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West Australian
2 hours ago
- West Australian
Culinary retreat in Perthshire
Like Gordon Ramsay, Chris Rowley is a fair-haired Scottish-born chef. But in contrast to Ramsay — especially a peak Kitchen Nightmares-era Ramsay — he's an amiable, chilled-out character when dealing with amateurs in the kitchen. It's this temperament that makes his cooking class more a pleasure than a pain in the neck. We're at Ballintaggart, a rustic-chic farm retreat that Chris runs in partnership with his brother Andrew. Nestled above the River Tay in the hills of Perthshire, close to the whisky distillery town of Aberfeldy, Ballintaggart welcomes both day and overnight guests. A converted stone farmhouse here can sleep up to 14 guests — 10 adults and four children — while the Rowleys manage other spruced-up cottages on site as well as accommodation, food shops and dining spots in the local area. This includes the riverside Grandtully Hotel, a five-minute drive from here, and the village store in Kenmore, by the shores of Loch Tay, 30 minutes away by car. We've come to Ballintaggart for the food. After a caffeine boost with a slice of light, lovely lemon drizzle cake by the log burner in a wood-beamed, high-ceilinged converted barn, we're invited into the adjacent sleek kitchen for our cooking master class. It's led by Chris, who was born in Edinburgh, where he retrained as a chef at the Leiths School of Food and Wine, having previously worked in financial services in London. He was, he says, attracted to Perthshire because he remembered happy family holidays here as a child and when the chance arose to start a culinary-driven retreat at Ballintaggart, where he could move with his wife and children, it was impossible to resist. Whether it's hosting weddings or other private events, 'Slow Sunday' lunches or 'Feast Nights', seasonal ingredients play a key role at Ballintaggart with carnivores, pescatarians, vegetarians and vegans all catered for. Herbs, fruits and vegetables grow at the farm's meadows, gardens and orchards and produce is sourced from the surrounding area, which is blessed with plentiful fish and game from its lochs, rivers and moors. Being equidistant from both east and west Scottish coasts means seafood is also fairly easy to procure. 'We get a lot of people coming here who are keen to go away for a food escape,' says Chris. 'They will either book a cooking class or one of our chefs will go and cook for them at the farmhouse one night and they'll maybe do self-catering for the rest of their stay.' Following Chris' instructions, we prepare monkfish ceviche, marinating it with chopped chilli, citrus and pickled gooseberry. Then we season slabs of venison and new potatoes doused in a Highland rapeseed oil. We also conjure a salsa verde with sage, tarragon and chives from the Ballintaggart herb garden. As the ceviche settles, we bring the venison out to Chris, who's firing up the barbecue on the terrace. There are rousing views of the Tay Valley in the background and the cooking aromas and sizzles soon have our appetites raging. Fortunately, it's not long before we're back inside, seated at the dining table in the barn, enjoying these flavoursome and filling dishes. We compliment ourselves on our graft, but we know most credit goes to the produce, farmers, fishermen and chefs of bonnie Scotland. + Another local overnight alternative is Townhouse Aberfeldy, which has nightly B&B rates from around $200. See + To help plan a trip to Scotland and Britain, see and + Steve McKenna was a guest of Visit Scotland and Visit Britain. They have not influenced this story, or read it before publication.
7NEWS
a day ago
- 7NEWS
NASA astronaut and Apollo 13 moon mission commander Jim Lovell dead at 97
American astronaut Jim Lovell, commander of the failed 1970 mission to the moon that nearly ended in disaster but became an inspirational saga of survival and the basis for the hit movie Apollo 13, has died aged 97. Hollywood superstar Tom Hanks played Lovell in director Ron Howard's acclaimed 1995 film. It recounted NASA's Apollo 13 mission, which was planned as humankind's third lunar landing but went horribly wrong when an onboard explosion on the way to the moon put the lives of the three astronauts in grave danger. Lovell and crew mates Jack Swigert and Fred Haise endured frigid, cramped conditions, dehydration and hunger for three-and-a-half days while concocting with Mission Control in Houston ingenious solutions to bring the crippled spacecraft safely back to Earth. 'A 'successful failure' describes exactly what (Apollo) 13 was - because it was a failure in its initial mission - nothing had really been accomplished,' Lovell told Reuters in 2010 in an interview marking the 40th anniversary of the flight. The outcome, the former Navy test pilot said, was 'a great success in the ability of people to take an almost-certain catastrophe and turn it into a successful recovery'. The Apollo 13 mission came nine months after Neil Armstrong had become the first man to walk on the moon when he took 'one giant leap for mankind' during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969. There was drama even before Apollo 13's launch on April 11, 1970. Days earlier, the backup lunar module pilot inadvertently exposed the crew to German measles but Lovell and Haise were immune to it. Ken Mattingly, the command module pilot, had no immunity to measles and was replaced at the last minute by rookie astronaut Swigert. The mission generally went smoothly for its first two days. But moments after the crew finished a TV broadcast showing how they lived in space, an exposed wire in a command module oxygen tank sparked an explosion that badly damaged the spacecraft 320,000 km from Earth. The accident not only ruined their chances of landing on the moon but imperiled their lives. 'Suddenly there's a 'hiss-bang. And the spacecraft rocks back and forth,'' Lovell said in a 1999 NASA oral history interview. 'The lights come on and jets fire. And I looked at Haise to see if he knew what caused it. He had no idea. Looked at Jack Swigert. He had no idea. And then, of course, things started to happen.' Swigert saw a warning light and told Mission Control: 'Houston, we've had a problem here.' In the movie, the line is instead attributed to Lovell and famously delivered by Hanks - slightly reworded - as: 'Houston, we have a problem.' With a dangerous loss of power, the three astronauts abandoned the command module and went to the lunar module - designed for two men to land on the moon. They used it as a lifeboat for a harrowing three-and-a-half day return to Earth. The astronauts and the US space agency experts in Houston scrambled to figure out how to get the crew safely home with a limited amount of equipment at their disposal. People worldwide were captivated by the events unfolding in space - and got a happy ending. The astronauts altered course to fly a single time around the moon and back to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean near Samoa on April 17, 1970. Lovell never got another chance to walk on the moon after Apollo 13, which was his fourth and final space trip. Lovell, who later had a moon crater named in his honour, retired as an astronaut in 1973, working first for a harbour towing company and then in telecommunications. He co-authored a 1994 book, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, that became the basis for Howard's film. Lovell made a cameo appearance in the film as the commander of the US Navy ship that retrieves the astronauts and shakes hands with Hanks. James Lovell was born in Cleveland on March 25, 1928. He was just five when his father died and his mother moved the family to Milwaukee. He became interested in space as a teenager. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1952 and became a test pilot before being selected as a NASA astronaut in 1962. He had four children with his wife, Marilyn.
The Age
2 days ago
- The Age
‘It paid in the end': The family that bankrolled AC/DC – and still owns its catalogue
This story is part of the August 9 edition of Good Weekend. See all 13 stories. It's a 50-year showbiz relationship, as enduring as any of AC/DC's timeless hits, yet the bond between the band's founding brothers, Malcolm and Angus Young and the late music impresario, Ted Albert, who helped make them famous, seems destined to remain shrouded in mystery. Ahead of AC/DC's upcoming tour of Australia in November and December – the band sold 320,000 tickets on one day alone in June – the low-key, Sydney-based Albert family refuses, albeit politely, to discuss any of the Young brothers: neither Angus, now 70, nor Malcolm, who died in 2017, aged 64, nor their older brother, George, founder of The Easybeats, who died just three weeks before him at 70. This is despite the Youngs playing an intrinsic role in the Albert family's enormous impact on the Australian entertainment industry. Ted's great-grandfather, Swiss émigré Jacques Albert, went from selling watches and harmonicas in the 19th century to owning a media empire – originally called J Albert & Son, later becoming Albert Productions – that encompassed radio and television. Ultimately, it signed some of the biggest rock and pop acts to come out of Australia, including AC/DC in June 1974. Ted died young – of a heart attack in 1990 at the age of 53 – and in 2016 his family sold Albert Productions to the German music giant BMG. Despite exiting the recording industry, though, it retained ownership of its prize jewel: AC/DC's music catalogue, which includes, of course, everything the brothers ever wrote, including mega-hits T.N.T. (1975), Highway To Hell (1979) and You Shook Me All Night Long (1980). It ranks as one of the most valuable catalogues in the world, reported to be on par with that of British super-group Pink Floyd, which sold last year for $US400 million. The band's music still regularly features in movie soundtracks and commercials, generating substantial publishing fees. 'There's no doubt the AC/DC catalogue has been the Albert family's cash-cow for the past 50 years,' says music biographer Jeff Apter, who wrote Malcolm Young: The Man Who Made AC/DC. It's the gift that keeps on giving. Loading In 2010, journalist Jane Albert – Ted's niece – touched on the enduring relationship in her book House of Hits, revealing how Ted Albert bankrolled AC/DC for almost a decade before turning a profit. 'For him, it was a long-term investment,' Angus Young told her, 'but it paid in the end.' Today, the family's focus is the Ted Albert Foundation, which funds 'positive social outcomes through the power of music'.
