BENGALURU: Every year, my wife Judi and I take off on a long vacation during our shared birthdays in June, which are just a week apart. This year we chose Australia, where I had never been, though this would be Judi’s fourth trip. She has masses of family there, with her brother David and his wife Nina, and almost all her first cousins who emigrated there decades ago. You couldn’t find a single country more unlike India than Australia, for while we find parallels in England and Europe culturewise, nothing quite prepared me for the reality of this beautiful country.
David and Nina live in a suburb called Barden Ridge, where picturesque valleys and rivers make for dramatic scenery. Frequent trips to the Sydney Opera House and the Royal Botanical Gardens culminated in a party thrown during Sydney Fashion Week, when we lunched at the stunning Bennelong restaurant with the fashion fraternity of the city. Melissa Shea and Sneha Andani hosted a remarkable lunch for us. The quality of food is superb in Australia, with only the best produce reaching their tables. At Hubert’s, a trendy fine-dining restaurant, they served the finest international viands and seafood in unusual dishes.
Australia is multi-cultural and the original immigrants claim superiority over more recent arrivals, much like America does when they claim ancestry from the first pioneers who sailed there on the SS Mayflower. You see more Aboriginal art in the galleries than actually meeting the original inhabitants. I was told that most of them are encouraged to migrate to Central Australia, into reserves away from the big towns, to what they call the Outback. Signposts and memorials in stone are all over, paying tribute and acknowledging that these areas were originally sacred aboriginal sites, but now lost to them forever.
Trips to Bald Hill Highland Reserve, Scarborough, Clifton, Newport amd Palm Beach offer delightful glimpses of riverside and seaside life.
A road trip to Melbourne makes us sigh with pleasure at a driving experience that we may never experience in India. We spend the night with friends in Wodonga, and stop for lunch in a charming town called Avenel.
In Melbourne, we stay with another old Bangalorean and cousin Veena Devaya, in a lovingly refurbished heritage home in Balwyn, where she lives with her Persian cat, Artemis. Her home is stuffed with antiques and bric-a-brac, for she is an avid collector.
The next morning, we meet Judi’s cousins, Christopher and Cynthia White, who also lived in Bangalore before they emigrated in the ‘80s. They take us to Healesville Sanctuary, a natural open zoo where you get to see kangaroos, koala bears and badgers. The bird show is simply magnificent. We return through Coldstream to visit Coombe in Yarra Valley, a stately home that belonged to the family of Dame Nellie Melba, the celebrated opera singer after whom the famous dessert Peach Melba is named. She also appears on the Australian 100-dollar bill.
We drive to Canberra to visit the Australian War Memorial and it is a moving experience to see how every soldier is honoured. In Bengaluru, we struggle to get our single little war memorial erected, after much pleading and protesting.
We often walk 10 km a day and enjoy the physical activity. Cousin Nina is a great cook, and is determined to feed us and then make us walk it off on the many jaunts she plans.We return to Sydney and it’s like catching up with Bangalore from the ‘80s when we meet cousins Caroline and Oliver Pais and their daughter Rachel, and have dinner with Denise Bartley and Chris Mendens, who were famous singers in Bangalore. We meet Kate and Farhad Irani, again old Bangalorean neighbours who moved there. They take us on the Sydney Harbour Bridge walk and then a coastal trek from Clovelly to Bondi Beach.
We catch a last ferry ride from the Sydney Opera House to Manley, a period seaside town perfectly preserved in the Art Deco style. We lunch at Hemingway’s and it’s the perfect end to a wonderful trip, and we come back with memories of friendly people, stunning views and amazing food!
Prasad Bidapa is a Bangalorean who presents fashion promotions all over India and abroad, and is committed to promoting heritage handlooms and khadi.