Port Fairy.

Finally, today the sun shines here in beautiful Port Fairy:

With the bad weather as an alibi I've been on a book a day.  When I finished all the reading material I packed, I set to work on $2 books at the op shop. Side by side with the trash were Madame Bovary and The Great Gatsby. I left them there for someone else to read.  Funnily enough it was walking down the main street which sent me a subtle prompt:

So I dug Fifty Shades of Grey, which had been downloaded by a friend onto my iPhone, out of my trash and succumbed to reading it - much to my husband's utter horror. Fifty Shades of Grey has been doing the rounds of the school gates in Hobart as 'Mummy Porn' yet the grey haired bloke in the bookshop at Port Fairy described it as 'Granny Porn'. I suppose it depends on where you are at. He also showed me this Amazon parody on YouTube. And there I was thinking Port Fairy was a sleepy, retirement town. I finished the book, yet can't say that I'll be rushing out for the next two instalments. Now, I've moved on to Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending. As I keep telling my husband, it 's serious literature as it was nominated for the Man Booker Prize last year. He's happy with that.

Since we have been in Port Fairy I've taken up coffee again. In my defence I have also taken up jogging, as the closest Bikram Yoga studio is in Geelong.......three hours away. Most days, in the quest for coffee and milkshakes, we all descend on Rebecca's cafe at least once if not twice:

Rebecca's is a charming cafe with a really lovely buzz. They do a delicious traditional Irish stew (there was a time when Port Fairy went by the name of Belfast) and very good eggs benedict.......not to mention the take away buckets of mini yoyo biscuits.

For some inexplicable reason, I am incapable of using the ceramic cooktop in the beach house - I have burnt everything I have attempted - lamb shanks, polenta and even toasted sandwiches. I seldom burn anything on the gas cooktop at home......oh, except for rhubarb fruit mince one Christmas. The catch cry in the beach house is.....'I can smell burning.....Mummy must be making lunch'.

So we have been forced to dine out. If you find yourself in Port Fairy make sure you have lunch in the Cafe at Basalt Wines, on the highway at Killarney:

It's an old weatherboard cottage quirkily decorated with an eclectic mix of taxidermy, art and strangely curious antiques. My favourite combination. The food was really interesting:

I was talked into the tripe and it was delicious. I still remember how fervently I tried to avoid tripe in France - my greatest fear was that I would accidentally order it - maybe I shouldn't have been so paranoid.

Probably the best thing about Port Fairy, and we are talking about a gorgeous, historical town (it boasts no less than fifty National Trust listed properties) with sweeping dramatic oceanscapes is the fact that it has it's own island complete with lighthouse. Griffith's Island is something straight out of Enid Blyton's The Famous Five. It is just how I imagine the fictitious Kirrin Island to be. Even better, it's an easy walk from town along the river and is attached by a walkway so you don't need a boat (or to swim) to get there:

You can circumnavigate Griffith's Island in an hour, even if you take a stroller. Camelia has been channelling Lady Jane Franklin's tour of the West Coast of Tasmania as her stroller has turned into a sedan chair, carried not by convicts but by her parents.

Anyway, there you have today's post - from  Fifty Shades of Grey to The Famous Five. And I bet you thought it couldn't be done!

R