The Highlight Reel

Friday 16/3: We earned our Nerd Frood Stamps, and had an Aussie BBQ complete with beets

We busted out our new snorkel masks, and explored The Wreck, two off-shore shipwrecks that can be swum from the beach. The boats are pretty destroyed by this point, in many pieces, and home to schools of silver fishes. We came back in from the beach, showered off, and headed out to the library to Get Our Library Cards. We attempted to do this a few weeks ago, and were sadly told that we needed some kind of proof of residency, in the form of valid ID and ANYTHING – a lease agreement, rent receipt, anything. Having paid our first rent at the Westpac, we walked up to the library and presented ourselves at the library desk and announced that we had a permanent address and would like library cards, please. At which point the very nice librarians regretfully told us that the receipt lacked our address, which we needed. I looked at the wall clock behind her head, saw it was twenty to five (the library closes at five, and we live a twelve minute walk away), and sighed, and said, “All right, we’ll come back in the morning.” Then I looked at Ben, who glanced at the clock and at the door with a grin. Damn. I know that face. We agreed to run for it. We sprinted to our house in flipflops, raced in through the back door, grabbed our lease agreement, and sprinted back to the library. It was a hot afternoon, and we’d been swimming all morning. We showed up dripping with sweat, panting and clutching our lease agreement in triumph. The librarians saw us come in through the door and pulled out forms and our new cards before even looking at the paper (which, admittedly, only had our address hand-written in to a fill-in-the-blank spot in the paperwork generated by the leasing agency for a whole group of housing). They kept the library open for us five minutes late to let us check out our books. Five minutes later, still dripping with sweat, Ben carrying a novel and me carrying a book on the Great Barrier Reef and an update of Origin of the Species, we headed out and across the street to L’Ultime, the local French patisserie and chocolaterie, to buy fresh bread for our beach barbeque. We went back home, dropped off our books, picked up our condiments and a spatula, and went to the Green Grocer for a beet (Aussies put beets on their burgers. We were determined to find out why.),  salad greens, and an orange. Over the block between our house and the grocer, we saw the biggest, brightest, most perfectly arched, most complete rainbow either of us have ever seen. It had the full ROYGBIV, and ended beyond the lighthouse in one direction and into the sea in the other. Given a boat or a plane, we actually could have followed the rainbow. We took our supplies back to the house, Ben made some home-made orange-ade with fresh fruit, and we headed back to the beach, stopping by Woolies on our way to pick up the Australian Beef Patties we’d been eyeing earlier, and had ourselves a barbeque. It was tasty.

This weekend the fruit of the banana trees between our house and the neighbors has begun to ripen. The temptation of fresh bananas right off the vine, creamy and flavorful and delicious, is too much to resist. Having stolen a banana (or three – they were over-ripening and about to fall off anyway! I told myself…) I stopped next door to introduce myself to the neighbor. He turned out to be a very nice elderly  Australian gentleman named Peter, who told me that he’d planted the trees in his yard ages ago and they’d run wild and colonized. Anything on our side, he said, we were welcome to pick, and “have a feed, love.” And so there was a banana cream pie. I tried to take him a slice, but he wasn’t home. We we, and our roommates, ate it all. Then there was a banana oat custard tart, first for breakfast, then later chilled with white chocolate. Happily, Peter did indeed get a slice of this before it vanished. Then there was oatmeal banana breakfast, and banana white chocolate pancakes (YUM) for breakfast, and leftovers for dessert still in the fridge. That’s pretty much done it for the first bunch, between us and all three of our roommates eating the bakeables and snacking off the tree. Three more bunches wait out there, still green on the vine.  Again, Yum.

This weekend was St. Pattys Day. We ran through a tropical rainstorm to procure bottles of beer after I got off work late at night, and puddle stomped our way home to toast with Australian beer.

Sunday was a rainy morning, so we hung out and read our new library books all morning. It cleared up at night, and we hiked ourselves out to Cooks Lookout. There was a huge storm swell coming in this week, and massive waves broke over the rocks under the stars. Which was beautiful, and completely arresting, until we got hungry, and hiked ourselves back home for Italian home cooking for dinner and Cool Runnings, which may be the best movie ever made.

Tuesday we learned to surf! On ten foot long foam boards, in a three hour lesson (which went a lot like a tutorial, followed by being pushed out onto a few waves – the surfing equivalent of training wheels- then pointed to the good waves and told to go for it!) we both managed to stand a few times. It was a huge feeling! There is more surfing in my future. That night, after having an early dinner of pizza leftovers and a later dinner of chocolate and forest berry sorbet from Bella Rosa Gelateria, we found ourselves hanging out at the Beach Front Hotel, hanging out with a guy we’d met last week at Buddha Bar’s open mic and two Dutch girls. It was another of Byron’s open mic events, Gary sang and played his guitar again, and the music all night was good. We finally stumbled our sleepy selves back home, and watched the end of an episode of Top Gear before crashing off to sleep.

This morning it’s a rainy Thursday, so we’re catching up with the internet and the world at the Why Not Café. Ben had a croissant with vanilla cream and fruit, I had the sweet special – profiteroles with dark chocolate and macademia nut ice cream, and an LSD (Soy Dandelion Latte, and my favorite local drink). We’re just about out of here, though, off to do a bit more surf-board hunting, then go for a swim (hey, it might be raining, but we’ll be wet anyway), and pick up our free burgers from the Byron Corner Store, a deli that rewards customers for booking the surf lesson. The board of ingredients looks promising.