Nadine Williams

Olivier’s sailing success –

Sunday, May 15:

Olivier’s week has been wonderful. He has packed the three months since his diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer with a round of new projects which would exhaust a much younger man. He has been far too busy to fret too much about his first check-up with the oncologist next Tuesday to monitor the impact of hormone treatment.

An inaugural “Encounter’’ yacht race linking his French-Australian business community with the Goolwa Regatta Yacht Club has occupied much of his time when he wasn’t working on our building site with his grandson, Andre.

Olivier is not a sporting man, but he was bitten with the sailing bug on a particularly rough crossing to Kangaroo Island in the grand yacht, Twilight Express, 18 months ago.

Although he had never raced before,  he initiated the idea of a yacht race with business members of the French Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Encounter Regatta holding the race at the Goolwa Regatta Yacht Club. And the two groups held the event on Sunday to loud acclaim.

Olivier worked with our good friend, Rear Commodore Locky McLaren of the Goolwa Regatta Yacht Club and together they organised the event including a perpetual trophy and publicity.  Eleven yachts raced and about 45 FACCI members and their families attended from Adelaide.

Olivier raced in a yacht for the first time and 17 other FACCI members were “sailors’’ on GRYC yachts.

Sunday had dawned a crisp, windless day in Goolwa, but luckily a light sea breeze blew up early afternoon to provide ideal race conditions.

The clubrooms were decorated with red check table cloths and the flags of both countries – Australia and France on tables where guests enjoyed a French-style lunch of soup, quiche and salad before the race. Peugeot sponsored the event and had three of their latest cars on display. By the end of the day Peugeot had signed up for the next five years.

Public Relations identity, Mike O’Reilly won the event in his yacht Oh Really! And FACCI president, Philippe Gravier presented the trophy to hearty cheers and  applause. Rear Commodore Locky McLaren thanked everyone for coming and Olivier for his grand idea which had been brought to exciting fruition.

The race will be held each year to commemorate the meeting at sea of French captain, Nicolas Baudin and English Captain Matthew Flinders which took place five miles from the mouth of the River Murray. Goolwa is the river and Flinders named Encounter Bay after the historic encounter on April 8, 1802 when the two captains had breakfast together two mornings in a row sharing their maps and experiences despite the fact that France and England were at war.

Next year, the men hope the regatta can be moved back to April.

Cepes and Citron dishes from My French kitchen

Rarely does French husband venture into my kitchen when I am at work, but this morning we are standing side by side by the hotplates making French dishes.

At the big element he is sauté-ing cepe mushrooms we gathered yesterday in the Kuitpo Forest and I am stirring the lemon mixture for Tarte au Citron on the back element.

Harmony in my French Kitchen? Yes! And we are having fun together as the two flavours waft up the exhaust fan – the unique cepe aroma, so loved by the French and the sweet lemon scent, so familiar to me from my mother’s kitchen.

His project is breakfast and he will be using some of the 2kgs of mushrooms we gathered yesterday afternoon in the May sunshine on Fleurieu Peninsula, SA.

In France they are known as Cèpes and he is making Omelette aux Cèpes using a recipe he found on the internet early this morning.

Last night, he cleaned the cèpes and chopped them up this morning, while I squeezed four lemons for 100mls of lemon juice to make Tartes au Citron for my nephew Jason’s engagement party tonight.

They will be petite tartes using pastries made by a French chef in Hong Kong and imported to South Australia by Ferguson Australia. The product is La Rose Noire, small vanilla rounds. We had a big box of them stored from the house slab party we intended to hold, but which was shelved when we discovered Olivier had cancer.

The lemon custard is now cooling and I will spoon it into the pastry rounds tonight at my sister’s place and put a dollop of Dairy Whip on the top of each one. The best part of our culinary exercise is that both dishes cost exactly $4. The mushrooms were free and we stopped at a roadside stall on Bull Creek Road, Ashbourne and bought the 10 lemons at 20 cents each and a dozen small eggs for $2.   C’est tout!

 

 Tarte Au Citron

 Ingredients:

200 g sugar; 4 eggs; 100mls lemon juice; 140g butter (real butter).

Method:

Beat 100g of the sugar with the eggs until really light and fluffy. In a saucepan melt together the remaining sugar, the lemon juice and the butter and stir to blend. Remove from the heat when melted.

Add fluffy beaten sugar and egg mix. Mix together and cook gently over a very low heat, stirring all the time until the mixture thickens and coats the spoon. Don’t boil.

Omelette aux Cepes .

 Ingredients- serves two:

3 large or 4 small eggs;  ¼ cup of chicken stock; 150 gr cepes or Swiss brown mushrooms; 1 clove garlic; Salt and pepper to taste and some parsley to garnish.

 Method:

Crush garlic in a little oil and simmer. Add dollop of butter. Saute mushrooms until soft. Season to taste. Beat eggs and chicken stock until light and creamy. Pour egg mix into well oiled frypan and cook gently until bubbles appear and sprinkle mushrooms over and cover with lid of alfoil until almost set and then flip one side of the omelette over the other. Cook 1 more minute or to your liking.

House of sticks

Time has passed and our future home – once a house of sticks – has become a half-finished building, clad in Hebel and capped with an iron roof.

Brickwork is complete, aluminium windows and sliding doors are installed and its Hebel walls have had the undercoat rendered.

Stellar Homes is at First Fixings stage and yesterday we wandered around our well-defined rooms with the project supervisor and electrician confirming detailed plans  for lighting and power throughout.

A “sparkie’’ named Luke led us through placement of double power points, two-way switches, bathroom heating for towel rails (a luxury), ceiling fans, fluorescent garage lighting, power to appliances, sensors, dimmers, downlights and myriad other matters.   

Perhaps it’s because I am a sparkie’s daughter, that our biggest extras bill for the house has been the electrical work. 

In tandem with the electrical wiring, Exquisite Audio had begun to install the high tech wiring for our Smart House to create sophisticated home entertainment, to install computer data points in four rooms, telephone points and security.

Whilst all of the office paper planning had been carried out with Sue and Michelle late last year, here on site, there are only the blokes in working boots. 

As they climb around the roof space draping wires, I cannot get out of my mind that awesome Working Man opening spectacular of the Sydney Olympics.

It is now five months to the day since the foundations were laid and Stellar is running behind time to complete the house in “26-28 weeks’’. A few wet weeks have hindered progress.

However, as we walk from room to room, where the bare external walls are yet to be insulated and then clad in Gyprock, Olivier and I can hardly contain our pride.  Our retirement home in the Mitcham Hills has taken shape.  Here is the entrance foyer with its high ceilings leading into the formal lounge, a square room with beautiful hillside views through wide windows. Soon we will be able to open  a leadlight door saved from our former home on this site and walk into a small vestibule connecting the informal living area and kitchen with the garage and the formal lounge.  The whole floor plan is on the one level for safe living for older people.

The dining/family area has two sets of sliding doors leading to the alfresco facing south and a small outdoor area facing north.  Another leadlight door from the old house will be installed at the passage leading to two bedrooms, two bathrooms and my study. Olivier’s study with its Oregon beams and raked ceiling is off the entrance foyer. He is at one end of the house and I am at the other as we live our individual lives under the one main roof.

Time cannot pass quickly enough for the big day when we take possession of the keys.

Darwin, a colourful chameleon city.

I was whisked away from the Darwin railway station in a shiny, red Robinson R44 Raven II helicopter. And I felt very star-like as the helicopter swooped over Darwin’s exciting new Wharf precinct, and the wreckage of the historic bombed wharf, so dramatically portrayed in “Australia’’. Old jetty pylons jut this way and that out of the sea as a dramatic reminder of Japan’s bombing raids on Darwin in February 1942. Few people know that air raid on the morning of the 19th was one of the biggest and deadliest air attacks yet seen in World War II, by the same Japanese air commander and bombing crew who bombed Pearl Harbour. There were big differences though. More bombs fell on Darwin, more citizens were killed – and more ships were sunk.

I had read of Australia’s only mainland assault by an enemy force in the book An Awkward Truth by Peter Gross, and I already knew these facts and that the raid caused the worst death toll from any event on Australian soil. Yet, it was quite different to see dramatic reality of the bombed wharf than read about it. Below me, too, lay Darwin of today. It’s striking cityscape, its long shoreline and the vast town harbour and behind it all, lush mangrove swamps. It was so exhilarating it scotched my long held fear of helicopter flight. All too soon, we plopped ever-so-gently on the grassy helipad at Skycity Hotel, outfitted with enough opulence to win a Qantas Australian Tourism Award in 2009.

It was monsoon season and the city was a revelation with its colourful, office architecture, posh marina housing, restaurant strips and, most exciting of all, the new Wharf Precinct jammed with exotic apartment blocks.

Darwin is something of a chameleon town, having reinvented itself, following more than its share of hardship over the years. Not only has it risen phoenix-like from the devastation of its wartime bombing, but also following Cyclone Tracy in 1974. And its tourism growth is linked to an Australia growing awareness that war really came to Australia in Darwin. The Japanese pilots bombed three hospitals, flattened the police barracks, destroyed the post office and communications centre (remember that footage in Australia) and wrecked Government House.

The bombings  left the harbour and airfields ruined and in flames after those two raids that first day and there were 62 others. Which is why we stop at the site of the bombed Post Office so emotively captured in “Australia’’. There was no escape for the staff who had fled to a bunker, where they died in a direct bomb hit. We read in silence those names of the first victims of bombing on mainland Australia. We look at the only one fieldstone wall of the original Post Office left standing, pock-marked with machinegun fire but preserved within the government building complex.

We drove to the Esplanade and walked over to the war memorial which overlooks the harbour, before driving on to Stokes Hill Wharf, where the set for the movie “Australia” was built.  Darwin’s wharf is the popular leisure hub on weekends and high tourist seasons and this is where passengers of cruise ships alight. Darwin Museum at Bullocky Point holds the story of Cyclone Tracy, which destroyed Darwin early on December 25, 1974 – Christmas Day, killing 65 people. It was a sobering walk around the museum display where the story is told graphically with television footage and radio commentary from journalists, who lived here. A photographic display captures the terror of how Darwin was flattened.

Yet, Darwin transformed itself for a second time in our lifetime from destruction into such an exciting multicultural place, bursting with growth and change. No other capital city has suffered such huge civilian losses in an act of war or through an act of nature. (The bushfires hit regional communities.)  The Darwin of today is a vibrant city, the result of contemporary urban planning, dynamic architecture and beautiful open parks and modern housing.

Monsoonal rains sheet down on our second night at the contemporary Vibes Hotel. The weather continues its fury during breakfast where we watch, amused as the Cairns Rugby Team, the hunky Cowboys, huddle under the veranda in their budgie smugglers waiting for the storm to pass. They were on their way to swim in the new wave pool, the tourist highlight of the wharf precinct, when the deluge struck. On our last morning, we visit Darwin’s newest attraction, Crocosaurus Cove, with its countless crocodiles of all sizes.

Darwin, with its unique war history is unlike anywhere else in Australia. It’s a trendy, multicultural, tropical city and its colourful population mix (50 language groups in 100,000). It appears to be the most Asian of our capital cities and it also boasts a high percentage of traditional landowners, the Larrakia Aboriginal people. Monsoonal weather adds an exciting element and low tourist season offers reduced hotel rates and a luxury holiday on a budget in a beautiful place.

More information on www.tourismnt.com.au.

Peta’s off to Cannes

Good news for Adelaide film producer Peta Astbury who has bought the film rights of my book From France With Love.  She is taking her first, successful film, The Marrige of Figaro to Cannes.

The movie will screen in the Marche du Film of the Festival de Cannes, the all-important Cannes Film Festival marketplace on May 11, which could well be a lucky day because it is also Peta’s 35^th birthday.

The best news is that the SA Film Corporation will fund Peta’s trip to the event.

When one considers that Cannes attracts top film stars for the top international films, as well as the who’s who of film in direction and production, it’s certainly the place Peta needs to be.

The Marriage of Figaro is a delightful low-budget film about a good-guy Biker – Figaro – who can’t seem to pull off marrying the mother of his children after what has been an idyllic de facto relationship. It all threatens to collapse like a pack of cards. It had a successful run in the cinemas three years ago and is available on DVD.

Peta says she wants From France With Love to be her first mainstream film and going to Cannes for the second year in a row must surely help her international connections for funding and film distribution. And it won’t only be for Figaro, but hopefully also for FFWL, my own love story about meeting my husband Olivier in 2004. Back then he was my “lovely French man’’ and FFWL has been a best-seller for Penguin.

A fairytale wedding for a thoroughly modern Kate

Wasn’t the Royal Wedding wonderful? Although I am a Republican, it would be a hard-hearted woman who did not enjoy such a rich scene and relish in the pomp and ceremony when Catherine Middleton married Prince William in Westminster Abbey.

The new Duchess of Cambridge is bound to inject her own unique, lovely style into the eccentric Royal Family.  And wasn’t it a beautiful dress fit for a real princess? It was the dress more than anything that enticed husband, Olivier to sit through the whole two hour BBC coverage because he and his late wife, Colette, founded Caleche Bridal Centre. So he has seen many bridal fashion fads through the 37 years of his career as a national bridal manufacturer. He was delighted that Kate chose a gown with sleeves rather than the sleeveless gowns which grace our own social pages week by week.  He, of course, declared the bodice was “surely French chantilly lace’’.

Prince William – the future King of England – looked charming in his red military jacket and his mother, Diana would have been so proud of him.

It was such a joyful day with that fitting theme of charity and love.

I thought the Archbishop of Canterbury captured all our hopes for the bride and groom when he said. “They are making a new life together so love can flow through them into the future.’’