Looking down

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All Saints Anglican church, bunya nuts, oak tree, prayer labrynth

Admittedly, this is not what it looks like from the first photo. But the focus is really the prayer labrynth at All Saints Anglican Church, Bodalla. Which is down.

The labrynth is gravel-and-grass. As I approach it, I register the grand trees in the spacious churchyard of this late nineteenth century grandeur built from local granite – a spreading oak as splendid as any I’ve seen, which draws my attention by its scattering of acorns and its distinctive leaves …

… and a primeval bunya pine which announces its presence with a huge cone that reduces my terror of falling coconuts to a minor fear. Believing that perhaps adoration will protect me, I crouch down for a frenzy of photography, entranced by patterns and shapes, the Fibonacci design that it shares with harmless sunflowers amongst other things. It becomes the real focus of my photo-session.

I saw it on Friday. When I returned on Sunday to snaffle it so I could watch it burst open and release its nuts, it had disappeared.

My daughter tells me a friend of her harvests the cones and roasts the nuts. Her 3 year old twins love them: my daughter adds them to cabbage, banana, and mayonnaise as foods she can’t bear.

I’ve already featured bunya nuts elsewhere. If you want to know a bit more about them scroll down a fair way in this post.

While I was away …

Tags

Downward Dog Cafe

… some things changed. In Batemans Bay shopping centre revamped parking and a new road complete with traffic lights. In Bodalla a new cafe. It was once Mexican, as you can see from the sign, beginning its afterlife as a ghost sign complete with Mexican hats.

You look at the notices in the window, to see what’s on offer as well as food.

You walk through a blue door, held obligingly open by a wooden dog wearing a studded collar.

You notice the textured white walls straight away, and then the collection of bonsai. A woman in her seventies is walking round with a tan plastic watering can, making sure her dwarfings have enough water.

You have a choice of four spaces for your meal, including a semi outdoor area and armchairs in front of an open fireplace.

You might choose inside space, which acts as a gallery for three artists: Rita Easton, Lois Selby, and the cafe owner, Megan Small.

When you leave through the opening into the car park you encounter a muscly tree;  a dilapidated shed buried under honeysuckle and lush grass; and a view out to the mountains.

Bodalla: if you want to shop

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Artisans Nest, Different Choices, Gallery Bodalla, Hairwaves, Hippie Sticks, Lavendar Shop, Post Office, Songbee

Home territory is often, oddly, a foreign country. I’m not much of a shopper, and it took me months to realise that two new shops have opened in Bodalla, although I drive past them four or five times a week, and even park in front of them. When a breakfast at Blue Earth was cancelled at the last minute, I ambled in to see what they held, and when my friend was visiting made a thorough tour of the town, camera in hand.

Songbee sells things sourced from markets in Cambodia. The owner’s grandfather came to this part of the world in the early 20th century, and she’s run a number of business in the area over the last few years. In the current shop coconut shells have been transformed: they’ve become gleaming bowls painted with feathers or tropical flowers and long necklaces. Fabrics have become elephant purses; soft blocks; owl cushions. Mats are woven from recycled saris; bags manufactured from recycled paper.

Next door, Different Choices combines the old (old gramophone, squeezebox, posters for Elvis films), the handmade (pigs from gas cylinders) and knick-knacks, ornaments, bric-a-brac, bibelots, and curios.

Down the hill, Hippie Sticks vibrates with its tie-dyed rainbows: hats, shoes, jumpsuits, sarongs, you name it, all a swirl of purples, reds, greens, oranges, blues

Between Hippie Sticks and the Lavendar Shop, around the corner from the cat in front of the fire, is Hairwaves, a shop I visit semi-regularly, usually just before I head overseas. It’s where I luxuriate in a shampoo, never quite rough enough, catch up with local news, meet friends from the deep past and occasionally encounter a neighbour I didn’t know I had.

More subtle than Hippie Sticks is the Lavendar Shop, a haze of mauve and purple: soaps, bags, sachets, oils. The garden outside grows lavendar, and last year, flourishing purple hardenbergia, with its little green eyes, wound its way up the picket fence.

Next door is the Artisans Nest, an outlet for a variety of local artists: felters, fibre and mixed media artists, jewellery makers, users of reclaimed materials, experimenters with natural dyes, sculptors, makers of dolls, art cards and dream catchers, knitters, weavers, printers.

Behind the post office is Gallery Bodalla, which has for me a dangerous wall with a window in the centre. Paintings I’m tempted to buy always hang there, and yes, once I succumbed and bought two. The story of that purchase is revealed at http://morselsandscraps.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/frugality-and-impulse-in-mortal-combat/

The temptation is there again in the current exhibition – two reasonably priced landscapes of Broken Hill, once my heart’s home. The exhibitions are always of work by local artists, although not always on local themes, and are very diverse. I love the opportunity to duck in for a revisit during the month of the hanging.

And then of course there’s the Post Office itself. There you can buy the usual stamps, and also books for grandkids, spec wipes, postcards, photographic cards. All purchases come with the gift of friendliness.

That’s Bodalla, my nearest tiny town – population 527 in the 2011 census – rich in treasures far beyond my expectations when I embarked on an attempt to profile it.

If you’re interested in demographics, have a look at

http://localstats.qpzm.com.au/stats/nsw/south-coast/south-coast/bodalla

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Bodalla – if you want to eat

Tags

Blue Earth, Bodalla Bakery, Bodalla pub, Dairy Shed, Malibu Mex

When we arrived in Bodalla nearly forty years ago, there was a pub and a small takeaway cafe. Now there are many choices when hunger strikes. Blue Earth Café has taken over as the place to meet friends – they rarely come to my home now, or I to theirs. There are gardens to sit in and umbrellas to sit under; chooks clucking lazily near the compost heap; a thriving and envy-inducing garden; friendly staff; an interesting menu; and a resident and cheeky magpie who’s eager to join the group and taste the meal.

Then there’s the Bakery, with an old fashioned inside room, a corner table with cushions and a view, and a deck for outside eating. Once a month there’s a Sunday high tea, showcasing the sought after cakes and revisiting a past era.

The Dairy Shed offers remnants of Bodalla’s dairying past. A raised deck has hammocks for the languid, and a view over a dam and rolling hills, and inside there’s a vast fire against the winter chill. You can bottle feed calves, if that’s your fancy, or hunt out cow images, or admire the eagle carved from a tree stump.

Malibu Mex is an interesting building, with even more interesting decor showcasing the surfing interests of its founder: benches and chairs made of surfboards, and white surfing bas-reliefs in the dining room.

The pub in the past has had live music at the weekend, and good counter meals. At the moment, it’s for sale and battened down.

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Bodalla churches

Tags

churches, Edmund Blacket, Horbury Hunt

Photos taken by Rosemary Barnard, old friend and companion in a prowl around Bodalla: the second one of the Catholic Church, framed by the big tree; and the close-up of the St Francis stained glass window.

 

 

View of Bodalla countryside from All Saints

Bodalla is a village on the highway, nine kilometres from Potato Point. It began European life as the dairy estate of Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, a pioneer in large-scale cheese making and refrigeration. It’s bracketed by two churches: the shingle-walled Catholic church designed by Horbury Hunt; and All Saints, the Anglican Church designed by Edmund Blacket, and built from granite quarried a few kilometres down the highway. The organ in All Saints was made by Henry Willis and Sons of London, a preeminent British organ-builder. Both architects are famous in Australia, and it’s a bit of a treat to have two such churches in a very small town

Catholic Church

All Saints Anglican Church

Inside All Saints

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