The roast duck is served with dehydrated mandarins. At home I throw those away.

We came to subo as proxies for a Sydney friend whose family lives in Newcastle but will eat only at the Blackbutt Hotel. It’s a story the maitre d’ is disposed to enjoy. Newcastle was a dining wasteland when she moved here — and, it’s implied, before subo opened. We mention the attractive cafes on Darby Street, which we’re considering for breakfast “Cafe food,” she says with a shake of her head. “Okay if you want eggs, bacon and Hollandaise.” I daren’t say that I do.

In case you’re wondering what a dehydrated mandarin looks like

There’s more than a hint that subo considers itself a cut above: the lowercase spelling; the front door fashioned from irregular blocks of wood; and the way the staff lean in to give the pedigree of each course in a low voice, sometimes too low. “Is this lamb?” bellows an elderly woman still wearing the top half of her Chinese pyjamas. “I didn’t hear her. Is this lamb?” 

subo’s menu

Everything on the menu appeals, right down to the typewriter font. It all has provenance — the biodynamic (what?) sourdough is from Dungog, the Berkshire pork is from Byron Bay, the beef is from Cape Grim, and the goats that gave of their curd did so freely in South Australia. It’s not unusual on a menu but at subo it adds to the impression that the restaurant itself would rather be somewhere else.

Starter: Smoked salmon

We start with the ample cubes of house-cured smoked salmon served with shards of crisp potato and balls of roe that burst in the mouth. The perfection of these things makes it possible to indulge the scoop of potato ice cream dolloped uselessly on the plate. Take warm, buttery mashed potato, put it in a freezer and you’re left with something that glistens like a quenelle of cream but tastes like a dirty ice cube. The best thing about learning how to make potato ice cream is that it puts you only one step away from realising you shouldn’t.

At this point the lady at the table next to us begins sobbing. Perhaps it has been too much for her that her partner has been forking baby cos like he’s playing whack-a-mole then chewing it as if he’s worried it might come to life if he doesn’t destroy it first.

Main course: Roast duck

The roast duck comes, as roast duck always will, lying on a sauce that makes it look like the duck died from Delhi belly. Our waitress assures us this is actually a puree of witlof, the bitterness of which has been tempered by liquorice. Also, the lady in the Chinese pyjamas is not the only desiccated mandarin in the house tonight. There are several segments of dehydrated mandarin curled up next to the duck. The former fruit does nothing for the dish and the witlof allsorts is pleasant but, like the salmon, the duck stands well on its own, moist and full of flavour. 

Dessert: Peanut butter ice cream ++

The chef’s lookout in subo

Dessert choice is easy. Peanut butter ice cream served with salted peanut brittle strewn around a chocolate cake that is “finished with Guinness”, placed on a chocolate mousse and given a vigorous dusting with chocolate flakes. The mousse, the waitress says, leaning in and tucking one arm behind her back, is “house made”. In a restaurant that locates its goats curd on the map this begs the question: where the does the rest of it come from? If it’s not all made on the premises, there’s another reason to scrape the mash out of the ice cream maker. Wherever it comes from, it’s superb.

There is a wall of exposed brick at the back of subo. Set into it is a window to the kitchen. The window doesn’t open and it’s placed too high for the seated patrons to see much more than the handles of pans hanging on hooks. Sometimes, however, the chef can be seen in it, looking down onto the dining room. If he looked at us, he would have seen a couple enjoying well-sourced ingredients perfectly cooked, simply presented, and rising above some of the undesirable elements that surround them, just as subo itself is trying to do.

The great ocean behind Bells Beach

There is a point as you join the eastern end of the Great Ocean Road when you wonder if this is even going to be an ocean road at all. It’s a reasonable question when you’re surrounded by the thin greens of the Victorian countryside without so much as water glimpses. Then the veil of bush is snatched back and in front of you is over 200 kilometres of road so beautiful it’s on the Australian National Heritage register. Far from being a road with no ocean views, there are times when the road is so close to the Bass Strait that a passenger could open his door and drag a foot through the water.

Torquay

The steps down to Bells Beach

We spent the night in Torquay, having flown into Melbourne and rented a Ford G6 from Thrifty — an upgrade, so thank you very much, Thrifty. Torquay is the nearest town to the famous Bells Beach surf break and Sean, our Irish and occasionally befuddled GPS, took us in past cathedral-sized surf temples of every denomination — Billabong, RipCurl, and the rest of the board-short business club. This adjacency to mythical surf explains the signs around town forbidding cash-strapped surf pilgrims from using their vehicles as accommodation, man.

Torquay is a pleasant but unremarkable town, with supermarket, all-important bottleshop, and the odd cityfied outlet like the Torquay Larder (so of course we ate fritatta there). It’s in the throes of a recession-busing property boom. Seconds from the town centre four-bedroom kit homes are rising from the earth in every direction, indistinguishable except through individual combinations of options from the catalogue. This one with a portico, this one without.

Anglesea, Lorne, Apollo Bay

Anglesea: town or boutique shopping centre?

There’s surprising variation in the places along the Great Ocean Road. Anglesea, where we stopped for a coffee, is town whose centre is nothing more than one of those shopping centre complexes built by a developer with a “village” feel, off-white pre-fab buildings built around artificially winding lanes to give you the impression of making discoveries. “Oh look, a charming supermarket.” Nonetheless, the Offshore Cafe made perhaps the best coffee we had on the whole trip and a smoked salmon brioche that would have been worth driving back for.

Swing bridge, Lorne, leading to a $4 cup of tea

Lorne is not much more than a caravan park but its swing bridge was a premiere photo opportunity on a trip that was beaded with photo opportunities. It was a signature view and the Swing Bridge Cafe was a nice place to sit, even if we were starting to marvel that everyone on the Road could keep a straight face when asking $4 for teabag and water. I remembered the countrywoman overheard on a Sydney bus telling her travelling companions that she travels with a scoop of instant coffee and hot water in a thermos so as not to be tempted into the expensive city cafes used by office workers. I don’t think we found a coffee under $4 on the whole trip.

Apollo Bay we didn’t like. It seemed somehow to attract a different type of holidaymaker. Maybe our impression is affected by having been filtered through the crotch of the young woman who lay on the park bench opposite our cafe table, legs slightly akimbo and pointed at our lamb salad. The town just seemed run down and set in its ways.

12 Apostles

Bay of Islands

We counted three companies offering helitours of the 12 Apostles. The one based at the back of the carpark for the viewing promenade has two in ceaseless rotation, their skids barely touching the grass before they’re off with another load of Nikons. The Apostles are certainly quite something, but I was more moved by the same type of limestone stacks at the Bay of Islands.

The Bay of Islands doesn’t come with parking for 200 cars and a Parks Victoria cafe, and it’s the better for it. Without the other people pressuring you for the same vantage points, it’s possible to stand and be still with the view. The stacks are like sentinels with their eyes fixed silently on the horizon for thousands of years. There’s a sadness about them because they’re doomed eventually to fall when ocean has finally worn away enough of their bases.

Port Fairy

Port Fairy

Taking a coffee to the dock at Port Fairy and walking up to see the ocean and the nature reserve was another highlight, not just because it comes with a quite random reconstruction of a pirate ship floating towards the mouth of the inlet.

Port Fairy is tiny and charming. Parts of it are clearly used to catering for a high class of person and wear it obnoxiously, like the restaurant with a printed notice in the window demanding a reservation. Empty when we walked past looking for dinner, empty as we walked home from a wonderful meal and friendly service at L’Edera, where we didn’t have a reservation either.

Port Campbell was on the agenda the next morning before we turned inland to head for Daylesford. We didn’t see much reason to stop long, a good place to resupply but a service town, not a place to wander.

Only two and a half hours from Sydney, either by motorway or a pleasant winding back road is the Hunter Valley wine country. It’s a popular destination for couples, groups of friends and parties.

Nine feet under the ground, nine menus annually, nine courses, nine wines… Nine has one of the most cohesive themes of any restaurant we’ve ever been to…

Sydney's adults-only playground

Mark Dapin is a novelist and Sydney Morning Herald columnist. His witty Good Weekend column is so popular, he told me, that he can’t give it up because they offer him more money every time he tries.

I, myself, was introduced to Dapin through his novel King of the Cross, which I enjoyed so much in part because it felt so routed in its setting, Sydney’s Kings Cross. Through the publisher I asked if Mark would be willing to take V Australia’s passengers on a walk through the suburb for which he has obvious affection.

He agreed and what followed was a fascinating stroll around Kings Cross, Sydney’s magical adult playground, one that appears only when you’re with the right people. On a Wednesday night, when you’re out with your wife’s banking colleagues, it’s dinner in the fashionable harbourfront suburb of Potts Point. On a Saturday night, out with the boys, it’s acceptable to acknowledge that the self-same schnitzel house is right in the centre of Kings Cross, red light district, nightclub zone, and gangster headquarters.

Cazneaux Tree, Wilpena Pound

A comfortable four and a half hour drive from Adelaide there is a giant thumbprint in the World Heritage-listed Flinders Ranges National Park. It’s almost like the signature of the forces that forged this amazing area of South Australia.

The thumbprint is Wilpena Pound, a deep hollow formed by a combination tectonic forces 800 million years ago; followed by the action of a sea that deposited rock and debris over a period of 300 million years. The final sculpting was done by even more time and natural forces, sculpting the area into a furrowed landscape of deep cypress covered valleys that drop away into sheltered creeks lined with river red gums.

Wilpena Pound is a natural amphitheatre 17 kilometres long and 7 kilometres wide in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. Just to the east of the pound is Wilpena Pound Resort, built on Wilpena Creek. Where could be better to relax and slow down than a place that took hundreds of millions of years to become what it is?

This podcast was made for Anthology, whose Wilpena Pound Resort is the accommodation of choice for those who visit the Pound.

A glass of red wine, a comfortable armchair, a pianist singing lightly in the background and a staff that makes you feel like you’re a most welcome guest at a country house weekend. If this is your idea of a relaxing weekend, then you need to get in the car or on the train and head for the Blue Mountains…

Elegant but relaxed enough that you feel you can walk through the lobby from the spa in a bathrobe

This audio feature was made after a weekend at the Blue Mountains at Lilianfels in Katoomba, a hotel that truly makes its guests feel as if they’re part of a English country house weekend.

My friends on the lake at Blenheim Palace, 1992

In terms of mood it reminded me of a trip I took to Blenheim Palace in 1992, boring my friends with the constant lament: “Why isn’t all this mine?”

Within minutes of stepping through the doors of Lilianfels, I was wondering how I could arrange to live there.

I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels but this is the one that has so far come closest to my ideal: relaxed, comfortable, utterly uncorporate and dripping in old world elegance.

It’s a hard balance to strike. I expect there are bed and breakfasts that come close but I don’t like B&Bs — I can never shake the fact that I’m staying in someone’s house and they’re going to be cleaning the sheets, the bathroom and judging me.

Lilianfels manages to combine the remove of a hotel with hospitality that makes you feel they know who you are. It comes from the top of course and it was easy to see that as Brian McHenry, the general maanger of Lilianfels, worked the cocktail party he holds for guests on a Friday evening.

Interviewing Brian McHenry, the GM of Lilianfels

In our case Brian really did know who we were because we were interviewing him for the feature, which is how we ended up in his Volvo heading down Katoomba Street towards the shops. We’d not realised we’d chosen the weekend of the Winter Magic Festival.

I was just asking Brian whether many people came up for it when we came in sight of the blocked off street and a river of about three thousand heads blocking Katoomba Street waiting for the parade.

The parade isn’t mentioned in the feature but it will be in the book of weekends away that we’re preparing to launch some time this year. As you can see from the pictures, it really is quite a magical affair; a complete celebration of the joy of the Blue Mountains.

This feature was made for the inflight entertainment of V Australia.