Where in the World #3
Travel news that pushed my buttons this week including Sydney's best sashimi salad, travel journos' December travel snaps and they're tearing down Harbourside Darling Harbour THOSE ANIMALS
BIG THINGS A’COMING: Next week I’m running an interview with the very excellent editor of Australia’s leading food and travel magazine - think of it as a Travel Communicator Christmas present. It’s one of the most insightful, fascinating interviews you’ll ever read for anyone interested in the sort of work she does.
Know someone who’d like it to thump firmly into their inbox like Santa plonking down a chimney?
Then share and ask them to subscribe now so they don’t miss it when drops:
Meanwhile, let’s get into this week’s chats…
On The Job
Lots of Aussie travel writers squeezing in a bit of last minute pre-Christmas journeying while some of us have back injuries.
*indignantly and jealously swallows more painkillers*
Katrina Lobley in Bora Bora
Tash Dragun probably almost able to wave to Katrina in Moorea
Oh and hi, says the also-Tahiti-ing Dilvin Yasa
Kirrily Schwarz in the French Alps
Mark Daffey in Thailand
“Me and my hols” by Alex Carlton
Tread softly for you tread on my childhood
Businesses have begun moving out of Harbourside shopping centre in Darling Harbour, Sydney, ahead of this gloriously repulsive 1980s icon being torn down to make way for apartments.
Darling Harbour was my Utopia when I was a pre-teen. The most vibrant, exciting place you could go. There was no greater thrill than getting the train to Town Hall, and if you happened to be flush with cash for some reason, the Monorail (“Mono means one and rail means rail!”) across to this big, touristly retail wonderland to spend your pocket money at the pick ‘n’ mix lolly store (what was its name, does anyone remember?)
And now, they’re TNT-ing its dorky aqua blue 80s curves and those incomprehensibly dim and claustrophobic shopping spaces and I bet we’re going to regret it when 80s architecture has its Brutalist moment and everyone thinks it’s cool again.
And don’t even get me started on the final glorious gasps of Frankie’s Pizza before it also gets demolished, again to make way for apartments. We need housing, sure, but what are all these new apartment dwellers going to do for fun without Wednesday night hard rock karaoke and bags of raspberry lollies and Nerds?
Holiday weird next year
We travel and food media folks are busy wrapping up Christmas Gift Guide Season and How To Do Christmas Season (here’s one I wrote in the latter genre for Gourmet Traveller) and entering my favourite: Next Year Prediction Season.
Usually I write a lot about destination and food trends but for something a little different this week I found myself quite diverted by this spirited discussion on LinkedIn about whether or not the current ridiculous airline prices were likely to stabilise in 2023.
According to the CEO of Flight Centre, Graham ‘Skroo’ Turner (speaking to the AFR), the answer is yes, because airline capacity will resume.
It’s also predicted that Chinese airlines will eventually be back in the sky and able to shoulder some of the capacity burden (though I’m a bit iffy on this because once the Chinese airlines start flying won’t Chinese passengers fill up the seats? Don’t those two things cancel each other out?).
2023 should be the year where we all visit “that small town next to the big city everyone goes to”
Personally I’m most interested in the arrival of the gaudily-named domestic airline Bonza into the Australian market (it sounds like a souvenir shop you’d find inside Harbourside Darling Harbour). Will it help cool our overheated domestic flight prices?
Maybe. Their cunning plan is to shun what Traveldream founder and MD Paul Mercuri calls the “Golden Triangle” - the mainstream routes of Syd-Melb-Bris. Instead, they’re going for some more, shall we say, creative journeys. Ambitious, even. Melbourne to Tamworth, for example, and Melbourne to Gladstone. It reminds me a bit of Sydney’s CrossCity Tunnel - great for the 17 people who live in the Eastern Suburbs and work in the Western Suburbs or vice versa, but little more than an occasional novelty for the rest of us.
But I’m warming to it. After the crazed tourist hotspot overcrowding of 2022, I think 2023 should be the year where we all visit “that small town next to the big city everyone goes to”.
I’m actually quite taken with the idea of sitting down with a globe, plonking my finger onto ‘Rome’ or ‘Tokyo’ or ‘Sydney’ and then shifting it an inch or two to the left or right or up or down and going to whatever town I land on instead (cool new game for travel agents to play with clients - you’re welcome. If anyone does it, let me know how it goes down).
Grinning when you’re twinning
While most of us are spending wildly on Christmas presents and enormous hams, the very generous team at Evil Twin PR just crowdsourced 57kg of food for Foodbank NSW, which makes me think they’re really not evil in the slightest.
A New York State of Unkind
Something weird was in the filtered boutique water that rich NY chefs drink this week. First, Martha Stewart decided to push the veggie section of Coles into piles to create these tablescapes at a dinner for Hermès. Emphasis on ‘piles’:
Then Balthazar’s Keith McNally, whose oft-probbo but endlessly diverting Instagram account is so fascinating to me that the algorithm pushes it to the top of my scroll list every time I open the app, decided to dangle $50,000 in front one of his employees, a runner from Morocco called Mounir Bergha. Lord McNally says he will grant his serf the money if Morocco wins the FIFA World Cup in Qatar (By the time you read this I expect you’ll know whether or not they scraped through the semis against France).
Keithy goes on to admit had barely ever spoken to Mounir before in the full 24 years that he’d worked for his extravagantly wealthy boss. Strong Game of Thrones vibes that his first interaction is to wave $50K under Mounir’s nose, something the father-of-three can only access if a thing happens on the other side of the world that’s entirely out of his control. Deep Keef.
At the time of writing Morocco was still in the running and therefore so was Mounir for the casual $50K that Keith can obviously toss around without making any significant dent in his own fortune. Surely Keith can be a good guy and sling him a cool twenny-five if the African team makes it to the semis. And also, you know, talk to him every now and then.
While we’re on Qatar, don yon serious hats for a moment. I’ve been thinking a bit recently about the ethics of visiting and encouraging tourism to morally dubious countries. There are definitely things to consider - though I personally think there’s a fair bit of good old-fashioned western xenophobia going on. Writer Tara Wells unpacked some of the arguments very well in this thoughtful piece for Adventure.com a couple of months back.
Three Things I Like
I’ve lived in Marrickville in Sydney’s inner west on-and-off for 10 years and when I’m home I rarely leave it because it is the cradle of the gods in every way (Bob Hawke Beer and Leisure Centre! Goodwood Bakeshop! Baba’s Place! Kurumac! Nguyen Garden Vietnamese Noodle House which is better than almost all the others, actually that’s not true there are about 19 that are great!).
I’m such a Marrickville tragic that I have framed scenes from the neighbourhood all over my house. I’d love to add one of local artist Nancy McAlpine’s love-letter-to-Marrickville watercolours to my weird suburb shrine:
Snow footwear that isn’t clunky and horrible! And it’s waterproof! And it’s Ukrainian! And if they’re sold out they’ll make you a pair to order! And they ship free worldwide if you spend over $USD150! I hate exclamation marks in text but I really, really like these boots! Sharry Brown Textile boot, $USD210
A few years ago I met Amber Guinness and her lovely husband Matthew while covering a Silversea cruise for Qantas magazine and she is an unbridled delight in every way. She’s a kind of Italian-based Nigella Lawson - all beauty and charm and grace and living an endlessly elegant life running her painting and cooking school in Florence. Yet she’s also a solidly nice person to be around. Just browsing her new book makes you instantly more chic. A House Party In Tuscany, $47.25 (on sale), Booktopia.
Thanks for reading. By the time I finished writing this I have had my back operation and I’m raring to get out there again. LOOK OUT WORLD (AS IN LITERAL WORLD).
Alex