane.  The bakehouse was a pleasant shady place to sit and relax with a pleasant breeze and good food before setting up the meeting.

In the evening I met up with a college friend who lives in Brisbane.  We went to the Grey Street near my hotel where there are lots of nice restaurants the face onto Grey Street on one side and on the other face across Little Stanley Street to the South Bank Parklands by the Brisbane River.  I saw the Arbour arched walkway with its purple bougainvillia flowers, which I remember from a previous visit.  If I had had more time I would have loved to have wandered along during the day to check out the man-made Streets Beach, statues and galleries.  We just had time to check out a bit of street art (above) and a some twinkling tree lights (top photo).

I chose Ahmet's Turkish Restaurant because it was $9 pide Tuesday but I was just as happy to see they offered mocktails.  I loved the Turkish apple tea while travelling in Turkey so I had a "jar" of Turkish apple frappe; an icy drink of apple tea with apple, pineapple and lime juices.  It was very pleasant drink on a warm evening.  I loved all the colourful patterned table linen on the outside tables where we sat.

I had a pumpkin pide which was generously topped with roast pumpkin, red onion, feta and garlic.  It was lovely.  Nicki had a vegie pide with spinach, mushroom, onion, tomato, feta and mozzarella cheese.  I had some of this and it was also nice but as with some vegetarian pizzas was a little soggy.  It was lovely to catch up with Nicki who I don't see very often.

I really liked the caterers we used for our event (FigJam Indigenous Caterers).  We had some really nice food like Spanish-style potato & onion frittata with beetroot relish and anise myrtle, and Scones with bush plum and fresh cream, with riverapple dust.  I was too busy to take many food photos during our meeting but I have a photograph of the wonderful fruit platter which had lots of dragonfruit, figs, passionfruit, grapes, peach, strawberry, watermelon and orange.  I am not sure what the yellow fruit at the top is but I am guessing ebony fruit.

At the end of the first full day of meetings, I walked back to my hotel on the scenic route past lots of interesting cafes.  I was surprised at all the street art.

I really liked this banana painted fridge.  (Traditionally Queenslanders were called Banana Benders so it amused me.)  I noticed a few other painted fridges as I walked about and wondered why fridges were being used as a canvas for street art.  To make people feel cooler in the warmer climate of Brisbane?

As I walked past the South Brisbane train station, I photographed this lovely Indigenous street art (above and below).

I was also surprised to see street art referring to the 1988 World Expo in Brisbane (below).  I remember friends planning to go there.  Now all the talk about town is of the Brisbane Olympic Games in 2032.  Nicki said it would be crazy but I was sure she would find something to entertain her.  I remember the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne with all the fun cultural activities around the city which we enjoyed without seeing any sport.

I liked these mosaic (diamond?) sculptures along Grey Street near our hotel. (below)

We had a work dinner at Chu The Phat (111 Melbourne Street, South Brisbane) on the second night with participants from the meeting.  I had intended to take a photo of the feast but, at first, dishes came out one by one with just one piece for each person, and for the meat items I got nothing.  By the time we got past all the starters and reached the mains of pumpkin and peanut curry, sesame broccoli, greens and steamed rice, I was so discombobulated.  As the dishes were cleared away, I reflected on how nice it had been and that I should have taken a photo.

The food was actually very good in general and everyone was very impressed by it.  I also enjoyed a Virgin Passionfruit Mojito mocktail of passionfruit, lime, mint and soda.  Chu the Phat was quite spacious and modern but I particularly loved this outside area in "fish alley" with the street art.

After dinner I walked home because I was really full and needed some cool air.  As I walked past the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre I was quite taken by how the lights in the ground not only uplit the tree but also left tree-shadowed patterns on the underside of the roof.

The next day we had a morning of discussions and lunch before heading back to the airport to fly home to Melbourne.

In my kitchen: April 2023

It is April and we are into Easter and school holidays!  Life continues to be busy.  Over the last few weeks I have had my flu jab and my 5th covid jab.  I have been to see Billy Bragg at the Forum (amazing), taken Sylvia to St Kilda and been to see Everything Everywhere All At Once (mind-blowingly crazy) at the cinema.  We have had a new couch delivered, finally got rid of 20 year old tins of house paint from our shed on my first visit to the tip, and replaced lost cat collar and name tag.  Sylvia has bought a chicken onesie among her online purchases.  Politics has been interesting in Australia with Labour winning the NSW state election and the Aston by-election in Melbourne from the Liberals.  In overseas news, Trump has being charged with 34 felonies in the US.

Easter has been fun with lots of cooking and catching up with family and friends.  Above is a batch of my fave recipe for overnight sourdough hot cross buns and the start of a pate but more about these further down the post.  But let's check out my kitchen, including a lot of foreign foods.

Not only have we been to USA foods in Moorabbin but there is a smaller USA Mart in Sydney Rd, Brunswick opposite the police station.  We love trying out different versions of familiar bars and bought the blueberry muffin Kit Kat and the salted caramel Milky Way.  Sylvia loved the kit kat but I preferred the milky way.

We also bought Cheetos Mac'n'Cheese at the USA Mart.  Sylvia loves the Lord of the Fries mac and cheese balls so we bought a packet of their mac and cheese mix.  Both were nice but not a patch on home made mac and cheese.

We still find interesting groceries at our local supermarket.  Sylvia loved the Subway pizza sub flavoured Smiths crisps.  I enjoyed the native flavours of the Kakadu Plum and Australia Aged Cheddar Kettle crisps. I also enjoyed the sweet potato and rosemary wafer crackers.  The baby roma tomatoes are in the photo because I was surprised to see them in a cardboard box rather than the usual supermarket plastic tubs.  And Sylvia got the Cola Slush Puppy but it is still in the freezer so I can't report back on it.

On our trip to St Kilda we had lunch at Rococo.  Sylvia declared her potato pizza the best pizza ever.  So we plan to be back.  I had a hearty salad and we shared some garlic bread.  I usually have garlic bread that is cooked in food and quite soft but this was fried or grilled and both crispy and buttery.  I had to take home leftover salad and garlic bread, especially after I helped out Sylvia with her pizza.

Acland Street in St Kilda is famous for the amazing cake shops that were opened by European post war migrants.  It is fun to walk between the tables and chairs and tempting window displays stopping to drool over the huge range of cake.  There are lots of light and creamy cakes but always something for everyone.  We bought a slice of apple crumble slice for Sylvia and a florentine for me to take home.

We stumbled across Premium Co Groceries (173 Acland St).  It has lots of Asian groceries but also some fascinating vegan groceries.  I have never seen vegan anchovies before but resisted.  When I saw these vegan corn dogs though I had to buy them.  I don't think I have ever had a corn dog before but they scream fairs, summer, celebrations, freedom and lots of fun and laughter.

Also at Premium Co Groceries we bought Hello Panda bikkies (gone in the blink of an eye), apple Fanta (one sip and abandoned in the fridge), and a Popin' Cookin' DIY candy kit.  I'd never heard of them but Sylvia had seen them somewhere and begged for it. It was really odd.

At home Sylvia made up her popin'cookin' kit.  It came with little mixing bowls, moulds, measuring spoons and stirrers and packets of powder to make it up, as well as instructions.  It looked very impressive when put together but the fizz on the coke didn't last long.  I found it fascinating and frighteningly futuristic at the same time.  It looked like fun making the burger and chips but was more about playing with food than enjoying it.  The resulting candies were so sweet and tasteless that after a few weeks they were thrown in the bin. 

Like a lot of the house, my lemon and lime trees have been neglected lately.  They had grown so bushy that it was hard to get in and keep an eye on them.  I've been worried about citrus leaf miner and started to prune a lot of foliage.  When more of the trees were exposed I was horrified at how much gall wasp had snuck in.  I lost some fruit this way but managed to keep quite a bit and hope this will make the trees healthier.

I was given a new phone cover that I wasn't so keen on.  While my phone was wearing it, Sylvia played with the favoured old one and managed to break it.  So I set out on a search for a green phone case that sparked joy.  I really liked this one by cRasee on Etsy.  I was a little sad that the quote "a well read woman is a dangerous thing" is not as visible on my case as on the online photo but the case makes me very happy.

A while back, I chopped up some vegetables to add to a noodle and tofu dish.  I took the leftover vegies for lunch with some cashews and rice vermicelli noodles.  I had foolishly thought if the noodles had been dunked in water and sat in some seasoning liquid they would soften by lunchtime.  They didn't!  I had to eat around them, add some boiling water and microwave until soft at the end of my lunch.  The next time I took rice vermicelli for lunch with leftovers (tempeh and corn soup), I let it sit a few minutes at home in boiling water before leaving for work.  Lesson learned!

I was in denial about stone fruit season finishing until I went to my local supermarket and found it had no more stone fruit.  Thank goodness there is still some stone fruit in other supermarkets.  I have stewed plums a few times and it does me the world of good to have some stone fruit.  But my fruit intake has markedly decreased with the availability of stone fruit. 

We had another visit to USA Foods in Moorabbin.  I loved these Pretzel crisps with buffalo wings.  I also bought the Egg Rolls.  Sylvia was surprised as she knows I don't like egg.  We don't have egg rolls in Australia and I was also surprised years back when I found out they don't contain egg.  I thought the wrappers were egg but it is a bit more like chiko rolls than egg!  And there are no buffalo wings in the pretzel chips either.  Sometimes there is a lot of reading of ingredients!

We also bought these snacks at USA Food.  Sylvia has discovered just how sweet a lot of American food is, compared to what we are used to in Australia.  But she is smitten with toaster strudels.  The eggo flavoured pop tarts weren't to her liking nor were the caramel apple pops.  She liked the ding dongs more than I did.  I chose the strawberry and dark chocolate kit kat which I sort of liked but found the flavours a bit chemically fake.

It is the 100th anniversary of vegemite this year so there are a few vegemite products about.  We tried the McCains Cheesy vegemite mini pizzas and were disappointed.  The pizzas were slightly sweet and the cheese and vegemite topping was a bit soggy.  However I have tried a far superior home made pizza with vegemite which I will share some time.

When I bake hot cross buns, I insist on making them with dried fruit, much to Sylvia's displeasure.  So I have made her some shapes with the flour and water "crosses" mixture and brush them with sweet glaze.  She was very pleased with them.  Can you see the one shaped like a horse with no legs? 

Easter this year was a bit different to usual.  I had Easter lunch with my parents and siblings in Geelong on Saturday, a friend come over for hot cross buns on Sunday morning, and I made a roast dinner for Sylvia and me for tea.  I was too involved in catching up with family to photograph my meal in Geelong but it was fairly similar to this roast dinner that we had at home: voracious vegan pate with tomato relish, roast potato, roast pumpkin, cauliflower cheese with macaroni, and peas.  The pate went really well with the roast dinner.  I made two pates so I could take one down to Geelong.

We were pretty relaxed about lunch on Easter Sunday.  I heated one of the hot cross buns and filled it with a slice of leftover pate, a slice of cheese and some quandong jam.  I really liked having a bit of savoury in the hot cross buns, which weren't especially sweet anyway.   I find I much prefer hot cross buns to other bread at Easter so this worked well as a substitute for bread in the sandwich.  Highly recommend it to anyone with leftover hot cross buns this year or to keep as an idea for next Easter.

I am sending this post to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the In My Kitchen event. If you would like to join in, send your post to Sherry by 13th of the month.  Or just head over to her blog to visit more kitchens and her gorgeous hand drawn header.

Time by Rone, Art installations

A few weeks back I went with my dad to see the Time exhibition in the Flinders Street Station Ballroom.  The artist, Rone, describes it as a "nostalgic love letter to mid-century Melbourne".  As we arrive we are told not to touch anything, that every cobweb and piece of dust are part of the exhibition.  This is the first inkling of how much painstaking attention to detail has been involved in the installations.  It is hard to know where the history ends and the art starts.  In creating this ambitious exhibition, Rone employed 120 people on the ambitious 3 year project. 

The thrill of being in the fabled Flinders Street ballroom was less intense as I had first been there for the Patricia Piccinini exhibition, but Rone really uses the building as an integral part of the installations.  It feels as though we are in abandoned rooms from the past that we have happened across years later; faded, cobwebbed and neglected.  The only human presence is the wistful sepia face of Rone's muse, the model Teresa Oman.  She hovers over each installation like a ghostly presence from yesteryear.  The windows to the present in the corridor are covered in mid century newspapers, lights slowly dim and brighten, and Nick Batterham has created a haunting and melancholy soundtrack of piano and strings.  It is such an evocative, immersive experience. 

Here are the 12 installations in order that we saw them:

The Art Studio.  The easels with sketches reminds me of life drawing in art short courses I have taken. I notice a stool knocked over.  These rooms are not perfectly organised.  Pictures are crooked, stuff is scattered on the floor or out of place.  I loved reading that they even spilled some liquid on one of the rugs to make art imitate life.

 

The Classroom:  it a trades school classroom.  Which makes sense because these offices by the ballroom in Flinders Street station were built to provide leisure activities to the railway workers.  Why?  To make the workers happier so there would be less strikes!  A few employers could learn from this today!  A gymnasium, a lecture theatre, a magic lantern, a library and clubs.  The classroom was evocative of a simpler time.  I saw an older woman get nostalgic about a book thata she had as a student.

 

The Library: my favourite room.  I can't resist rows of old books.  I can cope with books over the floor because I can't fit all my books in my shelves at home but I did want to straighten the crooked pictures.  The library came complete with a wrought iron spiral staircase, old leather chairs and even a secret door.  I noticed lots of books had Time written on them and asked a guide who said that all the books had been made for the exhibition.  I read elsewhere that the books were hollow because the room could not handle the weight of so many books.

The Pharmacy: a dusty old shop.  My dad was amused at a big sign for Aspro claiming that it does not harm heart or stomach.  I loved the old scales and old greeting cards.  We've been watching Back in Time for the Corner Shop, where the designers often found they had to make new packaging to make the past seem fresh and new.  Whereas Rone created a forgotten and abandoned world where everything was faded and rusted around the edges.  The pharmaceuticals were way past their use-by dates and covered in dust and cobwebs.

The Clock Room: the first thing that strikes us is the silhouette of the old clock face that is backlit.  At first I thought this was an actual clock face on the building.  But I am very fond of the Flinders Street Station building and, yes I did a google search on my phone, because I had to confirm that there was no clock outside this part of the building.  It was a such an impressive illusion.  And an allusion too.  Flinders Street Station is famous for its clocks giving train times.  It has been a favourite place to meet for so long that when they tried to digitise the clocks, there was an outcry.

The clock drew the eye but when we looked around there was that face looking upon the room, wine bottles, old crates and a piano.

The Glasshouse: is set up in the arched ballroom.  It is the only room created as an outdoor space of sorts.  Apparently it is inspired by London's Crystal Palace.  I used to live near the Crystal Palace tube station but the actual structure had burnt many decades before.  For me the glasshouse was reminiscent of the scene in The Sound of Music when Liesl and Rolfe sing 'Sixteen going on Seventeen'.  I loved the ivy growing over the seats and up the windows as though it will eventually cover the whole structure.

The Work Room: the exhibition is set in mid century Melbourne when post war migrants came in huge ocean liners to help with our manufacturing industry.  One of these industries was the garments industry which employed warehouses of seamstresses at sewing machines like this one created by Rone.  It made me nostalgic because my grandmother was a seamstress at the time.

So my dad and I were the misty eyed people in the room viewing the dressmaker's dummy that took us back to the sunroom in the house where my grandparents lived.  My grandfather would write to us every week and often would talk of Nan having ladies over for a fitting.  I think of her with a dress on the dummy, a mouthful of pins and the fancy cheval mirror for the ladies to view their new clothes when they tried them on.

The Mail Room: definitely seems like a place in the past.  These days I can work in an office for months without even printing out a page of paper.  Back then the mail routine was crucial for keeping in touch with people in other towns, buildings and even offices.  In the bottom half of the photo are lots of mail bags to be filled with letters.  I remember folding letters in offices so the address appeared in the window of the envelope.  My early days in the office of sticky labels and mail merge might seem old fashioned today but the computers would have seemed fancy to those before me who used a lot of longhnad writing. 

This collage is of some of the parts of the exhibition that made me feel nostalgic.  

• At the top right is an old telephone - I have very vague memories of these old black phones in my early childhood.  So solid!  
• Next to the phone is a pile of old keys.  We don't get keys like this very often these days.  In fact I work in a building where I have never seen keys because everything is entered by swiping cards.  I am not sure what happens in a power blackout.  
• The rubber stamps made me nostalgic for days when I had rubber stamps to enter dates or "faxed" or other useful words.  They are needed less and less now as our files and correspondence are more and more online.  
• A typewriter was exciting to us as kids to push those clunky keys up and down to write.  Computers have never had anything to replace the satisfaction of pushing the carriage return lever at the end of a line.  
• Bottom right is the electric jug.  My parents have always drunk a lot of tea and used to have similar ceramic electric jugs that got dangerously hot when they boiled.  
• And finally the National Bank calendar.  I grew up always having one of these hanging on the back of the toiler door! 
  
  

The Switchboard Room: this is so evocative of another time when phone calls were far more central in our lives.  In the present day of smart phones, email and internet, phone calls don't feature so much in our lives. I no longer have a landline at work or home and even finding a phone number can be challenging.  My dad was telling me he met someone who worked may years ago on the telephone exchange in the town where I grew up.  Apparently she did not stay there long as she did not like the people.  Goodness knows what she heard on those calls!

The Typing Pool: made me quite nostalgic for the days as a child when my dad took me to his office when he went in on a weekend.  It was quite exciting when we went there.  People in offices seemed very glamourous.  We'd bash at the keys on the typewriters and pretend to take phone calls.  I wouldn't be surprised if we were also pretending to smoke cigarettes while we did it.  I was still a university student when I bought my first computer.  Before that most of my work was longhand but I did write some essays on a borrowed electric typewriter.  Rone's team sourced 14 vintage typewriters for this room but had to give a vintage feel to new desks.  It was great to walk about and read what was being typed on different typewriters.

The Waiting Room: the place to wait to speak with the boss.  The desk is for the secretary to manage who went in.  My dad almost sat down on the couch and then remembered it was part of the exhibition and not to be touched.

Head Office: is where the boss sits.  I wish I had an office like this.  So much space.  Big windows.  Beautiful wooden filing cabinets.  Pressed metal wall.  I could just do without the layers of dust.  And I don't like people looking over my shoulder when I work.  I think Don Draper would have been at home here.

I am sad to leave this place.  Although it feels like it has always been there, it has been so neglected, it would not surprise me to return and find it had crumbled to nothing more than dust.  The same beauty in the well crafted is also present in the decay.  Rone started out as a street artist so he knows a bit about transience.  Nothing lasts. 

But wait, there's more!

The Newsagency: amazingly once we are step outside the Flinders Street Station and walk towards the clocks, we come across one final installation.  Newsagency would have thrived in these shop in mid Century with all the comuters passing by on their way to and from the trains.  They would take newspapers from the stacks and perhaps peruse the magazines on the racks along the wall.

Relevant links

• https://rone.art/
  
• Rone takes over Flinders Street Station's Hidden Ballroom:it's my biggest project yet, in The Guardian, 27 October 2022
• The iconoclass critiques Female Faces by Male Artists on TikTok, 31 October 2022
• Time travelling with artist Rone in a fabled Melbourne ballroom, in Life and Leisure, 1 November 2022
• The Fascinating Meaning Behind the Signature Female Face Splashed Throughout Rone’s Exhibitions in Thrillist, 25 November 2022
• Time.Rone by Giles Fielke in Memo, 4 February 2023