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Café in The Rocks

Prelude: The autors of these monthly reports would like to have the fragrance-transmitting Web in order to share the olfactoric exuberance in Sydney during this season: The spring shrubs and flowers smell abundantly.

Interlude. This month, we have selected four topics: Siegfried and Elke in Sydney, Sailing at the Whitsunday Islands, Balmain Regatta, Home-brew master Claudia.

Elke and Siegfried in Sydney

Siegfried and Elke in Sydney. At the beginning of October, Elke and Siegfried come to visit us from Germany, our first guests from our former home country. Unfortunately, the spring decides to have a break during their first three days and the temperatures fall down to 12-16° Celsius. The first BBQ on our balcony (prawns and fish) therefore is a relatively short one, eventually the sun has a heart. We take our guests to a slightly unusual tourist program: Self-speaking that we show them around in our suburb and the city, that Elke and Siegfried watch the free-flight show of the flying foxes leaving their roosts in the Botanic Gardens at dusk (see also Tipps für Sydney-Besucher, only in German) and take the ferry for a day-trip to Parramatta. A 2-hour kayak tour for Siegfried is also included into the program, as well as our famous Spit-to-Manly-Scenic-Walk. After a long stroll around Paddington on a Saturday morning, we fetch the rental car and train driving on the left hand side of the road in the narrow Sydney (many roads were built for 2 lanes per direction, meanwhile 3 lanes share the same width). Sunday, we head north to Palm Beach. Kite-surfers are busy training with their giant kites that allow jumps up to 80 (!) metres. It is not an easy task to get Siegfried away from watching them... The following Tuesday, the big adventure starts for Elke and Siegfried: Driving through Australia all on their own, without any precise day-planning, without any pre-booked hotels. They have 20 days until they will catch the Ghan in Adelaide on November 2 to be brought back to Sydney. Days to discover the national parks, to drive along the Great Ocean Road, to bush walk, to stroll around. The first reports at the telephone sound promising: The two are invited by fishermen to a boat tour and are shown the newest inventions in fishing techniques. At leaving the fishing boat, they meet a group and are invited to a BBQ with sausages and wine. It is so easy to get in touch with the people here!

Beer party in paradise

Sailing at the Whitsundays. While Elke and Siegfried criss-cross Australia, the two of us depart for a week of holiday. Friends at the sailing club had asked us to join in for the chartering of two yachts at the Whitsunday Islands. We spend the days with sailing, cooking, eating, swimming, snorkeling... We are in the tropics, see many turtles swimming next to our boats (rhythm: breathing 5 times and then diving again), anchor in a bay crowded with sting rays (after Claudia snorkeled with them for 3 hours, she knows how they move and react and is quite familiar with them). A gorgeous bay hosts coral reefs like in an aquarium: Underwater forests of corals of various shapes, countless colourful fish, Giant Clams, even a swimming-with-a-turtle experience for Claudia. Unfortunately, the wind gets stronger and the anchorage is no longer safe – the following bays have less abundant corals. We find our personal paradise on the last but one day in Chance Bay. This bay is incredibly shallow – finest sand, turquoise water, not a single (!) person ashore, sting rays, and mangroves – that we don't weigh our anchor that day, but simply enjoy life. See also our photo gallery Sailing at the Whitsundays. Barely back in Sydney we can hardly wait to – guess what? Correct! – go sailing at the Balmain Regatta.

Typical boat at the traditional Balmain Regatta

Balmain Regatta. The laundry is not yet done after our sailing holiday, our fridge looks still "minimalistic" (verbatim quotation of a friend) that we prepare for yet another sailing day. Our club organizes the Balmain Regatta, a feast for the entire city. In its origins, the regatta was a race for wooden boats but meanwhile, it offers various classes ranging from traditional row boats, a number of dinghi classes, and putt-putts to racing yachts. Peter is the official photographer whilst Claudia and Poppy prepare for the adventure of dinghi sailing. Peter spends his day with taking pictures of beautiful old and impertinently new yachts. More than 200 boats are registered. The wind is predicted to be rough (and Claudia prepares for yet another swimming lesson). She and Poppy have a good start. At setting the spinnaker we heel alarmingly and our competitors already see us in the water – but then manage to balance the boat again, have learned from previous mistakes, don't even "nose dive" (i.e., nose into the water and head over heel) and only capsize a single time: At the last leg when we set the spinnaker once again because we want to cross the finishing line so elegantly that we get onto TV. Bad luck! However, we get upright again much better than ever before and agree that this is the best race day that we had so far on the new boat ;-)

Beer brewer Claudia bottling

Beer brewer Claudia. One of the first impressions after our arrival in Sydney in May was that the Autralian beer cannot compete with what we were used to. There is only Lager and Draught, imported beers are prohibitively expensive. In August, we constructively used our dissatisfaction with the local beer to do our own home-brew (wheat beer, the heaven for a wheat beer). Then, the hardest time came: The beer needs to be bottled for at least 2 months prior to consumption. The longer, the better. Now finally, end of October, the long-expected moment has arrived: Our first home-brew is opened. Scaring questions: Will it be carbonated to satisfaction (carbonic acid develops only after the bottling), which will be the quality of the foam, what will the taste be like? Reverently, we open the first two bottles. It bangs! It fizzes! It tastes good! Not as good as a Schöfferhofer, but significantly better than anything we tried in Australia. We have our wheat beer with a lemon wedge (well, everything is a bit different here). The next home-brew is prepared when Elke and Siegfried are back from Adelaide – we can't stop from having this fun.