The kitchen wisdom that saved Marta Dusseldorp's marriage, and the restaurants she loves most
Dusseldorp, a Victorian College of the Arts graduate who worked as a waitress in St Kilda and South Yarra in her 20s, went on to become a household name by the early 2000s – appearing in hit TV series including Jack Irish, The Crownies and A Place to Call Home.
These days, Dusseldorp travels to Sydney and Melbourne regularly for work, and always tries to visit her favourite restaurants in each city, as well as those in her adopted hometown, Hobart.
Eating out
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

Sky News AU
6 hours ago
- Sky News AU
‘Little prick to the ego': Poll shows most Aussies unaware of Labor's economic roundtable
Sky News host Paul Murray discusses how Australian politicians all think they are 'rockstars' and winners of popularity polls. 'Jim Chalmers and the week he is due to have at the economic reform roundtable, now remember when this was supposed to be about productivity, but productivity puts people to sleep but economic reform is a big general term… that also puts people to sleep,' Mr Murray said. 'You know what I love? I love when politicians and, basically all bar a few … they all think they're rockstars.'


West Australian
16 hours ago
- West Australian
Safety checks in quads on Bali
In November, an eight-year-old boy was airlifted to Perth in an induced coma after suffering a fractured skull during a quad bike accident in Bali. It wasn't a one-off. A quick online search shows headlines like 'Dangerous/unsafe/100 per cent chances of getting badly hurt', and 'One of our riders was trapped under a rolled ATV, a 500kg machine, with both an adult and my son pinned beneath it'. Nigel Mason, the fit 82-year-old Australian founder of Mason's Adventures in Bali, adds: 'There are more accidents than you hear about. Many of them are covered up. Quads are dangerous, full stop. Around 20 people get killed on them in Australia every year.' It may sound odd, then, to learn in addition to whitewater rafting, elephant feeding and mountain biking, Mason's Adventures offers 'jungle buggy' tours on which tourists tear through the jungle with abandon. But there's a huge difference, Nigel explains. 'We don't use ordinary ATVs,' he says. 'We have a fleet of Polaris dune buggies from the US that you sit in, not on top of, which means you have a lower centre of gravity and are less likely to roll over. And in case you do roll over, you're surrounded by a cage and wearing a seatbelt. We're the only company in Bali that has them. Plus we don't take people on roads or public tracks. 'We have a private 5km track that I spent three months gouging out of the jungle, and it has safety barriers and signs. And if you don't have a valid driver's licence, you can only go as a tandem passenger. 'People still flip from time to time but in eight years, the most serious accident we've had is a broken arm, and that only happened because they didn't follow instructions and put their arm outside the buggy as they tipped over.' All members of our group — a bunch of middle-aged blokes on holiday in Bali — wince as Nigel shows us video footage of that particularly painful incident and four or five other spills during a short safety briefing. Once that's out of the way we don helmets and buckle up in our buggies, which are now also equipped with safety nets that make it nearly impossible to thread an arm through. Still, I can't help feeling a little nervous as I turn the ignition key and 350cc of American muscle roars to life. But my reservations fly out of the window as I follow the other riders and our guide on to the track. Within a few minutes I'm drifting around corners and tearing down bumpy straights like a pro, high on adrenaline, wishing I could do this forever. After three crazy laps we return to base camp – a large bamboo building overlooking dreamy green rice fields in central Bali – order a round of beers, and compare notes. 'It's so easy. You go with it and let the machine do the work,' says Kim, a mate from Sweden. 'That was sound. Topnotch,' says Mathew, who hails from the UK. 'And I'll thank you for noticing that I came first across the finish line.' 'That's because you started at the front of the queue behind the guide,' says Dave from Canada. 'And there was no overtaking.' 'Would've, could've, should've. You could have overtaken me if you had any skills,' Mathew replies. And so the conversation progresses, with no party giving an inch over who was fastest and who got the highest air. There was, however, one thing we could all agree on: jungle buggies in Bali are good fun. + Dave Smith was a guest of Nigel Mason. Nigel did not influence this story, or read it before publication. fact file Jungle buggy adventures are $92 per person, including transfer from your hotel, a topnotch buffet lunch and insurance. Drivers must be 18 or over and have a valid driving licence. Tandem passengers must be 12 or over. See .

Sydney Morning Herald
18 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Australians are choosing to travel to Asia over the US. It's not because of Trump
Japan, China and Vietnam are fast becoming the top travel destinations for Australians, with fewer residents flying to the United States than before the pandemic. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics data released last week, the number of Australian residents visiting Japan nearly doubled from about 484,000 in 2018-19 to more than 910,000 in 2024-25, making it the third most popular destination for Australian travellers, overtaking the US. While China, Vietnam and Indonesia also recorded continued growth, with the latter – attracting 1.7 million visitors – remaining Australia's most popular overseas destination, fewer than 750,000 Australian residents chose to travel to the US. That figure was up on 714,000 the previous financial year but remained lower than the nearly 1.1 million who travelled to the States in 2018-19, before the pandemic. Australian Travel Industry Association chief executive Dean Long said that while US President Donald Trump had some dampening impact on Australian business travel to the US, there was little effect on visits for leisure. Loading 'It's not having as big an impact as we originally anticipated,' he said, noting instances of Australians being stopped at the US border were consistent with the pre-Trump era. 'There's definitely been some loss of business events, but in the leisure market, people still want to go do things they can only do in the US.' Long said the more popular Asian destinations were those where costs had not risen dramatically over the past few years, as well as those that had experienced favourable exchange rate movements.