Wednesday, 18 August
We'd wangled a considerable saving on the train journey because of the 40th anniversary celebrations, but the reduced fare came with a couple of riders.
One was the need to book two nights' accommodation, which accounted for the booking at the Travelodge (at a rate, incidentally, we would've avoided under other circumstances) and the second was the need to book one of three tours on offer.
One was a wine tasting tour to Margaret River, but our plans included a couple of days there rather than a one-day bus trip. The second was an excursion to Wave Rock, which Madam had visited and been underwhelmed by, so the third option was always going to start a short priced favourite.
A visit to Rottnest Island is probably one of those things listed as a must do when visiting W.A. but given the time frame we were working in we'd probably have given it a miss if it hadn't been the third tour option. But the others were non-goers, so we'd gone to bed the previous evening with the knowledge the courtesy bus would be waiting at the front door at 8:20.
We went very close to missing it, having slept in due to a combination of a king size bed that proved a remarkably good sleeping surface, general weariness after the train trip, where we'd slept adequately rather than well, effective curtains on the windows with a large sun-blocker to our eastward side, overcast weather and the previous evening's over-indulgences.
Under other circumstances I would have been up early, tapping away on the laptop, but while I managed a start, that happened much later than expected, and I'd mentally prepared myself to stop when Madam emerged from the shower, something that happened slightly later than expected, so there was a wild flurry of activity that had us downstairs in the foyer right on 8:20 to spot the Rottnest Explorer bus waiting on the other side of Hay Street. As we boarded and found seats about midway along the bus, I was mildly nonplussed to note a strangely familiar face, and while I couldn't imagine what noted Australian culinary personality Stephanie Alexander would be doing on a tour to Rottnest Island stranger coincidences have, no doubt, occurred.
Now, it's not as if Hughesy has spent his entire life filing away celebrity images in the memory bank, and as noted elsewhere, when they were filming the movie in Bowen (in Bowen Australia is always the movie) I wasn't sure I'd recognize Nicole Kidman and I failed to spot John Jarratt strolling past wearing a pink dressing gown, so why, inquiring minds would ask would Hughesy be spotting a grey-haired lady of a certain age and making an identification as Stephanie Alexander?
Simple, really.
After some thirty years of reading the odd article about food with that face somewhere in the byline, and a similar period of newspaper articles with accompanying photos, Ms Alexander is one of three or four culinary figures I'd possibly recognize in real life. When you consider the others are The Cook and The Chef and Neil Perry there's possibly an answer to your question of Who is Stephanie Alexander?
Given the relative dearth of watchable TV over recent months I seem to recall Ms Alexander as the subject of one of those tribute to and examination of their influence-type programs on the ABC, where the husband/partner was featured from time to time and there was something familiar about the bloke who was sitting alongside the possible influential culinary figure. There was another woman in the party of three, so it was possibly a case of three old friends or relatives on a day trip together, and since that was presumably the case I butted right out.
Still, you can't help wondering.