Brisbane & Byron

You know you are in Queensland when the hospitals have banana vending machines, maybe it should have a big warning sticker on it for renal patients.

Fancy dark chocolate mousse cake with mandarin jelly from a French patisserie Le Bon Choix in the city.


When I typed "food Brisbane CBD" into google, Urbanspoon presented me with a top 10 list which I can't remember any of, but one immediately caught my eye - Bun Mobile! (Every time I said this out loud, someone would mishear this as bum mobile).

So on Friday night after our course, Johanna drove us around the burbs of Brisbane until we found the Bun Mobile.. and where else would it be parked but be outside Kevin Rudd's office! So we sat on the pavement outside KRudd's office and ate our fluffy white Chinese-style buns stuffed with burger fillings like pulled pork and beef with chorizo.. what a perfect Brisbane dinner.

The next day we went to Byron and stopped off in Gold Coast for lunch. This was the ridiculously crispy roti with smoked salmon and tahini yoghurt (their name, not mine), which was delicious if a little small..

When we got to Byron Bay, we ran down to the beautiful Tallows beach (at the Suffolk Park end), where the sun had migrated to just the right place on the horizon to give these lovely long shadows.

Sunset bathing the town in a golden glow.

Sunrise the next morning.

An almond croissant from the Suffolk Park bakery, where we discussed vaccination and obesity.. thought we might get stoned to death by all the hippies there!

Another view of Tallows beach from the lighthouse headland. At the lighthouse we saw so many whales it was incredible - there was a mother with a calf who were frolicking just a few hundred metres away from the shore, and some kayakers had gotten so close up to it I thought they might just get flicked by the whale.

Waffles with fruit, greek yoghurt and honey from the Byron markets.

We went up to Bangalow for lunch, which was such a lovely little town away from the hustle and bustle of Byron, which felt like it had grown way too big for its own good. We had trouble deciding between the Town cafe and Utopia, but in the end decided Utopia looked more airy and spacious. Our waiter was so ridiculously friendly I wanted some of what he was on.

This was the excellent handmade papardelle with chilli crab and basil I had there - it was so good it made me want to go home and make pasta myself.. more on that another day. 

Memories are so strange

If something happens, and you form a memory of it, but then you forget it completely and no longer have awareness of its very existence, does that mean that it's the same as if it never happened?
If you then remember it some years later, when you find something random that triggers the secret path to that memory, and it seems so hyperacute, how is it possible for that lost moment to surface so quickly?

Why is it that even if you try really really hard to hold onto something, you still inevitably forget some things that you really really don't want to forget, because it was part of you.. but it's gone, and there's nothing you can do about it.

I feel like Watanabe, except I'm not yet 37 and not yet experienced a descent into Hamburg, but the feeling is exactly the same.

As time goes by, it gets harder and harder to recall him. The sound of his voice, the feel of his skin, the warmth of the feeling of being in love. At the beginning, it took a second, then a minute, then several.. and now even with the utmost concentration it feels as if one is looking through a fog and those memories are fuzzy in the past. 

Now I understand why we desperately wanted to affirm that we loved each other, because somehow we knew it would come to this.. that we would forget, and that it would all fade. Like ripples on the surface of water, once it passes it's as if the ripples were never there. 

But they were, and you were real. I have just moved to another place in my mind.