Travel

Ejo #174 – Drunk In… Barcelona: AKA – A Love Letter To Ben

Drunk In....., Food, Good Life, Learning About Me, Other Cultures, Travel, , , , , , Leave a comment

In 2008 David and I went on an amazing six week driving tour of Europe, staying in Paris, Saint Paul-de-Vence, Puligny-Montrachet, Ludes, Siena, Piemonte, Ancient Korinth, Athens, Huesca, San Sebastian, Hondarribia, Zamora, Badajoz, Marbella, Alicante and Barcelona.  This was pre-smartphone days so all our google map directions were printed on reams of A4 paper, which I valiantly tried to keep in some semblance of order.  But by the time we reached Barcelona’s ring-road at around midnight I realised that I’d lost the relevant pages somewhere along the way.  If you’ve ever driven in Barcelona, you know that the city is a curious mix of perfectly laid out grid-like roads, magically interwoven with streets that wind and curve, in infuriatingly unpredictable ways.  And if you’ve ever met me, you might know that being a navigator without a map is one of the most stressful situations you could ever put me in.  So yeah, basically I was freaking out.  But you know what happened?  Navigating around prominent landmarks, doing my best to work from memory, and invoking Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, we somehow, somehow managed to find our accommodation in the dense warren of Barri Gòtic, one of Barcelona’s oldest and most labyrinthine suburbs.  It was, ladies and gents, a stone-cold miracle. 

We stayed in the city of Barcelona for three days and totally fell in love with it, so we went back for five days in 2011, four more days in 2013, and then another three days in 2014.  But for some reason, in the ensuing years, Barcelona sadly fell off the travel radar.  Shame on us.  So when my old friend Ben told me in December of last year that he and his parents, Ellen and Greg, would be travelling to Barcelona in March 2024, and would we like to join them for a couple of days, the answer was a resounding hell yes! 

He’s always been a peach!

David and I finished working our night shifts at 6am and, as is our wont, jumped straight on a plane to Barcelona, getting to our cute little apartment at around 3pm.  We immediately jumped into bed for a 20 minute coffee nap to perk up before meeting with Ben and Greg for a bite to eat (Ellen was recovering from a painful and, unfortunately timed, foot surgery a couple of days before their trip, and was laid up at their hotel, resting).  Naturally I had compiled a map of all the cool restaurants, cafes and bars I wanted to check out while we were in town (as well as a few old favourites that David and I really wanted to return to), but there was nothing in the immediate vicinity and I didn’t want to drag everyone around the city looking for places that fussy little Miss Chryss approved of – I didn’t want to be that person.  So instead I dragged everyone around the neighbourhood and did something which I hate doing, which is randomly choose a restaurant that looks like it serves nice, traditional food and just roll the culinary dice.  Don’t ever let anyone tell you I don’t live on the edge. 

As expected our meal was OK, but nothing special.  It might (or might not) shock you to learn that I have a real phobia of eating mediocre meals when I travel.  It’s something that I really hate, because when you’re in a new country or a new city, you only have a finite number of meals with which to sample all the delicious and glorious cuisine of that location.  And wasting even one of those meals on shitty food is a tragedy of epic proportions.  I am not the type of person who eats to live.  So I will never be the type of person that just grabs a bite for sustenance.  For me, the food is the main event.  It is the reason I travel.  And after enough bad experiences, I am no longer the type of person who optimistically wanders around town hoping to just serendipitously stumble upon the perfect restaurant.  The idea gives me hives.  Sure it’s possible, but it’s also possible that you’re going to eat a really shitty meal.  Which is what happened to David and me in Madrid, 2013 on our seventh wedding anniversary.  We’d booked a fancy dinner, but decided to leave lunch to fate.  And fate did not treat us kindly.  Lamentably, we ended up at a place that served soggy croquettes, rubbery Jamón and sickly sweet sangria.  I got really angry with myself, and then I got really sad that we’d eaten such sub-standard food on such a special day, in a city known for its extraordinary gastronomy.  And, with my fist raised towards the sky, I vowed on that day to never let it happen again.  Which is why, over the years, I’ve developed a system of google mapping a location, doing a bunch of research and locating some great places to visit.  I don’t necessarily make bookings at all the restaurants I like, but if I happen to find myself in an area and feel peckish, I can just open my map, and I have a number of options that I know are going to hit the spot (with recommendations for what to try on the menu and what to avoid).  This system works well, and I currently have active maps for 34 cities around the world.  Yes, I am a freak!

Plenty of places to eat a good meal in Barcelona

So, feeling a little triggered by the fact that I was responsible for our lacklustre snacks the previous day, the next morning I suggested we go to the local market and have an early lunch at El Quim de la Boqueria, an institution in Barcelona despite only being around since 1987.  Located smack bang in the middle of a bustling market filled with locals shopping for groceries and meat and fish, I knew right away that it was my kind of place.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, any city worth its salt has a great foodie market-hall.  It may only have been 10am but, taking our cue from several older Spaniards who were enjoying breakfast beers with their food, we decided to order a bottle of cava to share, coz why not!  When in Barcelona, bitches! 

The incredible menu, and the irresistible tortilla de patatas (or as they call it in Spain, omelette)

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Charcoal grilled octopus and sizzling garlic prawns in a cava reduction. Yum!

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Their house specialty, two fried eggs with assorted wild mushrooms, and butifarra sausage with beans and aioli.

After lunch Ellen and Greg headed back to their hotel while David, Ben and I went in search of some culture.  Being familiar with Moco Museum in Amsterdam, we decided to check out their new outpost in Barcelona.  Specialising in modern and contemporary art, it was fun to spend an hour checking out artworks by prominent masters such as Warhol, Haring, Basquiat and Kusama as well as exciting contemporary street artists like Banksy and KAWS.  And they even had a section highlighting NFTs! 

Fifteen minutes of fame
Light installations are my favourite, they’re so fun and whimsical!
Life imitates art. My friend, Ben ♥

Afterwards we took a walk along the harbour looking for somewhere to quench our thirst, stopping at a couple of places that don’t really warrant mentioning, but I’mma mention them anyway, just for laughs.  The first offered a rooftop bar, and we were all keen to check out a nice view of the city so we made our way there and were offered a large table in the shade.  Perfect!  Two minutes later, an abrasive young server sporting an impertinent ponytail and holding onto a clipboard for dear life strutted over to our table and told us we’d have to move, as it was reserved only for large groups.  I asked if there was a large group waiting to be seated and she said no, but one might come along at any moment.  I blinked at her and offered to move should that situation eventuate, but she insisted that the table was only for large groups.  I pointed out that we hadn’t even chosen to sit there, we’d been offered the table by one of her colleagues.  She took a deep breath to argue with me again, which is when Ben picked up what I was throwing down and ran with it, pointedly said to her, “Are you throwing us out?”  I stifled a laugh and looked at him in awe.  Sassy as fuck!!  Flustered, she stormed off, whipping her ponytail into a frenzy behind her, and moments later our drinks were served.  We considered hanging around for another round just to piss her off but decided to move on and try one of the places downstairs (which we shouldn’t have, because the cocktails were literally undrinkable). 

Just taking our sweet ol’ time

We got a text from Greg saying he’d like to join us while Ellen rested, so I suggested we meet at Paradiso, which was about a ten minute walk away.  My colleague Mark recommended this place to me, and the fact that it was voted #1 of The World’s 50 Best Bars in 2022 didn’t hurt either!  We figured getting there at opening time would help us secure a table, and avoid the long lines that famously snake around the block, and we were in luck.  Ushered into a tiny pastrami shop through red velvet ropes, the four of us looked for the entrance to the speakeasy, spinning around and bumping into each other, baffled about where it could possibly be.  And then they showed us!  And we laughed, and we nodded appreciatively.  I may have clapped. Trust me, it’s very cool.  You’ve gotta go and check it out for yourself.  Once inside we were blown away by the décor, the friendliness of the staff and the delicious, inventive cocktails. 

The lovely server explaining David’s choo-choo drink.

During our afternoon stroll through the streets of El Born, we came across a great looking seafood restaurant called Cadaqués and spontaneously decided to make a booking for dinner that night (DON’T EVER LET ANYONE TELL YOU I DON’T LIVE ON THE EDGE).  I found out later that Cadaqués is a very picturesque fishing village in north-eastern Spain, home to none other than visionary artist Salvador Dalí.  And our evening did kind of kick off in a surreal way when our two groups somehow ended up at two restaurants with the same name, and two very different google ratings.   Just as David and I were being seated (at the good Cadaqués) we got a few alarmed messages from Ben (whose Uber was taking them to the bad Cadaqués) saying that the reviews were terrible and we should bail and find somewhere else for dinner.  Eek!  The confusion was quickly cleared up though, and when our friends got to the good Cadaqués we had a wonderful dinner, with delicious Catalan food and wine and dessert.  It was a very fun night and I think you should go next time you’re in Barcelona (just make sure you go to the right one). 

False alarm

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The paella was to die for!!!
Five very satisfied customers.

I’ve mentioned my friend Ben in my essays before, but I’ll give you all a quick recap in case you missed it.  We met online in 1996 (pshhh-kkkkkkrrrr-​tsh​chchchchchchch-cheeeeeeeeeeeeee-oooooo-eeeeee), bonding over our shared admiration of Gwyneth Paltrow.  After a few months of getting to know each other over dial-up modem, we decided that it would be a fabulous idea to meet in real life.  So, at the tender age of 25, I threw all caution to the wind and sparked what would later become an insatiable thirst for travel and adventure.  I took two months leave-without-pay from my dead-end government job and (rather insanely) got onto an aeroplane and flew to California to meet my digital pen friend, who could, quite plausibly, have been a psycho serial killer.  Fucking wild, right? 

In the couple of months I spent squatting in an empty Avery House dorm room at Caltech, Ben and I developed a kind of routine, where he would go to class and I would fill my days exploring and writing, and then at the end of the school day we’d hang out together.  My heart fills with fondness when I think of that time, and I have so many fun memories of it. 

Since I was an interloper at the university, and had no rights to eat in the school cafeteria, Ben helped himself to extra food for me every night using his meal card, loading his tray with double serves of everything.  We’d claim our beanbag spots in front of one of the TVs in the dining hall, hoping to catch the latest episode of The Simpsons (Season 8, bitches) but sometimes having to suffer through Home Improvements instead (the worst!).  Sometimes we’d follow dinner with a couple of tablespoons of the coffee flavoured Häagen-Dazs we kept in the dorm freezer, as a treat.  One time we found ourselves in possession of a big fat cigar that we shared sitting on the steps near the dorm.  I can’t remember where we got the cigar, but I remember it hurting my throat, and becoming lightheaded as I looked up at the twinkling Californian stars. 

We went to movies (so many movies) and always sat in the front row, cricking our necks to gaze up at the big screen in unison.  Ben introduced me to the music of Tool and Korn, and inspired me to write poetry at the desk underneath his bunk bed while he was in class.  We played Quake in the communal computer room (where Molly, a girl that had a crush on Ben would alternately shoot daggers at me or pretend I didn’t exist), and I remember the day some kid burst in with a bootleg copy of the pilot episode of South Park.  We stopped shooting each other long enough to gather around one of the computers to watch it, and afterwards the room erupted into an excited frenzy.  I remember the sense of it being a profound moment, and I soaked it all in. 

We rode around Pasadena on Ben’s bicycle, me dinking a ride on the back wheel pegs, the wind blowing in my hair, feeling carefree and wild, wishing I could stay forever.  Wishing I never had to go home.  I still get that feeling when I travel.  We’d ride to Tower Records down the road to rent videos, and then sneak into a Caltech auditorium to play them on the massive, lecture room projector screen.  Nothing beats the feeling of two people sitting in an otherwise empty auditorium, eating popcorn and watching Trainspotting.  Nothing. 

Ben heroically tried to teach me how to play guitar, and showed me pictures of the girl that he was in love with.  I wasn’t to know at the time, but a couple of years later I would meet her, and she would become one of my best friends.  One time, riding Ben’s bike at night, I lost my balance and fell into a hedge.  I still proudly sport the scar on my finger.  We drank gallons of pink grapefruit juice and ate way too much McDonalds.  We ate at Burger Continental, a place we decided was run by Greek mobsters, where the salad I ordered was literally the size of a basketball and Ben joked about how I’d better fucken finish it, or Stavros would organise a hit on me.  One night we drove a couple of hours south to San Diego to see his parents, and then drove all the way back again when we figured out it was too late to visit.  We stopped at Taco Bell for midnight snacks on the way home, and laughed and laughed when the cashier couldn’t understand my Australian accent when I tried ordering a Coke.  I just kept saying Coke, Coke, Coke, as the cashier leaned closer and closer towards me looking more and more puzzled, and in the end Ben had to order my drink for me. 

Ben took me on an illicit tour of Caltech’s (not so) secret tunnel system to look at some of the haunting 70s era graffiti scrawled on the walls, and I remember feeling pretty scared as we got lost and the tunnels got darker and smaller and more cobwebby, until we were eventually chased out by a grumpy security guard with a flashlight.  I still remember the feeling of exhilaration when I took that first, deep breath of fresh air on the outside.  Another time we took a road trip to the Anza Borrego desert, spending the night in a motel close to the Mexican border, and eating at a local Mexican restaurant.  The place was so jam-packed, that after nearly an hour of trying to pay the bill we just gave up and did a runner.  We spent the rest of the sleepless night worrying about Mexican hit men storming our room and demanding retribution.  One Saturday night we walked around the Avery House dorm rooms, just saying hi to all these random, drunk kids.  We sat chatting with one guy for a little while, but decided to beat it when he casually mentioned that he’d taken a pretty big hit of acid and oh man, was it starting to come on!!!  We attended Ben’s step-great-grandmother Frieda’s 100th birthday party at her nursing home, and stayed at Ben’s parents’ house afterwards.  Which gave me a chance to get to know them better.  And vice versa.

I love Ben, and I love Ellen and Greg.  When I first met them they were understandably dubious of me.  A strange, foreign woman (psycho serial killer?) in her mid-twenties, hanging out with their 19 year old son at his university.  What the fuck?  But over the years our relationship has blossomed into something special, independent of Ben.  So it was truly beautiful to spend a couple of days with all three of them in Barcelona recently.  Sadly, it was over way too soon, and after our wonderful dinner at Cadaqués we said our goodbyes, as the three of them were travelling on to Nice, France the following morning. 

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

David and I had another two days of cavorting planned in Barcelona and the next morning we started in earnest by having Bloody Mary’s at Milk Bar & Bistro.  So many vitamins and minerals, what a nutritious way to start the day!  Afterwards we walked to our favourite tapas bar, the iconic El Xampanyet.  The place was, as always, raucously packed full of locals and tourists alike and with no seating available David and I parked ourselves at the stand-up bar (which I actually think is the perfect place from which to enjoy all the tasty morsels on offer).  Being in prime position to observe all the amazing array of tapas dishes being prepared, all we had to do was point at something we liked the look of and say, “Esto, por favor!”  This worked a treat and we were served plate after plate of incredibly delicious tapas, including chorizo, marinated sardines, tortilla de patatas, Galician pulpo, braised pork with Padron peppers, and stewed snails all washed down with glass after glass of the house cava.  I was in heaven. 

Tortilla de patatas, Galician pulpo and juicy pork with Padron peppers!

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We didn’t order this, but we did eat the hell out of it, El Xampanyet’s very special version of Crema Catalan.

The next morning, being the culture vultures that we are, David and I just had to squeeze in a visit to another art museum, this time visiting Fundació Joan Miró, a museum established by, and dedicated to, the renowned Catalan artist, to peruse a few of his modern masterpieces.  And being the booze hounds that we are, doing so made us extremely thirsty, so afterwards we went off in search of a vermutería, or old-school vermouth bar.  We settled on Bodega La Peninsular, an historic wine cellar founded in 1903, known for serving the traditional libation at la hora de vermut, typically between midday and 2pm as an aperitivo before lunch.  Vermouth, a fortified wine infused with spirits and spices, has recently experienced a resurgence in popularity and I can totally understand why.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but I found the drink to be very light and refreshing, and perfectly accompanied by a plate of fresh razor clams.  We would have stuck around for a few more rounds but we had lunch plans and had to get a move on. 

David contemplating Fireworks (1974)
Absolutely superb, and we will definitely return for a full meal

Passadis del Pep is another of our old favourite restaurants that we absolutely had to book when we found out we were returning to Barcelona.  We used to love their welcoming ritual of seating us at the table and immediately popping a bottle of cava and pouring two glasses of their house bubbly!  The deal was that if you didn’t like it, those first two glasses were free, and if you did like it, the bottle was yours. Of course we liked it.  We liked it so much, that the first time we went we had three bottles!!  Unfortunately this custom is no longer offered, which kind of took the shine off the experience for us a little bit.  What was still amazing, however, was the procession of super fresh seafood that they bring out when you choose their chef’s menu.  Plate after plate of glorious, plump, juicy, delicious seafood.  And of course you can still buy as much cava as you like! 

Estos platos eran estupendos!!

Two of our favourite new bars that we discovered on this trip couldn’t be more different.  The first, Bar Sincopa is a very cool, gritty, old-school dive bar.  Nothing fancy about the place, but the vibe is awesome.  Great rock and roll played loud, and free-poured margaritas.  What’s not to love.  The other cool place is called The Box.  The owner and bartender is a super nice French guy called Matthias and he makes dozens of infusions of rum and vodka and tequila, so the place looks like some kind of apothecary.  His margaritas are also strong, but they are very meticulously assembled, like something in a laboratory.  I’ve never tasted a crisper, more clean tasting margarita in my life.  Day after day after day, it was consistently good.  Which is why we kept going back, day after day after day. 

Bar Sincopa, where the spirits are strong, and the music is louder!
Chin-chin!
Cutie pie Matthias makes extraordinary cocktails (and apparently a very good hotdog!!)

You all know I love travelling.  It feeds an insatiable wanderlust to explore the diverse ways in which other lives are lived, to eat food my tastebuds have never sampled, to see the iconic landmarks and buildings and landscapes of the world with my own eyes.  I want to touch everything.  I want to breathe in the air at the top of that hill, and I want to splish-splash in the waters of that sea.  I want to be Drunk In… Reykjavík and São Paulo and Mexico City and Wellington and Prague and Vancouver and Cape Town and The Trossachs and Zagreb and Essaouira.  We all have this one wild and precious life, and I really like to think that I first plugged into mine when I took that leap of faith as a brave, young woman and travelled halfway around the world to California for what was probably an ill-advised adventure.  But not only did I have a life-changing experience there, I made three lifelong friends.  I learned that the world was bigger than my little corner of it, and I wanted more.  Fifteen months later, driven by itchy feet, I left Australia again, this time to spend a year as an au pair in Connecticut.  A whole other odyssey.  And the snowball kept rolling, kept on growing bigger, projecting me on the journey that I find myself on now towards an extraordinary life.  A life outside the box.  A life dedicated to seeing it all, and to experiencing it all.  That first trip to Pasadena to hang out with Ben at Caltech, that’s my origin story. 

Me and Ben in Rosarito, Mexico 2006, nine years after we’d first met
Don’t ask me what I’m doing please.
Three amigos at The Croft Institute, Melbourne 2007

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Visiting Ben and his family in Portland, Oregon 2023 (we’ve come a long way, baby)

Ejo #170 – The Farm

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I was recently leafing through a Condé Nast Traveller magazine and came upon a page where contributors were asked to share their favourite summer holiday memories.  As I sat on the toilet contemplating all the far-flung destinations my travels have taken me to, my head filled with countless pleasant memories created since David and I moved to Dubai fifteen years ago.  As a lot of you know, I do not like living in Dubai so much, but I do acknowledge that residing here has given me a pretty remarkable life, full of travel and adventure and the opportunity to make friends all over the world.  With a faraway look in my eye, I smiled and reminisced as I tried to settle on just one favourite sun kissed memory. 

I thought of our three pilgrimages to Burning Man and in particular that one glorious morning when my friend Marya, David and I all woke up before dawn and cycled a few miles out to the trash fence in skeleton bodysuits to watch the sun rise majestically over the playa.  Rubbing our sleepy eyes, we squinted at the champagne coloured clouds from which a dozen or so large black dots appeared to magically materialise. 

Waiting for Daft Punk’s trash fence gig to start

As we blinked incredulously at the golden light, the dots seemed to get bigger and develop brightly coloured tails.  Marya and I glanced at each other, a little alarmed.  What was happening?  Were we hallucinating?  NO!  It slowly became apparent that what we were seeing were a number of daring parachutists who had jumped out of a plane at daybreak and were now painting the sky with their rainbow coloured chutes, gracefully trailing beautiful long flags in a wondrous tapestry across the heavens.  It was such a beautiful moment and I’ll never forget it, but was it my favourite summer holiday memory? 

After searching for months I found this video of the people that we saw dropping out of the sky that morning.

I didn’t think so, but the floodgates had opened.  I remembered wiling away long hot Ibiza days drinking sangria and eating tapas, followed by misspent nights dancing to our favourite DJs.  I remembered the simple, but delicious seafood lunch served to us by the captain of a Turkish gulet we’d hired off the Turquoise Coast of Antalya.  I remembered hiking the wild and windy coastline of southern Corsica, staying in some random Moroccan billionaire’s summer home that our friends Gwen and Didou were managing for the season.  I remembered trekking through vast mountainous canyons to explore the ancient Jordanian city of Petra, and then a few days later bobbing around the Dead Sea, smearing its healing and beautifying mud all over our faces and bodies.  And I remembered countless summer days drowsily contemplating the hypnotic cicadas in a tiny ancient hamlet called Adine in Siena, Italy, one of my favourite places on earth.  Occasionally we’d summon the energy to drive into town to eat pici served with locally caught wild boar.  And afterwards we’d devour nocciola and Amarena gelato while sitting on the cobble stones of the town square, watching toddlers awkwardly chasing pigeons and teenagers awkwardly chasing each other.  Later that night David and I chased fireflies in the hamlet’s olive grove.

Late summer days in Siena’s Piazza del Campo

I remembered trips to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan.  Mostly just to eat the street food, but also to lounge around on beaches or pools or in izakayas and rooftop bars, kicking off the day-drinking with breakfast beers and seamlessly graduating to lunchtime cocktails and then bottles of wine at dinner.  I remembered evenings wandering narrow backstreet warrens looking for the perfect place for a late night meal, and somehow always finding it. 

And of course I remembered Greece and her beautiful islands, which I discovered relatively late in life.  First Mykonos, and then, in quick succession, Santorini, Milos, Sifnos, Naxos, Zakynthos, Skiathos and Kefalonia.  Distinct memories of wandering down overgrown sandy tracks to discover completely secluded beach coves, with the bluest and clearest water I’ve ever seen in my life.  Enjoying the simple but delicious food of my childhood, chased down with surprisingly good wine by the kilo.  Always followed by the obligatory afternoon siesta.  Balmy fragrant nights laden with the promise of a good time floating on the sound of a bouzouki being strummed somewhere.  Everywhere.  These are all gorgeous memories that I will keep forever.  But are they my favourite summer memories?  I realised that no, they were not.  To access those, I had to go back to Australia.  I had to go much further back in time, to my childhood.  I had to go back to the farm. 

If sheer perfection was the criteria…

When I was about 12 years old my parents went into cahoots with my aunt Dimi and uncle Alex to buy a plot of land in the Victorian countryside.  I remember being dragged around with my sisters to endless real estate inspections of properties on the Mornington Peninsula, about an hour and a half drive from Melbourne, until they eventually found the perfect one.  Lot 3, Boneo Road, Cape Schanck was a hilly ten acres of overgrown tea-tree shrubs and native grasses.  And that was it.  It was wild, it was untamed and it was magnificent.  For the next five or six years, we spent most weekends and summer holidays at the farm.  And even though it was, in no way, shape or form an actual farm, that was what we called it.    

In the beginning, we camped in tents.  Later on my Dad laid the foundation for what would come to be known as The Shed.  And of course, because it was my Dad, it wasn’t built out of wood or steel or bricks.  He built it with materials used by NASA.  And I am not even joking about that.  The stuff was basically slabs of Styrofoam enclosed in a bright green metallic casing.  The shed was four walls and a roof.  Our family of five had a tiny bedroom to sleep in, and my aunt and uncle had an even tinier one.  My Dad built us all bunk beds.  The rest of the shed was an open space kitchen, living, dining area.  The floor was a concrete slab. And that was our holiday home.  It wasn’t fancy, but it was ours. 

Our days and nights were filled with adventures, accompanied by a rotating roster of friends, children of family friends, cousins and even kids off the street.  One morning while my sisters and I were playing at the bottom of the driveway three young girls on ponies materialised in front of us and asked us if we wanted to go for a ride.  Hell yeah we wanted to go for a ride.  Other times the three of us, and whoever happened to be around at the time, would explore the property, trying so hard to get lost, going so deep into the dense tea-tree shrub that we sometimes had to fight through the thickets on our hands and knees, our arms and legs covered in bloody scratches.  We were always so disappointed when we hit the fence-line and had to retreat back to the clearing.  But that never stopped us from trying again. 

I learned how to drive on the farm, in an old unroadworthy Land Rover that needed a crank to start the engine.  The same Land Rover that we would all pile into and be jostled around on the 2.5km dirt track down to a secluded, rocky beach that was essentially our own private paradise.  I don’t remember seeing more than a handful of people in all the years we spent on that beach, and when I recently tried to find it on a map, I discovered that it still doesn’t even have a name.  If you want to find it, it’s somewhere between Gunnamatta and Fingal beaches, but good luck getting to it. 

Driving lessons on the farm, being herded by Joshua.

Oh, that beach.  It was ours!  It was ours!  We’d drive down in the morning and stay all day, carrying down platters of homemade food for a sumptuous feast sprawled on the rocks.  We’d recline for a while in the shade of a rocky overhang, and afterwards we would fish, always hooking a bounteous catch of butterfish to cook on the BBQ later that day.  Sometimes we would search for elusive abalone in the many tidal pools, and sometimes we would be lucky.  My Mum would tenderise and pickle it, and cook it up in a stir-fry with rice, the thought of which still makes my mouth water.  My sisters and I would confidently leap from rock to rock, like agile little mountain goats.  We trudged up massive sand dunes, just so that we could tumble back down them, and then do it all again.  And we dove and frolicked in our very special, swimming pool-sized rockpool for hours, exploring every single nook and underwater cranny, trying to catch the little fishies that had been washed in with the previous tide.  But they were always quicker than we were, and they were always somehow able to dart away, out of reach of our prune-fingered grasp.  This is what favourite summer holiday memories are made of. 

The rockpool.

Back at the farm we zoomed around on my uncle Alex’s three wheel motorcycle.  Oh what a thrill it was to wrap my arms around his waist as he floored it up what felt like an insurmountable summit.  The wind whipped my hair around, because it was the 1980s and helmets weren’t a thing.  I was always scared that he would rev it just a little bit too much and the two of us would flip backwards.  But facing that fear and always reaching the crest and landing those three wheels back on solid ground was an exhilarating experience that I’m fairly sure not many other 14 year old girls were lucky enough to have. 

Our hobby farm was right next door to an actual, working farm with a couple of horses and a paddock full of grazing sheep.  There were also ducks and chickens and a pigeon coop and a small corn field and a gorgeous black and white Border Collie called Joshua.  Every time we drove up the driveway to the farm, Joshua would be there waiting for us.  And apart from dinnertime and bedtime he spent every waking minute with our family.  He would even chase the Land Rover to the beach, whenever we drove down there, and he’d spend the whole day with us.  I don’t know if Farmer Murphy was aware of it or not, but Joshua was our first family dog.  We loved him and he loved us. 

My sisters and I developed a routine of knocking on the Murphys’ back door every Sunday night, collecting large hessian bags filled with stale loaves of sliced bread and heading down to the pastures to feed the sheep.  I remember the first time we did this.  We entered the enclosure and clicked the gate behind us.  It felt like every single sheep in that three acre pasture stopped what they were doing and looked up at us.  And then, the sheep started running.  A hundred sheep stampeding towards three nervous young girls holding sheep food.  I’m pretty sure we all started screaming, and I’m pretty sure I thought the three of us were going to die.  And as they approached us and the fear escalated, somehow, we started running back towards them and the killer sheep dispersed.  And we laughed and laughed, mostly as a release to the fear, but also because it was just funny.  And we started throwing slices of bread all over the place and the sheep lunged at it like ravenous wild animals.  And when we ran out of bread, the sheep just disinterestedly sauntered away.  As if nothing incredible or mind-blowing had just happened. 

The Murphy’s were really nice to us, letting us feed their sheep and steal their dog.  They sometimes even let us chase around the cute little springtime ducklings and chicks that had just hatched.  But the truth is that they probably didn’t love us being there.  We were a rowdy bunch of Greek immigrants who would often be up until the wee hours of the morning revelling and carousing and generally being festive motherfuckers!  I remember one particularly merry night, my Dad was playing guitar and Alex, taken with the spirit, grabbed a drawer from his bedroom dresser, theatrically flipping the contents on the floor and, with his leg up on a chair, started using it as a drum, rhythmically banging the shit out of it.  My Mum, inspired, grabbed a coffee jar full of rice from the kitchen to use as another instrument in this unhinged jam session, and everyone danced and sang along.  We kids watched in wonder as our normally mannerly relatives just rocked the fuck out.  The carefree exuberance and unbridled high spirits of moments like these stay with me, and fill me with joy decades later.  These are what favourite summer holiday memories are made of. 

Sometimes the singalongs came at the end of the night.  Sometimes they were the opening act.  Depending on the tides, sometimes my sisters and I would be woken up at one or two in the morning and then we’d all drive down to the Fingal Beach hiking trails.  A dozen of us carting buckets, torches and gardening gloves, we traipsed down the steep, sandy steps to the rocky beach below to catch crabs.  As the tides started going out, the crabs would emerge from the rockpools in search of food and we would be there to grab them.  We were young kids running around in the middle of the night in gum boots on jagged rocks catching crabs as the tide went out into an inky black, and sometimes wild, roaring sea.  Hell yeah! 

The cliff path might have felt like a thousand steps going down, but it felt like a million steps climbing back up with buckets full of salivating crabs.  We’d drive back to the shed, put a huge pot of water on the stove to boil and enjoy a glorious supper of the most ridiculously tasty, freshly caught seafood bonanza you could ever imagine.  The memory of cracking open a thick leg to pull out delicious, tender, meaty morsels of crab at 3 o’clock in the morning, bleary eyed and surrounded by my loved ones has to be one of my favourite summer holiday memories in a life filled with them. 

I spent those years on the farm being a free and feral child, living a wild and precious life.  Whenever David and I go back home to visit Australia, my sisters and I always make sure to get together at Fingal Picnic Area where we used to barbeque the butterfish that we caught on our private beach all those years ago.  We gather now to reminisce about those good old days, and to pay our respects and to honour the memory of the wonderful childhood our parents gave us. 

My Mum, my sisters, fourteen year old me and a family friend at the Fingal BBQ

We were there just a few days ago and on our drive to the picnic area, I asked to stop off at Lot 3, Boneo Road.  A gorgeous new house has since been built on the highest point of the property, but the old shed is still there.  A little nervously, we walked (trespassed?) up the driveway to the shed which is now being used as a garden shed.  The exterior has been painted black, but inside it’s still bright green.  The old grape trellis my father built is in total disrepair, and the garden my Mum cultivated is a riot of wild grape vines, passionfruit plants and lemon trees.  But, most notably, nature has fiercely taken back what was once hers.  The natural world that we constantly had to fight off to build the shed, and to live in the shed during our summer holidays, has won the battle.  Mother Nature, biding her time, grew back with a vengeance, surrounding the shed, enveloping it and ultimately reclaiming her space.  My Mum and Dad are gone.  Alex is gone.  One day Mary, Pieta, Dimi and I will be gone, and every single memory of those summer days down at the farm will be gone.  But as we stood there the other day, looking at this familiar, cubic building that somehow seems to have become part of the landscape of what used to be the farm, I found that there was something really beautiful about that.  The farm now belongs to someone else.  The shed, still standing nearly 40 years after my Dad built it, belongs to someone else.  And yet somehow it still all belongs to us.  It will always belong to us. 

The top of the shed felt like the top of the world.

Ejo #165 – Dad

Good Life, Greece, grief, Learning About Me, Photographs, The Extraordinary People I Know, , , , , Leave a comment

My father died 20 years ago today.  His death fucked me up pretty good.  Actually, his illness didn’t do a bad job of fucking me up either.  Watching him deteriorate from a strong and vital man into a shell of a human being, someone I barely recognised, sent me plummeting into the deepest and darkest depression I’ve ever experienced.  The ten months of his illness were agonising, and the months afterwards were very much worse. 

Until my father died, work was a source of great comfort for me.  A place I could escape the gnawing torment of his decline.  A place of relief from the anguish.  I was working as a junior air traffic controller at Moorabbin, which is a busy airport full of training aircraft.  It’s chaos.  Delving into work, my focus was laser sharp and blinkered, all the better to not allow any thoughts of my father to seep into my consciousness.  I was depressed, yes, but I was functional.  In stark contrast, after Dad died, I became catatonic.  I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t do anything.  And I certainly couldn’t work. 

I was off work for three months, and spent all that time at our family home with my Mum and sisters.  I slept in the living room on a foam mattress which I made up every night, and packed away every morning.  Sleep was elusive; my head filled with swirling memories and jagged thoughts that were so painful I would just sob into my pillow for hours.  I was eventually prescribed sweet, merciful Temazepam to help with the debilitating insomnia, which was a life buoy thrown to me when I was drowning in a tempestuous sea of grief.  My waking hours were spent staring into space.  Aimlessly shuffling from room to room.  I was completely numb and I don’t remember much from that time.  I lost a lot of weight.  I rarely left the house.  I cut myself off from all my friends.  My father’s death knocked me out.  It was a king-hit that took me more than 18 months to emerge from.    

My mother never resurfaced from her loss.  When Dad died, a very large part of her did as well.  She never stopped loving him with all her heart, and she stubbornly refused to live a full life without him.  To my Mum, Kon’s ashes embodied his soul, and until the day she died she kept a lit candle beside his urn on the mantelpiece in the living room.  She said goodbye to him when she left the house, and hello when she returned.  Goodnight when she went to bed, and good morning when she woke up.  It was her way of staying connected to him, even though he was gone.  It was her way of keeping him alive, and that gave her comfort. 

My mother’s death hit me very differently.  Firstly, even though I knew she was sick, I didn’t know that she was at death’s door, so I was totally unprepared.  Secondly, she was my mother, not my father.  And thirdly, after Dad died, I still had my Mum around for another 15 years.  But when she died too, suddenly they were both gone and I experienced not just the loss of a very important person in my life, but the loss of my roots, my anchor, my family unit, and my very foundation.  And the loss was profound.  I didn’t get depressed, like when Dad died.  Instead I succumbed to an extreme and overpowering sadness, the depth of which I could never have imagined possible.  The sadness that I felt was not normal.  My whole life leading up to this event, sadness was a room on the ground floor.  Maybe when things got really bad, it went down to the basement.  But suddenly, when my Mum died, I realised that it was not the lowest, or the worst, that I could feel.  I learned that there were twenty cavernous levels below the earth that could fill up and overflow with my sadness.  It’s like when people say you don’t know how much love you can truly feel until you have a baby.  Well, maybe you don’t know how much sadness you can feel until you lose your mother. 

I’ve spent the last four and a half years since my mother’s death fiercely grieving her.  I miss her deeply and still sometimes cry myself to sleep when it just hits me in the chest that she’s gone and that she’s never coming back.  I think of her every single day.  I see her picture on my bedroom wall every single day.  And every single day something reminds me of her, and I’ll say emphatically, “I love my Mum”.  Because I really fucking do.    

Conversely, in the last four and a half years, I have hardly thought about my Dad at all.  Deplorably, I haven’t had any room in my heart for him.  And I feel so incredibly guilty that the all-consuming grief I feel for Mum has completely supplanted the grief that I was holding for my Dad.  And of course, intellectually and emotionally, I know (I know!) that I still love my father and I know that I miss him and I know that I grieve for him.  And of course it’s not a competition about who I love or miss the most.  But I am grateful that this, twentieth anniversary of his passing, is an opportunity for me to once again focus on my Dad, and to once again make some room for him in my heart where he belongs. 

My parents were very different people, and had very different parenting styles.  My Mum was all heart, loving, open and warm.  My Dad was more outgoing and filled the room with his personality… which could sometimes be a lot.  He had been raised in a household where the man was in charge, the man was the be-all and end-all, the man wore the pants and the man had the last word.  My Dad’s gentle nature prevented him from becoming the kind of authoritarian parent that his own father was, but still he could be pretty strict and uncompromising, especially when my sisters and I were teens.  I think that when his three daughters started growing up, it triggered an internal clash between his easy-going personality and the stern parental conditioning he’d grown up with.  And this started causing a rift in our family.  Being the first born child, being the one for whom rebellion simply wasn’t an option, I accepted all the rules.  I was the good girl.  And I’m grateful to both of my sisters, for being significantly more ballsy than I was and smashing down the barriers that had been put around us.  I’m grateful because, even though it caused a great deal of heartbreak and strife and tension in the house at the time, it was the catalyst for our father to change.  As a parent, and as a man. 

I have to give my Dad props for being able to shed generations of toxic masculinity, and to look inwards and realise that he no longer had to be so overprotective and controlling of his daughters.  He understood that if he didn’t make changes within himself, he was at risk of pushing us away, or even losing us completely.  And he changed.  He just did it.  He softened, he became more accepting, and he became more affectionate and open and loving.  He became more himself.  It was a truly remarkable transformation.  Over the years, my relationship to my Dad evolved from worship, to reverence, to fear, to shame, to disrespect, to ambivalence.  And then I went back, and I got to know him as a person, as a human being.  And I started loving him again.  And finally, at the end, after all that, we were friends.  I’m so grateful that we had the opportunity to complete that circle while he was still alive. 

I have so many beautiful memories of my extravagant and irrepressible father, whose extraordinary zest for life left an impression on everyone who knew him.  Even though it may seem trivial, a memory that I hold very dearly is of how gentle my Dad was when he put my hair up in a ponytail when I was a kid.  As opposed to my Mum’s confident and efficient method of whisking my hair up and quickly twisting the hair-tie around the ponytail, my entire head fit into my Dad’s enormous hands as he tenderly stroked my hair, trying so hard to not pull even a single one as he lovingly gathered it up on top of my head.  And I knew, I just knew, even then, as a five, or six, or seven year old, that it was a special moment between us.  I cherished that moment when I was a kid.  And I cherish it now. 

One family story that became legend over the years demonstrates how meticulous and fastidious Dad was about certain things.  He always took such great pride in the way that he looked, and in particular the clothes that he wore.  His sisters, Dimitra and Sophia, recently recalled the story for me, setting the scene at a large family dinner.  Dad, Mum, aunts and uncles and friends of the family were all there, gathered around the table.  Someone was carving and serving a large roast chicken, and a few droplets of gravy splashed onto my Dad’s shirt.  As was his wont, he became very upset.  Everyone there was accustomed to witnessing Dad’s over-the-top reactions whenever he got even a minor stain on his clothes.  But this time, apparently, he became so melodramatic about it that my Aunt Sophia (who was up to here with Dad’s histrionics) lost her patience, and lost the plot.  Wild-eyed, she pushed her chair back, walked around the table to where my Dad was sitting, grabbed the chicken drumstick off his plate and furiously started rubbing it all over his shirt, yelling, “It’s just a fucking stain, Kon!!!”  As you can imagine, everyone was so shocked at the unexpected insanity of the moment, they all burst into laughter.  Everyone, that is, except my Dad, who sat frozen like a statue, staring straight ahead with a stony look on his face. 

Hello police, I’m dressed to kill and I’d like to report a murder.

Thinking back, I remember lots of stories from my Dad’s youth.  Like the time a tree he was standing right next to was struck by lightning.  Knocked out by the impact, my father lost his sight and couldn’t see for hours afterwards.  When his eyesight returned, he went back to the tree, which had been cleaved in two, and found a stunning gemstone in the cradle of the split trunk.  The stone was a brilliant azure blue, and I remember seeing it and holding it and being in awe of it when I was a kid.  My Dad treasured that gemstone, and I wish with all my heart that I knew where it was. 

My father’s family were so poor that his parents couldn’t afford to feed all six of their children, so when my Dad was 17 years old, a deal was struck to foster him out to some neighbours, a rich family that lived just down the road.  Until then, my father had never even worn a pair of shoes.  So the pride that he took in his clothes later on in life makes total sense to me.  The couple that “adopted” my Dad were in their sixties and didn’t have any children, but they promised to secure him financially and to love him like their own.  The first few months went smoothly, and Dad helped them on their farm and generally did whatever was needed around the house.  He even used to drive the couple to church every week.  In a village where most families couldn’t even afford a bicycle, this was a big deal. 

After a while though, the couple started talking about weddings, suggesting that Kon marry their niece, but he wasn’t interested.  So the old guy started imposing a curfew, saying that my Dad (who was 19 years old by that time) had to be home by 10pm on Saturdays.  Obviously this was total bullshit and Kon justifiably stayed out until the wee hours of the morning that first weekend.  He did the same the weekend after.  And on the third weekend in a row that he came home late, he found the door to the house locked.  And that was it, that was the end of the deal.  That Sunday morning, his younger brothers and sisters woke up to find Kon sleeping on the floor next to their beds, and the whole family rejoiced that he was finally back where he belonged. 

Beloved siblings (Back row: Roula, Kon & Christos and Front row: Stavros, Sophia & Dimitra)

Kon Stathopoulos was a singularly brilliant man.  He pulled himself out of abject poverty in Greece, and created a whole new life for himself in Australia.  He completely rewrote his destiny.  My Dad was a dreamer and a big thinker!  Sure, he drove trucks, and then later taxis, but my Dad was too big to be a taxi driver forever.  He worked some shitty jobs to make ends meet, but in his spare time he was an enthusiastic entrepreneur.  Bow ties, light up yo-yos, silver screens for cars, decorative ceramic tiles.  He tried a whole bunch of innovative business ideas before finally starting his own company, Plastercraft Contractors. 

A one-man show, my Dad took solid plastering to the next level, turning it into an artform.  Within just a couple of years he had built such a great reputation in the industry that he was asked to singlehandedly restore the exterior of a large church in Ballarat.  He was also commissioned to create a new plaster cast emblem for the Red Eagle Hotel, in Albert Park, the very same bar where Kylie Minogue had her 21st birthday party!!!  He then landed the extremely exclusive job of re-designing and building the beautiful and iconic fountain at Government House in Victoria.  Every year on 26th January, Government House opens its doors to the public, and thousands of people get a chance to peek inside the stately home and to roam through the gardens.  There are also monthly tours of the 11 hectare garden which anyone can book, so why not go along on one of these tours and see for yourselves the amazing sculptural achievement created by my very own father. 

The construction phase.

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The standing ovation phase.

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The current phase.

Later on, due to the success of his business Dad expanded into larger scale projects like apartment building construction sites.  He often invited me to join him and earn a little bit of extra cash, and I once hit the jackpot, making $400 in one week being an elevator girl, asking big burly construction workers wearing hardhats, “Which floor?” for eight hours a day.  It was here that I first saw the man that my father had to be when he wasn’t with his family.  For the first time, I heard him casually throwing around words like, “fair dinkum”, “bloke”, “smoko”, and I even heard him say “fuck” a few times.  My brain exploded.  As a 21 year old I’d never heard my Dad swear at home, yet here he was cursing with such ease and regularity.  It was surprising, but also kind of nice, to discover this other side of Dad that I’d never seen before.  It added yet another dimension to him. 

My Dad left his mark on some pretty important buildings, but his passion project was building a holiday home for our family in Ancient Korinthos, in Greece.  The construction took him several years, and was (mostly) finished just before he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002.  His dream was for the five of us to holiday there, as a family.  But tragically, he never lived to see that happen.  The house is still there, an empty monument to one man’s vision. 

Mum and Dad hard at work. Literally building their dream home.

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The dream. With Greece’s only Hill’s Hoist.

I have a cute little blue urn on my bedside table, which holds a little bit of my Mum’s ashes and a little bit of my Dad’s ashes all mixed together.  I thought that having my parents close to me when I sleep would provide me with some sense of closeness to them, like my Mum used to get from having Dad’s ashes near to her.  But I was wrong.  I get nothing from it, except an academic understanding that my Mum and Dad’s cremated remains are next to me when I’m in bed.  I have no response to it at all, emotionally.  Sometimes I’ll shake the urn, and listen to their bone fragments rattling inside.  I know what’s in there, I know that it’s them, but even so, there’s no connection to who they were when they were alive.  I wish there was. 

Hello Mum and Dad, it’s me, Chryss.

My Dad really shaped the first 32 years of my life.  His first job in Melbourne was in the inner-city suburb of Carlton.  So naturally my father was a Bluebagger.  Therefore I am a Bluebagger.  Dad inspired my love of tennis, and I played competitively for years, even aspiring to turn professional when I was sixteen.  He taught me all the tricks of how to play a solid game of backgammon.  When I was 15, he taught me how to drive a manual in a rusty old Land Rover on a hilly farm with no roads.  And once I’d mastered that, he took me to an abandoned industrial estate in Springvale to learn how to drive his crappy work van. The one with the dodgy clutch and the sticky column shift.  And once I could drive that, I could drive anything.  I’m pretty sure that the reason I love to throw epic parties (and I really do love to throw epic parties) is because I inherited my Dad’s passion for entertaining, and showing people a good time, and living large.  It’s funny, what gets passed down from father to child.  Being a sports fan can be one of those things.  Wanting things to be just right, might be another.  A house in Greece, another still.  But maybe a zest for life and knowing how to dream big are the most important things a man can pass on to his daughter. Thanks Dad.