Our first (and second...) Singapore Sling!

As many of you know, this week's blog is coming to you live from East Asia where Jane and I are on our current travels! Stories of this trip will follow in the coming weeks, but I thought I'd share one little nugget now!

A highlight of our present trip was a visit to the world famous Raffles Hotel, a true icon in the real sense of the word. It was our third visit to the island state yet this was our first visit to the world renowned establishment.

Never had a Sling before and it certainly didn’t disappoint. It was so good we had to have a second. Truly delicious. We weren’t lucky enough to get a chair in the Long Bar, where the Sling was originally concocted by Ngian Tong Boon, a bartender in the aforementioned bar.

It is not clear when it became the Singapore Sling as it seems to have been christened the Straits Sling as it became widely available through Singapore, Penang and Malacca, the Straits Settlement. In a time when cocktails boast such suggestive name as “Shag on the Beach,” “Apple Spitter” and “Express Martina,” I might not have the names exactly right but you know what I mean, it is a relief that Raffles sticks to such traditional names as are shown on the photograph.

Melbourne, Puffing Billy and the Dandenongs

Back on our 2020 trip Down Under, the fires continued to rage in the bush, so we had to sort out our change in itinerary.

We had been following the fires with an avid interest. They really were having an effect on our trip. This, even to me, seems a little selfish. Out in the bush, Australian for countryside, fires were ripping through communities, ripping through lives and ripping through acres of woodland in their millions. It was bad enough to witness this or hear about it over television and radio news, but we could not imagine living through this all-consuming nightmare. There was no sign of significant rain and the winds would get up at the most inopportune times. It left devastation that could not even be conceived in Hollywood which, of course, nearly brings us full circle, as witnessed recently in California. This planet can sometimes be very unforgiving.

Anyway, we were scheduled to spend some time with my cousin, Peter, and his partner, now husband, Jamie, close to the New South Wales – Victoria border, but the fires were taking their toll. They had moved their valuables into a fireproof safe building on their property and had already been evacuated, as a caution, on a number of occasions. Following on from our visit to Beechworth, their town of residence, we were due to visit the country’s capital city, Canberra. Thanks to the ravaging fires we now needed to change our plans. We now had a gap of nine days to fill, so we split them between Melbourne and Sydney city centres.

Every day the news emanating from the fire areas became more and more worrisome. 33 people paid the ultimate price, losing their lives to this, in the main, natural phenomena. Fire, it appears, plays an important role in the rebirth of native flora. It is also estimated that over 3 billion vertebrates, not including humans, were affected by the catastrophic blazes. 19 million hectares of land, including 12.6 million hectares of woodland, were destroyed. Just think about that for a minute, 19 million hectares is 190,000 square kilometres, 73,400 square miles; to put this in context, Yorkshire has an area of around 4,600 square miles. All of this devastation has left thousands bereaved, homeless and scarred for life. Add the mental anguish to the physical privation and you have a small apocalypse. Frightening, isn’t it?

Alas, Jane and I are still to visit Peter and Jamie, as well as Canberra. According to many accounts we haven’t really missed much by not calling in on Canberra but I am, nonetheless, intrigued to visit this purpose built capital city. One day, who knows!

There is no doubt that Melbourne is a leading light in sport and culture, it hosts the first of the year’s tennis grand slam tournaments and the Boxing Day test has become a stalwart within the international cricket calendar. It boasts fine theatres, although I don’t speak from experience, fine universities and a beautiful urban park, the splendid botanic gardens. All of this sits quite tidily on the banks of the Yarra River.

In my opinion it is the home to one of the most impressive war memorials in the world, the Victorian War Memorial. As I have mentioned previously in these pages, it doesn’t take a lot to make me cry in this sort of environment. I do wonder as we get further away from the lives of those who served in the world wars if this respect will dim even further. I think this hunch is borne out by the apparent abandonment of present day veterans, there seems to be a lack of investment in supporting their physical and mental wellbeing. I believe it is a smear on any government that does not support its war veterans.

As with all these places around the world, it is full of names of men, in the main, and some women, who laid down their lives that the rest of us might enjoy a semblance of freedom. Will we ever learn the lessons? It doesn’t seem like it, does it?

On leaving the memorial we strolled around the gardens, consisting of many native and migrating plants, all living in harmony. Not quite a metaphor for the human occupation of Australia, as the indigenous peoples seem to have been brushed aside for the foreign migrants. This is just food for thought. It contained a beautiful ornate lake as well as a well-manicured greensward. We found ourselves a bench and, as many people say, drunk in the vista.

It was hard to believe that within small tens of kilometres fires were raging out of control, the persistent drizzle of the past couple of days barely enough to put out a candle. Jane set up a selfie of us when a kind young man, walking in the park with his cockerpoo, named Inca, and his daughter, named London, asked us if we would like him to take one of us together? We accepted his kind offer, but a memory flooded in to cast doubt. Do you remember the time Del Boy and Rodney went to Florida in a Christmas special of “Only Fools and Horses?” A stranger asked them if they would like a picture of the pair together, they agreed and the good Samaritan promptly turned tail and legged it with their camera. To ensure against this, I asked that he let his dog be in the picture with us, I said how I loved dogs. We got the picture and swapped the dog back for the phone.

As an aside, we came across a statue in memory of, and tribute to, Sir Edward Dunlop, known as Weary, to his friends and men. What a truly amazing character. First of all, we shall deal with his nickname; I am sure the cryptic crossword experts among you will have worked this one out already, sorry, I had to look it up. His surname of Dunlop, of course, is synonymous with car tyres, so word association kicks in here, tyre is changed to tire and, hence, tired is weary! There you go. Then old Weary, having collected a first class honours degree from Melbourne University went on to become the first Victorian born man to represent the Wallabies, the Australian international rugby union team. To this day, he is the only Victorian remembered in the Australian Rugby Union Hall of Fame. He then joined the Australian Army, the Medical Corps, and was taken prisoner of war by the Japanese in Java. He ended up a Lieutenant-Colonel before his capture. He was, inevitably, as it seems for PoWs, transferred to the Burma Siam railway. He is credited as the main reason the Australian survival rate among the allies was the highest. After the war he had a distinguished career as an Ear, Nose and Throat Specialist. A real modern day hero.

On the day of our excursion to Puffing Billy we were greeted with a fine drizzly dawn. In fact, I think I would describe it as foggy. We were collected from the hotel and transported into the Dandenong Mountains. Let’s get one thing right here, despite Australians’ tendency to built their own landmarks and achievements up, it is a mystery why, as there is no shortage of ego, the Dandenong range is not a mountain range, they barely count as hills.

On the way we pulled into a lovely forest park, an incongruous space with such devastation so close. We were treated to a brew from a billy, basically a cup of tea, the Australian delicacy of vegemite on crackers and a lamington. God, I had forgotten how good vegemite was. Must see if I can add some to our next Sainsbury shop!

Lamingtons, well there’s a thing. Not quite sure what is so special about these? There is no doubt that they are nice and tasty. They are, though, a slab of vanilla madeira cake with chocolate icing drizzled with desiccated coconut. Not sure I have used the right culinary terms in the description. The name is attributed to Lord Lamington, a former governor of Queensland. I was intrigued: did he come up with the recipe himself, did he order a minion to come up with it and why, Queensland is very hot for most of the year, so I am not sure how he thought the icing would set? So I looked it up. It turns out that he was born Charles Wallace Alexander Napier Cochrane-Baillie, like the cake, what a mouthful! It seems he thought that the appointment of State Governors should only come from the British gentry, seems fair enough! He was, initially anyway, opposed to federation believing it would introduce a rampant socialism into the colony.

The Australian Federation was created in 1901, incidentally the same year dear old Lammers completed his term as governor. It doesn’t state anywhere that toys were tossed from the pram but it does make you wonder. Articles I read on the matter don’t appear to be entirely convinced that he gave his name to the cake, after all it does not appear in records until 1927, well after his term as Governor of Queensland. If it wasn’t named after him you can only wonder who? It probably isn’t really important but, I do agree with most reports, they are jolly nice.

Onto Puffing Billy himself. Talk about underwhelmed, this, in my mind, was the epitome of disappointment. I think we had seen him originally when Michael Portillo, during one of his great railway journeys had called in for a look. Memory told us that he spent an entire day traversing the line, learning fact after fact about the legendary engine. It all looked quite wonderful with blue sky, a shining sun and Portillo dressed gaily to match, probably in a pink and green combo or similar. We, on the other hand, were crammed in to carriages facing out, couldn’t see a thing, welcome to my world, thanks to the all pervading fog.

The train has now acted as a tourist attraction for longer than it was actually in service. Its original job was to carry resources, human and material, from Melbourne to the, what was then, frontier land. It doesn’t seem plausible today as it is only a short kangaroo hop from the city’s suburbs.

We alighted at the town of Sassafras, not much more than a village in English terms, so named because of the trees bearing the same name discovered in the locale. It has a population of only 970 and boasts the lovely little Marples’ Tearoom. It is not a great leap of faith, on this cold, grey and foggy day, to imagine Agatha Christie’s sleuth enjoying a pot of tea and solving a murder nearby.

I don’t know whether it was the weather but it did feel very English, a summer’s day with the temperature only just nudging 13° it is easy to imagine this to be the Yorkshire Moors.

To be continued next week...