When I’m on holiday, I tend not to take photographs of the usual things. In fact, it’s only relatively recently that I’ve taken photographs at all, generally much preferring to rely on memories of the things I see, which conjure up far better images than any photograph of mine could, especially of people and places. That said, I’m always on the lookout for things which encapsulate the holiday or represent significant aspects of it, and being able to use the camera on my phone to capture anything quirky or amusing is simply too much of a temptation. Given what you already know about me, it will probably come as no surprise to you that I often take pictures of cakes. More specifically, I take pictures of cakes in Australia.
I first went to Australia in 2003 to visit my friend Sam, an old work colleague who emigrated a year or so after getting married. I felt instantly at home there, not only because I was surrounded by friends, but also because, while very different, Sydney felt strangely familiar. Visiting was rather like being transported to a parallel universe in which aspects of everyday life in the UK had been mashed together with things I had previously only seen or heard whilst watching TV; a place where pies had mythical status and the biscuit aisle in the local supermarket was the stuff of dreams. I’ll never forget going to the station to catch a train into town one day whilst feeling a touch jet-lagged and seeing a suburban service bound for Liverpool via Regent’s Park.
Much as I enjoyed that first visit, I didn’t return to Sydney until 2011. During the intervening period, work and everyday life got in the way and I pretty much lost touch with Sam, relying on mutual friends to provide me with news from down under. I’m not very good at keeping in touch with people at the best of times, but this was bad, even by my standards. One day, whilst sitting at my desk during one of those lulls that follow a fairly intense period at work, I started thinking about Sam and realised how long it had been since I had last spoken to her, at which point it hit me quite hard just how badly I had let things slip and what a fair-weather friend I had become. I picked up the phone, had a long chat with her and resolved to be a better friend. I arranged to fly out to Sydney early the following year and since then, with a couple of exceptions, have made a point of going back each year.
My annual visits down under are important for several reasons. First and foremost, they allow me to spend time in person with Sam and my other friends in Sydney. They also allow me to escape everyday life in the UK whilst recharging my batteries in familiar surroundings; an opportunity, metaphorically speaking, to unplug myself from London and then to plug myself back in again thousands of miles away, in a place I know well enough for a holiday there to feel more like a staycation. Lovely as a proper staycation would be, there really is nothing quite like an 11 hour time difference and the knowledge that, even if you were able to board a flight home immediately, it would be at least 24 hours before you were back on the ground in the UK, to help you to switch off and relax. Finally, as an introvert who likes nothing more than extended periods of time alone with my thoughts, the pleasure gained from spending 24 hours disconnected from the rest of the world at 35,000 feet with unlimited access to snacks cannot be underestimated.
Given that my visits are more like a staycation than a holiday, I spend most of my time in Sydney doing what I would do if I had a day off mid-week at home: popping to the shops, catching a film or an exhibition, watching copious amounts of trash TV, and generally pottering about. Nothing too strenuous or particularly touristy. Returning to the subject of photographs, I always make a point of spending time in two cafés which have stayed pretty much the same since my first visit, and taking a photograph of the coffee, the cake and what I happen to be reading at the time as a souvenir. The photographs are bad by anyone’s standards, but for me at least, they capture the essence of my visits down under and the importance of returning to Australia each year.
The Rocks Café
The Rocks Café is located close to the waterfront on George Street in the centre of Sydney, directly behind the Museum of Contemporary Art. A dark, cool and narrow enclave with a sleepy atmosphere and a rather attractive refrigerated window display providing the all-important glimpse of the cakes on offer, it provides the perfect place for a mid-morning or mid-afternoon pitstop. I always sit in one of the wooden booths on the ground floor, as close to the window as possible, the perfect place to read my book and look up periodically to watch the world go by. Lovely as I am sure all the cakes are, the only one that interests me is the lemon meringue pie, a personal favourite of Sam’s and mine. It isn’t the most lemony one I’ve eaten, but it’s certainly sharp enough to make you realise you’re eating something with a zing, and the pastry case is nicely thick (I’m not a huge fan of very thin pastry). Best of all though is the meringue topping which is sweet, slightly chewy, and visually impressive to put it mildly.
Corelli’s
Corelli’s is located on King Street in Newtown, a suburb outside the city centre in what is referred to as Sydney’s inner west which combines elements of Camden Town, Dalston and Stoke Newington. Located close to the Newtown High School of the Performing Arts, Corelli’s is a grungey café frequented by a mix of students and alternative characters, with a serving area made from corrugated iron that looks more like a barricade, and quite intimidating staff who wouldn’t look out of place as extras in Mad Max. That said, the cakes are great and the portions are generous. Disappointingly, Corelli’s doesn’t do lemon meringue pie. Even if it did, I’m not sure quite how I feel about eating something that frivolous in a post-apocalyptic setting. As a result, whenever I go in, I’ll either have the sticky date cake served warm with caramel sauce, or the chocolate fudge cake. I like to sit by the window at the back, where I can read my book and engage in a spot of people watching.
Coffee
Wherever you go in Australia, you’re never far away from an espresso machine and someone who knows how to use it. Being more of a tea man, I don’t drink a huge amount of coffee, but if I’m going to have a cup, it needs to be strong and taste of coffee rather than milk. For that reason, I generally go for a long black (the antipodean term for an americano) with a splash of cold milk to cool it down slightly and take the edge off. That said, I have flirted with the odd flat white over the years, as evidenced by several of the pictures below. The coffee in Corelli’s is always served with a speculoos biscuit shaped like a teddy bear; an amusingly incongruous touch that appeals to my love of all things kitsch and camp. As a good boy who was brought up not to let food go to waste, I always eat the speculoos biscuit and finish off any leftover milk in the jug, but draw the line at collecting the packets of sugar as souvenirs. If the speculoos biscuit is missing from any of the pictures, it’s because I’d already wolfed it down. Needs must, and all that.
Books
In case you’re interested in the books I was reading, I’ve listed them below.
- Notes from an exhibition – Patrick Gale
- The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
- The Chequer Board – Neville Shute
- Men at Arms – Evelyn Waugh
- Prester John – John Buchan
- Spring Snow – Yukio Mishima
- Girl with a Pearl Earring – Tracy Chevalier
- A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
It’s often struck me that our appreciation of a book is dictated as much by our own circumstances and experiences as by those of the author, and that whatever makes it memorable probably says more about us than it does about the book itself. Bearing that in mind, the brief observations I’ve set out for each one will give you a hint of their significance for me. I’d recommend all of them if you’re looking for some relatively light and thought-provoking holiday reading, especially if you’re planning on spending a quiet hour or two in a café with a cup of coffee and a slice of cake.
2011 – Lemon Meringue Pie, Sticky Date Cake, Patrick Gale
The lemon meringue pie in The Rocks Café was served with a racy zig zag of strawberry coulis which always brings back memories of eating ice cream as a child during summer holidays with my grandparents in Eastbourne. It was every bit as good as I remembered from 2003. The warm sticky date cake with caramel sauce in Corelli’s was moist, gooey and intensely sweet. Coffee-wise, I was clearly going through a flat white phase in 2011. In case you are wondering, that rather bizarre swirl on the table in Corelli’s is artfully applied wood varnish rather than some cake-related dirty protest by the previous customer. As regards what I was reading, Notes from an exhibition is a story about matters coming to light after a family bereavement which cause those trying to come to terms with what has happened to learn more about themselves than they were expecting. For the avoidance of doubt, I’d just like to point out that I am not (and never have been) a member of the Richard & Judy book club.
2012 – Lemon Meringue Pie, Chocolate Fudge Cake, Oscar Wilde
The lemon meringue pie in The Rocks Café came with a squirt of chantilly this year, as well as the racy zig zag of strawberry coulis. The chocolate fudge cake in Corelli’s was moist, very chocolatey and served au naturel with a dusting of icing sugar. Coffee-wise I was still flirting with the flat white. As for what I was reading, The Picture of Dorian Gray is fantastic and much more than a story about a man with a portrait in the attic which ages as he remains youthful. Instead, it’s a cautionary tale of individual responsibility and the potentially damaging (and often unseen) consequences of our actions. As a fairly skinny person who eats whatever he likes without having to worry about putting on weight, the irony of reading it whilst chomping enthusiastically on cake is not lost on me. More seriously, given the story’s focus on individual responsibility, a modern day Dorian Gray could just as easily be a social media influencer whose obsession with likes causes him to post damaging content online. Before you ask, I don’t have a portrait in my attic which pays the price for my cake-related excesses. I also don’t have a canvas bag from Daunt Books.
2013 – Lemon Meringue Pie, Chocolate Fudge Cake, Neville Shute, Evelyn Waugh
L 
The lemon meringue pie in The Rocks Café was slightly underwhelming this year, served without its customary zig zag of strawberry coulis or a squirt of chantilly, and looking a little rough round the edges. It still tasted pretty good though. The chocolate fudge cake in Corelli’s made up for the lemon meringue pie’s lack of embellishment with decorative curls of chocolate on top and a squirt of chantilly on the side. Note the switch from the flat white to the long black with cold milk. The books I was reading (The Chequer Board and Men at Arms) are by two very different, but nevertheless very British, authors. Writing in their own way about the reality of war, they emphasise the importance of a positive mental attitude (in the case of Neville Shute) and a good sense of humour (in the case of Evelyn Waugh) as effective coping strategies, not just in wartime but also more generally when times are tough.
2014 – Lemon Meringue Pie, Sticky Date Cake, John Buchan, Yukio Mishima
The lemon meringue pie in The Rocks Café was back on form, served with a squirt of chantilly and an even racier zig zag of chocolate sauce, its meringue quiff as impressive as ever. The sticky date cake in Corelli’s looks restrained by comparison, but believe me it wasn’t. I decided to go for hot milk in my long black this year, meaning that it arrived each time disguised as a flat white, with foamed milk on the top. I can, however, assure you that it was a long black. The reading material consisted of Prester John, a Ripping-Yarn-style boys’ adventure story about a young man who gets caught in the crossfire of conflicting interests whilst seeking his fortune in an unfamiliar country, and Spring Snow, the first in a series of novels about the life of a law student destined for professional success, whose inability to break free from events in his past leads to embarrassment in later life and ultimately his downfall.
2015 – Lemon Meringue Pie, Sticky Date Cake, Tracy Chevalier, Kazuo Ishiguro
The lemon meringue pie in The Rocks Café was served on a rather Masterchef-style oversized rectangular plate, sandwiched between a racy zig zag of strawberry coulis and a squirt of chantilly. The chocolate sauce from the previous year had clearly been put in its place. I don’t know about you, but it looks to me as though the strawberry coulis was starting to get ideas above its station, jockeying for position with the lemon meringue pie after falling out with the chantilly. Not to be outdone, the sticky date cake in Corelli’s came with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, adding to the already quite full-on contrast of textures, flavours and temperatures. Note the switch back to cold milk with my long black. This year’s reading consisted of Girl With A Pearl Earring in which Griet, a 16 year old maid in the house of Johannes Vermeer, is placed in a very difficult position at the centre of a web of vested interests when she becomes the sitter for the eponymous painting, and A Pale View of Hills in which Etsuko, a woman living alone after the death of her daughter, recalls a strange and unlikely friendship with the enigmatic Sachiko, a wealthy and proud woman reduced to vagrancy in post-war Nagasaki.
2016 – Lemon Meringue Pie, Chocolate Fudge Cake, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The lemon meringue pie in The Rocks Café was even more impressive than usual, upping its game with a beautifully defined two-toned filling consisting of the usual sweet layer topped with a sharper and more intensely lemony layer. I wonder if it was feeling the pressure from the strawberry coulis which had clearly teamed up with the chocolate sauce in my absence and gone quite arty. Even the chocolate fudge cake in Corelli’s came with an appropriately anarchic-looking splash of black cherry coulis, giving it a rather enjoyable Black Forest Gateau roadkill vibe. The chantilly didn’t get a look-in. This year I finally got round to reading some Sherlock Holmes short stories after years of being told by relatives how much better they are than the dramatisations. Much as I enjoyed reading them, however, I found that watching the dramatisations as a child affected my appreciation, causing me to compare the Conan Doyle stories to them as if the dramatisations were the original, and leaving me feeling slightly disappointed as a result. In the same way that I prefer the taste of tinned peaches with evaporated milk as a result of eating them rather than fresh peaches and cream as a child, I will always prefer the dramatised version of the Conan Doyle stories, and Sherlock Holmes for me will always be Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett.
2018 – Lemon Meringue Pie, Chocolate Fudge Cake, Margaret Atwood
Things appeared to have calmed down at The Rocks Café in my absence. The plate was less of a statement piece, the strawberry coulis had gone back to its more familiar zig zag pattern, and it looked as though there had been a rapprochement between it and the chantilly. That said, it looked to be an uneasy truce with the lemon meringue pie sandwiched between them. I am sorry to report that the lemon meringue pie was a disappointment this year, its quiff a little less perky than I would have liked and the filling not as zingy as the year before. The strain of keeping the peace and asserting its dominance over the strawberry coulis had clearly taken its toll. Perhaps as a gesture of solidarity, the chocolate fudge cake in Corelli’s had ended its brief flirtation with the black cherry coulis and was served with a squirt of chantilly instead. The reading material this year consisted of Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, a fictionalised account of the story of Grace Marks, a young immigrant convicted of murder in 19th Century rural Canada, as told through interviews between her and a psychiatrist tasked with assessing whether she should be pardoned due to insanity. While not nearly as dystopian as The Handmaid’s Tale, it nevertheless paints an all-too familiar picture of a society plagued by prejudice and class distinctions, in which truth is disturbingly elusive and whether or not you are believed depends more on your ability to manipulate others than on being honest.
Future visits
Covid-19 scuppered my plans to get back to Sydney in 2020 and 2021, meaning that the significance of future visits is even greater now than before; not just a reminder of the importance of friendship and continuity, but also a return to some semblance of the way my life was before March 2020, when I would get on a plane and hug friends and family without a second thought. The pandemic won’t truly be over for me until I’ve been back to The Rocks Café and Corelli’s, and taken another photograph of the coffee, the cake and what I happen to be reading at the time as a souvenir. If things hadn’t got in the way, 2020 would have marked my tenth visit down under, and reaching that milestone, albeit belatedly, is important to me. Bearing that in mind, I’m already wondering how the lemon meringue pie will be served in The Rocks Café. My other half Nick (aka the Fella) has also calculated that in order to achieve the perfect ten-year cycle of cake consumption in Corelli’s, I need to have sticky date cake twice followed by chocolate fudge cake over the course of the next three visits. Such is the life of a sugar-obsessed creature of habit whose partner is a fellow incorrigible pedant.
What I learned today... 