Ceridwen and The Big Dish

1 November 2009

Sadly one cannot stay in Betty's spare room forever, so we're heading for Melbourne. Stopped on the way at the iconic radio telescope featured in the movie 'The Dish,' which we haven't seen but understand is worthwhile. It's a gigantic white dish thing that was used to broadcast the moon landings in 1969 and sort of pops up suddenly amid the otherwise consistent landscape of wheat and cows. Bizarre and therefore terribly Australian. It's not actually an Official Big Thing like the Prawn or the Mango, but as it looks like a satellite dish on 'roids, I'm sticking to “The Big Dish” with lots of capital letters.

Lots of driving through country that is very gradually becoming greener and hillier. Camped for the night in Junee, home to the only surviving brick railway roundhouse in New South Wales, as well as a very pretty and disproportionately large train station. Nearly everything is High Victorian in Australia. There must have been a massive rush to assemble a nation between say 1830 and 1900; I'm sure that world supplies of wooden gingerbread and wrought iron must have been depleted by the sheer quantity of hotels and stations and ye olde cottages popping up down here. Junee is also home to the nicest campground people ever, who seemed really excited just to have us there—and they are similarly excited by all their clients, apparently. They even won best campground in interior New South Wales in 2006! Parked on the grass by a lake, with rissoles and pasta for dinner. Farewell NSW...

...hello Victoria. Yesterday down into Milawa, half of the home of the Milawa-Oxley Gourmet Region. We might have missed this gem entirely except that we spent 6 months with the daughter of the Milawa Cheese Company's owners, namely Ceridwen Brown (it's Welsh and sounds just like it looks--she goes by Corrie.) Corrie was coming home from London where she was cheesemonger at Neil's Yard Dairy in Borough Market (and how cool and gentrified and hip is that?) and she's been back to work for the whole time we've been jaunting about. But it happened to be her birthday, fortuitously, and so we went to visit. Ate at her family's fabulous restaurant for lunch, sampled the cheese. Went round to the gourmet olive place, sampled that. Went round to the gourmet mustard place, sampled some more (bought horseradish mustard, mmm). Went round to the Brown Brothers Winery, sampled some vino and bought a few bottles. Went round to the John Gehrig Winery, etc. It was an extremely satisfying day. Australia tastes good.

Back to Corrie's after work, for an afterhours raid on the gourmet cheese shop (have I mentioned I love Corrie?) to produce dinner, and drinking, and sleeping eventually on her sofa bed. We're getting good at making ourselves at home in other people's houses. Feel free to invite us to your house.

This morning, took our leave and Corrie (who is officially my favourite person today) sent us off with some beautiful cheeses for lunch with a bottle of wine and a gorgeous loaf of french sourdough (I recommend the Milawa Gold, which is stinky and gooey and just divine) and a fig salami. This is figgy and luscious and not much like actual salami, but is very good with cheese.

We stopped in Glenrowan on the way, famous as the place where the outlaw and folk hero Ned Kelly faced down the police in 1880 whilst wearing a home-made suit of armor constructed (in a charmingly 1880's manner with buttoned waistcoat-effect) of plowshares. Note to self: nothing in Australia is what you'd expect. Anyway, went to the Kellyland show thing, featuring creepy animatronic figures acting out the siege at Glenrowan and some special effects and the sweetest old guy running it who was also super excited we were there. There is a movie about this too, starring Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom, which I will have to see once home.

Or, you know, not living in a van.