COOROY AND KENILWORTH

Friday August 11, 2012. A late lie in – no dogs with their expectations of an early morning walk and a run around the oval – while Jesse and Angela went off for their morning swim in the heated pool.  Followed by a delicious breakfast of home made bread and home made muesli with home made yoghurt – and some lovely fresh fruit. Good start to the day.

Rab and Jesse chatting, while Ang's kookaburra watches the frog in the pond

We headed out mid-morning for a day in the country with the Loxtons. They wanted to show us some of the small country towns and Jesse in particular wanted us to share what he claimed to be the best sandwiches in the world. He had adopted many of the Queensland traits after living in that State for so many years. First stop, after meandering through some very pretty countryside was Cooroy. Now looking at the name like that you might be tempted to pronounce it Coo (as in  dove’s call)- Roy (as in the man’s name) but, like so many Australian place names it is better not to take an uneducated stab. The town is pronounced more like the Zimbabwean town Karoi, with the emphasis on the second syllable.  The initial plan was to view the local museum, but it was closed for some undetermined purpose, so we just had a look around the shops, including Gelignite Jack’s, advertising the lowest prices anywhere. I love those $2 shops with their amazing wares, mainly from China these days. We rarely buy anything, but….then again there have been some very useful purchases from time to time – and so cheap!

On we went to Kenilworth for lunch – an appropriately named town since we had all lived in a suburb of Cape Town of that name when we were neighbours all those years ago. Jesse’s restaurant was open and we were soon sharing the enormous corned beef sandwiches that were the speciality of the house. The meat came from the butcher across the road, the bread was baked on site and the meal was indeed delicious. It was as well that we had been warned about the American sized serving though – we would have battled to eat an entire sandwich each.

We had a stroll through the town after lunch to help with the  digestion. There was a wonderful play park for children there with all manner of swings and the like, including a zip-line – what we used to call a foefie slide – aka a flying  fox. The kids were loving it and I worded how long it would be before the joy-killers would ban the equipment in the name of Health and Safety. So many schools now are banning running games, touching games, ball games, even handstands and cartwheels, unless under properly supervised conditions.  I know we’re all getting old, and I sometimes almost have to agree with brother Steve when he says “The World’s gone mad.”

We landed up at the cheese factory at the bottom of town. My life, if only we had been able to transport some of the marvellous goods on offer back home. Apart from glorious standard cheeses, both hard and soft – and goats as well as cow, there were some exotics, the likes of which I had never seen before. My favourite of those was the chilli/curry flavoured cheddar. I was very tempted to take a bit of that for our roadside meals as we travelled. Rab didn’t share my enthusiasm.

 We headed back home and all opted for a Nana Nap as we Aussies call the welcome afternoon snooze that we used to mock our grandparents about.

Angela, Rab, Jesse, Wayne, Dalma

Wayne and Dalma Dunn came over in the evening. Wayne was good enough to lend us one of his fleet of vehicles, thus saving us two days hire. We had a drink and then all went into town for a meal at the Riverside Café. Excellent meal – Rab and I had belly pork, which was delicious, but our guests, the locals, felt it was a bit pricey. We reckoned it was about equal to the cost of a similar meal in Melbourne – $250 for the six of us main course plus drinks and wine seemed to be about right. – such is city life.