But I’m loving it!
Though obviously this means no time (nor net connection) to update AHW, so the world will have to wait ’til Sunday evening at the earliest for their daily/weekly/monthly dose of AHW goodness (in light of recent events, the latter is probably the most accurate).
I’m hoping to get back home and discover that the Force managed a miracle win against the Chiefs at Subi on the weekend…
Chunks of the last two weeks were spent in the coastal town of Broome in Western Australia’s northwest. For the first two days of our stay, the town had been issued with a category blue cyclone warning (it’s the wet season up north) but Cyclone Nicholas ended up turning tail and heading back out to sea, leaving in its departure the gloriously warm weather that has Perth people fleeing to Broome during our winter.
If you get the chance, I thoroughly recommend you visit, especially if you can get there during the low-season when tourist numbers are down and most of the people in town are locals. In addition to some spectacular scenery and being the perfect spring board for trips into the Kimberleys - if you really like, you can also head out to the now-infamous Wolf Creek (spoilers alert) to check out the area that inspired the 2005 Aussie horror flick of the same name - the quality of eating available in Broome is spectacular with Noodlefish and Som’s Thai being real highlights.
Also worth mentioning is the abundance of Champagne available at eateries in Broome, often priced at amounts considerably cheaper than back home in Perth (ie bottles of Moet at $90 at Divers Tavern and Zanders on Cable Beach with Veuve just a tenner more). The leisurely two and a half hour flight from Perth airport will make the trip appealing for those with a fear of flying.
Last night, Marie and I had our best New Year’s Eve together when we joined two other couples (all great friends of ours) and celebrated the end of ‘07 by drinking Champagne and sparkling in a spa ’til about half one in the morning. Quiet, low-key, surrounded only by good friends and good wine: the evening of Monday December 31 ticked all the right boxes for a good New Year’s Eve.
Of course, such exploits often leave one feeling a little tender come morning, so the combination of a lack of options and the need for something greasy to ease the stomach resulted in a trip to Hungry Jacks on the way home for our first meal of the New Year: a Whopper, regular onion rings and regular OJ. As a recent media junket to Margs proved, a lot of people in the “industry” would turn up their noses at the thought of consuming a hamburger from a multi-national franchise and look down on those that do, but then again, I’d probably call these people wankers with perhaps more money than sense. I know they’re not particularly good for me, but Whoppers taste bloody good and I enjoyed every mouthful of mine this morning.
Which leads me to a couple of New Year’s resolutions for AHW. Looking back on it now, December was a pretty shit-house month, what with the combination of letting my hosting lapse (my bad, even though I never saw the invoice email as it was being sent somewhere else) and not many wine write-ups due to Festive Season commitments that had me drinking the stuff rather than writing about it. I want AHW to never experience another December 2007. I want it to be a well maintained site that features useful, well-written content that is different enough from the wealth of wine and poker blogs clogging up cyberspace but without distancing itself from its peers.
While I’m not game enough to publish my personal resolutions for 2008, here are a few areas I’ll be focusing on over the next 12 months.
1. Regular updates
When AHW started, I was publishing wine reviews daily with many of them just being 12″ mixes of the reviews published as part of “Grape Expectations”, my-then weekly wine column in the Guardian Express newspaper. The column has gone the way of decent fashion among today’s youth (in other words, long gone), but the quality of Australian wine on the market just seems to keep inching its way upwards. As a wine writer, it’s my responsibility to keep on top of this and regularly big up the real standouts.
2. Honesty
Not to say that the last two years of AHW have been filled with as much bollocks as a session of Parliamentary question-time, but I think the site should reflect a bit more of my own perspective as a person and wine lover. I’m not rich, I don’t drink expensive French wine and the value of my “cellar” isn’t equivalent to the asking price of a small inner-city apartment - 10 years ago. The reality is that I’m not quite 30, somewhere between “young punk” and “time to settle down”, swear a little too much for my mother’s liking, not likely to spend more than $25 at the bottlo when choosing a bottle to go with lunch or dinner but highly likely to eat at a BYO restaurant because I can bring decent plonk and save a couple of bucks at the same time.
While I don’t fit into the stereotype of consumer once held by the wine industry, I think it’s fair to say that people like me (perhaps with a little more money and respectability) and my demographic are going to be the backbone of the [Australian largely, though from discussions between mates, I suspect this trend is a global one] industry in years to come. Hopefully AHW will do a passable job of representing for the “new” generation of wine drinkers.
3. 250 individual tasting notes
Last but not least, a tangible goal for me to try to achieve - roughly one wine a day, Monday to Friday. The good folk at Winorama absolutely smash it in with TNs while I suspect I’d struggle to even rack up triple-figures in a year - but all that’s about to change. And best of all, I’ve got an extra day to try and achieve my goal!
To everyone: thanks for reading. I hope you all had a safe, relaxing and enjoyable Festive Season and I wish you and your loved ones the very best for 2008.
And a little note about the picture at the top of the post: it’s a Polaroid I snapped at King’s Park on my Colorpack IV using expired Polaroid 125i film. It’s the first shot in a new photography side-project I’ve [re]started entitled “Polaroid 6000″ or P6K. I’m a Polaroid junkie and this is my effort at capturing the city/state I call home in all its glory. Check it out at Polaroid 6000.
Sorry if you’ve tried to check out AHW over the last couple of days only to find that the account’s been suspended - that’ll happen when you don’t get an invoice but all’s good and you’re stranded with AHW for another 12 months - my Christmas gift to the world.
After Danny Green - www.dannygreen.com.au - lost last year’s much-hyped bout with rival Anthony Mundine, I was devastated and close to tears. But last night after a long and largely beneath-the-radar comeback, the son of a hamburger chef has vindicated himself and sitting on top of the boxing world, albeit after a fairly underwhelming bout that seemed decided by a little over half-way.
While I’ve studied the art, I wouldn’t call myself a boxing fan - but then again, I don’t think Danny Green is your average boxer. While the media has plenty to say about his heart and work-rate in the ring (particularly as it comes closer to fight time), what a lot of people don’t see is Green’s heart outside of the sporting arena.
While Green’s heroics moonlighting as a lifesaver in 2006 copped plenty of attention (see “Danny Green saved my life“), there’s a very soft and human side to the boxer famous for his hard-hitting sledgehammer right - and it’s a side Green doesn’t draw a lot of attention to. One example of this selflessness was a fairly impromptu visit he paid to the patrons of Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH), Perth’s busiest children’s hospital.
Organised through Radio Lollipop (the longest-established children’s charity at PMH - though the well-paid marketers behind the Starlight Children’s Foundation would have you thinking otherwise), Green paid the hospital a visit with a bag of Nintendo DS systems that he gave away to kids while talking to patients and signing autographs and just being a great bloke. No media, no publicity shots, no grandstanding - just being a dead-set legend. He then donated a set of signed boxing gloves to auction at the charity’s Gala event that sadly my $1000 bid (never mind how was I going to pay for it) was woefully inadequate for.
I’m sure there are people out there with their own stories of Green’s generosity and selflessness, but I wanted to share mine in admiration of a great man, athlete and ambassador for Western Australia. Here’s to an exciting new chapter in a working class hero and champion from “The Lawn Down Under”.
Just a quick notice, I’ve been told by my web provider that some server upgrades will be taking place this weekend and that AHW will be down as a result of it. I hope you enjoy the wonders of the intra-web without the threat of accidentally clicking through to AHW-ville!
It’s been a pretty hectic three days over here. Saturday and Sunday was spent down in Margaret River for the second Howard Park international riesling tasting which was a killer just like last year’s maiden event. Sunday was spent crying over the Wallabies loss to those dirty poms before, after and even during a visit to Moss Wood while Monday morning involved the three-hour drive back to Perth in horrible weather and getting to Fraser’s in Kings Park for a vertical tasting of Lenton Brae sem sav. Posts on these will follow during the week in chronological order.
But for now, and so it’s not an entire week without a post (needing to finish freelance writing jobs and not having a net connection while down south - not that I’d want to - leaves little time for “other” indulgences), I just wanted to jot down a few sentences on the departure of 25-year-old Melbourne musician Jacob Butler from this year’s Idol. Ignoring for one second the downright baffling voting habits, and hence musical taste, of the Australian public, Butler’s conduct while he was being “evicted” was a lesson in grace, decorum and humility that all reality TV contestants current and aspiring would do well to watch and even imitate.
