Christmas Greetings: Chitting and Chatting

Christmas greetings to everyone and I hope you find some peace in your own Lake Lacuna.

Chitting:  Mr Curly's goat cart leads me nicely to a potato topic - one of those easy to grow, almost round-year crops that are so versatile.   I think crunchy, golden potatoes roasted in duck fat are one of the best things about a Christmas dinner - in fact potatoes just about done any old way would make my husband happy (I think it must be the legacy of those English school dinners!)  Chitting potatoes is the term old gardeners, like my father, would use for forcing the potatoes to grow shoots before you plant them by placing them in a cool, dark place for a while.  This almost guarantees success.

Harvesting potatoes

When you are ready to plant just mound up the soil that you have enriched with compost and pop them in about 50cm apart - they don't like a heavy clay soil.  As they grow, pile up straw around the stem.  The potatoes grow from shoots on the stem and unless you do this 'hilling' you end up with a smaller crop and green potatoes from too much light.


Harvest after about six weeks. There's nothing quite like freshly dug new potatoes, and you can now also increase your scintillating conversational repertoire chatting about  'chitting' and 'hilling'.  


TOP TIP:  I am writing this with raw potato poultices stuck to my 'once' very painful achilles tendons (achilles tendonitis).  Potatoes, particularly the skin and just under it, contain high levels of potassium (plus calcium, iron and phosphorus) and greatly assist with helping bruising and painful swelling.  Just grate some raw potato and attach it to the painful area with glad wrap or a bandage.  Repeat every couple of hours until the swelling and pain goes.  It's the only thing that has worked for me!


Thank you to the 3,000 plus people who have followed my blog since it started five months ago and especially those who have given me feedback and made comments - let me tell you, it is nothing but a pleasure for me.  I think you all deserve a Christmas present so here we go.


Luscious and Interesting Plants for your Garden:

'Datura'  Brugmansia sauveolens This apricot variety in my garden has large trumpet flowers, an interesting plant shape and wonderful exotic fragrance - especially at nightfall.


 A native of South and Central America it easy to grow from a cutting.  Just prune it back hard after flowering because it can get leggy.


It is renowned for having hallucinogenic properties so I wouldn't recommend munching on it - besides the perfume is heady enough to get you high!

The extensive family of strange, but beautiful, 'Beehive Gingers' with the flowers appearing like little orchids or crab claws out of the waxy bracts.


The 'cones' are long lasting, make beautiful cut-flowers and come in a vast range of colours from golden, scarlet - through to chocolate.  Zingiber spectabile.  The upright leaf stems give an exotic tropical feel to the semi-shade parts of the garden and grow from 1-1.5m.

I first came across this stunning climber at my neighbour Clive and Belinda's place - I love to be surprised by a plant I have never encountered before - especially something as gorgeous as this.  The glorious fragrance and beautiful flowers make a spectacular show. They cleverly use it to cover their pergola to give them some summer shade but then let in the winter sun because it tends to be deciduous in our area.  I have used it to cover and arbour that leads to my terraced garden and is in it's full glory over Christmas.


Vigna caracalla - otherwise known as 'Snail Vine' - the mauve, purple and white flowers look like curled up snails.


A leguminous vine from South America it develops long brown pods with seeds that are easy to propagate. It's a great plant for making use of the vertical spaces in our gardens - something, I think, we don't do enough of. 


NOTE:  My two older grand-daughters (6 and 8) recently put entries into the local country Bangalow show - I think their entries were flower arranging and biscuit making.  I noticed that another of the entry categories was 'gluton free chocolate cake' - a 'typo' that put a smile on my face.  A peaceful and loving 2012 to everyone - and happy gardening and cooking.

Recipe: Peach Chutney, Jam and Ice-Cream

Being in the sub-tropics, the local stone-fruit farm in Bangalow has only a small season of production from October to November, but you really have to get there to take advantage of the wonderful peaches and nectarines that are ripe and luscious for those few precious weeks.


I have been picking up cases of speck fruit (slightly damaged) for $4.  You just need the time (and jars) to then turn them into something delicious that will last for the whole year - the alchemy of cooking! It is worth just the drive home with the smell of ripe peaches in the car.  Jars of jam and chutney also make fabulous Christmas gifts.

Peach Chutney

2 red onions, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, finely crushed

4 cm fresh ginger, finely grated

4 sticks lemon grass, white part only, finely sliced

1/2 tsp black pepper

3 kg peaches, chopped

2 cups brown sugar

1/3 cup apple cider vinegar

1 tsp salt

Cook the whole lot up for 30-40 mins until slightly thickened and syrupy.  Put in pre-washed an heated jars.  Seal when cool.  Great with Christmas turkey, ham and cheese.

Peach and Rhubarb (optional) Jam

(I add the rhubarb to take the edge of the sweetness and help set the jam a bit better - but you can leave it out)

2 kilos stoned and chopped peaches

1/2 kilo rhubarb, chopped

Sugar

Barely cover the fruit with water.

Measure how many cups of fruit pulp you have because you will need the same in sugar.

Bring the fruit to the boil and simmer for 30 mins.

Add the warmed (if you are making this in winter) measured sugar.

Bring to the boil and simmer until a skin begins to form around the edge of the pan (or when it gels when dropped onto the back of a cold saucer - the way my mother used to do it).

Put in washed and sterile jars and seal when cool.

Peach Ice Cream


6 eggs beaten
3 1/2 cups white sugar
10 fresh peaches, pureed
4 cups heavy cream
2 cups yoghurt or light cream
2 tsp vanilla essence
1 tbs lemon juice
3/4 tsp salt


Have all ingredients very cold.
Mix eggs and sugar in bowl until creamy
Add pureed peaches to sugar/egg mixture
Stir in all other ingredients and put in ice-cream maker until churned


This is so yummy.  Fresh and slightly tangy.  Will keep in the freezer for up to three weeks.

The Fragrant Garden: White flowers

Frangipani.  Plumeria rubra (almost white!)

There is nothing better on a summers evening than sitting out in the garden with a cold glass of wine and taking in the wonderful smells and listening - listening to the birds calling and cooing, the green tree frogs racketting in the drainpipes, the catyatids drumming down in the creek ( and the mosquitoes buzzing!)  But, most of all, just drinking in the fragrances.  At the moment it's mostly from white flowers: magnolia, gardenia, frangipani and mock orange.


If you have ever wondered why white flowers tend to smell most fragrant at nightfall it is because they are mostly pollinated by moths that find their way to the flowers by the white glow of the petals and strong perfume - plus the seduction of nectar.

Gardenia magnifica

I love white flowers - particularly the gardenias flowering now in all the gardens around me.  There is one for every aspect - small and compact Gardenia radicans, middle-sized shrub Gardenia 'Professor Pucci' and the head-high Gardenia magnifica.   I love their glossy green leaves, their beautiful irregular flowers with their matt ivory petals, but most of all I love their fragrance.  I have a lot of white flowers in my garden and had a 'love at first sight' for white and silver gardens when I went to Sisinghurst Castle (Kent, UK) for the first time in the 1980's (it's glory years!).  This was the home and garden of Vita Sackville West and her husband Harold Nicholson - debatably the template for modern English (world?) garden design with a focus on formal design and informal planting.  I know when I went there the first time, late one summer's evening I said to my husband - "Well I can happily die now because I have seen heaven and it is wonderful"

Sissinghurst.  White Garden with climbing rose

Vita was an eccentric disinherited aristocrat who made her money by writing - she had a long running gardening column in the English dailies - on the periphery of the Bloomsbury Group.  Her husband and she were both actively bisexual - now that would make for an interesting marriage! - but, if their letters and diaries are anything to go by, they loved each other to their dying days. Harold, a British diplomat, was appointed to the court of Shah of Persia and Vita's story of her trip overland to meet him in Tehran for the Sha's coronation makes fascinating  reading (Passenger to Tehran, 1926)  Harold too was a wonderful writer and diarist of his life and times - his books still make fascinating reading.

Sissinghurst - formal design with informal planting

At Sissinghurst she wrote in a tower with a view over her beloved White Garden - while Harold, the children (two sons) and a few servants lived in outbuildings scattered over the estate (sounds sensible to me!) I was recently listening to an old interview with her son Nigel who said that, in his mother's lifetime, he was only allowed twice into her tower. 

The White Garden, viewed from her tower, was created to glow in the dark on moonlit nights - to comfort, inspire and perfume her solitary musings.  It also broke a lot of gardening 'rules' i.e. massed plantings of one colour and using a living structure as support for a climber (in the centre of the White Garden was an old apple tree and growing through it was a white climbing rose cascading over the branches - a wonderful sight to behold).  The apple tree has long gone but the rose is still there supported by a conventional pergola. 

Sissinghurst, and English gardens of the same era like those of Gertrude Jekyll, Edward Lutyens and the Lloyds at Great Dixter, created a template in garden design that has been enjoyed and copied over and over again ever since - that is, formal design (creating rooms within rooms) and informal planting.

Mock Orange.  Murraya paniculata

Now we get to the regal queen of the garden - a particular favourite of mine.  It is worth having a Magnolia grandiflora 'Little Gem' for the fragrance alone - subtle lemon with jasmine undertone - let alone the flowers - wow!!! I have had one in a pot, as a focal point in my garden, for about five years.  It will happily keep on flowering as long as you prune off the old flower heads because it only flowers on the current seasons growth (plus you don't want energy wasted going into making seed heads). This is a very underused plant in Australia which the warmer parts of Europe have taken to their heart.  I was amazed the first time I saw this beautiful plant (not the dwarf one) espaliered all over the side of an old villa in France - then seeing it repeated over and again in Italy and Greece.  


There are no rules for this, just fun and beautiful results.  Try out a 'Vita garden' in a spot at your place with white flowers and plants with silver foliage - it doesn't take long to see and smell the results.  If you don't have room,  all of the plants mentioned make fine pot specimens - just be generous with the pot size and remember to feed them because they don't have access to nutrients from the soil.
NOTE:  A friend, whose eyesight is not so good, told me that she has recently planted the lovely native shrub/herb Cats Whiskers( Orthosiphon aristatus) along the path to her front door to 'light' her way home in the dark.

What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.

Vita Sackville-West

Recipe: Broad Beans

I think broad beans are worth having just for the plants alone.  I love their winter flowering that has a tiny pink blush on the petals (like they have been stained with raspberry juice), and their slightly fragrant flowers looking like butterflies clustered on a stick.  And then you get the edible pods!

NOTE: To encourage 'bushiness' pinch out the tips when they are about 1m high - you can eat those too in salads.

Growing Broad Beans (Vicia faba):  Known as fava beans in America these are one of the easiest beans to grow.  They are not a summer bean however, and need to be planted late summer for spring harvesting - but they are frost hardy.  Sow the seeds in a bed that has been enriched with some good compost/composted manure/ or composted grass clippings. Give it a feed of blood and bone and dolomite (to raise the pH slightly as the pea and bean family prefer slightly more alkaline soil)- 1 handful of each per square metre.  Water well until the shoots are through and about 15cm high - you can then pretty much leave them alone unless you have a very dry period.  Plant a few together so that they can support each other as they get taller.

Vaucluse House Kitchen Garden

Broad beans are a favourite vegetable of mine with their nutty flavour, but I learned even more about them on my last trip to Sydney thanks to my Greek friend Despina.  The Greeks have a whole repertoire of cooking broad beans at every stage of their development, and I was lucky enough to get some dishes cooked for me or have the recipes passed on.

It all started on a walk around the kitchen garden at Vaucluse House where they have tried to recreate, with heirloom varieties, a Victorian food garden.  They had a bumper crop of broad beans and Despina explained that you can eat them in their ‘three stages' 

Broad beans in my garden

The shelled beans are delicious by themselves as a vegetable - simply steamed and tossed with olive oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper - but here are examples of the three ways to use them.

When the pods are about as long as your index finger you can eat them whole:

Broad Beans and Artichokes from Lesvos:

250g young broad bean pods

4 fresh artichokes, prepared and peeled back to the hearts (keep from going brown in water with lemon juice)

3 tbs olive oil

1 brown onion

juice of 1 lemon

bunch of fresh dill

salt and pepper to taste

‘String’ the bean pods with a peeler as you would for runner beans.

Sautee the finely chopped onion in olive oil in a saucepan. (I asked Despina if you put garlic in it and she gave me a look as if I had stuck her with a knitting needle and said “Of course not”- I obviously still have a lot to learn about Greek regional cooking!)

Add the broad beans and prepared artichoke with 1 cup of water and the chopped dill.

Despina's whole broad beans with artichoke

Cook for about 20 mins adding the salt and pepper and lemon juice at the end.

NOTE:  You can also cook the whole broad beans like this, but without the artichoke and use stock instead of water - just don't forget the lemon juice, olive oil and dill.
(I have just found a recipe similar to this in Elizabeth David's Mediterranean Cooking from 1950)

When you can see the beans fattening in the pods:

Salad of Broad Beans with Cauliflower, Watercress and toasted macadamia nuts.  This is one of the best late winter salads that you will ever eat!

250g shelled broad beans – they will still be green

250 g cauliflower

Handful of washed watercress (or rocket/salad leaves)

Half cup macadamia nuts (or pine nuts) toasted

Dressing from olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper

Cut the cauliflower into florets and stream with the broad beans for 3-5 minutes (it still needs to be firm)

Toast the nuts in a frypan or in a tray in the oven until slightly golden

Toss together the cauliflower, broad beans, watercress and nuts with the simple lemon dressing

When the pods are really fat and the skin on the beans is as thick as paper.

Sicilian Broad Bean Dip

500g mature broad beans, shelled

1 clove garlic crushed

lemon juice

olive oil

salt and pepper

quantity of crusty bread

Steam the beans for a few minutes until just cooked.  Cool.  Now, I am sorry but you are going to have to peel them or they give the dip a bitter taste, but it is worth it.  Don’t worry if some are a bit grey looking.

Mash the beans and add the lemon juice, crushed garlic and olive oil (about 1 part lemon juice to 2 parts oil).  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Should be firm, not sloppy.  Spread on the crusty bread and open a bottle of prosecco. Buon appetito.

(When I said to Despina "How can you eat the broad beans whole-aren't they all hairy inside?" She replied "You think I would eat furry?") NOTE: The furriness goes when you cook them.

Another Salad with Broad Beans
Di's Garden Salad  October 2012

500g shelled broad beans, cooked for one minute in boiling water that has had a knob of butter adeed to it.  Refresh under cold water when cooked
Mixed salad leaves
Few mint leaves
Freshly shaved pecorino/parmesan cheese
Dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper

This was truly delicious - and all the better if you have fresh beans from the garden!

Compost Tea: Put a Bit of Magic in your Garden!

What is it?:  Liquid fertilizer
What is it made from?: Organic waste
Why use it?:  How long have you got?

NOTE:  This is a fun gardening activity to do with children

A bottle of the good stuff - undiluted, homemade, compost tea.

The tradition of using compost tea to feed the garden is centuries old and each community has their special way of making it that is steeped - like tea, in collective, shared and ancient knowledge.  This next bit makes me feel very ancient, but I was brought up in inner-city London in the era of horse drawn carts that brought bread, milk, coal and the rag and bone man (scrap stuff).  We used to keep a coal shovel by the front door so that we could race out and scoop up the horse poop, after these tradesmen have been around, before our neighbour 'Old Fenton' got to it.  He wanted it for his prize dahlias and my father wanted it to make compost tea for his allotment. Simple pastimes before the days of television and computers.


When I came to Sydney in the mid-seventies we moved to an area with lots of Greek and Italian migrants that had abundant edible gardens. I paused in wonder at seeing for the first time things growing that I had only ever seen in books - like aubergines and fennel with oranges and lemons hanging over the garden walls.  Most of these gardens had a large barrel that contained their special liquid 'brew',  with a recipe brought from Kythera or Calabria.  It also helped that around them, in every back lane, were the stables for Randwick racetrack and mountains of free horse manure. 


1 A Simple Compost Tea:

• You will need: A bucket, an old hessian bag or cotton pillowslip for your tea bag and a good few handfuls of compost.
• Put the compost in the bag, secure the top and dunk it in the bucket filled with rain water.
• Soak for a week, jiggling the bag a few times a day.
• Dilute to the colour of tea and pour directly onto the soil.

NOTE:  This is a very good brew for activating a 'tired bed' or a new no-dig bed.  It is loaded with micro-organisms that gets organic matter breaking down and subsequently soils revitalized pretty quickly.

2 My Compost Tea:  3 things - SEAWEED (brown kelp), ANIMAL MANURE and fresh COMFREY LEAVES.  Why these three?

• Seaweed enriches the soil: Seaweed is a broad spectrum fertilizer that is rich in beneficial trace minerals and hormones that stimulate plant growth. Seaweed is high in carbohydrates which are essential building blocks in growing plants, and low in cellulose so it breaks down readily. Seaweed shares no diseases with land plants. Boosts lethargic plants: Seaweed fertilizer contains an abundance of fully chelated (ready to use) micro-nutrients which can be readily absorbed by plants without any further chemical decomposition needed. Seaweed is high in potassium - essential for the production of healthy roots, flowers and fruit.
• Animal manures contain a multitude of beneficial organisms and nutrients that biologically activate your brew and subsequently your soil. They are usually high in the three essential plant macro-nutrients nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. By composting them this way you eliminate any 'nasties' in them like weed seeds, animal pathogens, chemicals and drugs that may have administered to the animals to make the ideal liquid fertilizer.
• Comfrey is a dynamic accumulator - that is it 'mines' nutrients from the soil so adding it to your compost tea will boost it's macro and micro nutrient levels - essential for plant growth. It is very high in nitrogen and contains 2-3 times more potassium than farmyard manure. Comfrey is fast-growing, herbaceous, perennial plant of the borage family with a thick and tuberous root system, allowing the plant to 'mine' compacted soils for minerals and other nutrients which are often difficult for other plants to obtain. It is an essential addition to any garden.

• What you will need:
• A container with a lid for mixing your brew in - I use a garbage bin.
• Some seaweed.  (You are not supposed to collect any from the beach, but I figure that by making my own compost tea, and not buying manufactured fertilizer in a plastic container, that collecting a handful of seaweed is doing very little harm - discuss?)
• An old pillowcase with a rubber band for sealing it - this is your tea-bag - just make sure it is made from a natural fibre - like cotton!
• Some comfrey leaves.
• Small bucket of manure.
• Rainwater for mixing it - chlorine in town water harms biological activity.
• Somebody who knows how to make spells.

• How to make it:
• Put the comfrey, seaweed and manure in the pillowcase and seal it with the rubber band.
• Soak it in the bin that is three-quarters full of rainwater.
• Chant your spell while giving it a good stir. (Suggestion below)
• Leave it to soak for a couple of weeks  giving it a stir now and again.  NOTE:  You can keep on using it over a few months until it is used up.  The comfrey will make it smell!

• How to use it: 
• As a liquid fertilizer for the soil:  Scoop out some of the brew into a bucket or watering can, dilute to the colour of weak tea and water into the soil for a fast and fantastic nutrient boost.
• Directly applying the diluted compost tea brew to the leaves as a  foliar spray has a multitude of benefits – it is a gentle tonic for the plants that is absorbed straight away – a liquid fertilizer boost (it takes more time via root system) also the micro-organisms help to protect the plants against disease. This is particularly beneficial against fungal attack e.g. mildew on zucchini/peas and beans. NOTE: You will have to strain the brew if you are using it in a sprayer.
• I use it to give plants a potassium boost when they are in bud (eg. beans and strawberries - in fact anything that is going to flower and fruit) to encourage the production of flowers and fruit set.
• Seedlings and young plants will also benefit from a compost tea spray every 3-4 days for a phosphorous boost, which they need for the development of healthy roots.
• Stress relief!!  You need it and so do plants, particularly when you are transplanting seedlings.  By giving them a spray with dilute compost tea you are giving them a boost of vitamin B1, which is a constituent of seaweed, and reducing transplant shock.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the caldron boil and bake; 

Eye of newt, and toe of frog, 

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, 

Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, 

Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,— 

For a charm of powerful trouble, 

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. 

Double, double toil and trouble; 

Fire burn, and caldron bubble. 

Macbeth, William Shakespeare

For information on COMPOSTING(cold)  and HOT COMPOSTING got to previous posts - simply use the SEARCH box.  Di

Spring in Sydney

Vaucluse House

I have been down in Sydney for a few weeks being with my youngest daughter while she waited for the birth of her first child. It wasn't an arduous task for me (she probably has a different viewpoint!) - because November has always been my favourite month in Sydney.  Winter  has finally blown away, the ocean sparkles, the scent of star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) fills the air and the harbour foreshores are given a 'blue rinse' with the magnificence of flowering jacaranda trees. Every now and again you catch an accidental/inspired collection of flowering plants that just puts a smile on your face.  Try a jacaranda next to the scarlet of an Illawarra flame tree, next to the golden yellow of a silky oak, next to the creamy white of a melaleuca with crimson bougainvillea spilling over a sandstone wall? Nature, weaving magic.

Ladies Baths, Coogee

Debate raged in the daily paper while I was there when one correspondent suggested that all 'exotic' plants should be removed from Australian gardens and replaced with 'natives' picking on , in particular, the jacaranda tree a-native of Brazil. Well, he almost started World War III.  His argument just doesn't make sense.  Gardens everywhere have always been an eclectic mix of plants from all around the world whether they be trees, shrubs or vegetables.  My garden, for one, would be empty- no frangipani, gardenias, citrus, papaya, bougainvillea, tomatoes, gingers-the list is endless. Of course in difficult climates and conditions it makes sense to grow whatever plants are best adapted to those conditions - usually 'natives'.  

I would agree with him though with regard to street tree plantings.  Very often the choice of  trees gives no sense of place at all - look around you in most cities and you could be anywhere in the world.  This puzzled me until I was employed by Waverley Council in Sydney in the 1980's and realised that almost up until then they had no horticulturists/arborists working at Councils and street trees choices were made by the Chief Engineer who worked from a list of about 6 trees.  Then I went to Barcelona, visiting a landscape architect friend of mine, and looking around you could have been in Sydney with their gum trees, Canary Island date palms and London plane trees.  He said they had a list of about 7 trees and only two were different from the Sydney list!  It's a personal thing but for me the beautiful lavender blue of the tropical jacaranda enhances the Sydney streets capes in a way that the London plane tree just doesn't, contrasting so well against the warm sandstone buildings of Sydney (e.g. along Oxford Street, Paddington outside the Barracks).

Parsley Bay, Vaucluse

So we are bequeathed often inappropriate, boring, street trees that have usually been amputated by poorly trained tree loppers because they have to try and grow amongst an ever-expanding tangle of overhead power-lines. What a different place Sydney would look if the then Premier, Bob Carr, had got his way in 2000 and, as a lasting new millennium project, had put all power lines in Sydney under the ground.  How wonderful it would be to drive around Sydney with avenues of trees arching above you. Go around the harbour-front at Rose Bay and see the magnificent arbour of'local' fig trees (power lines under the ground!) and you will get a glimpse of what we could have.

Another bonus to being in Sydney at this time of year is that my favourite swimming spots are still relatively empty - the water still too cold for most folk. I love swimming. Swimming has saved me many times - it seems to have the natural power to cure and always lift my spirits.  When I swim in the sea I feel totally free - gravity suspended - and I have never had a swim that didn't make me feel better. Plus, it is exceedingly good exercise for gardeners!  So I just thought I would share some of my favourite swimming spots with you.


Then finally, after a long wait, our dear little grandson was born on 3 November.  After 5 grand-daughters he was a bit of a surprise, but a beautiful one.

Taj Felix 

My Favourite Things to do in Sydney No.1: Bondi to Bronte walk, Sculptures by the Sea (pack a pair of bathers and a small towel).

Start with a coffee at Speedos Cafe, North Bondi and say hello to the lovely Anna and her sisters who have being running this place for years. Get a seat by the window and take in the view. When my brother arrived for a visit from the UK after one trip to Speedos he said "just leave me here for two weeks and I will be a happy man". I have been going in this cafe since it started (about 25 years ago).  The building reflects a time when Bondi was a bit shabby (the original owner was 'colourful Sydney underworld figure' Abe Saffron) but Bondi has always been colourful itself with steady waves of alternating migrants. When I first came here in the 70's you heard the accents of middle Europe from Warsaw and Budapest - Holocaust survivors and their children.  I remember being chilled to the core seeing, for the first time, a  woman in a supermarket with a camp tattoo on her arm.  Wander around now and the accents of Durban and Minsk have mostly replaced them. 
Pumped with caffeine take time to have a look at the mosaic mural around the baby pool at North Bondi before you walk along the promenade south to Bronte.  The endearing joy of Bondi Beach, in any weather, is that you totally forget that the city is bustling on behind you and that you are less than 7km from the city centre.

'Admire' the graffiti on your way.  In particular the tribute to the Anzacs and those who died in the Bali bombing where flowers have been left every day since 2005.

'Buddha takes a a holiday'

Traverse around the Bondi Icebergs swimming pool and go back later for a cocktail in the iconic Icebergs Restaurant.  Dodge the joggers and step out onto the most easterly point at Mackenzies Bay to wonder at the Aboriginal carving of a stingray on the flat rocky outcrop.  By now you will be able to see some modern art from the always inspirational  Sculptures by the Sea, now in it's 15th successful year.  Don't forget to look out to sea because between June and November you often see migrating whales. A couple of years ago, walking along this track, I noticed a pair of leaping, spouting whales and pointed it out to a couple of young tourists walking by.  They looked, blinked, then looked again and said "Are they real"  - I smiled happily and replied "Yes, that's where they live"


Keep going past Tamarama Beach ('Tamaglama') home to the buffed and waxed beautiful young things.

Tamarama Beach - not Easter Island 

Leave plenty of time to look at the sculptures. The juxtaposition of blue sky, aqua Pacific and white sand just adds another dimension to my experience and enjoyment of others creativity.  


The surf at Tamarama is notoriously treacherous - so make sure you swim between the flags or in one of the ocean pools around the corner at Bronte Beach.  This beachside suburb maintains it's 1920's feel with landscaped park, model train for the kiddies, Norfolk Island pine trees and picnic sheds.  Day in and day out the benches around the ocean pool are lined with the same guys - they have designated this area 'Dr. Bronte' and I can see why.

They swim, yarn, go for a coffee, check out the racing'form' for the day, spend hours looking out to sea and doing the crossword in the daily paper   Beats staying home and watching the tellie.
If you have time - go for a walk in Bronte Park up the gully to the waterfall at the top and rest for a while of the big flat rock. A quiet place in a busy city that has special significance for local Aboriginal women going back thousands of years.
At weekends this park is crowded with with large groups of picnicers that looks and sounds like the League of Nations.

Now it's time for your swim.  Take your pick from the ocean pool, bogey hole and sea (if you are a strong swimmer - I learned all about rips at this beach).  Then have lazy lunch at one of lovely cafes (just don't go on a Sunday!)

If you have time keep walking round to the next beach of Clovelly.  In fact, you can pretty well walk along the coastline from Bondi Beach to Maroubra Beach - about 9km and you would not get any better views along the east coast of Australia or a better feel for seaside Sydney. Hooroo!