We embark on our plane to Australia with only three objectives, the rest is wide open: visit our good friends the Fouter family in Sydney, take surf lessons and go to Uluru/Ayer’s Rock. As we leave Auckland, we don’t know quite to expect: Julien had sent us pictures looking out from their house in the Sydney suburb Mosman and all you could see was a thick haze. The bushfires were blaring in New South Wales and the outlook bleak. As we reach the Fouter’s home, it is love at first sight: the kids instantly go crazy about the lovely Fouter girls Isabelle, Zoé and Charlotte who kindly indulge the madness and we are, as so often, amazed how despite many years of not seeing each other (we calculate that the last time was in 2010) and far too few phone calls, our reunion feels as if we’d just seen each other the previous week.
Julien and Catherine make us instantly feel at home despite having just moved into their new house a couple weeks previously. After a few rounds of netball, trampoline and touch rugby, we head out to the Mosman village Christmas market where the boys get to – finally! – tell Santa what they would like for the big day. Over the next few days, we leisurely stroll around Sydney, taking the ferry to the Opera House, the Botanical Garden and visit the incredible Taronga Zoo. We’re lucky, the temperatures are not too bad and the fire haze neither. The boys have their first surf lessons at Manly Beach and are completely hooked. Besides pulling off the cool surfer dude look with bravado, I say quite objectively.
The days fly by, between surf lessons, hanging out at Bondi or Manly Beach, catching up with our friends and getting haircuts – Anjali, in a desire to feel closer to home and her beloved cousin, decides to chop off her hip length mane just like Sonali -, farmers markets and sushi dinners on the beach and it is already time to head off to the centre of Australia, bang right during the hottest recorded week, to Ayer’s Rock/Uluru (see separate post).
We get back to Sydney from Uluru on Dec 23rd and head straight to the Hunter Valley, a ca. 2 and half hours drive north. We thought it would be nice to celebrate Christmas in this region famous for its wine, cheese and gastronomy but it turns out that most places are actually closed for the holidays! No matter, between baking Christmas cookies and preparing the snacks for Santa and his reindeer, we don’t have too much time to spare anyway. Nilay and Anjali dig into the butter and flour, using our brand new Australian animal cookie cutters to make cute kangaroo, echidna, platypus and kookoobara shortcake cookies while Vyas peels the carrots. Everyone goes to bed crossing fingers that Santa will find us, what with our constant moving about. Luckily, he does and the 25th morning, despite a bright blue sky, it is nearly impossible to get anyone out of the house, everyone is so busy with their Lego and unicorn mini-boomboxes.
With the fire situation around Sydney becoming worse, we decide to move our trip to Tasmania, currently planned for beginning Jan, up by a week (see separate posts).
Our final stop in Australia is Melbourne. We’d heard it was quite the happening city and look forward to discovering the street art, and, of course, the restaurant scene, but we also timed our visit such that we get to go to the Australian Open! The added cherries on the top: Pascal, our good friend and Thierry’s golfing buddy from way back P&G times who currently lives in Shanghai and works for Wilson, will attend the Open, too and we will get to hang out, besides meeting up with Arnaud an former P&G colleague of Thierry’s whom he hadn’t seen in 15+ years. Arnaud now lives in Melbourne with his family and our three kids are delighted to have three new cool friends. Our day at the Australian Open thus is not just a day filled with great tennis, but also the opportunity for everyone to hang out with friends. The AO is absolutely perfectly organised. The location is practically right in town, so easy to get to and as you enter the event park, there is an absolutely enormous kids area filled with dozens of great kids activities. Pascal picks out the must matches of the day and we secure fabulous seats on court 3, where, shortly after, Croatian Marin Čilić will confront Frenchman Benoit Paire. The match starts off pretty spectacular with the hot headed Paire already shouting out insults to the referee within the first ball exchanges. He pulls himself together sufficiently to pull off a great second set, which he wins 8 to 6 in a tie break, also securing the third set 6:3. He then completely loses it mentally in the fourth set and loses it 1:6 which is a real downer because until then the tennis was pretty great, but once Paire turns into a pouty toddler it’s just sad to watch. Fortunately he pulls himself back together for the 5th set which shows up some truly remarkable tennis from both players, with the crowds going absolutely crazy (on our end, the French fans are doing their best to defend the loud and proud reputation), ending, after 3.5 hours in a tie break, again, which Čilić brings home 10:3. It’s soon time for Roger Federer to warm up prior to his match, and so we head over to the warm up court. The queue is already snaking around the court but the warm-up is cancelled, or rather moved to a closed off area. To finish our tennis day, Thierry and Pascal watch another outstanding match in 5 sets, 3 of which are fought in heated tie breaks, Dimitrov against Paul and at 8pm we finally call it a day, walk back to our apartment, stopping for the kids’ first sushi train experience on the way.
The next couple of days we spend walking around Melbourne’s cool neighbourhoods, discovering lots of great street art on the way, spend a day at the science museum (not great), the exposition on the gut microbiome in the Natural History Museum (not bad) and lots of fabulous meals. Our highlights are lunch at Lesa (Spanner crab-green apple – fig leaf, Koji aged lamb on fennel/almond/eucalyptus fricassee….) and my birthday brunch at Industry Beans in übercool Fitzroy, a converted warehouse now coffee roasters and café. Vyas has some tea soaked steel cut oats with a chia crumble, Anjali the cinnamon dusted brioche with sour cherry dust and coffee caviar, Thierry the avocado smash with charred lemon, Nilay some eggs and I, my absolute highlight: a kohlrabi nest with porcini dusted egg with wild greens. Truly one of our best breakfasts on our entire trip (and that’s to say a lot). After all the delicious food we walk some of it off through Fitzroy’s street art covered streets down to the famous Keith Haring mural. After packing up our bags for our early morning departure to Kuala Lumpur the next morning, we head out for dinner which is supposedly one of Melbourne’s top addresses, Etta, but which we find very disappointing. We can’t let my birthday finish on such a low note, so we jump into a cab and head back over to Fitzroy, to Messina, to indulge in some scandalously creamy gelato. From boysenberry- yogurt to caramelised pistachio, this is top notch and worthy of a grand finale to our Australian adventure.
