I Carusi

Drive along Holmes Street in Brunswick East looking for a sophisticated, restaurant with obvious signage and you will miss this treat. You have to know the address is 46a Holmes St and even then, you may drive right past.

At last you realise that the small shop front with a bicycle leaned against the window and a couple of rather rattly looking tables and chairs, is I Carusi. It might have been one of those old gathering places for European men, where they sit in dark corners and play board games.

Inside is a different story, narrow alleys allow for as many tables as possible to be jammed into this rustic restaurant. It is always noisy. Always. That is part of the dining experience.

Aromas

The first thing you notice is that it is warm and welcoming and casual but yes, it does have sophistication. This is the kind of sophistication that can throw you, like when the waiter serves your wine in traditional country style by pouring your NZ red into tumblers.

Then the aromas of fresh baking thin pizza crusts, topped with garlic and good oil and a range of flavours starts to send your taste buds crazy. For me, favourites are the Bianca pizzas, like potato and leek or the four cheese with hints of Gorgonzola threaded through the cheesy wash. Edible artistry is the only description I can give these pizzas.

The Best

Why is this pizza restaurant the best in my opinion? Because the flavours are never ostentatious, but are delicious to the last bite, even when we have ordered more pizza than is wise for our stomachs.

Other favourite pizza restaurants would have to be pizza Espresso in LowerTemplestowe and Woodfire in Ivanhoe. Excellent, but if I was to impress a friend, I would book I Carusi. And bookings are essential.

Somehow, pizza connoisseurs discover this eatery in large numbers. It is a pizza legend, at least amongst foodies and that is enough for me.

Cosi Duci

In Ivanhoe, there is a small Gelati shop owned by a Sicilian family. In summer, this shop is open until 9pm but expect to cram with dozens of other hopeful Gelati fans, moving toward the counter.

There are traditional creamy varieties such as Black cherry, or Tiramisu. My favourites, Bacci or Baileys or……oh what the heck! I love them all. Then there are the fruity sorbets that taste like the fruit has been picked fresh that morning and frozen in time in sweetness and that disappear in cool melting spoonfuls.

The Best

Why do I think that this shop is so far above all the others? It is the quality of the taste. That's about all I can put it down to. There is an authenticity to the Gelati here. Try it.

“Chill On,” is Melbourne, Australia's first ice bar. The hot sizzling temperatures outside make the inside feel much more enjoyable. At $30AU per adult and $15AU per child (before 6pm kids are allowed in) the price includes gear to keep you warm while you're inside.

You're only allowed to enjoy your stay for 30 minutes and are given a buzzer when your time is up.

Your drinks are on ice, literally. The glasses you drink from are frozen ice, imagine that!

For more information check out their website.

The penguin parade happens on Phillip Island every night. Many tour buses (ie. Autopia) comes through and gives you a tour of the Island (animal parks and along the shore) and at night allows you to see the Penguin Parade on Phillip Island. Rates are reasonable per person (about $100 USD for an entire day).

The Ten Apostles

A beautiful site along the coastline of Australia. It is a several hour drive from Melbourne but well worth the view even in winter. Be sure to bring a jacket and a camera. Tour buses will take you along the Great Ocean Road and to see the Ten Apostles also.

Great Ocean Road

A long scenic drive along the coast of Australia. Much like the beautiful highway along the coast of California this gives you a great view of Australia's beaches. Surfing takes place at some of the beaches. It can be incredibly touristy in some areas. Great for photographs!

Healesville Sanctuary (Or Another Australian Wildlife Park)

This is a must see for anyone coming to visit Australia. Before going home you'll want to be sure to see some Kangaroos, Koalas, Wombats, Wallabies, and the famous Tasmanian Devil.

Ballarat

A great look back in time at Australia and the gold rush. Be sure to stay for the light show to learn all about “Blood on the Southern Cross”.

Australian Football Game

Australian Football, known to the Aussies as “Footy,” is a rather easy game to understand. It's much like American Football without the confusing rules and plays that are involved. Players aren't allowed to throw the ball, only punt it to their teammates and kick respective field goals for points. Tickets are reasonable and sold at the door for games. The majority of teams in the Australian Football League are in fact in and around Melbourne so it's much like seeing a rival city play (i.e. Chicago Bears vs. Greenbay Packers).

Yarra Valley Wineries

For those 18 and over, be sure to check out one of the many wineries in Yarra Valley. They offer samples and tours. The vineyards are rather beautiful.

Melbourne

When going to Victoria, Australia you can't forget to visit the second biggest city Melbourne (pronounced Melbin). There's lots of sites to see downtown. There's a train into the city from the suburbs that runs daily as is a tram that goes around the city to the many sites including Queen Victoria Market.

Queen Victoria Market

In the heart of downtown Melbourne, Queen Victoria Market offers a great shopping experience for those that both live here and are visiting. The market has many sections offering different items from meats and vegetables to souvenirs. You can find great gifts to bring home at reasonable prices and the vendors typically with bargain with the price listed. Most vendors only take cash however there are cash stations outside the market.

Dolls on the Mount is described in the Melbourne ‘Cheap Eats’ Guide 2003 as ‘something kooky’. The woman dressed in the long skirt and equally long, full crisp white apron frowned and asked, “Do we look kooky to you?” Looking around the tiny tearooms, there is a table with eight grey-haired grannies sipping tea and our trio of middle aged females waiting at a circular table, covered with a good imitation lace plastic tablecloth.

“No! No, you don’t.” I stammer.

Certainly Dolls on the Mount is a unique experience for an afternoon tea in Melbourne, but ‘quaint’ may be a better description. The waitress turns out to be Vivienne Dodd a maker of dolls and creator of some of the best baking to be tasted in Melbourne.

Take a train to Heidelberg and stroll up toward the residential end of Mount Street. Half way up the street there is an old Edwardian villa with a sign stating that this is a doll’s museum. Lace covers the dark windows and a second reading of the sign, explains that afternoon tea is available.

The woman in the long apron answers a knock on the door. As the door opens, it reveals a house frozen in a bygone era. The parlour is set up for afternoon tea guests and as ‘newbies’ to the house, you are ushered into a side room. This is where the museum is housed. One room, with a large dining table in the middle is crammed with dolls from yesteryear. Plenty of porcelain ladies and here a number of retired Noddys and Alice-in-wonderland figurines have found refuge from the modern world.

Saturdays are often noisy affairs with a dozen young children who have come to dress in the costumes crammed into boxes in this room. The birthday girl is dressed as the Queen and seated on her ‘throne’ she entertains her guests dressed in an assortment of characters from sailors to old fashioned ladies.

The house has been home to Vivienne and her mother and has operated as a tea rooms and doll museum for five years. The front rooms were redeveloped to include the dining area. Many locals have learned the art of doll making here and can bring dolls for appraisal or to be mended. There is no need to advertise as people who come invariably return with friends. Today it can be important to book in advance, especially for weekends.

A few minutes browsing in the museum and ruing of days when dolls were closer to true human body proportions and sighs of relief that this house hasn’t quite caught up to Barbie and we are back in the parlour.

The menu includes a high tea, or traditional pastries or sandwiches. You can choose the ‘fat rascal fruit scones and Devonshire tea for $8.50. We go for the Devonshire tea. It takes a few minutes and we are correct in our suspicions as we bite into the scones that this small delay is because they have been freshly baked just for us. They are set at the table with an accompanying mountain of whipped cream and fruity jam.

The tea arrives and each of us has ordered a pot. Each pot has an individual tea cosy adorned with a porcelain doll torso and head. My two companions get delicate slim ladies that uncannily resemble my companions. My teapot arrives and the doll is a chubby blonde dowager with rosy cheeks. The table of eight turns and evaluates and laughs.

Dolls on the Mount, a must for girls. A brave man may enter.

To get out of two physical education classes in high school, I took up learning the violin. The teacher was a little old man called Mr Hubscher who would meet with my three renegade friends and me, under the school stage, in a small dressing room. We rasped and scraped the rosinned bows across the strings. One friend refused to ever play the ‘E’string and none of us in three years could play one tune, despite a change by the school authorities to a younger and more qualified violin teacher.

We loved Mr Hubscher. When he lifted his honey-gold ancient instrument to his chin, his bow would transcend us into gypsy fields and the room would fill with a plaintive voice that called my soul into life. Four sets of teenage eyes were fixed but unseeing, as the music first tore us with exquisite pain then lifted us into laughter and set us free from our earlier melancholy. I fell in love with this siren, this instrument that could so accurately steal my heart.

Though I never learned to play, I forgot the original motivation for learning and would proudly bear my violin case to and from the working-class school, where it marked me as a school regulation, beret-wearing, outcast.

Sport was the hallowed arena of acceptance, so to my mind, I was secretly a ‘rebel with a case’. And inside the case was this magical musical violin, with the rich history of the instrument and if I could unlock its power I could escape the boredom of suburban school life.

A SHOP OF VIOLIN TREASURES

It is a reverence for the violin and anyone who can master it that can turn my head. So to discover on Bridge Road in Melbourne Australia, a small shop window with a row of violins hanging like geese in a Chinese roasting shop intrigued me. Then to spot a man underneath them with white Santa-like beard, delicately wiping the finish on yet another cherished violin, lured me in for a second look.

Brenton Fyfield owns the store, which has been in Bridge Road for three years. Before this he was in Camberwell for fifteen years, making and mending violins and violas. His devotion to the violin began at the age of nine

when he persuaded his father to buy him one. His favourite expression is in chamber music.

The shop has violins and violas and their accessories. Richard Cox whose preferred playing instrument is the cello, was busy, carefully planing the neck of a damaged violin. Customers know this shop from all across Australia, from Adelaide, Perth, Canberra and even as far as Darwin.

I looked with my infant admiration at the bows lining part of the wall.

“I did at least learn how to look after the bow!” I offer my small connection to their expert understanding.

CAT GUT

Brenton explained that the violin continues without change, the bows are still made of horsehair. You would think in this age that someone would make a synthetic bowstring that self tightens at need with digital techniques. But, it is somehow comforting to realise that some things in life are sacred. Electrified violins we may accept.

At A$20,000 for a quality new violin, perhaps it is best that someone has to select hairs from a horse. There should be some unique quality and a cost by some innocent animal. But, no longer does the plaintive deathly cry from the strings come from the sacrifice of some poor cat. Some would say it never did and that sheep guts were always used, as they were the right length, rather than the meager offerings from the cat. Now the strings are steel, nylon, silk or perlon with some still containing animal gut wrapped in aluminium or silver and in more rare cases, gold.

THE ANCIENT VIOLIN

It is agreed, that Andrea Amati made the first violins in Italy around the mid to late 1500’s. He is said to have been the teacher of perhaps the most famous violinmaker of all, Antonio Stradivari. To find a Stradivarius violin, even in the Violineri would be like finding my violin skills in demand at the Sydney Opera house. But I had to ask, if just maybe they had ever had one.

The Violineri did sell their oldest acquired violin a little while ago. It was made in 1787 in France right at the start of the French revolution. Maybe it played tunes to fire the hearts of the struggling poor upon its strings? Or perhaps it played elegant symphonies to entertain Marie Antoinette before her demise? It sold for A$25,000.

When you are in Bridge Road, take time to see this interesting studio that bends no bow to a whim of fashion, but holds its tune in a cacophony of ever changing clamour, just up the road in the fashion outlets that line this busy area of Melbourne, Australia.