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You know, wherever you go in the world you never forget where you were born. I was born in a small town in Scotland called Dumbarton. Its history goes back a long way and it is dominated by a basalt rock that is thought to be the oldestfortified hill in Britain. One of the stories associated with it is that a group of Vikings were sneaking up in the early morning when a milkmaid saw them and gave the alarm. The defenders toppled a huge rock down to crush the invaders. To this day the locals know it as Milkmaid’s Rock but rock climbers come there now to practice their skills and one name they gave this great boulder was ‘Mephistopheles’ after a World War I German tank of a similar shape. You can see it in the photo, lying where it fell.

DUMBARTON CASTLE

Ancient crag

Born in fire

You turn back

Foemen’s ire

Castle Rock

Wall of stone

Key and lock

Guard your own

Still and strong

Looking down

I belong

To your town

Some Coffee Shops stand out in my memory. The early ones were in Brisbane when I was in High School and for several years after. The two that stand out were both downstairs. One fitted the description I gave in the first of these Coffee Shop blogs, complete with chess sets, intellectuals earnestly discussing radical things, and Bob Dylan’s protest songs. The other is honorifically a Coffee Shop in my memory whereas it was actually a Folk Club in a Cellar, which might actually have been called the Cellar, if only I could remember clearly. I went there for the Folk Music but it was definitely a dimly lit place of good coffee, good conversation, good music and an atmosphere that has rarely been matched in my experience. Both served strong Cocoa. Nothing downgrades a Coffee Shop in my estimation like weak cocoa.

In a tiny town in North Queensland, called Bowen, and subject of my first blog on Bloggerparty, was the Horseshoe Bay Cafe. I hope it is still there. It sits beside the little granite fringed bay it is named after. Often, I would sit there having coffee, or some other cooler drink in summer, sipping and idly watching the sugar sink into the cappuccino and then gazing out towards the Barrier Reef or idly watching the bathers come and go. The coastal breezes swished the fronds on the palm trees and the sound of the waves made other music irrelevant. Occasionally I would shoo away an over zealous brush turkey as it foraged for scraps around my legs.

At the far North of Australia in Darwin I loved to sit on the verandah of the coffee shop of the Northern Territory Museum looking Northwards towards Timor, thinking both about the tragedies of that sad place and about the beautiful Aboriginal Art that I had been looking at before indulging in the fruits of my favourite culinary art form. The gallery curators were capable of drawing me back for more art and coffee by hosting exhibitions that excited my mind. I vividly remember an exhibition of clothing as art that included a wedding dress that was entirely composed of tiny toy soldiers painted white and wired together.

On the other side of the world I loved the Willow Tea Rooms in Glasgow which preserve the Art of Charles Rennie McIntosh, a local genius misunderstood in his day but now admired internationally. He designed the Tea Rooms, furniture and all, in his version of the Art Deco Style with a strong Chinese and Japanese influence. Despite its official title I am glad to give it the honoured name of ‘Coffee Shop’ for if I lived in Glasgow only extreme poverty would keep me from spending a lot of time there.

A score of miles away, at Balloch, where the beauteous Loch Lomond decants into the River Leven, I spent some time a few years ago as it is the area I was born in. When I was a boy, a wonderful paddle steamer still took people up and down the Loch and I went on it several times. In fact it was one of the last treats our family had before we left for Australia. Imagine my joy when I found the Maid of the Loch back at Balloch Pier and under restoration. The restoration is a long project and is continuing. Are there any rich people reading this? Here’s a worthwhile project for you to support. Do it tastefully. If you want your brand splashed along her sides keep away! What is this stuff doing in my coffee shop posting? The interiors are much easier to restore than the engines and hull and the enterprising members
of the society that is restoring her opened the old boat to the public as a cafe. I spent some happy hours on board, sipping coffee, eating cake and looking out at the loch during my time in Scotland in 2001. Here are two websites, one the official site. The other has photos of the steamer, including the Coffee Shop.

http://www.maidoftheloch.co.uk/

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/tramways/MaidoftheLoch1953.htm

Lastly, I have found a place worthy of the name Coffee Shop in Wuhan, China. It is Giano’s restaurant where the owner provides just the sort of atmosphere I describe in my definition blog. However, if you go to my blog on Bloggerparty you can read about the problem she is facing about keeping the place open. It’s a dog eat dog world and a big dog wants to eat my friend though she is more of a lovable lapdog herself. I may be about to lose my current Coffee Shop. (P.S. There’s another on the other side of town, Betty’s SPC.)

Twenty-odd years ago my wife did her Master’s Degree at Southampton University and our accommodation for that year was far lovelier than we could have dreamed of. We arrived in Southampton and went straight to the Domestic Bursar’s office to ask for assistance with accommodation. She was a bit dismayed as almost everything she had was full, especially for a married couple. After a while she told us there was something but it was a bit out of town so not very convenient. It had been rented to an Indian man for a while and, in her words, he had painted it in ‘garish colours’. Most people didn’t like it. We had little choice so we said we would be happy to take it. She gave us more information and we set out to find it.

A bus took us to a stop next to a wood. Nearby was a driveway and we walked along it, through the wood, until we saw them - two beautiful little thatched cottages on either side of the drive, guarding the entrance to a manor estate. Unlocking the door we entered the tiny living room which was painted in pastels which would have been popular in the sixties, by no means garish. I suppose the Bursar was a white and eggshell person. The ground floor consisted of a very small living room and smaller kitchen and a staircase hugged the wall to spiral up to a bedroom just big enough to hold a double bed and a tiny toilet and bathroom which nonetheless contrived to fit a nice deep bath. I will always remember sitting, er… relaxing there one day and watching a squirrel chase a rabbit away from its favourite tree. The cottages were round and their thatched roofs made them look like oversized mushrooms used by fairies as houses.

The manor is Chilworth manor and neighbours Broadlands, the former Lord Louis Mountbatten’s family home. Chilworth was never a grand estate but I will never be rich enough to own such a place. We loved walking around its formal gardens and enjoyed the surrounding woods just as much.

In Winter there were days when it was all covered in snow producing that white-clad beauty that I have missed so much in my life in the tropical state of Queensland, Australia. Then Spring came and the lawns were covered in crocuses and daffodils, the rockeries were filled with primroses and the woods filled with bluebells. The last two brought back beautiful memories of my Scottish childhood. Rhododendron and azalea bushes painted the front lawn of the Manor.

The gardener was nice fellow, a country man who could talk about the many interesting people who had been tenants of these and other cottages since the University bought the estate. We talked about colonialism and he said in his burring Hampshire accent that he always pointed out to the Indians, Pakistanis and others that it was not his ancestors that were to blame for it, it was the people who lived ‘There’; and he pointed to the manor house. I agree. It was the moneyed class which exploited the poor and sent them to their deaths in countries they did not belong in, killing people they did not know or hate.

There is a small lake and a dilapidated shelter for a boat, nothing so grand as a boathouse on this small Manor. I loved the Deer Circle most. It is a closely planted circle of pine trees with a small gap and when there were deer on the property they would come into the circle in Winter to be fed. The circle was lent an air of mystery by several caryatids lying on their backs gazing skywards. Later I was inspired by this to write my only ghost story. You can find it here……

The cottages are called the Beehive Cottages. Our neighbour in No 1 Beehive Cottage was a chemistry professor and became a good friend. He generously lent us his car at times and we had some wonderful conversations. I’ve lost touch with him so if any readers can work out who he was and have knowledge of what became of him I would love to know. He was a highly intelligent and fit and energetic man older than I am now. I look now like he was then but don’t have his fitness. I miss you whenever I remember you Hieronymus. We enjoyed playing with fanciful names, didn’t we? I don’t know why we were so blessed to have such a wonderful place to stay and such excellent company. Life is unexpectedly wonderful and there is always a beautiful surprise waiting around the next turning in the woods.

A view from Flagstaff Hill, Bowen, North Queensland, Australia 

‘A Tropical Paradise’ is no Cliché, Bowen Exists.

I can’t resist giving a plug for a beautiful place that was my home for a decade. It’s the kind of place everyone dreams of so let me introduce it. Even I don’t understand fully why I am not still there.

Bowen is a little town of about nine thousand people in North Queensland, Australia. It has become a cliché to say that Bowen is the best kept secret on the Queensland coast but it is hard to say why the tourist world has largely passed it by. The nightclub venues of the Airlie Beach area are an hour’s drive away but that’s not far and you can rage there for a couple of nights if that’s your thing and then return to Bowen to recover. There are plenty of pubs for a recharge if needed. Maybe you can put up with quietly lazing on a beautiful little beach or on a kilometer of soft white sand and very few people to restart your headache. You can always pop in to one of the many pubs for a refresher or a pub meal with a huge steak or locally caught seafood. In my opinion Fellow’s Fish and Chips are the best I’ve had anywhere in the world. A lot of fellows in the Fellows family fish (say that five times fast) and a lot of their catch goes to the Fish and Chip shop and into appreciative stomachs within hours of swimming around the seas inside the Great Barrier Reef.

Horseshoe Bay and Murray Bay are granite gems surrounded by the best preserved fringeing reefs on the East coast and as you swim you can dream about going on and on out over the reef to the Pacific, on a yacht of course. Don’t forget to come back ashore so you can walk on and on, on King’s and Queen’s Beaches, picking up the occasional shell or bit of flotsam that interests you. Drive up Flagstaff Hill and have a coffee and a club sandwich while staring out at the most beautiful coastal view I have seen in Australia, islands and a white lighthouse floating in an always-blue bay. Perhaps you will long to sail into this view. You could stroll down to the boat harbour and start chatting with the local yachties, people who were born here or some of the many who sailed here and couldn’t find the heart to leave. Maybe you can find an invitation (don’t be surprised, it happens!) and sail through Gloucester Passage to the Whitsunday islands. They’re not far as the gull flies.

I’m lucky, I have friends I can always stay with there, but you can choose between hotel, motel, backpacker and small resort accommodation. If you are on a travel/work trip the town is the centre of a major farming area and you can earn money to stay longer. Despite its small size the town is known as the mango and tomato capital of Australia and has a legendary association with these two fruits. Other areas have established competing farms but Bowen is still the centre of a major farming area, diversifying into a multitude of vegetable crops. You might find yourself picking tiny bird’s-eye chillies or corn. Thousands of cases of mangoes and tomatoes still travel to Australia’s major cities and overseas each year and most are picked by seasonal workers. The rich soil is usually irrigated by underground water from the riverbed but if you are there in the brief summer rainy period you might see the awesome sight of a wall of water roaring and rushing down to transform the normally bone dry Don River into the second-fastest stream in the continent.

Bowen is a historically significant also-ran in Queensland history and has a sad pattern of being second choice for numerous major dreams over its century and a half existence. It is not the major town of North Queensland, it is not the rail centre to the northern interior, etc., etc. However, its history is worth a peek. However, a peek at its history reveals the major issues of North-east Australian development. Amazingly, the Historical Museum opened the door to a major reassessment of Australia’s treatment of the Aboriginal people when scholar Henry Reynolds began to read the ‘Port Denison Times’. Every issue since the paper (now ‘The Independent’) was founded is in the Museum and the archives opened a pandora’s box, releasing a plague upon those who claimed moral supremacy for white settlers. It is stunning to read letters from settlers protesting about cruelty to the local ‘blacks’. The Shire is also the only one in Australia ever to have elected a Communist Party Member of Parliament.

It’s a dry old place;in the character of the locals, their cynical but good natured humour, and its weather. Craggy Gloucester Island, off the coast, creates a rain shadow that makes Bowen the dryest town on the Queensland shoreline. If you want to, you can go further North to the rainforest areas and get wet, but why would you? Do you remember those movies about slogging through stinking hot jungles? The movies were great and the forests are wonderful, but those wars are over and it is great to lounge around a beach on a clear sunny day. I love this place!