Camper's Banana Cake, Passionfruit Soda and Re-awakenings.

Dispatch from the road two...not week two. Not really sure what week it is.

Rain fell this morning. It fell heavily for many hours. Dense in what felt like large drops, came down in solid straight streams, no wind or breeze just swollen wet skies descending to sandy green earth on the edge of the small sub-tropical island on which we’ve been this week. The air, thick with moisture, now wraps around us like a warm moist cloud. It reminds me how much I miss tropical rainfall living in the south of the continent normally, much in the way the weeks preceding this reminded me of my love of the outback.

Red dirt the colour of ochre fine and dry like sand, itself descriptive of the environment in which it carpets the ground, coloured the vista. It finds its way into the seams of your clothes, crevices of your car and even in your hair running out in the water that pools in the shower. It finds its way into your heart too. It’s the base colour for all the tones of the earth whose ground it dusts stretching through a spectrum of oranges and yellows glowing a warmth through the landscape that adds to the atmosphere and light. Foliage too appears tinted by its hue the greens richer and more vibrant.

I first travelled through the outback 23 years ago also on an extended adventure camping and touring through the outback. My husband and I with our then very young baby in tow. I’d never been across that country divide where the panorama is coloured by the seasons and rich in agriculture with green pastures and rivers bordered by towering gum trees. The vastness of the outback, flat and open fascinated me. Vegetation characterised by scrub I’d never seen dotted the vista, roads disappeared into tracks and horizons and waterholes emerged out of shimmering heat like mirages rather than rivers snaking through the countryside. Coming from the suburbs the outback was entrancing. During that first trip my eyes darted from side to side constantly not wanting to miss a thing. Coming from suburban Melbourne I couldn’t comprehend such beauty almost expecting it to reveal bustling population round the rare turns the roads took convinced the vastness couldn’t possibly be as great as it is. We travelled to such destinations a number of times in the years the followed, drawn back to the open red landscape that engulfs you always wanting to absorb more of its beauty.

We went on to move to the tropical north for a few years, country that emerges out of the outback like a mirage city springing from red dirt where the scrub thickens to bush and the bush transforms to a landscape of waving palm trees and vibrant tropical flowers. The warmth and humidity of the monsoonal shift in seasons has supported a tropical environment that has grown on great swathes of porcellanite its layers and layers of red veined rock forming the foundations of the northern outpost we called home. It was, at times, a challenging place to live. Half the year monsoonal rain created an atmosphere akin to living in a steam oven with little relief causing intense exhaustion and a necessarily slowed pace of living. The other half of the year, suitably known as the dry, would shift to a more traditional summer like heat during which the population would pack in a year full of living causing a different type of malaise resulting from increased ‘living’ and activity. In the everyday of that lifestyle, with no break in the seasons your used to, it can be a tough environment to dwell in. It does have it’s riches though. Rain was plentiful falling after cacophonic thunder and lightning storms. They’d arrive with distant rumbling like a prelude signalling the need to finish anything you may be doing outdoors, call playing kids inside and prepare for ‘the show’. And a show the storms were. Many offering displays of light like strobes from lighting strikes in the numbers of thousands. Our lived environments can often become such second nature to us, we cease to notice their beauty but the storms never reached the invisibility of the mundane, they were always utterly captivating.

The last few weeks since last I wrote have taken me back and reminded me of the hypnotising nature of Australia. We’ve tracked north through inland routes at the head of clouds of red dirt kicked up by our tyres. Roads, bordered by great plains stretching in their vast beauty to the horizon where the view shimmers in heat rising off the earth, led us to destinations we’d not visited before. Places that awakened a love for the outback that’s been simmering in the background, the kind you’re vaguely aware of but don’t feel her richness in your soul until you're immersed in it. We’ve tracked through fertile plains irrigated by historic waterways, rivers that have carried history and commerce in one way or another for more than two centuries in some cases. Like arteries of history on the landscape, their stories chronicle time and lead you to the next destination. The road has taken us to towns in which we’re welcomed, inviting us to live amongst them, where they’ve celebrated their communities or their culture. We’ve escaped the beginnings of fires that evolved into bush fires, visited old friends on their beautiful beef farm, wound through the lush green hills of the Northern Rivers and finally landed on the coast. It’s a journey, so far, that has ignited memories and wanderlust.

This morning’s rain felt like an exclamation mark to the journey so far, red dirt, history, open plain country, rolling hills and those lush dramatic monsoonal rains. Each destination, like today’s rain, has been marked by the pace it’s environment dictates as has it’s culture. Its reminded us what a vast and varied place our island home is and how very very lucky we are here.

One of the surprise locations we visited was Girraween National Park in Queensland’s Granite Belt. Camped in the centre of towering hills of granite boulders born of times when volcanoes dotted the landscape and perhaps even when dinosaurs roamed (certainly that’s how it felt), we hiked, explored and swam in sun glistened waterholes. All the activity did make me hungry and while I’ve not missed home I have missed baking. Thankfully our little home on wheels has an oven and my little traveling larder some basic essentials. Girraween doesn’t have internet reception, so I did need to wing it. That said even with a few glitches with the oven my Campers Banana Cake turned out great.

**Like my last offering this was created without multiple test bakes. It is delicious and worked perfectly first time giving me the confidence to offer it to you as a’ have a go’ recipe. As always trust your instincts, they’re usually right.**

*Apologies for a lack of photo but it didn’t last that long.

Indredients:

2 eggs

½ cup white sugar

1 tsp vanilla paste/extract

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

50 gms melted butter cooled

1 Tb honey

1 cup  and 1 Tb of plain flour (I’m traveling without scales)

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon (I used Gewurzhaus Apple Pie Spice mix. Use what you have.)

1/3 cup of milk ( I used almond milk, you do you)

2 very ripe bananas mashed

Method:

Preheat oven to 180c, grease and line a loaf pan. Either sift or dry whisk dry ingredients, set aside.

In a large bowl whisk together the eggs, sugar, vanilla and oil until emulsified and frothy. The sugar will be partly dissolved. Add butter and honey and again whisk to combine well.

Gently fold in half the combined dry ingredients followed by the milk then finally the remaining dry ingredients. Finally fold in the mased banana, this step with distribute any remaining clumps of dry flour. Pour into prepared loaf pan and bake. Now here’s the instinct part. I imagined a 45 minute bake and checked at 30 minutes to check progress. My little gas oven had blown out and needed to be reignited. So I’d suggest you check your cake at 40 minutes. If it has a wobble in the middle don’t bother poking it with a skewer rather return to the oven for ten minutes. Check again after that using a skewer, if it comes out clean as we always say, it’s done. If not try 5-10 minutes bursts to finish it depended on how much more it needs.

Serve warm or cooled with lashings of butter and a view.

Feel free to comment below if you have questions.

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Finds & Forays

Do you remember last time I wrote talking about visiting a little town I’d had on my list? In the early days of the pandemic, inhaling my monthly copy of Country Style magazine I enjoyed an article about a tiny town in NSW in which a café was featured. So interesting was the story it stuck in my mind and stuck as a place I’d like to visit if ever I was nearby. Our journey north required the choice between two routes one the most direct and first choice of Google Maps and the second the slightly longer one taking us through towns lesser known and that good old road less travelled….and through gorgeous Coolamon. The Station Collective is a sweet little café tucked away in the town’s historic railway station. A short walk from the town’s centre the café is ran by owners Jess and James who returned to the town, their home, during the early day of the pandemic. The opportunity to establish a little home for their business in the gorgeous heritage station was too good to refuse. They cook all the food in house offering superb cakes and delicious brunch and lunch dishes. Importantly too is their exceptional coffee though hubby, who doesn’t drink coffee, ordered a homemade passionfruit soda. Jess generously shared the recipe for her Nan’s recipe for me to share with you. It really is super refreshing and amazingly easy.

Combine equal parts passionfruit pulp, lemon juice and sugar (choose your quantity to suit your needs) in a saucepan. Stir and simmer gently until sugar is dissolved and the syrup is slightly reduced to a cordial consistency. It should only take a few minutes. She advises that she sometimes adds a splash of water to loosen the mixture if necessary, passionfruit juiciness will dictate this or some citric acid if lemons are unavailable. In the café they serve it with sparkling water and some fresh lemon, but Jess also suggests it’s lovley with a splash of gin and sprigs of mint.

Before we left town we popped in here and stocked up on award winning cheese that didn’t last long, it was that good!

From the red dirt to the sea, we’ve enjoyed some great finds both delicious and interesting:

~Amazing handmade chocolate in a cottage in the hills in the granite belt.

~A great country pub meal down the road from an Aussie icon.

~Gorgeous vintage homewares next to more great coffee and interesting wares.

~More fantastic coffee and breaky in a vibrant town in the plains.

~An intriguing and delicious country pub lunch in the shade of blooming jacarandas tucked away in the Northern Rivers hills (pictured above), ironically in a village with the same name as home.

~A pub with a view and more great coffee (are you detecting a theme?).

Until next time friends, hopefully a little sooner than the weeks between my last instalment and this one,

S x