A short trip away… part work, part break (with Roger) and collecting stories from people and places to bring together the final strands of the next book I’m now back at my desk to finish off.
It’s funny how it’s often the unexpected encounters or the wrong turn down a road that reveal something randomly beautiful. Befriending 80-year-old, June who I saw sitting alone at breakfast and hearing her story. Or when Roger and I lugged washing bags to the laundromat for that mundane necessity only to find stories in different characters coming and going.
It was melancholy to see the grand, old guesthouses of the Blue Mountains, once the darling of honeymooners and holidaymakers, now empty, their glass broken or burnt out within, as the years have passed. (This one at Leura was, The Ritz built in 1892 as ‘a coffee palace with accommodation’.)
Passing through Jamberoo, by chance we saw a lush avenue of trees into a Benedictine abbey. The sign said, ‘Welcome’. What an ambiance of serenity and grace. We left feeling such calm and with a jar of marmalade the nuns had made from their citrus trees.
In Goulburn, milkshakes at the Paragon Café that’s been open since 1940 – the same era Nonno Anni and Nanna Francesca worked at the Astoria Café in Brisbane. Just hearing the old milkshake machine working hard made me think too of all the milkshakes they’d made in their own milk bar over the decades.
I’ll stop here for now (and get back to work!) but I will share more with you in the coming weeks. It’s good to be back at the desk but also good to get out and about into both small towns and cities, amid quiet trees or by the sea, temperatures from zero to thirty, sunshine, gales and storms (even if this requires all-seasons clothes and a laundromat!) More to come… 😘🌿🌠
Zoë Boccabella 