Carpe Diem

The time has come for us to reflect on why we bought The Blue Bird and what it means for our future.  Remember that we first fell in love with a forlorn gem of a building desperately in need of someone to rescue it from crumbling to dust.  The potential of the art deco shop to be a significant building in Australia's culture and architectural history was immediate. We also saw a business potential though recognised that the days of the Greek cafe had passed for so many country towns that it was unlikely the shop would see the same vibrancy and success as it had in days gone by. Nevertheless we hoped that we could find a new purpose, stamp our own mark on the Blue Bird and provide a new relevancy for an old relic.

First and foremost was the building. With very, very limited funds but enthusiam and energy to compensate, we set about restoring and renovating the defunct shop for a new life, a new era.  Our initial burst of energetic work was hard going. We battled on with no income to fund tbe work for four months and in that time it became apparent that we had bitten off more than we realised. Still, we knew we were up to it. We were learning more each day how to care for and restore an old building. After four months however, it was necessary to generate an income in the shop so it could support its own repair.  So we opened before we felt we were ready to unveil our work. It was a necessary sacrifice in the interests of survival. We also opened a business that we were not ready for and that side of our lives quickly took over.

Before we knew it, we were slaves to opening in order to make money so we could continue the restoration we felt compelled to do. Trading however had its drawbacks. Originally six days a week meant that we had no time at all for restoration work let alone resting and looking after ourselves. We neglected life outside of the Blue Bird for a year, spending our one day a week closed, running around for the business. And as we did, people kept asking us what we were doing away from the shop, as if we were not entitled to a life outside of making money. We did not go into business so that we could burn ourselves out chasing money. There is more to life than that and many people in small business, including the original Greek cafe owners will tell you that small business is not as lucrative as you'd think. It is hard work for limited personal gain.

After the first year we realised that six days opening was not getting us anywhere in terms of our original aim to care for a lovely, deserving heritage building. So we cut back on opening hours and gave up some of the necessary funding for the building restoration work. After that it became a balancing act of work versus work, money versus time and we never seemed to find the successful combination.

We had some milestones along the way, like opening the milk bar again, restoring the booths and increasing the usable size of the shop, little by little. Threes years on however we had built a business that had developed into something we were happy with and proud of but we knew that it was at the expense of the building we loved suffering as it started showing signs of neglect and continued slow decline.

So after some agonising and head scratching about the future, we decided that we did not want to lose sight of our original purpose of taking care of the Blue Bird. We have closed the business for the time being so that we can dedicate effort to building repair and restoration. The ceiling needs a lot of work that was never going to be achieved while the shop was open and the brick and plasterwork needs attention too. Until now, we had never managed to take on the old kitchen because we understood early on that it was so far gone it could not be practically restored beyond beginning again from scratch and we never had the money for that project.

We know that some people will question our decision in many ways but it is what we need to do for our future and the fiture of the Blue Bird that we have put our hard earned money and time into when so many others passed it by day after day not caring if it crumbled to dust and forgotten memory. We are comfortable with our decision to take care of ourselves and our investment in the past/future. They say that if you are not moving forward you are going nowhere. This is a step forward, for us and for the Blue Bird.

Celebrating the End of Summer

I hate to seem ungrateful but summer, you have outstayed your welcome and it is time to go. Thanks for coming but I'm ready now for autumn not this Indian summer they are telling us we are having. Given that here in Lockhart we have had probably two days out of the last five weeks under 30 degrees, and a cool change is announced as 36, I think I can safely say I am exhausted by a pretty relentless summer. Besides which, we need the gradual cooling autumn brings to ease us into and acclimatise us to winter. I like autumn, it's a fabulous season for cooler nights, warm days and amazing colours, both in leaves and and shades of light.

I'm not even sure what has happened to the light this year. Has anyone else noticed that it has not been very light this daylight savings season? It has been light in the evening sure, sometimes even glaringly so if you're driving anywhere but the mornings have been a hazy dark until about 7am. I'm used to waking up with the sun and this summer that has been happening after my alarm has gone off. And on the occasions when I have had a sleeplessly restless night sweltering in the heat, the night has gone on interminably long.  What gives? Is this part of global warming? We haven't been warned about global darkening too.

And then there is the autumn festivals like the one we have coming up this weekend. The Vintage Veranda Fest, it even sounds like an autumn festival and traditionally it has been, making the most of the stable autumn weather to have one last knees up before the long winter months devoid of celebration kick in.

So what to expect this weekenes at the Vintage Verandah Fest. Well as usual there is the National Historic Truck show out at the Lockhart Showgrounds, street traders of retro goods and crafts, the auntiques auction, garage sales around town and other entertainment such as music, kids fun, that sort of thing. Mostly it is a chance for people to visit Lockhart and remind themselves about the Veranda Town. Visit the Blue Bird, the museum and the unique Doris Golder Gallery and stroll around the streets taking in the historic shop fronts and houses. Lockhart is 116 years old as a shire this year, not bad going when you consider that the land boom attached to the wool fortunes of Brookong Station was only expected to last 5-10 years back in 1906. That was when a handful of prospector business developers like WD Drummond erected the shops on Green Street to service the farmers and their employees. In the 1930s and 40s The Blue Bird Cafe had a roaring trade from seasonal workers and travelling salesmen, single men often, on their own looking for a home cooked meals seven nights a week. Those days are sadly gone with modern automated farming not requiring so many hands any more. It seems like an age ago but I wonder what the founding fathers of Lockhart would think of the town today. In some respects they might not see much that has changed, the Blue Bird is still there and so are the buildings that housed the banks, bakeries, butcher, hardware, menswear and other shops. Businesses of course have come and gone or adapted to change and there are now only two pubs in town as opposed to four (at least) but two of the biggest building changes would have to be the War Memorials and the Ex servicemens Club. Which of the founding fathers and mothers would have anticipated the need for those in the country town? So let's celebrate the end of summer by looking back to summers gone by.

Hot start to 2016

I don't know about everyone else but I have spent this summer melting, more so than other summers.  I remember that 2014 was a difficult year with three heatwaves through December and January.  I also remember one of our fridges struggling to cope as much as me.  We had it re-gassed that February but it was the beginning of the end for the poor thing.  The joys (or not) of food service.  The equipment, maintenance and risk of breakdown is very stressful and expensive.

Anyway, hot as it was that summer, this one has been in some ways, harder for me.  I don't cope well with heat and while we have not had as many days above forty degrees, we have had week long seemingly endless stretches between 35 and 39.  I cope with temperatures up to 35 and then I start to hurt.  I suffer headaches when I over heat and 35 degrees seems to be my cut off point.  It has been nice this last week to have had lower temperatures but I note the forecast this weekend is rising and will hit 41 by Tuesday.  Not looking forward to it.

One silver lining has been that we managed a rare holiday in January.  It was our first real holiday in four years and we used it most importantly to catch up with family in NZ.  It was so good to see them, I have missed my family so much and have had little opportunity since moving to Lockhart to see them.  We are fortunate that Mum and Dad have managed to visit us a couple of times but this January was the first time I seen my great niece and nephew as they were born since we came to Lockhart.  Such a shame that we had not had the chance to meet before now, my nephew is so grown up, I missed his early life.  All my family, nieces and nephew have grown up such a lot since we last saw them.  They are fast approaching adulthood.

We spent a lovely two weeks with them as well as enjoying the beautiful green New Zealand countryside.  I was quite homesick and pleased that while we were away, we missed the hottest day, a scorching 46!  But all holidays are too short and we are back to familiar surroundings.  Let's hope that the season starts to cool soon.  I'm more of a winter person than a summer one but I do like autumn and seeing the colour changes.  Looking forward to it.

Just Around the Corner

So.  Christmas is just around the corner and I have this odd feeling in the pit of my stomach that I have forgotten to do something...and I hope that it is not that I have forgotten a gift for someone but if I have, well, there is little I can do about that now.  Other than that, the chook is defrosting and waiting to be cooked, the pavlova is cooling on the tray and my feet are looking forward to a day off.  We will be open again on Boxing Day as we have done every year, to save the sanity of the travellers so I will have to make do with just one day off this week for Christmas Day.  That is why my plan is to cook the chicken tonight and save tomorrow for relaxing with family.

At some point in that I might allow myself the luxury of half an hour to read.  At the moment that is Joanne Harris' third installment of Vianne Rocher's story, "Peaches for Monsieur Le Cure".  It all began with "Chocolat", that now well-known book about a mother and daughter, travellers blown by the north wind to the conservative little French town of Lansquenet.  They change the inhabitant's lives forever, tempting them during lent with the mystique of chocolate and generosity.  This time after having fled to Paris in the second book "The Lollipop Shoes", Vianne and her daughters return in response to a letter from beyond the grave and find their old haunt much changed by new arrivals bringing a new religion and culture.  If Vianne did not fit into Lansquenet, then the Muslim community that has taken up residence in Les Marauds, certainly will not.  Father Reynaud is still the self-proclaimed upholder of morality and tradition in Lansquenet but he has changed greatly since he last met Vianne.  In the context of today and the challenges the world faces with social cohesion and tolerance of cultural differences, this books is a lovely way to remind ourselves that friendliness, neighbourliness and gentle acceptance goes a long way to bringing people together.  I am enjoying the book so far and I'm only a third of the way through but look forward to every moment snatched to read a couple more pages here and there.

I wish everyone a happy summer break and hope that you get more time off than me to enjoy a rest at the end of the year.

The Season for Giving

Christmas is coming and it is the season for making things to give friends and family.  A friend of ours gave us some mulberries and as it was getting to the end of the useful fruit on the tree, I turned the harvest into jam.  I was a bit concerned that the fruit might either be too tart because it was not ripe enough or too sugary being over ripe so I decided to add some other fruit and flavours to make it more interesting.  I wasn't sure if it would work but I had some apricots and added some vanilla bean and - well, it worked.  Go figure.  It will be nice to be able to give a jar of jam back to the friend who provided the mulberries.

The same friend gave us some wattle seeds.  Mind you I had to do the tedious work of extracting the seeds which took ages.  It's not hard, you leave the pods in the sun until they dry out and open then scoop the seeds out, or if you have left them on something easily shakeable, they will shake free but of course I didn't do that so had to manually split the pods and flick the seeds out with my fingernail.  Like I said, not hard but time consuming and I'm not sure how rewarding it might end up being.  I've never used wattleseeds before but I am aware that you can use them in the same way you'd use poppy seeds so a little experimentation is in order.  Eating them whole is tough, unlike poppy or sesame seeds they are hard little beggars but I read that you need to toast and grind them in a coffee grinder.  Well, fortunately we have a coffee grinder so no problem.  I have a few recipes that I will be trying as soon as I get the chance.

I've been making Christmas mince pies, experimenting with an almond meringue topping on my gluten free spiced pastry and making the filling less sugary sweet by adding fresh pear to the standard fruit mince.  I won't claim it to be acceptable to diabetics with the meringue topping but it might be better than a regular mince pie.  I would certainly hope so.

So, the real joy of the Christmas season is the preparation building up to the day, the making something to give.  Shopping and Christmas carols have long since worn off but the feeling that I can use my skills to make presents feels good.

Rain, rain, steamy rain

Just before Spirit of the Land earlier this month a farmer told us that they were looking at a good harvest and just needed a spell of rain in October to finish it off.  Well, that much needed rain arrived and I hope for the farming community's sake that it did the trick.  The harvest has started but not in earnest quite as we haven't observed the wholesale emptying of the crops on properties along the Wagga or Boree Creek Roads yet but it is happening.  Mind you we had quite a bit of rain courtesy of a storm cell last weekend.  It was warm (though not as warm as Alice Springs thank goodness) and steamy when the storm hit pelting the shop with driving rain for about half an hour of power threatening lightning.  We have become accustomed to holding our breath during electrical storms as they threaten power cuts which are not good when you run fridges and ice cream freezers and certainly there were a few flutters in the supply but nothing too serious.  The thunder and lightning continued across the weekend especially through the night when a bright flash and very loud crack directly overhead jolted me awake.  But we survived without leaks in the shop.  The crops looked a bit hammered on Monday bent over by the onslaught of wind and rain.  Let's hope that they survived well enough but I guess they will need some drying out which as there is more rain predicted through the week, they might not get the chance to do.  There are pools of swampy water lining the roads again as they did most of this winter.  I noticed on my evening walk last night, that those pools are now smelly, instant breeding grounds for mosquitoes.  With such a flat landscape in this area with little natural drainage, swampy water is a problem, especially in the townships where there are not many stormwater drains.  It just seems to be left to nature to sort out.

I'm starting on my traditional 'build-up-to-Christmas' Dickens reading.  For some reason around this time of year I start hankering to read a Charles Dickens classic.  It's something to do with the idea of experiencing a traditional Victorian winter Christmas.  I don't go in for decorating in the Northern Hemisphere tradition of fir trees, snow scenes and Santa Claus in the summer heat we get here in Australia and New Zealand for Christmas and the idea of eating all the stodgy winter trimmings is too much but I do like to imagine what a Northern Hemisphere Christmas must be like by reading a Charles Dickens novel to get into the Christmas mood.  It doesn't even have to be A Christmas Carol that I read, I get the same satisfaction from any of the classic Dickens tales.  They are all brilliantly written satirical cautionary tales and always worthy of multiple readings.  This time however, I am taking a slightly different tack and embarking on 'Havisham' by Ronald Frame, the back story of the infamous Miss Havisham of 'Great Expectations' re-imagining the events leading to the tragic wedding day abandonment that set the scene for Pip's education in that marvelous book.  I hope it lives up to the original.

Exciting and New

Spring is here, at last!  It has been a long hard winter this year.  We are bracing ourselves for the future as we are being told that we are heading into the worst el Nino conditions this October to January.  But that was not the exciting news, far from it.

No, the exciting bit is that we have put our bookshop online so you can now buy from the books you have seen in our Lockhart shop, in between visits to the town.  It is something we have wanted to do for a while now so we can better promote our physical presence by venturing into the online world.  We still encourage people to visit and discover us in Lockhart which is a pretty little spot in the Riverina but we understand that Lockhart is not exactly on the regular route map for many and you might only be in town once or twice a year.

I am working each day to put more of our extensive stock on the website so keep an eye out on a regular basis as it is worth seeing what is new.  We run a browsing shop where you have the opportunity to stumble across gems you never knew about or were on your 'one day' list but if you don't see what you are looking for, you are welcome to contact us via the store website and we will see if we have what you want in our 'yet to be catalogued' pile.  As you can imagine, it is quite a task and we were eager to get the site up and running and too impatient to wait until I had everything entered to 'go live'.  My goal is to catalogue a pile of at least ten books a day so there will be something new all the time.

Here's the link to the new bluebird-books shop.  www.bluebird-books.com  Have fun shopping for a good book and remember, we hand pick our stock based on my long library background of reading and matching readers with good books.  I know a lot of readers and they have been recommending books to me for many years so I rely on their impeccable taste as much as my own.  I have also stocked the shop with books I've read with my many book groups.  You won't find any of the well-known mass produced romance series or churned out mysteries in our collection I'm afraid.  And I haven't gone for fantasy collections either for the simple reason that if you don't have the whole series all the time then you are usually missing the one particular book that the serious collector is looking for.  No, we specialise in good fiction, literature but not high-brow literary, Australian and New Zealand works, some classics, small print run local histories and a selection of Australian historical texts from a private academic collection.

Read and Enjoy.

Snow falling on NSW

I wish that I could publish photos of snow on our blog as other NSW towns have been able to but despite the rumours, I have not seen any snow in Lockhart over the last weeks of the so-called 'Antarctic Vortex' that we have been experiencing.  I have however, been indulging in an equally fun aspect of winter, that being curling up with a book in a warm bed of an evening.

In the last couple of months of winter I have read two of the Joy Dettman Woody Creek books, true stories 'A street cat named Bob', Making the rounds with Oscar' and 'The house of grief'.

Joy Dettman is a master storyteller and I mean that because she manages to write basically a period soap opera drama that hooked me, a cynic, straight in.  And how does she do this?  Joy is an incredibly adept 'character craftswoman'.  She writes amazingly simple yet incredibly engaging and believable characters that keep readers like me (and my mum) reading when we openly admit that the storylines are silly and soapy.  Ah, but what does that matter in a bit of winter escapism.  I have always said that there is a place in life for reading escapism and so I applaud Joy's skill at being able to suck a cynic into her six book series.  At the end of book two 'Thorn on a rose', I told myself that the plot was implausible and I would not read any further but that did not hold me back for more than a week from plunging into book three 'Moth to a flame'.  Oh, how quickly I abandoned my literary snobbery and opted instead for the pure pleasure of reading and escapism and I am not ashamed.  There is a time and place for relax-a-read and winter is the perfect excuse.  So go for it, in spite of myself, I recommend Joy Dettman's Woody Creek series of which the first book is 'Pearl in a cage'.  I just sold it over the weekend but we still have a number of the books in our shop.

Besides, I think I needed escapism after bravely plowing my way through the harrowing tale of the Farquharson trial in Helen Garner's 'House of Grief'.  It was an engrossing book thanks to the skill of Helen Garner at describing her obsession.  Basically Helen spent years in the press gallery of the High Court in Melbourne following the trials of a father accused of drowning his three sons.  Helen examines public reaction for and against the idea that a loving father could kill his family supposedly to revenge himself on his ex-wife who was getting on with life when he was a broken man who could not.  Many could not believe that an average man and good father could possibly have killed his own children and yet it does happen.  The book was fascinating but I did feel weighed down by it and needed escape afterwards.

The two cat stories provided that in some ways but both touched me in different ways.  They provided a much needed emotional release and an excuse for an indulgent cry.  I believe that we need a private tearful release from time to time to help us deal with all those circumstances in life when as adults, it is not appropriate to throw tantrums or howl in frustration.  Books like 'A street cat named Bob' and 'Making the rounds with Oscar' also remind me how fortunate I have been in life.

The story of Bob and recovering heroin addict James Bowen really touched me.  The ginger cat who would be just an average cat if not for the fact that he was so laid back and tolerant that he could cope with living on the streets of London and busking in busy thoroughfares with his pal James.  For James, caring for his stray friend gave him a reason to pick himself up and get his life in order.  He admits that until meeting Bob, he had led a selfish existence but the wee cat spurred him into the responsibility of looking after someone other than himself.  The pair have become a YouTube sensation with James having penned three bestselling books about their lives as official Big Issue sellers in London.

'Making the rounds with Oscar' is similarly about a special cat.  Oscar is among a number of cats living in Steere House nursing home and helping with the treatment of dementia patients and their families.  Oscar however has the gift of knowing when a patient is close to death and staying with them to provide care and comfort in the last hours of life.  Ordinarily he is standoffish but curls up with a terminally ill patient in need of his comforting presence.  Two feel-good books.  I want my next book to be set in a warm sunny place.  I might take on a Joanne Harris book set in a french summer.  I am looking forward to reading Harper Lee's 'Go set a watchman' but as I have put it on my birthday wish list, I will have to wait another month to see if I am lucky.

On the Road

Apologies to any visitors planning to stop in at The Blue Bird this coming weekend (2nd and 3rd May).  The shop will be closed as we are taking our books on a road trip to The Clunes Booktown Festival in Victoria (near Ballarat).  We are building more and more on the Blue Bird Bookshop and felt that Clunes was a great opportunity to get our name out there in the wider world.

A fella spotted me reading during a quiet moment in the cafe the other day.  "You have time to read?" he asked in a scolding tone.  "I make time because reading is very important'" was my reply.  And I meant it.  For a year while we slogged away trying to start a new business and find our niche, I was so tired that I lost the desire to read.  I would pick up one of our books every once in a while and read a few pages but I didn't get into any of them and I was worried that I had lost that immeasurably important habit of reading.  And it is extremely important.  Reading not only broadens your world view and fills the soul with experience but just the simple act of digesting words on a page keeps your brain active and challenged.  If you let the skill slip, you risk losing it to some degree.  Mental activity is as important to our health and well being as physical activity so I was being very slack about looking after myself.  I work very hard, harder than most people probably see and I am very tired indeed.  We all need a little escape to keep us on the straight and narrow.

At a time when exhaustion and depression was getting me down I picked up Tony Birch's book "Blood".  It is not an upliftingly light story but a tale of hardship, personal battles and family bonds.  His writing easily allowed me to put myself into the place of the characters even though I have fortunately never been through the desperation they experienced.  Nevertheless, I could see how easy it would be to sink to such depths and I knew people who had come close so I I was completely engrossed in the characters and the story.  It was a real page turner and I thank Tony for his amazing ability to create such wonderful writing.  I have loved every one of his books so far and now eagerly await his next.  And most of all I am grateful that he propelled me back into reading is such a dramatic way.  Since then I have easily slipped into every book I have picked up and have remembered how truly important it is to MAKE TIME in our ridiculously busy lives to read.  And so it is without shame or need for excuse that I was able to reply to my critical customer that I, just as much as any other person, am entitled to incorporate reading into my day.  It is for the benefit of the well being of the world.

But that is beside the point.  It also made me realise that the cafe side of our business had been allowed to take too much time priority over the bookshop.  We are working on that balance as our original dream of running a quality second-hand bookshop with coffee and some light meals seemed to be fading from our business plan.  Plans change and evolve as time moves and shapes them but it is important to revisit those original dreams to see if they are still valid and still achievable.  And we believe that they are.  There is always room for a bookshop with a quality collection and now, more than ever, it is important for the world to read and broaden horizons.

So we are spending the weekend in Clunes among other book traders and readers and it will be a fantastic opportunity for us to connect with like-minded people who love books and reading.  Nourish the mind and soul with a good book today and make the world a better place.

Australia All Over

If you are not a fan of the ABC Radio's Ian (Macca) McNamara's regular Sunday morning programme 'Australia All Over' then you missed out on a gem last week.  This Sunday just gone Roger and I were on the show!  Ian caught us at the Eat Local Thursday Market in Wagga and he asked us where we were from.  We gave him a potted history of the Blue Bird and he was charmed by the story of the resilience of Kyriakoula overcoming sudden widowhood with a large young family.  Not to mention Jack and Peter, the colourful characters behind the bar at the cafe.  It was fun hearing ourselves on the radio so I wanted to share the interview for anyone who missed it.  We are about 5 mins 20 in on the podcast.

Australia All Over Podcast Sunday 22 February 2015 

Booth Boost

Late last year the booths went back in.  It saw the completion of a project that had caused us much heartache over the last two years.  We never intended them to be absent from the cafe for so long however a long priority list, logistics and the sheer amount of work that was overwhelming us meant that it took two years before everyone else was finally able to see the vision I had for the cafe from that first day.  I had been steadfastly holding an image in my head, resisting the doubts and the doubters, knowing that it would all be worth the heartache in the end.

In the meantime we tried to reassure customers who recognised that there was something missing from the cafe.  We fielded the frequent question: "why did you take them out?  Didn't you like the booths?"  Unthinkable.  Of course we loved them and felt that they were an intrinsic part of the cafe.  It was not complete without them but there was one light bulb moment some months ago when we realised why so many people were puzzled and in some instances, angry about their absence.  The booths are deeply personal.  People have memories of booths in cafes all around the country that tie into important life moments.  It doesn't matter that you may not have ever been into The Blue Bird in Lockhart before but people recall booths in the cafe that used to be in your home town.  And as one of the last remaining Greek cafes intact, The Blue Bird represents those moments in people's lives when important things happened.  And so I was inspired to write a piece about the booths and am pleased to say that the ABC Open has published my essay.  It is the first story about The Blue Bird but it will not be the last.  Others are already in the pipeline and I am working on a book about the history of the cafe.  You can read a taste of things to come on the ABC Open.

https://open.abc.net.au/explore/88989

The Ghosts of Christmas Past

I guess it is too late to wish the world a happy Christmas.  I don't really go in for tradition though, our Christmas window display this year says as much.  There was no tinsel in sight, no holly, no snow, no Santa.  I always feel sorry for anyone having to wear the red suit in the antipodean heat.

My Christmas display was simple and understated but it caught a lot of people's attention and plenty of comments.  I found an old Lockhart newspaper from December 1952 which featured advertisements placed by the Lockhart and district business people and shopkeepers wishing their customers a happy Christmas.  I cut these advertisements out and pasted them kindergarten style onto cardboard with the heading.  Happy Christmas from the businesses of Lockhart in 1952, do you remember these shops and where they were in the street?  Plenty of people let me know what they remembered and it was interesting which memories stood out.  For instance Alf Watson the milkman was also the night soil collector..although not I think, at the same time.  He must have been an early riser all his working career because both jobs took place in the dark while most of the town would have still been sleeping.

Les Paterson mended shoes and people remembered him for his wooden leg and his drinking habits.  There were a few names remembered as returned diggers from the war who had suffered wounds and were never quite the same.  The publicans were well remembered although most people commented that the pubs, The Gunyah, The Railway and The Commercial, changed hands that often that it would have been tricky to remember who was where at which time without the confirmation that the ads were from 1952.

The Monterey and The Blue Bird cafes were well remembered of course.  They were at the height of their rivalry for top Greek cafe in town at the time.  Leo Vakas was basking in his newly decorated fine example of a Hollywood style milk bar and the Veneris family was settling in to running The Blue Bird without the help of their Matis cousins.

My interest was caught by the first mention I have come across about two other cafes in Lockhart.  Mrs Biscaya's Aussie Cafe and Fred Winnell's Lattice Cafe.  Where were they and how well did they go against the fierce competition from the two Greek cafes?  Most people remembered The Aussie Cafe.  It was down the western end of Green Street and at least one person mentioned that there was also a fish and chip shop somewhere nearby.  The Aussie Cafe seemed to do all the same things that the Greek cafes did, light luncheons, morning and afternoon teas, dinners.  People were more vague about The Lattice Cafe.  It seemed to have been in a two storeyed building on the opposite side of the road and up the Blue Bird end.  I wondered (and still do), if it was the business that took over from The Paragon Cafe when it was vacated by the Veneris and Matis families.  No one seems to remember what happened to either cafe or to the building.  They are very clear about many places and landmarks but the fate of The Paragon building seems to have slipped from the collective Lockhart memory.  And it makes me curious.  What happened to the building?  Why was it demolished or destroyed?  And why can no one tell me what was built in its place.  The theory seems to be that the old Paragon site is still vacant land to this day.  There are two on that side of the street but if so, why has it never been developed and who owns it.  The detective in me wants to know but until someone with a better memory than most in town comes forth, I may have to go on theorising.  Was it the site of some disaster or tragedy?  Is there a dark past to it?  Is there a story that the town at the time wanted to forget and now it is so far in the past that it really has been forgotten?  As Alice in Wonderland once said, curiouser and curiouser.

Eat Local, Live long and Prosper

The Blue Bird Cafe duo (that would be Roger and Me), has joined the Eat Local Thursday Market as stallholders.  We have decided to focus our market offerings on our gluten-free range of food.  Last Thursday was our first foray into the market which operates at the Murrumbidgee Turf Club in Wagga Wagga between 2.30 and 6.30pm.  We really enjoyed meeting the other local food producers and felt so welcomed by their friendliness that we knew that it was the right decision to bring our food out of the cafe for a day a week and introduce it to a new audience.  We know that there are many people out there who have made the gluten-free commitment and we enjoy the challenge of catering for their needs.

Last week we had Christmas cakes, Christmas stuffing, Roger's Rock Show sauce, luxury fudge and gluten-free party popcorn mix.  We also took along our special CLOey fertiliser to share with the market stallholders.  This week we will have ready-to-heat gluten-free meals, retro chocky rocks, lemon teacake, chocolate nut biscuits and gluten-free jelly slice.

The raison d'etre for the market is to provide an outlet for local food produces to sell their specialties to an urban public.  There is an emphasis on organic produce and the stallholders support each other by buying ingredients from each other.  So the tomatoes in Roger's sauce are locally grown and we get to hand pick them at the market.  And so on.  We look forward to this week and meeting more like-minded food produces and buyers.

Grand Opening Day - An Invitation

On 6th November 1934 Lockhart's new cafe "The Blue Bird" opened its doors.  It had been trading since 1906 as "The Marathon Oyster Bar and Saloon", "The Marathon Stores" and "Peterson's Cafe".  They were all precursors to the cultural icon of the Greek Cafe and were mixed businesses selling meals, fresh fruit and vegetables, grocery items such as tobacco and kerosene, confectionery, cold drinks and smallgoods.  Peter Veneris and Tony Matis had operated "The Paragon Cafe" across the road in Green Street since the early 1920s.  They took on the bigger cafe which had always been Greek run and decided to modernise.

Renovations and refurbishments were made to the building including new plate glass windows, a kitchen extension and realigning the roof.  Painters and decorators were called in and the doors were opened on Saturday 6th November to "The Blue Bird" now selling American style ice creams, sodas, milkshakes and its very own orange ale.  The Blue Bird quickly became Lockhart's premier cafe and sundae shop after its proprietors Peter Veneris (senior) and Tony Matis, offered first day's gross takings to the Wagga Hospital.

Eighty years on Roger and I are marking the date with a small celebration of our own.  We are opening our doors between 2 and 4 pm on Thursday 6th November for a celebratory afternoon tea and in tribute to the original proprietors, we are donating the proceeds to our local branch of The Red Cross.

So if you can join us to mark this milestone, please join us for afternoon tea.

The Booths are Back in Town

See, just like we promised at the start, the Blue Bird booths are finally back where they belong.  The iconic furniture takes pride of place in the cafe once again alongside the milk bar and the art deco mirrors.  Oh, you have no idea how fantastic it feels to finally be seeing our original vision come together.  It was a vision born two years ago when we looked through the grimy windows at the abandoned Blue Bird and grabbed the chance to rescue an old classic.  We saw how it could still be vibrant in a modern world, a world that had harshly dealt with most of its compatriots in towns across the country.  Somehow The Blue Bird defies the odds and lives on.

And she is looking good if I do say so.  The booth refurbishments have turned out well.  New highlights, new curves, new bling.  Our design touches are the stepped waterfall decorations under the mirrors and the diamond propellers on the ends.  We still have a bit of trim and some mood lighting to install but the new, old look is about 85% there.

The booths were unveiled at Spirit of the Land 2014.  It seems that we make a habit of revealing a new facet of the cafe at each anniversary.  It has so far been an incentive to give that extra push to complete each new stage.  The balancing act between surviving day to day, hand to mouth running a cafe and finding the time and money to complete projects has been immense.  Especially as life has a habit of getting in the way.  My philosophy on life (well one of many), is that it is good to have an idea about where you are going but putting firm timelines on a plan will likely bring the heartache of failure because no one is in complete control of life.  Goals are good but I would rather be a lifelong traveller than a tourist on a bus trip.  How we got the booths back in the cafe and what we learned about ourselves along the way, is far more interesting than the project itself.

P.S.  A person sitting in an orange booth looks across at a person sitting in a green booth.  Symmetry.

Another First

Inspired by our recent pie win I took the time during a quiet spell on Saturday to do some baking.  It was a bit slow in the cafe during the AFL Grand Final so I got out the mixing bowls and baked a chocolate cake to enter into the Lockhart Show the following day.  I am always nervous entering local show cookery competitions because I know that I am taking on longstanding country cooks, champion sponge and scone makers.  The standard of their entries is often high.  These cooks have after all been making and entering cakes for many years.  Their recipes have been handed down from generations of cooks and they know their kitchens and oven temperatures like the back of their hands.

Roger's grandmother could put her hand in her gas oven and tell by feel that it was the right, even temperature to cook the perfect sponge.  She made her own butter straight from the house cow and fed it in curls to her grandson.  Our friend Joy's mother Connie was inspirational.  She was taught to cook by her mother and passed her knowledge on to her own daughter.  Connie made champion sponges and fruit cakes and her cooking supported charities like the CWA and Red Cross at The Rock throughout her life.  Today Joy tirelessly makes trays of slices for the same charities.  Jelly slice, peanut caramel, hedgehog slice, she has made so many over the years that she is hard to beat.

So when I entered my high school recipe chocolate cake into the local Lockhart Show, I was summoning up all my experience and skill to compete.  After all, this cake was the first recipe that I learned in cookery class at school and my mother and I have made it many times sine then so I've had a bit of practice at it.  Mum adapted the recipe successfully to a coffee cake so that she could enjoy it too (she can't eat chocolate).  She used to bake every Saturday afternoon to fill the tins for Sunday lunch and weekday afternoon teas.  She is a good baker and passed her skill on to me.

We were too busy in the cafe on the Sunday to be able to join in the fun out at the Lockhart Showgrounds so I had to wait till the end of the day to hear whether my egg-free, low-fat chocolate cake had made the grade.  It won 1st Prize in the chocolate cake section and I have proudly displayed my certificate in our front window alongside the others.  The local win in the Lockhart Show is as important to us as our tourism and pie awards because a win at the local show offers us the support of our community. 

David takes on Goliath

We are over the moon today and immensely proud.  A few days ago we entered our Kashmir Vegetarian Gluten-free pie into the Official Great Aussie Pie Competition and with the results now in, we did better than expected.  After all, we were the David, going up against the Goliaths of the Australian pie world.  The competition within the industry was huge with the lists of medal winners over four days reading like a who's who of bakeries around the states and territories.  And there was my pie, packed carefully and tightly in a polystyrene box hoping that, with all the "this way up" and "precious pies inside" instructions on the outside, it would make it safely to Melbourne.  Apparently it did.

We looked for the results on Day 2 which, was about when we figured that our pie would have been judged.  Gold!  It had won a Gold medal and we were thrilled.  After all, I have only been making gluten-free pies since the start of winter so consider myself a rookie.  However, I have a philosophy where food is concerned.  I was a vegetarian for years and was always disappointed when I ate out.  If there was not a specifically dedicated vegetarian meal on the menu then you usually ended up with chips or wedges.  If there was, it was often pasta with a whole bunch of unrelated vegetables thrown together.  It felt as if I was being given a second class meal with all the leftover vegetables from other dishes.  It was as if the cook was saying that a vegetarian meal comprised nondescript food with the meat removed.  They were not dishes in their own right, with flavour and style.  So when I became vegetarian I decided that I was going to create dishes for my carnivorous friends that they could enjoy without noticing that there was no meat involved.

This is the approach I have taken with our gluten-free pies.  It is not a second-class pie, it has as much care and consideration in its making as any other pie.  I enjoy the challenge of replacing something conventional with something out of the ordinary and coming up with something tasty.  I guess I got it right with the Kashmir Vegetarian Gluten-free pie because we not only won a gold medal but...the overall gluten-free prize.  That means that the Blue Bird has been judged the best gluten-free pie...in Australia this year!  Wow, that was much better than we had expected.

We wished at the time that we could have entered our famous sausage roll and another gourmet pie as well but felt that the timing was not right with family visiting from NZ, Spirit of the Land preparations coming up and two local shows in which to participate.  This was also a long shot competition for us but we figured that you've got to give these things a go or you will never get anywhere.  Besides which, even just the effort of entering says to our customers that we believe enough in our product to let it stand up with others in our industry.  And we were right to have faith in our pies.  So now that we are feeling inspired, we will free up the time and resources to enter more categories next year.  It is always good to have the validation of your peers and this has definitely been a huge boost to our confidence.

Many years ago Peter Veneris made pies every day he worked at The Blue Bird.  Meat and apple were his pies, he told us.  We are honoured to keep up the Veneris tradition of pie-making.  In Peter's day, meat and apple were a staple variety.  In the 21st Century, new flavours and styles have emerged but the tradition of hand kneading dough and rolling out real homemade shortcrust pastry remains part of life at The Blue Bird.

On a Brighter Note

I will not dwell on the grim days of last week beyond offering our condolences to the Hunt family.  We do not know many of them well but nevertheless their heartbreak must be immense and we feel for their pain.  Also to the children of St Joseph's School who have suffered such a shock in their young lives.  You wish that you could shelter children from pain but life is full of distresses and it is not always possible to protect childhood innocence.  If there is anything that we can do from here, then we offer our ongoing help and support.

Prior to last week, we were working hard to perfect one of our gluten-free pies.  Why?  Because we decided to enter the Official Great Aussie Pie Competition which is being held in Melbourne as I write.  While we have only just begun our careers in pie-making, we decided that it was worth throwing our hats into the ring and entering.  We decided to start relatively small with just one offering this year as we understand that the competition is high.  Bakers and cafes from all over the country compete.

So our choice for entry was a specialty pie because that is what we consider we do best.  We have entered a vegetarian gluten-free pie.  Our Kashmir Pie has a handmade gluten-free shortcrust pastry base, filled with a mash of pumpkin, sweet potato, carrot, apricots, almonds and currants infused with sweet Indian spices.  The pie is topped with a mashed potato because we felt it necessary to vary our textures, given the challenge to make gluten-free pastry as light as standard pastry.  Our aim is to infuse flavour into an uninspiring world of gluten-free cooking.  So fingers crossed and wish us luck.  We know that we are up against some titans in the baking world however, in for a penny...

Night of Stars

Exhausted is how I would describe the pair of us today.  We had a tremendous evening at the gondola masquerade awards last night in Griffith.  Sleep and recovery however, was sadly lacking as we had to drive back early to Lockhart to open up the cafe and serve our customers.  Phew!  But it was worth the trip and all the effort put in entering the Inland Tourism Awards.  This may just be the start of something for us.  It certainly feels like we have taken a new direction and meeting all the people last night was like being welcomed into a group of like-minded friends.  We were nervous at the start of the evening but by the end, felt like we were celebrating along with others working hard in the tourism industry.

So how did we go?  As you know we were among the hopeful finalists in the Heritage and Cultural Tourism category.  We know that there were many others who never made it that far and felt proud to be considered for the award alongside the likes of Yanga National Park and Nundle Woollen Mill (a previous winner).  The competition was strong and the winner of the overall category was Yanga National Park but we won a special award of our own, one quite unique to the evening.  The Blue Bird Cafe proudly won the Encouragement Award, presented to us as a first time entrant just starting out on the journey.  We were advised that this award is not given out often but it recognises future potential and the integrity of a good tourism product.  We feel honoured therefore that we have the industry's faith in us and that we have been able to stand beside some outstanding businesses and multiple award winners.  It is an inspiration for us to go further next year.  Watch this space.

Wish Us Luck

Letting you all know that the cafe will be closed this Saturday evening and some of Sunday morning so that Roger and I can attend the Inland Tourism Awards in Griffith.  We have our glad rags dusted off and ready to go.  Courtesy of a lucky find at the opshop, I have a pretty new frock to wear and Roger has been instructed to scrub up and put on his Spirit of the Land fancy waistcoat for the occasion.  We will take some photos of the evening's excitement so that everyone can see us looking swish and having a ball.  It will be amazing if we win but even if we don't we are looking forward to a night away, a party and the chance to meet with other businesses working as hard as we are in the tourism industry.

Rest assured that we will still be cooking pizzas on Friday night and will make double the dough so you won't miss out as we will only be pizza making one night this week rather than the usual two.

So wish us luck and we will see you Sunday with all the news of the big night.