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The stream of holiday visitors has been interesting. We’re glad they are calling in on us and we haven’t had to face the nightmare of traffic jams on the Pacific Highway. One group from North America were appalled at the lack of facilities…ie gas stations with food and amenities between Sydney and the Gold Coast. They pointed out there’d be something at least every 50 miles and apart from running out of petrol how did we manage travelling with the elderly and children? There is a dearth of those cute small family run places that were along the old highways. Devonshire Teas. Homemade sandwiches and burgers. Antiques and Knick Knacks. Pretty Gardens with Plants For Sale. I thought back to Italy and some of our memorable meals were at roadhouses. Clean toilets, petrol, a small supermarket catering to travellers and a dining room with a family cooking food from local turning out regional specialities from local produce.
Our American visitors were shocked there wasn’t a roadhouse or refueling rest stop near to the Highway at Byron Bay. With some imagination, clever Byron-style architecture and promoting local produce, it could set a new trend away from the plastic petrol station complexes run by the multi-nationals.
A lovely fellow, who did work experience with Boris when he was a teenager, was inspired by Boris to become a cameraman. He and his young family called in to catch up after many years. Gavin was grateful to Boris for the training and help through the years. He now works in LA shooting all manner of top TV shows but still wanted to pick Boris’s brains as we sat over Aussie wine and oysters and let the kids run barefoot and feral, none of which they enjoy in LA. Gavin told an amazing story of being on a recent assignment to film the top hotels of the world and got caught in the siege of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai. He’d just met an English woman who was the local producer when the attack happened. They jammed the door shut, he pushed her under a coffee table in the small bar and wedged himself on the floor between the lounge and the coffee table, put cushions on top of himself and spent the next 36 hours there keeping quiet, sharing a bowl of peanuts with a bread and butter knife wedged in his sock – the only weapon to hand – and cursing the fact his camera was in his room.
Our other visitor was a great gorilla of a koala whose apparent drunken antics kept us amused all day.
Cheers
Di’s latest book The Islands, published by Pan Macmillan, is now on sale.
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