2012 clicked over without too much of a to-do. i think it was about 11.55 on the night of 31 december when i went to bed, no longer willing to play the guessing game of “will harlan wake up for a feed in ten minutes, or three hours?” i heard the fireworks going off in the city. harlan awoke about two hours later. but it’s not like we’ve been having an uneventful summer.

just shy of xmas, we hightailed it out of the city, into the northeastern corner of victoria, where the boy has a little patch of dirt. we brought along our kmart xmas tree, and scattered a handful of presents underneath. then we got along with the business of a summer holiday. bike rides for some…

and dipping our toes in sunshine at the nearby woolshed falls…

(while others of us dozed in the shade of the björn)…

(and elsewhere).

there was the endless washing of washers.

evenings, we walked the town, listening to birdsong and spying on wild bunnies. around the train station it’s rife with bunnies.

during the day we hid from the heat, or we searched out local delicacies. at the aldi in wodonga, we bought ham steaks and maple (flavoured) syrup and a six-pack of mince tarts. dinner sorted, we said, pleased, as they came up the conveyor belt. (though we were kidding — dinner was at the local chicken shop.)

another day, i came across a wonderful mulberry dacquoise at the beechworth pantry. crunchy hazelnut meringue sandwiching fat berries in cream. there may be no better cake in this pocket of victoria.

and then there was christmas, at the town called the rock — a glut of prawns and an endless supply of miniature chocolate bars. there was lemon tart and cream sprayed from a can. there were presents, oh my word, yes.

back in chiltern, we resumed the evening strolls. the weather had cooled down some and everything was green,

green,

green.

but guess what! i totally made it to sopra too.

i’d been offered a ride to the airport, and i thought, hmm… sopra’s on the way, and suggested that maybe a farewell luncheon would be in order. for research purposes, of course: would it be the same now that the original chef had gone? before i knew it, there were eight of us — cousins, aunt, visiting mother and random blow-in neighbour — waiting for a table to make itself available.

we waited upwards of 40 minutes, ample time to peruse the famed chalkboard menu over and over and weigh up whether to have the salad of wagyu bresaola, or of smoked trout, or of white anchovies, or…

in the end, i picked the soft poached duck egg, with asparagus, spinach, oyster mushrooms and pangrattato. oh, it was luscious. i had not had a duck egg before — are they all like this? velvety rich and creamy? stabbing the egg open resulted in a luxurious spill that coated the winsome vegetables. the fried breadcrumbs were impossibly crunchy, and very moreish.

the whole thing, really: i wanted more. it was all over before i was ready for it to end. but i suppose it meant i had some room for a taste of the rather splendid tiramisu from across the table, and a single spoonful of the kid’s eton mess — i’m sure it used to come with more than three strawberries mixed in, and this with strawberries right now in season! pah. this one was mainly a mound of whipped cream, though admittedly quite a delicious mound of whipped cream nonetheless, punctuated with shards of meringue, and generously drizzled in strawberry sauce.

so there you have it: sopra, still excellent. needs a little more fruit.

so we snuck back to sydney for a few days last week, the kid and i. we made the spur-of-the-moment trip ostensibly to visit family, though in actual fact, there was a large flashing billboard in my head, and writ large upon it was the word “messina”. still, for much of the week we played happily north of the bridge, walking through the hills and vales of cherrybrook, and the malls of the greater northern suburbs.

and then on friday, after a bus ride into the city and a ferry ride across the twinkly harbour and a walk down the memory lane that is oxford street, we met up with one d rodrigo for lunch at honeycomb. i’d only read about this new cafe a few days before, and while you’re in another city, it may register as merely a blip, but when you find yourself suddenly within — well, who knows how many hours, given public transport from the hills district — when you find yourself contemplating luncheon at sopra because it was probably your favourite place in sydney, then it seems the only logical conclusion that you end up at honeycomb, new home of old sopra chef andy bunn.

the waitstaff were all smiles and welcomes when we showed up just past 2.30, and gave us our pick of the empty dining room; the kitchen closes at 3! from the all-day breakfast menu the kid picked waffles with mascarpone, honey, and that rarest of fruits — the banana. d and i went an altogether more grown-up route.

off the main menu, we shared a generous dish of orecchiette with prawns, salty little nubblets tasting of the sea. the pasta was perfectly cooked, the riotous confetti of chilli and herbs as festive on the tongue as it was on the plate.

after a brief discussion about whether a lamb ragu would be too much for 3pm on a sunny day, we also picked the kingfish served with boiled fennel and salsa verde. under its golden crust the simply seasoned fish was meaty, a suitable canvas for a smear of the salty, tangy green sauce (though i expect i would’ve been perfectly happy to eat the salsa straight from the spoon). the cucumber ribbons and sprigs of watercress made the whole package a gift of springtime.

ambitiously, we split a salad off the specials list: oyster mushrooms with ricotta and potatoes in a tumble of leaves. it didn’t offer too much of a photo opportunity, but the salty slippery mushrooms, fried a little bit crisp around the edges, and the little daubs of creamy cheese, and the tantalising shards of witlof, more than made up for it in the mouth.

and then we were done! happy and satiated.

and we wondered, could we still do dessert? we waddled up the hill for a bit, and found our way to the cool, dim oasis that is gelato messina, where the gelato is always piled high, and there are always more flavours than you can safely consume in one sitting, even on the end of a tasting stick.

i did sample the cucumber sorbet, an impossibly smooth and slightly tangy whisper of cool speckled green, but gave in to a single scoop of almond croissant gelato. the subtly fragrant almond milk base was most agreeable, as were the pockets of almond frangipane from the housemade almond croissants. the bits of croissant pastry, however, had become chewy from the moisture, and were not a joy to eat. alas.

still, it was with a golden glow in my heart (and belly) as we wandered off into the sunset. somehow it has come to be that messina is the thing i pine for most when i think of sydney. i’d like to think it’s the really good thing that represents an amalgamation of harbour ferry rides, and good friends, and favourite aunts… not just the really good thing that might send your blood sugar just beyond desirable limits for the afternoon.

i didn’t fritter our weekend away eating fried potatoes, no. to the kid’s chargrin, i spent rather a lot of time in this sturdy little brick of a building just around the corner from the chiltern chip shop. contrary to what you may gather from the looks of it, it is not a historic gaol.

in fact, it is a historic printery, the home of the federal standard, a newspaper founded way back in 1859. these days it lies dormant most of the time, as it has since the paper closed in 1969 following the death of its publisher. however on the second weekend of each month the wooden door swings open, and the old machines within clank to life.

under the auspices of the national trust, a pair of personable old gentlemen trained in the ancient, ink-stained art of printing will invite you in, and tell you that everything is more or less how it was when the presses stopped running all those decades ago.

and it’s true: here and there, surrounding two 100+ year old printing presses, quaint tools hang on rusty nails

and vintage office chairs rest tiredly on threadbare carpet.

there are ancient fliers attached to the wooden walls,

or tucked into forgotten secret spots,

stacks of yellowed newsprint

sitting on stacks of shallow drawers.

lots of drawers bearing mysterious marks,

divided up into many tidy little compartments

holding a wealth of precious metal –

printing blocks in the tiniest of sizes, all neatly organised.

there are larger blocks as well, artfully carved of wood in fancy typefaces, for setting handsome headlines.

and there are trays of etched metal panels, each a work of art advertising the fine products of yesteryear.

look! it’s the new holden!

the pride of the printery though, is what its guardians consider to be the last working linotype machine in australia.

the big city newspapers used to have scores of them, i was told, but the advent of phototypesetting and computers saw these machines unceremoniously thrown out.

thrown out! this beautiful thing — borne of a genius watchmaker — with its diabolically clever mechanics.

this typesetting machine is itself adorned with type — instructional and stern

and heartbreakingly, gorgeously industrial.

and yet, the keyboard is unashamedly no-nonsense, not a hint is given as to the magic that will ensue once each key is pressed.

metal tabs are released from a large cartridge (“magazine”) above the keyboard, each one bearing a corresponding character.

once a complete line has been composed, set to a fixed width, the row of letters forms a mould into which molten lead is pressed. yes, that thar’s a cauldron of molten lead:

it cools down fast, solidifies, and is ejected.

voila. a line o’ type.

unglaze your eyes. i’m sorry to go all fangirl on you, but at this point a great metal arm swoops down, retrieves the metal tags, and then — following some turning of gears and a good deal of clicking and whirring — returns each little key to its rightful slot in the magazine. it is amazing to watch, but perhaps not quite as rivetting to read a rambling retelling of.

(if you are interested though, you could read this.)

oh, federal standard printing works… how you warm the cockles of my heart.

look what i ate during the just-gone school holidays: a small harvest of potatoes, fried up two ways. i blame the kid. we’d ambled up to the local takeaway on the main street of a little town in a northeastern corner of victoria — it’s the sort of place where under the counter there are lollies in jars to be had for 5c a piece, and behind the counter there is a handwritten board boasting such delicacies as hamburgers with the lot, pineapple fritters, banana fritters, and fish and chips and salad (which we’d ordered the last time we were in town; the salad was composed of a couple slices of tomato, some shredded carrot, a couple more raw onion rings than necessary, and half a dozen slices of tinned beetroot). this time, though, we were just after the chips… until the kid sang out, “and potato cakes. two each.”

i’m sorry to say that they were still mostly uncooked on the inside, crunchy, rather than just short of al dente. but you can tell, can’t you: compared to the golden brown chips below, the batter on the rounds of spud looks pale and flabby (much like one might look after subsisting on a winter diet of fried potatoes). not to worry. there was such a bounty of chips that even divvied up three ways (the wafting aroma of hot fat and vinegar was enough to lure the boy out from retiling the bathroom of his country estate), they proved unconquerable.

another day, i orchestrated a detour to the resurrected myrtleford butter factory, housed in a handsome brick building dating back to 1930. just look at the lovely lettering! here they churn out batons of cultured butter, salted and un-, wrapped in printed foil in a most fetching olde time design.

they had sold out of butter that day (and i can’t seem to track it down in melbourne — the perils of artisanal production, i suppose) but fortunately, mid-afternoon, the kitchen was still open for lunch.

i was having trouble picking one thing off the menu — garlic prawns? blue cheese tart in a buttermilk pastry? — when the waitress came over with a litany of specials. after she spoke the words “corned” and “silverside”, i only pretended to dally for the smallest moment before picking that.

beneath the rather aggressive balsamic glaze — to me it bordered on caustic — the meat was tender and comforting, and all sorts of salty-sweet-smoky. i was most won over, though, by the generous tumble of winter vegetables on the side. behold happiness: carrots, beans, tiny beets, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, a roasted onion and two waxy little potatoes. once my tongue had been beaten into submission (or perhaps the sauce actually did mellow over the course of the meal), the balsamic glaze served as a most agreeable accompaniment to the vegetables as well.

i was too full for a sit-down dessert after that, but from the counter display, i picked a a wedge of chocolate truffle tart to come away with me. it was thoughtfully boxed with a small tub of thick cream and berry compote. i dipped into the rich sludgy slice at random moments over the rest of the day — just a spoonful at a time was enough for an intense chocolatey burst. right before bedtime, i gave in and finished it off, inordinately pleased.

speaking of porchetta…

it is with regret that i admit i was in rome over christmastime last year, and not a sliver of porchetta, which originated in that region a century ago, was eaten. that enormous log of rolled meat up there is not porchetta. it is a mortadella as big (bigger than, in this case) as a child. none of this was eaten either. look. in rome, i concentrated on gelato, ok?

what we did eat, in rome, once, and in other parts of italy, was pizza. in retrospect, not even enough pizza. but while we’re all thinking about pizza — well, i am anyway: delicious sausage and broccoli puree pizza — i thought it was about time i dug up those holiday snaps from last year.

when we were planning where to go in italy, i was really very interested in naples, for the reasons of pizza and industry. the reality turned out to be a chaotic melange of all-day-and-night police sirens (norrrrrr-ni-nor-ni-norrrrrr-ni-nor-ni-norrrrrrrr) and garbage piled high on every street corner, sometimes for the length of the entire block. also: possibly the worst pizza ever, which was adorned in spirited swirls of some kind of cheese product: a claggy, cloying, unholy amalgamation of three kinds of cheese, squeezed out of a tube, shudder. fortunately, though we never came across the best pizza ever, naples did deliver some tasty specimens.

I.
just off the overnight ferry from sicily (after waiting a couple of hours on board to disembark, an epic journey on foot from the port to our hotel, an hour or so of whooping in wonder at our hotel, and a long-awaited bath for the kid), we wandered somewhat aimlessly (aimless for some, apparently; i thought we were on a mission for lunch) along the narrow grubby streets until i was faint and grumpy enough to steer proceedings in the direction indicated by the arrow on a dubious-looking sign for pizza. we ended up at the counter of a steamy, spartan little room, with two women assembling pizza and a wizened man at the end of the line stirring a cauldron.

there were only a couple of options on the blackboard menu, though the counterwomen seemed open to customisation. you picked from a handful of ingredients, and they were placed on a small disc of dough, and then — here’s the thing — another circle of dough was placed on top, the whole thing sealed and handed to the man, who dropped it into his pot of boiling oil. it swelled up like a blimp, turned blistered and golden brown, was fished out and placed on a bit of butcher’s paper, and then handed over the counter. pizza fritta!

i had inadvertantly lucked into a curbside luncheon of famous neapolitan street food. my salsiccia and broccoli rabe pizza — marked with a little squiggle of an S — was utterly delicious: crunchy crust gave way to chewy bread, the steaming tangle of green on the inside just perfect for a cold grey day. the boy was somewhat less enamoured of his mozzerella and salami pizza, although the kid was quite happy to finish it off the gooey innards.

II.
i went the more traditional route another lunchtime, with a pizza marinara. the kid was flummoxed by the lack of cheese, but the light, classic topping of tomato passata, garlic, oregano and a drizzle of fruity olive oil meant there was plenty of room for gelato after.

III.
the day we went to pompeii, the road up to the volcano was closed due to bad weather, so we spent all our hours roaming the excavated ruins of the ancient town. this is the kind of thing that will make you increasingly hungry and slumpy. just short of “resentful”, the boy led us to a very modern cafeteria he had found at the end of a cobblestoned street. here the pizza is no better (though no worse) than the kind you find sitting behind glass at those takeaway places in kings cross: congealed cheese, assorted salted meats, but the bonus is the counter staff slice it to fit perfectly in the wedge-shaped trays.

IV.
another day we caught the funicular up vomero. we were looking for a particular fritteria, but instead stumbled upon what we thought was a political riot, and which turned out to be… i dunno… high school kids let out for lunch, or something. so we made a detour towards civilisation, which turned out to be the lunch bar on the corner.

from the very desirable array of prepared foods, i picked an almost-pizza. a bready pie filled with, yes, of course, sausage and broccoli (rabe). i tell you, i will never be sick of this magical combination. the countergirl cut a wedge as large as i wanted and then placed it on the counter, from whence it fell to the ground, seconds later, with a damp splat. i was very pleased that she cut me another slice.

now if you will excuse me, i must go assemble a meatball sandwich for lunch.

well folks, it’s come to this. i’m getting on an airplane in about 8 hours, and i’m not done packing. it sounds like a lot of time, but i have to go out and procure some boxes, into which i’ll be packing up the rest of the house when i return in some weeks. i also have to drop a few bags of stuff at vinnie’s, to avoid packing them. i have a lot of fruit in the fridge, and i’m gonna try and prepare them in handy, bite-sized airplane snacks. i need to go to the supermarket.

i feel strangely calm. this is possibly a good thing.

catch you later.

we headed out of melbourne for a mini-roadtrip. it’s not my favourite thing, sitting in a car for hours at a stretch, watching the scenery whiz past, however the regional bakeries sort of make it worthwhile.

it was just after 9 on day 2 when we entered the bakery on the main street of kyneton — the country cob, i think it was — looking for a breakfast that would last us the drive back to the city (and out again to the snow). i cast my eye over the standards in the counter: scrolls, snails, slices, and would probably have settled for a large lamington when i caught a flash of colour from an adjacent display case.

look at that amazing pink cake! filled with chunky jam and just the right amount of cream, topped with sugary pink icing and shredded coconut. the cake itself was moist and strawberry-flavoured in a most agreeably artificial way. when it was gone i had to have a couple of stern words with myself about not getting another one for the road.

the other thing i like about the countryside is its easy curation of vintage signage. sometimes it’s a small moment of pleasure as you past it at 100km/h on the highway. other times you might arrive at a little town where the highway is the main street, and you might stop for a while for a more leisurely review.

pink cake can make you foolhardy, and will propel you into the middle of the road so that you can get a picture of that historic tea mural on an old building on the other side. or you might stand in the gutter just so you can fit a giant rooftop ice cream in your viewfinder.

these lovely signs will soon be just a smidge closer. come january, i am moving to melbourne. in short, the alternately estranged and absent boy came to the decision that he might actually want (and like) to have his family around him. for the last year or so he has been working a new job in melbourne, both of which factors have made him far less grumpy than we have been used to. so, we shall see.

i had been somewhat resistant to relocation, but then a couple of months ago i read of loobylu’s crazy plan to pack up a suburban melbourne existence and head off on an island adventure in british columbia. it struck me that melbourne wasn’t such a stretch after all.

what will be a challenge, will be packing up the house. i’m hoping that when i open up the boxes on the other end of the move, there will be less — maybe even a lot less — than i have around me right now. i like my stuff, and people who’ve been around here have been kind enough to point out what a blast packing it up will be, but i’ve also been reading of people who live with 50 things (or even 75, or 100 things). so, um… we shall see.

i am working on convincing myself that it’s actually just the idea of my stuff that i’m attached to. so far i have been very bad at even starting the cull, and i know this relaxed attitude will turn around and bite me in the ass in four or five months.

in the meantime, i calculate how much gelato i can eat at messina before the summer arrives, and i watch the sunsets over the harbour, coloured ever more rosy by their finiteness. aside from my lovely aunt, who cried out, “how can you leave me?”, people have been saying, “oh melbourne! i love melbourne! i’d happily live in melbourne!”, and i’m hoping that they follow through and come with me.

so, golly, it was just about a month ago that we were in melbourne. warm-and-sunny-in-the wintertime melbourne, whoulda thunk it. we did such typical school holiday stuff as go the the circus (the amazing circus oz, with no horses or elephants, but wonderful and strong girl-acrobats, and funny and hot — h.o.t. — boy-acrobats, and a rocking live band) and hide out in the tim burton exhibition on the one day it did rain.

first off though, we braved the sunday crowds at the queen victoria markets. i don’t know how i never noticed this before, but in-between the boreks and bratwursts there is a stall — colour of earth — that offers a big range of ready-made pizze. what made the choice even more boggly of mind is the number of different bases available. there were regular bases in white and wholemeal, but then there were a number of gluten-free bases. now, my normal reaction to a gluten-free version of something which is not traditionally gluten-free is to grimace and turn away, however these bases were a rainbow of happy toy colours, corresponding to their flavours: black rice, corn, pumpkin…

i couldn’t go past the beet and meat: hot salami, fetta, capsicum, zucchini and olives on a bright pink beetroot base. they didn’t heat it up for quite long enough in the oven — the center of the bready round was stone cold. however the bits around the sides had developed a pleasing crust around the chewy, slightly mochi-textured interior, and the toppings were generous and fresh.

a couple of days later, we caught the tram to port melbourne, and then made the long trek along the beach to st kilda, just so that we (ok, i ) could get ourselves a kugelhopf from monarch cakes.

they sat in the window, like puppies in a petshop, waiting to be picked. all slightly misshapen in that lovingly handmade way. i picked my cake, and the countergirl weighed it.

“this one’s a bit heavier, because there’s more chocolate inside. is that ok?”

more of that thick, sludgy chocolate wrapped up in chewy, sugar-dusted yeasty cake? well, yes! she rang me up, and that was the week’s breakfast sorted.

one afternoon, we showed up at journal, by the door of the melbourne city library in flinders lane. it was packed to the point of throbbing, and the chatter and clatter of peak lunchtime was more than a little confronting. a harried waiter pointed us to two newly vacated seats at the corner of a large communal table, and then disappeared into the crowd for some 20 minutes before coming back to take our order.

which gave me plenty of time to consider the chalkboard menu. i picked the endive salad, expecting a few leaves on a plate with a dribble of dressing. so i was surprised and pleased when a great mound of shredded endive was delivered, barely concealing many strips of prosciutto, walnuts, and clumps of mildly musty blue cheese. a textural masterpiece! there was even bread, for mopping up the tart dressing.

it was delicious, but i must admit, there was so much of it that towards the end, it almost became boring. almost. nevermind, dessert would surely recalibrate up my palate.

because journal sits within that 10-metre city block of tasty treats, all we had to do was go round the corner, and buy ourselves a little cupcake each, from little cupcakes.

i had the bite-sized pistachio cupcake: moist, nutty cake with exquisitely piped frosting, and a gem of a pistachio placed just so. perhaps next time i’ll be having the large pistachio cupcake.

and then yes, the drizzle kicked in, and we hightailed it to the bowels of the australian centre for the moving image, where we admired the very large and very strange body of work that tim burton had created since even before he went to art school. drawings and models and costumes and statues, and clips of edward scissorhands and alice in wonderland, and a perplexing japanese-slash-new wave version of hansel and gretel that the kid quite enjoyed.

(though i suspect her favourite part was actually the back room with the low tables and pots of textas where ordinary folk like us could sit and draw their own monster outcasts.)

the exhibition goes until mid-october, and i’m recommending it if you like tim burton, or strangeness, and monsters, and drawing.

i’m not doing a very good job of being here. on the other hand, i’m doing a sterling job of not being here. i mean, i have been here, only i’ve been working. that 300-page textbook job evolved — over more 1-and-2am bedtimes than i care for — into a 384-page textbook job. it’s not over yet, but it is back in the hands of the editorial department, for now.

a couple of weeks ago, i wasn’t actually here at all. i was in melbourne, where the tree outside the cottage industry shop on gertrude street is adorned with a patchwork of lace doilies, and the adjacent sign post wrapped up in a crocheted cozy. all very apt, for the proprietor of cottage industry, one penelope durston, crafts the loveliest arm warmers in a mindboggling range of dusty hues. i must not give in to them, because i already have three pairs of arm warmers, however a couple of years ago i did surrender to a rather fetching shopping bag she’d made out of two vintage tea towels (one was covered in fancy historical teapots and the other presented a nautical scene involving lobsters and lobster pots).

but yes, now i’m back in sydney, with a little breathing room, and where it turns out another pair of arm warmers would not be unwelcome when the temperature dips treacherously at night.

no matter, i turn on my electric blanket before taking the kid into the shower, and then after she’s all clean and shiny, we tuck ourselves into bed and read. we’ve just finished “charlotte’s web”, and towards the end, i started getting that feeling of needing to put the book in the freezer. but we bravely pressed on, into the face of certain death.

afterwards, the kid was subdued, and ventured, “i have a sore throat. you know how sometimes when you’re sad and your throat hurts?” she touched the base of her neck. mmmyes, i was certainly familiar with that feeling.

i could put it down to sleep deprivation. or maybe just the passing of time, or youth, or spiders. maybe the thought of being not here, some day six months from now.