'No matter what's thrown at us': Dad and daughter's Kokoda mission for mum
Dad and daughter David and Jasmine Goode will begin an eight-day trek of the Kokoda Trail on Friday to raise money for cancer research.
David, of Clarence Town, said trekking Kokoda was "one of those bucket-list things".
"I'm excited but have a bit of caution. It's not going to be easy," David said.
He aimed to stay focused and mentally strong each day "no matter what's thrown at us".
Jasmine, 24, said it would be "a lot of consecutive days to push through".
With lightweight hiking gear and guides, she highlighted that they "have it so much easier than those who trekked the trail in World War II".
"I think the challenge for me will be mostly mental."
In World War II, 625 Australians were killed and more than 1000 wounded at Kokoda in a four-month battle with the Japanese.
The Diggers pushed the Japanese back from their aim of taking Port Moresby.
Jasmine, 24, is an electrical engineering officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, based at RAAF Base Williamtown.
"I have done some pack marching during my time in Defence, but nothing on this scale," she said.
The 96-kilometre trek will wind through narrow paths in the Owen Stanley Range in Papua New Guinea, reaching elevations of more than 2000 metres.
They will cross rugged, remote terrain and face intense heat, humidity, steep climbs and unpredictable weather.
"The terrain will be relentless with slippery descents, river crossings and mud," said David, a former Navy serviceman who served on HMAS Townsville and HMAS Tobruk.
"I've seen the footage of the Kokoda Trail on Anzac Day. I really wanted to go there, do the trek and respect the guys who were there.
"I've spent time in New Guinea on patrol boats a long time ago."
In preparation, he climbed Tomaree Head at Shoal Bay a few times and "gave some stairs near my place a hiding".
Two former Navy mates - Damien Alexander and Shane Blundell - will join them on the trek, along with Michael Nolan.
The trek will support the TROG Cancer Research, which is based at Calvary Mater Newcastle.
The not-for-profit organisation runs clinical trials and works with more than 80 cancer centres across Australia, New Zealand and other countries.
TROG CEO Susan Goode is David's wife and Jasmine's mum.
"My mum passed from cancer about nine years ago," David said.
"Other family members have died of cancer. My father had cancer but he's recovered."
Susan used to work in cancer research at the University of Newcastle.
"When my mother first got cancer, they said she had a short-term prognosis," David said.
"Susan got my mum into a new research program in Sydney with radiation therapy.
"It gave her another five to six years. That therapy is now everywhere."
Jasmine added that "cancer touches everyone's life in one way or another".
"Any contribution I can make to cancer research is worth it.
"I've grown up seeing the passion behind this work and wanted to do something tangible to help."
Their goal is to raise more than $5000.
To support their trek, visit trogkokodachallenge.gofundraise.com.au.
Dad and daughter David and Jasmine Goode will begin an eight-day trek of the Kokoda Trail on Friday to raise money for cancer research.
David, of Clarence Town, said trekking Kokoda was "one of those bucket-list things".
"I'm excited but have a bit of caution. It's not going to be easy," David said.
He aimed to stay focused and mentally strong each day "no matter what's thrown at us".
Jasmine, 24, said it would be "a lot of consecutive days to push through".
With lightweight hiking gear and guides, she highlighted that they "have it so much easier than those who trekked the trail in World War II".
"I think the challenge for me will be mostly mental."
In World War II, 625 Australians were killed and more than 1000 wounded at Kokoda in a four-month battle with the Japanese.
The Diggers pushed the Japanese back from their aim of taking Port Moresby.
Jasmine, 24, is an electrical engineering officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, based at RAAF Base Williamtown.
"I have done some pack marching during my time in Defence, but nothing on this scale," she said.
The 96-kilometre trek will wind through narrow paths in the Owen Stanley Range in Papua New Guinea, reaching elevations of more than 2000 metres.
They will cross rugged, remote terrain and face intense heat, humidity, steep climbs and unpredictable weather.
"The terrain will be relentless with slippery descents, river crossings and mud," said David, a former Navy serviceman who served on HMAS Townsville and HMAS Tobruk.
"I've seen the footage of the Kokoda Trail on Anzac Day. I really wanted to go there, do the trek and respect the guys who were there.
"I've spent time in New Guinea on patrol boats a long time ago."
In preparation, he climbed Tomaree Head at Shoal Bay a few times and "gave some stairs near my place a hiding".
Two former Navy mates - Damien Alexander and Shane Blundell - will join them on the trek, along with Michael Nolan.
The trek will support the TROG Cancer Research, which is based at Calvary Mater Newcastle.
The not-for-profit organisation runs clinical trials and works with more than 80 cancer centres across Australia, New Zealand and other countries.
TROG CEO Susan Goode is David's wife and Jasmine's mum.
"My mum passed from cancer about nine years ago," David said.
"Other family members have died of cancer. My father had cancer but he's recovered."
Susan used to work in cancer research at the University of Newcastle.
"When my mother first got cancer, they said she had a short-term prognosis," David said.
"Susan got my mum into a new research program in Sydney with radiation therapy.
"It gave her another five to six years. That therapy is now everywhere."
Jasmine added that "cancer touches everyone's life in one way or another".
"Any contribution I can make to cancer research is worth it.
"I've grown up seeing the passion behind this work and wanted to do something tangible to help."
Their goal is to raise more than $5000.
To support their trek, visit trogkokodachallenge.gofundraise.com.au.
Dad and daughter David and Jasmine Goode will begin an eight-day trek of the Kokoda Trail on Friday to raise money for cancer research.
David, of Clarence Town, said trekking Kokoda was "one of those bucket-list things".
"I'm excited but have a bit of caution. It's not going to be easy," David said.
He aimed to stay focused and mentally strong each day "no matter what's thrown at us".
Jasmine, 24, said it would be "a lot of consecutive days to push through".
With lightweight hiking gear and guides, she highlighted that they "have it so much easier than those who trekked the trail in World War II".
"I think the challenge for me will be mostly mental."
In World War II, 625 Australians were killed and more than 1000 wounded at Kokoda in a four-month battle with the Japanese.
The Diggers pushed the Japanese back from their aim of taking Port Moresby.
Jasmine, 24, is an electrical engineering officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, based at RAAF Base Williamtown.
"I have done some pack marching during my time in Defence, but nothing on this scale," she said.
The 96-kilometre trek will wind through narrow paths in the Owen Stanley Range in Papua New Guinea, reaching elevations of more than 2000 metres.
They will cross rugged, remote terrain and face intense heat, humidity, steep climbs and unpredictable weather.
"The terrain will be relentless with slippery descents, river crossings and mud," said David, a former Navy serviceman who served on HMAS Townsville and HMAS Tobruk.
"I've seen the footage of the Kokoda Trail on Anzac Day. I really wanted to go there, do the trek and respect the guys who were there.
"I've spent time in New Guinea on patrol boats a long time ago."
In preparation, he climbed Tomaree Head at Shoal Bay a few times and "gave some stairs near my place a hiding".
Two former Navy mates - Damien Alexander and Shane Blundell - will join them on the trek, along with Michael Nolan.
The trek will support the TROG Cancer Research, which is based at Calvary Mater Newcastle.
The not-for-profit organisation runs clinical trials and works with more than 80 cancer centres across Australia, New Zealand and other countries.
TROG CEO Susan Goode is David's wife and Jasmine's mum.
"My mum passed from cancer about nine years ago," David said.
"Other family members have died of cancer. My father had cancer but he's recovered."
Susan used to work in cancer research at the University of Newcastle.
"When my mother first got cancer, they said she had a short-term prognosis," David said.
"Susan got my mum into a new research program in Sydney with radiation therapy.
"It gave her another five to six years. That therapy is now everywhere."
Jasmine added that "cancer touches everyone's life in one way or another".
"Any contribution I can make to cancer research is worth it.
"I've grown up seeing the passion behind this work and wanted to do something tangible to help."
Their goal is to raise more than $5000.
To support their trek, visit trogkokodachallenge.gofundraise.com.au.
Dad and daughter David and Jasmine Goode will begin an eight-day trek of the Kokoda Trail on Friday to raise money for cancer research.
David, of Clarence Town, said trekking Kokoda was "one of those bucket-list things".
"I'm excited but have a bit of caution. It's not going to be easy," David said.
He aimed to stay focused and mentally strong each day "no matter what's thrown at us".
Jasmine, 24, said it would be "a lot of consecutive days to push through".
With lightweight hiking gear and guides, she highlighted that they "have it so much easier than those who trekked the trail in World War II".
"I think the challenge for me will be mostly mental."
In World War II, 625 Australians were killed and more than 1000 wounded at Kokoda in a four-month battle with the Japanese.
The Diggers pushed the Japanese back from their aim of taking Port Moresby.
Jasmine, 24, is an electrical engineering officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, based at RAAF Base Williamtown.
"I have done some pack marching during my time in Defence, but nothing on this scale," she said.
The 96-kilometre trek will wind through narrow paths in the Owen Stanley Range in Papua New Guinea, reaching elevations of more than 2000 metres.
They will cross rugged, remote terrain and face intense heat, humidity, steep climbs and unpredictable weather.
"The terrain will be relentless with slippery descents, river crossings and mud," said David, a former Navy serviceman who served on HMAS Townsville and HMAS Tobruk.
"I've seen the footage of the Kokoda Trail on Anzac Day. I really wanted to go there, do the trek and respect the guys who were there.
"I've spent time in New Guinea on patrol boats a long time ago."
In preparation, he climbed Tomaree Head at Shoal Bay a few times and "gave some stairs near my place a hiding".
Two former Navy mates - Damien Alexander and Shane Blundell - will join them on the trek, along with Michael Nolan.
The trek will support the TROG Cancer Research, which is based at Calvary Mater Newcastle.
The not-for-profit organisation runs clinical trials and works with more than 80 cancer centres across Australia, New Zealand and other countries.
TROG CEO Susan Goode is David's wife and Jasmine's mum.
"My mum passed from cancer about nine years ago," David said.
"Other family members have died of cancer. My father had cancer but he's recovered."
Susan used to work in cancer research at the University of Newcastle.
"When my mother first got cancer, they said she had a short-term prognosis," David said.
"Susan got my mum into a new research program in Sydney with radiation therapy.
"It gave her another five to six years. That therapy is now everywhere."
Jasmine added that "cancer touches everyone's life in one way or another".
"Any contribution I can make to cancer research is worth it.
"I've grown up seeing the passion behind this work and wanted to do something tangible to help."
Their goal is to raise more than $5000.
To support their trek, visit trogkokodachallenge.gofundraise.com.au.
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Hidden Hunter: it's time to take a swing by the lake
LAKE Macquarie is full of wonderful hidden places. The latest I've just stumbled across is the popular 'swing bridge' concealed in suburbia on Dora Creek, behind the Avondale Campus, at Cooranbong. But more about that later. My interest in such sites began several decades ago after searching for, and finding, some unusual concrete igloos from World War II in secluded bushland, high on a hill above Catherine Hill Bay. They were the remains of the once top-secret radar station 208, which acted as a shield, or early warning system, for the largest seaplane base in the southern hemisphere at Rathmines, south of Toronto The Catherine Hill Bay ridgeline site also once hid twin timber towers, reportedly standing about 45 metres, holding the actual radar installation. Beneath it, from memory, one of the two Nissen-style curved concrete huts, or igloos, housed a generator, while the other held the female radar operators from early 1943. The Bay radar station only came into existence after a Japanese enemy submarine shelled the sleeping city of Newcastle early one morning in June 1942. After the war, the timber towers were demolished and recycled into houses, while the solid concrete structures were simply stripped of anything valuable and abandoned. The last time I saw them, years ago, someone had managed to drive a small, presumably stolen car, up a steep, rough track high above the beach, drive it inside one structure, jam it sideways, then set it ablaze. Hiking up to the hilltop site had been memorable, as had the sight of the blackened interior with a car inside one igloo. Over the years, visits to other hidden Lake Macquarie sites have never been as memorable, but always interesting. For example, there was once the odd sight of a light aircraft, minus its wings, sandwiched into a Swansea coffee shop as a novelty. I had been recycled after it had crash-landed elsewhere. Or the Aboriginal legend on a plaque once at Reid's Mistake (Swansea Heads) telling the story of Malangbula. Two upright rocks here represented two women transformed into stone after an altercation with a native warrior. The silent sentinels were to forever guard the ocean entrance to Lake Macquarie to protect the lake from fierce sea monsters trying to enter. Going now towards the western side of the lake and passing Speers Point, we soon come to the Five Islands Road crossing Cockle Creek. Here, just to the north on the opposite shore, parallel to the northern railway line, is Racecourse Road. Only the road beside the creek now reminds us of the story once told around here. In 1927, intrepid aviators Charles Kingsford Smith (after whom Sydney's airport was named) and Charles Ulm made an emergency landing here on the then-existing racecourse after suffering engine trouble. The sight of their aircraft, temporarily left there, went down in lake folklore. Then further on, not far as the crow flies from the Fennell Bay bridge, lies a now-submerged petrified pine forest in the shallows, or at least what's left of it. Called Kurrur Kurran, it is reputed to be more than 250 million years old, but there are only petrified stumps left now on the silty lake floor. Much of the ancient, petrified wood was souvenired, pilfered, up to 60 years ago. Some of this prehistoric forest (once 500 trees) ended up as pieces of a household fence in nearby Blackalls Park. The water site is generally regarded as the biggest and best preserved in situ of the Permian period in NSW. On the edge of Toronto itself, we come to relics of the now lost Toronto-to-Fassifern 3 kilometre railway (now the Greenway Track) and the site of the once popular Stoney Creek Swimming Club started in the 1930s. Moving again, but west, going along Awaba Road before going south on Freemans Drive heading to Cooranbong. Here, opposite the Avondale College entrance, is another gem of a place - the Elephant Shop with its unusual wares. But a little before that, motorists might be diverted down a side street to the South Sea Island Museum with missionary artefacts, including drums and a full-size former islander war canoe. Back on the road, we come to my latest find. It's Cooranbong's suspension or historic 'swing bridge' (since 1934) off Freemans Drive. Today, the wobbly bridge is a local landmark, but maybe for many of us it's still a hidden place, until you get precise directions on how to find it. Weekender was alerted to the site recently by Valentine author and bushwalker Greg Powell, who pointed out the nearby, flat 2.4-kilometre Sandy Creek Walk loop on part of the Avondale Estate for those who want to immerse themselves in nature. The Cooranbong swing bridge is at the old Weet-Bix factory on Dora Creek. The bouncy walk over Dora Creek originally provided handy access for workers of the Sanitarium health food factory. Without the bridge, people had to either row or swim across the creek or face a long walk around. At the back of Avondale College, the bridge over Dora Creek can be a little hard to find initially. Access is via a cul-de-sac after leaving Freemans Drive at Victory Street, just before a bridge under the M1. The first swing bridge was designed and built in 1934 by Harry Tempest, a Sanitarium division manager. The bridge was said to be built to help teacher Oleta Leech, the wife of a Sanitarium scientist. Living south of the creek, she was terrified of deep water and local boats were often 'borrowed' by persons unknown. Initially, the college faculty said using the bridge was out of bounds for its indoor students. This rule was relaxed in 1965. A tall eucalypt on the college side of the waterway also became known as the 'Billy-can tree'. Customers of the college dairy would hang their milk cans (to be filled up later) on nails hammered into the tree trunk. The original swing bridge partially collapsed in the 1980s after surviving multiple floods. In 2006, it was feared the repaired bridge might be closed, but it has survived, a testimony to its workmanship, stout timbers and galvanised steel supports. But while walking over the old, swaying suspension bridge can add a touch of adventure to any journey, since 2023, a wider, stronger, more stable, flood-free concrete bridge opened alongside, providing a more stress-free crossing. LAKE Macquarie is full of wonderful hidden places. The latest I've just stumbled across is the popular 'swing bridge' concealed in suburbia on Dora Creek, behind the Avondale Campus, at Cooranbong. But more about that later. My interest in such sites began several decades ago after searching for, and finding, some unusual concrete igloos from World War II in secluded bushland, high on a hill above Catherine Hill Bay. They were the remains of the once top-secret radar station 208, which acted as a shield, or early warning system, for the largest seaplane base in the southern hemisphere at Rathmines, south of Toronto The Catherine Hill Bay ridgeline site also once hid twin timber towers, reportedly standing about 45 metres, holding the actual radar installation. Beneath it, from memory, one of the two Nissen-style curved concrete huts, or igloos, housed a generator, while the other held the female radar operators from early 1943. The Bay radar station only came into existence after a Japanese enemy submarine shelled the sleeping city of Newcastle early one morning in June 1942. After the war, the timber towers were demolished and recycled into houses, while the solid concrete structures were simply stripped of anything valuable and abandoned. The last time I saw them, years ago, someone had managed to drive a small, presumably stolen car, up a steep, rough track high above the beach, drive it inside one structure, jam it sideways, then set it ablaze. Hiking up to the hilltop site had been memorable, as had the sight of the blackened interior with a car inside one igloo. Over the years, visits to other hidden Lake Macquarie sites have never been as memorable, but always interesting. For example, there was once the odd sight of a light aircraft, minus its wings, sandwiched into a Swansea coffee shop as a novelty. I had been recycled after it had crash-landed elsewhere. Or the Aboriginal legend on a plaque once at Reid's Mistake (Swansea Heads) telling the story of Malangbula. Two upright rocks here represented two women transformed into stone after an altercation with a native warrior. The silent sentinels were to forever guard the ocean entrance to Lake Macquarie to protect the lake from fierce sea monsters trying to enter. Going now towards the western side of the lake and passing Speers Point, we soon come to the Five Islands Road crossing Cockle Creek. Here, just to the north on the opposite shore, parallel to the northern railway line, is Racecourse Road. Only the road beside the creek now reminds us of the story once told around here. In 1927, intrepid aviators Charles Kingsford Smith (after whom Sydney's airport was named) and Charles Ulm made an emergency landing here on the then-existing racecourse after suffering engine trouble. The sight of their aircraft, temporarily left there, went down in lake folklore. Then further on, not far as the crow flies from the Fennell Bay bridge, lies a now-submerged petrified pine forest in the shallows, or at least what's left of it. Called Kurrur Kurran, it is reputed to be more than 250 million years old, but there are only petrified stumps left now on the silty lake floor. Much of the ancient, petrified wood was souvenired, pilfered, up to 60 years ago. Some of this prehistoric forest (once 500 trees) ended up as pieces of a household fence in nearby Blackalls Park. The water site is generally regarded as the biggest and best preserved in situ of the Permian period in NSW. On the edge of Toronto itself, we come to relics of the now lost Toronto-to-Fassifern 3 kilometre railway (now the Greenway Track) and the site of the once popular Stoney Creek Swimming Club started in the 1930s. Moving again, but west, going along Awaba Road before going south on Freemans Drive heading to Cooranbong. Here, opposite the Avondale College entrance, is another gem of a place - the Elephant Shop with its unusual wares. But a little before that, motorists might be diverted down a side street to the South Sea Island Museum with missionary artefacts, including drums and a full-size former islander war canoe. Back on the road, we come to my latest find. It's Cooranbong's suspension or historic 'swing bridge' (since 1934) off Freemans Drive. Today, the wobbly bridge is a local landmark, but maybe for many of us it's still a hidden place, until you get precise directions on how to find it. Weekender was alerted to the site recently by Valentine author and bushwalker Greg Powell, who pointed out the nearby, flat 2.4-kilometre Sandy Creek Walk loop on part of the Avondale Estate for those who want to immerse themselves in nature. The Cooranbong swing bridge is at the old Weet-Bix factory on Dora Creek. The bouncy walk over Dora Creek originally provided handy access for workers of the Sanitarium health food factory. Without the bridge, people had to either row or swim across the creek or face a long walk around. At the back of Avondale College, the bridge over Dora Creek can be a little hard to find initially. Access is via a cul-de-sac after leaving Freemans Drive at Victory Street, just before a bridge under the M1. The first swing bridge was designed and built in 1934 by Harry Tempest, a Sanitarium division manager. The bridge was said to be built to help teacher Oleta Leech, the wife of a Sanitarium scientist. Living south of the creek, she was terrified of deep water and local boats were often 'borrowed' by persons unknown. Initially, the college faculty said using the bridge was out of bounds for its indoor students. This rule was relaxed in 1965. A tall eucalypt on the college side of the waterway also became known as the 'Billy-can tree'. Customers of the college dairy would hang their milk cans (to be filled up later) on nails hammered into the tree trunk. The original swing bridge partially collapsed in the 1980s after surviving multiple floods. In 2006, it was feared the repaired bridge might be closed, but it has survived, a testimony to its workmanship, stout timbers and galvanised steel supports. But while walking over the old, swaying suspension bridge can add a touch of adventure to any journey, since 2023, a wider, stronger, more stable, flood-free concrete bridge opened alongside, providing a more stress-free crossing. LAKE Macquarie is full of wonderful hidden places. The latest I've just stumbled across is the popular 'swing bridge' concealed in suburbia on Dora Creek, behind the Avondale Campus, at Cooranbong. But more about that later. My interest in such sites began several decades ago after searching for, and finding, some unusual concrete igloos from World War II in secluded bushland, high on a hill above Catherine Hill Bay. They were the remains of the once top-secret radar station 208, which acted as a shield, or early warning system, for the largest seaplane base in the southern hemisphere at Rathmines, south of Toronto The Catherine Hill Bay ridgeline site also once hid twin timber towers, reportedly standing about 45 metres, holding the actual radar installation. Beneath it, from memory, one of the two Nissen-style curved concrete huts, or igloos, housed a generator, while the other held the female radar operators from early 1943. The Bay radar station only came into existence after a Japanese enemy submarine shelled the sleeping city of Newcastle early one morning in June 1942. After the war, the timber towers were demolished and recycled into houses, while the solid concrete structures were simply stripped of anything valuable and abandoned. The last time I saw them, years ago, someone had managed to drive a small, presumably stolen car, up a steep, rough track high above the beach, drive it inside one structure, jam it sideways, then set it ablaze. Hiking up to the hilltop site had been memorable, as had the sight of the blackened interior with a car inside one igloo. Over the years, visits to other hidden Lake Macquarie sites have never been as memorable, but always interesting. For example, there was once the odd sight of a light aircraft, minus its wings, sandwiched into a Swansea coffee shop as a novelty. I had been recycled after it had crash-landed elsewhere. Or the Aboriginal legend on a plaque once at Reid's Mistake (Swansea Heads) telling the story of Malangbula. Two upright rocks here represented two women transformed into stone after an altercation with a native warrior. The silent sentinels were to forever guard the ocean entrance to Lake Macquarie to protect the lake from fierce sea monsters trying to enter. Going now towards the western side of the lake and passing Speers Point, we soon come to the Five Islands Road crossing Cockle Creek. Here, just to the north on the opposite shore, parallel to the northern railway line, is Racecourse Road. Only the road beside the creek now reminds us of the story once told around here. In 1927, intrepid aviators Charles Kingsford Smith (after whom Sydney's airport was named) and Charles Ulm made an emergency landing here on the then-existing racecourse after suffering engine trouble. The sight of their aircraft, temporarily left there, went down in lake folklore. Then further on, not far as the crow flies from the Fennell Bay bridge, lies a now-submerged petrified pine forest in the shallows, or at least what's left of it. Called Kurrur Kurran, it is reputed to be more than 250 million years old, but there are only petrified stumps left now on the silty lake floor. Much of the ancient, petrified wood was souvenired, pilfered, up to 60 years ago. Some of this prehistoric forest (once 500 trees) ended up as pieces of a household fence in nearby Blackalls Park. The water site is generally regarded as the biggest and best preserved in situ of the Permian period in NSW. On the edge of Toronto itself, we come to relics of the now lost Toronto-to-Fassifern 3 kilometre railway (now the Greenway Track) and the site of the once popular Stoney Creek Swimming Club started in the 1930s. Moving again, but west, going along Awaba Road before going south on Freemans Drive heading to Cooranbong. Here, opposite the Avondale College entrance, is another gem of a place - the Elephant Shop with its unusual wares. But a little before that, motorists might be diverted down a side street to the South Sea Island Museum with missionary artefacts, including drums and a full-size former islander war canoe. Back on the road, we come to my latest find. It's Cooranbong's suspension or historic 'swing bridge' (since 1934) off Freemans Drive. Today, the wobbly bridge is a local landmark, but maybe for many of us it's still a hidden place, until you get precise directions on how to find it. Weekender was alerted to the site recently by Valentine author and bushwalker Greg Powell, who pointed out the nearby, flat 2.4-kilometre Sandy Creek Walk loop on part of the Avondale Estate for those who want to immerse themselves in nature. The Cooranbong swing bridge is at the old Weet-Bix factory on Dora Creek. The bouncy walk over Dora Creek originally provided handy access for workers of the Sanitarium health food factory. Without the bridge, people had to either row or swim across the creek or face a long walk around. At the back of Avondale College, the bridge over Dora Creek can be a little hard to find initially. Access is via a cul-de-sac after leaving Freemans Drive at Victory Street, just before a bridge under the M1. The first swing bridge was designed and built in 1934 by Harry Tempest, a Sanitarium division manager. The bridge was said to be built to help teacher Oleta Leech, the wife of a Sanitarium scientist. Living south of the creek, she was terrified of deep water and local boats were often 'borrowed' by persons unknown. Initially, the college faculty said using the bridge was out of bounds for its indoor students. This rule was relaxed in 1965. A tall eucalypt on the college side of the waterway also became known as the 'Billy-can tree'. Customers of the college dairy would hang their milk cans (to be filled up later) on nails hammered into the tree trunk. The original swing bridge partially collapsed in the 1980s after surviving multiple floods. In 2006, it was feared the repaired bridge might be closed, but it has survived, a testimony to its workmanship, stout timbers and galvanised steel supports. But while walking over the old, swaying suspension bridge can add a touch of adventure to any journey, since 2023, a wider, stronger, more stable, flood-free concrete bridge opened alongside, providing a more stress-free crossing. LAKE Macquarie is full of wonderful hidden places. The latest I've just stumbled across is the popular 'swing bridge' concealed in suburbia on Dora Creek, behind the Avondale Campus, at Cooranbong. But more about that later. My interest in such sites began several decades ago after searching for, and finding, some unusual concrete igloos from World War II in secluded bushland, high on a hill above Catherine Hill Bay. They were the remains of the once top-secret radar station 208, which acted as a shield, or early warning system, for the largest seaplane base in the southern hemisphere at Rathmines, south of Toronto The Catherine Hill Bay ridgeline site also once hid twin timber towers, reportedly standing about 45 metres, holding the actual radar installation. Beneath it, from memory, one of the two Nissen-style curved concrete huts, or igloos, housed a generator, while the other held the female radar operators from early 1943. The Bay radar station only came into existence after a Japanese enemy submarine shelled the sleeping city of Newcastle early one morning in June 1942. After the war, the timber towers were demolished and recycled into houses, while the solid concrete structures were simply stripped of anything valuable and abandoned. The last time I saw them, years ago, someone had managed to drive a small, presumably stolen car, up a steep, rough track high above the beach, drive it inside one structure, jam it sideways, then set it ablaze. Hiking up to the hilltop site had been memorable, as had the sight of the blackened interior with a car inside one igloo. Over the years, visits to other hidden Lake Macquarie sites have never been as memorable, but always interesting. For example, there was once the odd sight of a light aircraft, minus its wings, sandwiched into a Swansea coffee shop as a novelty. I had been recycled after it had crash-landed elsewhere. Or the Aboriginal legend on a plaque once at Reid's Mistake (Swansea Heads) telling the story of Malangbula. Two upright rocks here represented two women transformed into stone after an altercation with a native warrior. The silent sentinels were to forever guard the ocean entrance to Lake Macquarie to protect the lake from fierce sea monsters trying to enter. Going now towards the western side of the lake and passing Speers Point, we soon come to the Five Islands Road crossing Cockle Creek. Here, just to the north on the opposite shore, parallel to the northern railway line, is Racecourse Road. Only the road beside the creek now reminds us of the story once told around here. In 1927, intrepid aviators Charles Kingsford Smith (after whom Sydney's airport was named) and Charles Ulm made an emergency landing here on the then-existing racecourse after suffering engine trouble. The sight of their aircraft, temporarily left there, went down in lake folklore. Then further on, not far as the crow flies from the Fennell Bay bridge, lies a now-submerged petrified pine forest in the shallows, or at least what's left of it. Called Kurrur Kurran, it is reputed to be more than 250 million years old, but there are only petrified stumps left now on the silty lake floor. Much of the ancient, petrified wood was souvenired, pilfered, up to 60 years ago. Some of this prehistoric forest (once 500 trees) ended up as pieces of a household fence in nearby Blackalls Park. The water site is generally regarded as the biggest and best preserved in situ of the Permian period in NSW. On the edge of Toronto itself, we come to relics of the now lost Toronto-to-Fassifern 3 kilometre railway (now the Greenway Track) and the site of the once popular Stoney Creek Swimming Club started in the 1930s. Moving again, but west, going along Awaba Road before going south on Freemans Drive heading to Cooranbong. Here, opposite the Avondale College entrance, is another gem of a place - the Elephant Shop with its unusual wares. But a little before that, motorists might be diverted down a side street to the South Sea Island Museum with missionary artefacts, including drums and a full-size former islander war canoe. Back on the road, we come to my latest find. It's Cooranbong's suspension or historic 'swing bridge' (since 1934) off Freemans Drive. Today, the wobbly bridge is a local landmark, but maybe for many of us it's still a hidden place, until you get precise directions on how to find it. Weekender was alerted to the site recently by Valentine author and bushwalker Greg Powell, who pointed out the nearby, flat 2.4-kilometre Sandy Creek Walk loop on part of the Avondale Estate for those who want to immerse themselves in nature. The Cooranbong swing bridge is at the old Weet-Bix factory on Dora Creek. The bouncy walk over Dora Creek originally provided handy access for workers of the Sanitarium health food factory. Without the bridge, people had to either row or swim across the creek or face a long walk around. At the back of Avondale College, the bridge over Dora Creek can be a little hard to find initially. Access is via a cul-de-sac after leaving Freemans Drive at Victory Street, just before a bridge under the M1. The first swing bridge was designed and built in 1934 by Harry Tempest, a Sanitarium division manager. The bridge was said to be built to help teacher Oleta Leech, the wife of a Sanitarium scientist. Living south of the creek, she was terrified of deep water and local boats were often 'borrowed' by persons unknown. Initially, the college faculty said using the bridge was out of bounds for its indoor students. This rule was relaxed in 1965. A tall eucalypt on the college side of the waterway also became known as the 'Billy-can tree'. Customers of the college dairy would hang their milk cans (to be filled up later) on nails hammered into the tree trunk. The original swing bridge partially collapsed in the 1980s after surviving multiple floods. In 2006, it was feared the repaired bridge might be closed, but it has survived, a testimony to its workmanship, stout timbers and galvanised steel supports. But while walking over the old, swaying suspension bridge can add a touch of adventure to any journey, since 2023, a wider, stronger, more stable, flood-free concrete bridge opened alongside, providing a more stress-free crossing.
The Age
19 hours ago
- The Age
‘I've been chasing that feeling ever since': Besha Rodell reflects on her most formative meal at a Melbourne icon
Yes, there was a trip to France. A tower of profiteroles at Les Deux Magots. Breakfasts that included flaky, buttery croissants and fine porcelain cups of le chocolat chaud, so thick and creamy it has taken up residence in my sense memory as a paragon of deliciousness. But my journey into a life in food did not begin there. It began in Melbourne, Australia, at a restaurant called Stephanie's. Stephanie's was Melbourne's grandest restaurant at the time, housed in a majestic old home in Hawthorn and run by Stephanie Alexander, a chef who is credited with changing the way Australians ate. She trained many of the cooks who went on to become the country's most prominent chefs. The name Stephanie's was synonymous with the finest dining. In 1984, I was aware of none of this because I was eight and living with my American mother, my Australian father and my three-year-old brother, Fred, in a share house in Brunswick, an inner-north neighbourhood of Melbourne. The hulking old terrace where we lived − white, with black wrought iron framing its verandahs − had previously housed an elderly order of nuns. When my parents rented it, with the idea of filling it full of other like-minded hippie/academic/journalist types, its sweeping staircase and stained-glass windows and high-ceilinged rooms were filthy. They scrubbed it, claimed its grandest bedroom upstairs, and advertised the downstairs rooms for rent. Some of the first housemates they attracted were a single mother and her daughter, Sarah, who was about my age. Sarah was small, with dark hair and freckles and a gap-toothed grin, the opposite of my pudgy, blond, self-conscious self. She quickly became the leader of our gang of two, bossing me into compliance, though I did manage to inspire some awe with my firm belief that I was the queen of the fairies. (At night, while she slept, I flew away to fairyland, where I lived in a rosebush with my many fairy princess daughters. This is the subject for a different book entirely.) The central mythology in Sarah's young life had to do with her father, who was mostly absent. He was, she told me, handsome and rich and lived in a fancy house with his beautiful new wife. (The narrative was quite different when Sarah's mother told the story.) About once a month, Sarah would disappear for the weekend to her father's house and come back with 50-cent pieces that he had given her – more proof that he was 'rich', since our parents would never have bestowed such lavish wealth upon us. I distinctly remember after one such weekend, Sarah leading me dramatically to the milk bar near school and pointing to the wall of candies at the counter. I could pick whichever one I wanted, and she would buy it with her paternally acquired riches. (Did I mention my parents were hippies? Candy was not part of my usual diet.) When Sarah turned nine, her father proved Sarah's mythology by taking both of us for a celebratory birthday meal at the fanciest restaurant in town: Stephanie's. I have almost zero recollection of the food. There was a huge, beautiful chocolate souffle that haunts me to this day, but other than that, I cannot recall a thing I ate. I remember the brocade seating and deep red curtains, which gave everything a feeling of grandeur. I remember the lighting, the tinkle of glasses, the swoosh of the waiters, the mesmerising, intense luxury of it all. I remember feeling special, truly special, that I was allowed into this room where people were spending ungodly amounts of money on something as common as dinner. Quite honestly, I can't remember much about that year or my life at that time, other than the fact that my mother started sleeping with men other than my father and he moved into a different bedroom and cried a lot and then eventually she moved out of the share house and into a tiny, crappy house somewhere else with the guy who would end up becoming my stepfather. But I remember Stephanie's. My family did not frequent restaurants like Stephanie's, and in fact I do not remember any specific restaurant meal in my life before the one that occurred there, although I'm sure there were a few. I didn't need an education in food. I grew up with fantastic food, some of it just as good – and in some ways better! – than what was served at Stephanie's. My father was an academic and an occasional farmer and a gardener and a devotee of Julia Child. I was reared on homegrown fruits and vegetables, rich cream sauces, chocolate mousse made with egg whites and heavy cream and not a lick of gelatin. My mother had melded her American upbringing with her hippie sense of exploration. She spent her earliest years in Hollywood, where my grandfather was a screenwriter and many of his friends were Syrian. Rice and yoghurt became staples of her childhood meals, a tradition she never gave up. My father did most of the cooking while they were together, but when she cooked, lemon juice was added to everything: chicken livers, broccoli with butter, salads full of olives and feta bought from the Greek stalls at the Queen Victoria Market. No, I did not need an education in food. I needed – or more accurately, I desperately wanted – an education in luxury. After my meal at Stephanie's, I began haranguing my parents on my own birthdays. No longer satisfied with the family tradition of picking a favourite home-cooked dish as a birthday meal, I told them I wanted to eat at restaurants instead. They tried. My mother and my new stepfather took us out – now with a baby sister, Grace, in tow – to a neighbourhood Lebanese restaurant for my 11th birthday, something I'm sure they could not afford. I was disappointed. The food was good, but the luxury was lacking. This instinct, this need for extravagance where it is wholly unearned, runs in my family. Wealth has come and gone on both sides of my lineage, but it has never settled in and stayed. My paternal grandfather owned Malties, a cereal company that was one of Australia's most popular brands in the early 20th century. Then he had a heart attack and died, leaving my grandmother with five children and no idea how to run a business, and before long, the cereal company and the grand house in Eltham were lost. My maternal grandfather grew up exceedingly wealthy in Philadelphia and spent his life squandering that wealth on fancy cars and trips to Europe and multiple divorces, including two from my grandmother, all the while fancying himself some sort of genius playwright. Both of my parents grew up resenting the lack of luxury that should have been their birthright. I somehow absorbed that, but from a very early age, the thing I thought I ought to have, in a just world, was meals at fancy restaurants. I did not need an education in food. I needed an education in luxury. Money was a constant stress when I was growing up; I'd be lying if I said it hasn't remained a constant stress in my own adult life. And yet my mother has a thing for vintage cars, French soap, French underwear, Chanel perfume, tiny pieces of luxury that she should not be able to justify given that she is the type of woman who carries an extra canister of gas in her car because she runs out so frequently because she never has the money to fill her tank. (I know this makes no sense; you need not explain that to me.) In fact, the trip to France was a case in point. When I was 13, my mother came into a small amount of money and decided to whisk me off for an around-the-world trip, even though she and my stepfather were struggling with a mortgage and my sister Grace was a toddler and leaving her alone with my stepfather for months to take me to France and America was a wholly ridiculous thing to do. But this is my mother we're talking about, who drove a vintage red MGB convertible rather than a normal car, who believed her teenage daughter must see Paris to understand the brand of sophistication she believed we deserved to inhabit. I have endeavoured, in my life, to be more pragmatic. I have mostly failed. If I thirst for designer clothes, I know how to find them in thrift stores. I do not long for money, other than the kind that relieves you of the deep, existential dread that accompanies poverty. What I long for – what I've longed for since I was eight years old, sitting wide-eyed in that grand restaurant – is the specific opulence of a very good restaurant. I never connected this longing to the goal of attaining wealth; in fact, it was the pantomiming of wealth that appealed. I did not belong in that grand room! And yet there I was! It was intoxicating. I have been chasing that feeling ever since. This is an edited extract from Hunger Like a Thirst by Besha Rodell, published by Hardie Grant Books, RRP $35
Sydney Morning Herald
19 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘I've been chasing that feeling ever since': Besha Rodell reflects on her most formative meal at a Melbourne icon
Yes, there was a trip to France. A tower of profiteroles at Les Deux Magots. Breakfasts that included flaky, buttery croissants and fine porcelain cups of le chocolat chaud, so thick and creamy it has taken up residence in my sense memory as a paragon of deliciousness. But my journey into a life in food did not begin there. It began in Melbourne, Australia, at a restaurant called Stephanie's. Stephanie's was Melbourne's grandest restaurant at the time, housed in a majestic old home in Hawthorn and run by Stephanie Alexander, a chef who is credited with changing the way Australians ate. She trained many of the cooks who went on to become the country's most prominent chefs. The name Stephanie's was synonymous with the finest dining. In 1984, I was aware of none of this because I was eight and living with my American mother, my Australian father and my three-year-old brother, Fred, in a share house in Brunswick, an inner-north neighbourhood of Melbourne. The hulking old terrace where we lived − white, with black wrought iron framing its verandahs − had previously housed an elderly order of nuns. When my parents rented it, with the idea of filling it full of other like-minded hippie/academic/journalist types, its sweeping staircase and stained-glass windows and high-ceilinged rooms were filthy. They scrubbed it, claimed its grandest bedroom upstairs, and advertised the downstairs rooms for rent. Some of the first housemates they attracted were a single mother and her daughter, Sarah, who was about my age. Sarah was small, with dark hair and freckles and a gap-toothed grin, the opposite of my pudgy, blond, self-conscious self. She quickly became the leader of our gang of two, bossing me into compliance, though I did manage to inspire some awe with my firm belief that I was the queen of the fairies. (At night, while she slept, I flew away to fairyland, where I lived in a rosebush with my many fairy princess daughters. This is the subject for a different book entirely.) The central mythology in Sarah's young life had to do with her father, who was mostly absent. He was, she told me, handsome and rich and lived in a fancy house with his beautiful new wife. (The narrative was quite different when Sarah's mother told the story.) About once a month, Sarah would disappear for the weekend to her father's house and come back with 50-cent pieces that he had given her – more proof that he was 'rich', since our parents would never have bestowed such lavish wealth upon us. I distinctly remember after one such weekend, Sarah leading me dramatically to the milk bar near school and pointing to the wall of candies at the counter. I could pick whichever one I wanted, and she would buy it with her paternally acquired riches. (Did I mention my parents were hippies? Candy was not part of my usual diet.) When Sarah turned nine, her father proved Sarah's mythology by taking both of us for a celebratory birthday meal at the fanciest restaurant in town: Stephanie's. I have almost zero recollection of the food. There was a huge, beautiful chocolate souffle that haunts me to this day, but other than that, I cannot recall a thing I ate. I remember the brocade seating and deep red curtains, which gave everything a feeling of grandeur. I remember the lighting, the tinkle of glasses, the swoosh of the waiters, the mesmerising, intense luxury of it all. I remember feeling special, truly special, that I was allowed into this room where people were spending ungodly amounts of money on something as common as dinner. Quite honestly, I can't remember much about that year or my life at that time, other than the fact that my mother started sleeping with men other than my father and he moved into a different bedroom and cried a lot and then eventually she moved out of the share house and into a tiny, crappy house somewhere else with the guy who would end up becoming my stepfather. But I remember Stephanie's. My family did not frequent restaurants like Stephanie's, and in fact I do not remember any specific restaurant meal in my life before the one that occurred there, although I'm sure there were a few. I didn't need an education in food. I grew up with fantastic food, some of it just as good – and in some ways better! – than what was served at Stephanie's. My father was an academic and an occasional farmer and a gardener and a devotee of Julia Child. I was reared on homegrown fruits and vegetables, rich cream sauces, chocolate mousse made with egg whites and heavy cream and not a lick of gelatin. My mother had melded her American upbringing with her hippie sense of exploration. She spent her earliest years in Hollywood, where my grandfather was a screenwriter and many of his friends were Syrian. Rice and yoghurt became staples of her childhood meals, a tradition she never gave up. My father did most of the cooking while they were together, but when she cooked, lemon juice was added to everything: chicken livers, broccoli with butter, salads full of olives and feta bought from the Greek stalls at the Queen Victoria Market. No, I did not need an education in food. I needed – or more accurately, I desperately wanted – an education in luxury. After my meal at Stephanie's, I began haranguing my parents on my own birthdays. No longer satisfied with the family tradition of picking a favourite home-cooked dish as a birthday meal, I told them I wanted to eat at restaurants instead. They tried. My mother and my new stepfather took us out – now with a baby sister, Grace, in tow – to a neighbourhood Lebanese restaurant for my 11th birthday, something I'm sure they could not afford. I was disappointed. The food was good, but the luxury was lacking. This instinct, this need for extravagance where it is wholly unearned, runs in my family. Wealth has come and gone on both sides of my lineage, but it has never settled in and stayed. My paternal grandfather owned Malties, a cereal company that was one of Australia's most popular brands in the early 20th century. Then he had a heart attack and died, leaving my grandmother with five children and no idea how to run a business, and before long, the cereal company and the grand house in Eltham were lost. My maternal grandfather grew up exceedingly wealthy in Philadelphia and spent his life squandering that wealth on fancy cars and trips to Europe and multiple divorces, including two from my grandmother, all the while fancying himself some sort of genius playwright. Both of my parents grew up resenting the lack of luxury that should have been their birthright. I somehow absorbed that, but from a very early age, the thing I thought I ought to have, in a just world, was meals at fancy restaurants. I did not need an education in food. I needed an education in luxury. Money was a constant stress when I was growing up; I'd be lying if I said it hasn't remained a constant stress in my own adult life. And yet my mother has a thing for vintage cars, French soap, French underwear, Chanel perfume, tiny pieces of luxury that she should not be able to justify given that she is the type of woman who carries an extra canister of gas in her car because she runs out so frequently because she never has the money to fill her tank. (I know this makes no sense; you need not explain that to me.) In fact, the trip to France was a case in point. When I was 13, my mother came into a small amount of money and decided to whisk me off for an around-the-world trip, even though she and my stepfather were struggling with a mortgage and my sister Grace was a toddler and leaving her alone with my stepfather for months to take me to France and America was a wholly ridiculous thing to do. But this is my mother we're talking about, who drove a vintage red MGB convertible rather than a normal car, who believed her teenage daughter must see Paris to understand the brand of sophistication she believed we deserved to inhabit. I have endeavoured, in my life, to be more pragmatic. I have mostly failed. If I thirst for designer clothes, I know how to find them in thrift stores. I do not long for money, other than the kind that relieves you of the deep, existential dread that accompanies poverty. What I long for – what I've longed for since I was eight years old, sitting wide-eyed in that grand restaurant – is the specific opulence of a very good restaurant. I never connected this longing to the goal of attaining wealth; in fact, it was the pantomiming of wealth that appealed. I did not belong in that grand room! And yet there I was! It was intoxicating. I have been chasing that feeling ever since. This is an edited extract from Hunger Like a Thirst by Besha Rodell, published by Hardie Grant Books, RRP $35
