blogg it

coffee!

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:31:16 +0930

WOW! its nearly a year since I have posted in my blog. i guess other things have distracted me!

well here is the latest distraction, a Behmor 1600 coffee roaster. now we can buy green beans and roast them ourselves - which means cheaper coffee and fresher coffee.

camping...

Sun, 24 May 2009 16:13:06 +0930

...sort of!

we were back at bawaka for a few days camping - although it hardly qualifies with running water, electricity and sleeping inside! as you can see in the photo above, (if you look closely in the upper left hand section between the palm fronds), our friend niké the crocodile was in attendance again.

the weather was just perfect, cool in the evenings and lovely sunny, warm days with only light breezes. kai had a ball climbing on all the rocks - ‘rock world’ as he calls it, i caught plenty of mud crabs as well as a few fish and sal had a quiet relaxing time at camp while the boys were off hunting!

the evenings were blissful, sitting around the camp fire and watching the golden sunsets!

sunday dinner

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:48:24 +0930

my inspiration for tonite’s dinner was watching neil perry hosting a show called ‘food source - far north queensland’, he had tony sassi of sassi’s at bale fame cooking a dish with smoked red emperor and hand made pasta.

the two elements that caught my eye were the smoked emperor and the hand made pasta, rather than try to encapsulate the sauce in a ravioli he had made large circles of pasta and plated up in layers of pasta and sauce.

so i rummaged through the freezer and found a nice fillet of barramundi and set that to thaw out in preparation for smoking.

for the sauce i decided to use an intense italian sauce i had previously developed to use with seafood and pasta, it uses a home made fish stock of fish heads, mud crab mustard and balmain bug heads. i then make a simple italian sauce with tomato, onion, garlic, star anise and bacon to which i add the fish stock and cook out for 20 mins.

then i strain the sauce and stock and reduce it right down, finally i add an equal quantity of cream to soften it.

the pasta is easy, make a simple pasta dough, let it sit in the fridge then roll out with a pasta roller nice and thin, use a bowl to cut out nice big circles, (about 120mm diameter), cook them for 3 minutes and then place in cool water ready to be reheated for serving.

camping at bawaka

Sun, 8 Mar 2009 18:25:35 +0930

being on daywork for a few weeks and having weekends off like normal people, we decided to take advantage of coinciding days off and join will & dhalulu for a weekends camping at bawaka. will’s sister sascha and her friend sally were visiting as well, siena & her friend mikayla came along and we took djali ganambarr with us in our troopy.

when we reached the beach after a couple of hours driving we stopped & the men went hunting for marranjalk (stingray), guya (fish) and djinjalma (mud crab). I got 3 muddies and turned back as i had nothing to carry more in! will & djali continued hunting. i drove the women & kids on to bawaka and we started setting up camp, mikayla spotted a blue tongue lizard which got the kids excited! i caught a heap of bait in the cast net and dhalulu caught some nice gold spot trevally with the bait i had caught.

catching up!

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:12:14 +0930

seems like a while since an update of the blog! sal & i have slipped into an indulgent lifestyle since kai started school, very leisurely days and lots of afternoon nanna naps!

today we kept kai home from school and headed out bush to help some friends at a community who were setting up for a funeral next week - i heard the name of the community incorrectly and we drove out to yunungbi instead of djarrakpi (i know, i know!) - the road was very wet and muddy so it was a pretty challenging drive, it had been raining all night and most of the day so the rivers were well up too.

home alone...sort of!

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 19:37:53 +0930

so sal & kai have been away for a couple of weeks visiting mahni & geoff in tassie, i have been ‘home alone’ - except that i have had jeremy staying with me from NZ - so not so alone! jeremy arrived just before sal & kai left so we had a couple of days all together, the boyz had a day out in the bush and all the photos are up on our web gallery HERE

last weekend jeremy and i went out with will looking to spear some stingray (marranjalk) at daliwuy bay, we didnt do much good with the spearing but we did get some nice muddies!

home again...

Sun, 9 Nov 2008 21:58:24 +0930

...yes, after nearly 3 months we are home again, kai is back at pre school, i am back at work, sal has been busy fitting out our new room and life goes on!

i went out mud crabbing last week and got 3 nice crabs, we also had some mackeral fillets pete (houseminder) had left in the fridge for us.

inspired by the italian cuisine of the last 2 months i created 2 new dishes, an entree of hand made ravioli stuffed with mud crab, marscapone and brie, on a seafood bisque with crushed hazel nut and oven roasted sage.

the main course is a stack of oven roasted potato slices and poached mackeral fillets with a tomato and basil sauce.

speedy update..

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:13:00 +0930

ok, quick update on recent events, i have finished work for 3 months!! we have been out at the garma festival for the last 10 days, photos are up on the web site if you click on ‘photos’ on the navigation bar at the top of the page you can find them in the most recent album.

had a good time as usual catching up with all the usual suspects, peter phipps and lisa slater from melbourne, neil & denise (neil performed ‘bush dentistry on a dodgy peg of mine.), jack thompson, phil adams, greg & joan wearne and many others.

other visitors this year included ben lee and jimmy little.

we also had fiorino & alice camp with us at garma, they are friends of jeremy’s (who used to live here and work at buku larrangay), they live in italy near bologna so it was great to meet them here before we leave. fio runs a yidaki festival in italy each year and he and jeremy are arranging for djalu to attend the festival next year, so it was also an opportunity for fio to meet djalu.

we had a fantastic few days with them at garma & back at our house, they both helped us with our work at garma and at one stage in our camp we had fio, alice, peter, lisa, lyndon, jess, tilly, lola, jed, sal, me and kai all camped together at camp mooney!

we are now working like crazy to be ready for blastoff on wednesday - when we fly out bound for hong kong and then italia for 2 months, be sure to keep up to date with our travels by following our ‘blog italia’ - it has a direct link from the navigation bar at the top of the page.

krudd kabinet etc....

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:34:42 +0930

mmm...its been a busy week, got our new camera - a canon ixus 860 which is a nice little compact to take to italia with us. i wanted a good quality camera with a wide angle lens and something small enough to fit in the pocket when loitering about.

these pictures are amongst the first taken with it, and so far I am very happy with it!

i have also bought a new video camera, its a high definition model which shoots the most amazing footage for a consumer camera. looking at the footage on our sony widescreen TV it looks just like professional footage. the model is a sony HRD HC9E.

i will get some footage up on the webgallery in the next few days for those interested.

this week we have had the krudd karavan roll into town for kommunity kabinet, it is the first time the cabinet has sat in an aboriginal community and i spent yesterday out at yirrkala with the rest of the rubber neckers and i must admit it was pretty impressive.

lots of media, men in black with suspicious bulges, hanger-oners, rubber neckers and citizens with agendas. krudd kept talking about “closing the gap” when questioned by yolngu about the intervention - not sure how suspending the racial discrimination act fits with closing the gap, nor all the racist laws introduced by little johnny coward in the intervention, and maintained by krudd and krew!

whether there is actually any will or ability to ‘close the gap’ remains to be seen, but unless the solutions are generated from the ground up and aboriginal people have an input into therir design and implementation then the gap will widen rather than close.

as long as white australians continue to try to impose their values and aspirations on yolngu, implying the only yardstick for success is their degree of aligment with our white picket fence culture there is little hope of meaningful progress away from the current institutional rascism.

on a more personal note our trip to europe is rapidly drawing closer, we will be out at the Garma festival from the 5th of August so I only have 6 shifts to go before i finish work for 3 months! we get back from Garma and have a week at home before flying out for italia on the 20th of august.

scary, cool, zombie!

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 12:00:09 +0930

sal bought home this particularly attractive zombie mask from her rounds of the garage sales yesterday. (pickings must have been slim is my only comment!)

kai is besotted with it and happily scaring small children, native animals and hardened criminals wherever he finds them.

he did decide that scary and cool can go together, hence the shades and backwards cap!

clockwise - kai, randin, brandy, sal, sascha, aimee and troy.

on a much less scary subject, we had a lovely dinner party with old friends out the back on our new verandah last night. the sad death of Dr Marika has had the side effect of bringing people from all over australia to yirrkala for her memorial service and the ongoing ceremonial bungal.

so we have been able to catch up with many people we have not seen for quite a while, last week at the memorial we caught up with our friends Denise & Neil who used to be the dentists in town. (and upon whose yacht i proposed to sal as we sailed back from truant island), last night we had sascha and aimee round for dinner, sascha now lives in melbourne and aimee in byron bay. aimee came with her partner, troy. while in yirrkala they are all staying with randin & brandy so they also came for dinner at rick’s bar & grill!

it was a lovely night, great food ( if i say so myself!), great company and really nice to catch up with everyones news and plans. at the end of the night we watched a couple of short films from the DVD randin has been making with yolngu at the malka project at the arts centre - one being an amazing little film shot at dhalingbuy recreating an old yolngu story of love, betrayal and revenge!