As I wandered home from my regular Wednesday night routine – Swedish class, then catching up with mates at the pub – I took a peak through the window at Cossie’s.
Cossie’s is a cafe that’s operated for as long as I’ve lived in Surry Hills. It’s never been glamorous. It’s never been fashionable. But they do an EXCELLENT Club Sandwich. A meal I’ve been missing over the last few months as they’ve been closed for renovations.
The hoardings came down last weekend (I think), and since then the windows have been covered in newspaper. But there are gaps so you can look in.
To be honest, I’m not sure I could see much difference as I had a look through the window. The walls appear to have been painted. The floor looked a little different. They appear to have done some work on the window frames.
But otherwise, it looked like Cossie’s always has: an unpretentious, regular, local cafe. That said, it hasn’t been without its share of glitterati: I saw Blanche d’Apulget there once.
I’m looking forward to the re-open.
Otherwise, it’s been a reasonably unremarkable day. I woke late, got to work a little late. Went to Swedish class – which was very enjoyable tonight – and then caught up with mates at the pub. That’s enough for a Wednesday surely?
“Which one of your children do you love the most?”, I joked to a couple of people today. They knew exactly what I was talking about.
We were in Newcastle for the “internal auction” (as we called it) of Hawkesbury One, an art collection group I’ve been involved in for the last ten years.
You may have seen articles about us in the papers or may have seen the recent story about us on the Art Nation on ABC1.
Ten years ago we were a group of friends and family members. A few of us knew a fair bit about collecting before-hand; others (including myself) knew nothing.
Hawkesbury Ends
We had heard about art collectors groups in Tasmania, and so we invited a bloke called Dick Bett to come and talk to us about setting up a group with members in Sydney and Newcastle.
Since then, we’ve collected paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs, all sorts of things, from well-known contemporary Australian artists, as well as artists who are truly emerging. Over ten years, we’ve also been through a wonderful journey of getting to know more about contemporary Australian art, as well as getting to better understand the dynamics of group decision-making. There were challenges and difficulties along the way, of course.
It was always going to be a ten year plan, we knew. People’s lives change, we realised that. But when it came to the actual point of having to divide up the collection and go our separate ways, I think most of us were unprepared for that.
Most of the group has been very actively involved in a broad range of things everything from choosing the works, giving the group direction, looking after the legals, maintaining a website and so on. We were emotionally involved!
And it was transformative for many of us to see the works we had housed in our homes over a decade go on display recently at Newcastle Region Art Gallery. To see all of the works together was quite moving.
I’m so pleased we had an exhibition at the Newcastle Region Art Gallery to end things. I think if we were to have gone our separate ways without this sense of “closure” it would have been far more difficult. Like ending high school, but not having a “formal”.
But when we had to make choices about which of the “children” we wanted to keep – and to compete against each other for our favourite works – I think most of us felt a fair deal of sadness.
As with any sad occasion, we tried to laugh things off with humour. A joke here. A joke there. A round of applause when someone was able to get the work they truly loved.
It’s been a wonderful, enriching experience for me to be involved in, and I’m so truly grateful my friend Kate asked me to be a member. It’s changed my life in many ways. A wonderful experience.
“Where shall we meet for dinner”, I asked my friend Kate on the phone this afternoon. It’s not as if I really needed to, as I was pretty confident the answer would be “Red Chilli”, a Sichuan restaurant in Sydney’s Chinatown.
Over the last few years, Red Chilli has become a real favourite for us, and we tend to make the same menu choices every time. We usually start off with a lovely garlic cucumber dish. We then usually have this wonderful chicken dish, where the chicken is cooked in chilli, and with your chopsticks, you have to pick out the small individual pieces of chicken, and hope you don’t pick up some of the chilli pieces which are very, very hot. We also usually have a wonderful greasy pork dish, cooked in onions and leaks which is fairly decadent.
Tea Smoked Duck
Tonight, however, we expanded our repertoire. We ordered a dish Kate told me she had eaten in China and which she enjoyed very much. It’s duck smoked in tea. As you bring it close to your mouth and nose, you can identify the smell of the tea instantly. I didn’t pick it up in the flavour, but it’s definitely there in the aroma. And it’s tasty. Oh yeah, it’s tasty. And while I would normally gulp down some duck in an instant, it was the kind of meal that was good to eat slowly and really savour.
I was told before leaving Perth that Karratha was like an ordinary working class “new suburb” plonked straight on an unattractive mud flat.
How unkind, I thought. It was my job to prove them wrong, to discover the beauty of Karratha. Indeed, the flight from Perth – which takes about two and a quarter hours – is a spectacular one offering amazing views of the landscape, mostly due to the absence of cloud for most of the trip.
For a fair distance you travel over massive salt pans. Actually, the area was looking quite good, due to the massive amount of rain associated with the two most recent cyclones. As you fly over the town, it looks spectacular from the air, as you fly close over the coastal estuaries and mud flats. Yes, mud flats.
The town itself was planned and constructed in the late 60s to meet the accommodation needs of Hamersley Iron, with the ultimate goal being the establishment of a self-supporting city of 30,000. The populaton is currently about 10,000.
My friends were right. Karratha is very unatttactive. There is no shopping centre per se except for the one which could exist in virtually any Australian town, although this one is particularly unatttactive, although I did manage to pick up a couple of cheap shirts. The price of food and coffee, however, was outrageous. $3.70 for a flat white is unacceptable, but also unavoidable.
And although it’s plonked on a mud flat, you can’t actually see the ocean from town since there is a great bloody mound of rocks separating the two. Yes, I know they’re three billion years old and they contain fossilised evidence of the earliest known life… but.. it would be nice to see the coast.. except it’s a several kilometres from Karratha to the coast with the mud flats separating the two!
Part of the location issue may be its fear of cyclones, as they come through regularly, and the hope that a great pile of rocks might help protect the town, but I’m told it does make for an oppresive, enclosed environment for much of the year.
It would have been great to travel around the area, which is apparently gorgeous, but my work commitments were strong, and aside from a short trip to Dampier (the drive is spectacular) this wasn’t a holiday at all, but a working visit.
If I’d had time to holiday, it would have been great to go out to the nearby archipelago. But that’s also how many of the visitors to the area would also perceive of the town due to the strong culture of “fly in, fly out”. But it may also be the ethic of the locals too, as when I asked several where they go to swim, they said, “the pool”.
While the nation’s legislators struggle with what to do about same-sex marriage, there’s at least one major bank which thinks I’m still in a relationship which ended over a decade ago.
“Back in the 1900s and early 2000s” (I say this for dramatic effect), Damien and I had a joint bank account, with linked credit cards. After we went our separate ways as a couple, we also went our separate ways as a financial entity. Or so we thought.
Despite the fact we’ve both told the bank we’re no longer a couple, and despite having received at least two letters (yes, letters) apologising for the inconvenience and saying they would rectify the fault, I continue to receive a new credit card from them for this linked account every two or three years. The latest arrived in the bank yesterday.
“Can you just cut it up and promise you won’t go to Stockholm with it”, Damien joked to me in an email this morning.
Today was the first time in about a month when I had time at work to “breathe”. For many industries, October/November is a time when people start to wind down. But in the industry in which I work, it’s quite a busy time, with planning and negotiation around summer leave (24×7 requirements), and as contract negotiation for the following year is finalised. There will be more busy activity over the next week or so, and so it’s not over yet. But today, for the first time in what seems like forever, I actually had some “thinking time”. I also had some time tonight to review some interesting/”random” photographs from the last few weeks, and have shared them with you here today.
This is “Biscuit”, our apartment block’s “collective cat”. Orange is the new cat. Snapped through the glass at the ABC, the News 24 team during the US election.Snapped from the back laneway.The last week has been “crazy as #$^&”, so going through some forgotten photographs now, including this lovely photograph from last Wednesday, when we celebrated my birthday with a yummy cake with colleagues.Have had an amazing encounter thanks to one of the “whatever happened to..” groups on Facebook. This week someone posted a photograph of family member, Gloria who I recognised instantly. 1964 maybe?Each year, the ABC supports Australian music with #AusMusicMonth, and one one day everyone is encouraged to wear a “band t-shirt”. I haven’t had an Australian band t-shirt in years, and so I’m pleased Nat and the team from ABC Melbourne were able to help out with their t-shirt, featuring their Breakfast presenter and former Skyhooks member, Red.
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Every Wednesday we’re just “caught up with mates at a pub”??? Well, I think we deserve better than that. Some excited prose about Wednesday nights is surely in order, young man!
Every Wednesday we’re just “caught up with mates at a pub”??? Well, I think we deserve better than that. Some excited prose about Wednesday nights is surely in order, young man!
I wrote a lovely post about Wednesdays a while back actually.