writer and photographer FIONA STOCKER
When we pack for Bridport, I imagine Croquet Beach filled with sunshine, my husband breeching the waves in his kayak, my son somersaulting off the rock at Mermaid’s Pool. Like childbirth, Bridport has a way of ensuring you forget the pain, rain and onshore winds which batter the tent and the camp kitchen.
And we are filled with a new smugness, having become caravan owners. It’s our inaugural outing, and we here we are at the Bridport Seaside Caravan Park, which lines the foreshore and offers water views from every spot.
day one, we pitch camp, level the van and connect water and electricity. The fridge (a fridge!) is fully stocked. There’s a drinks cupboard for pinot noir. Outside, the teenager is accommodated in a roomy double swag under the marquee.
Day two is glorious, with cups of tea and al fresco crochet in reclining chairs looking out to sea. We make a passable butter chicken curry on the caravan’s gas stove. Overnight, we don’t quite die of hyperthermia.
Day three is a festival of rainfall so we occupy the teenager with his two favourite past-times that don’t involve an electronic device: learning to drive and eating out.
Hunkered in the dunes across Anderson Bay is Barnbougle Lost Farm Golf Resort. I once submerged my husband there at Spa 180, in a hot tub overlooking Bass Strait. Never before have we partaken of a cheese board and sparkling wine in a bubbly bath, but we liked it. Now we are back to experience the resort’s Lost Farm Restaurant.
The Sattlers, a local farming family, had the genius idea of using the coastal strip of their farm for a golf links. Created by a designer of world renown, Barnbougle subsequently became world-renowned. It has been rated in the Top 10 golf courses on Earth. Accommodation and dining are housed in timber-heavy, architecturally quiet buildings that hunker down in the dunes. The restaurant sits high on a windswept dune overlooking Hole 15. Today it’s a grey place where sea, sky and land collide.
The dining area is a generous room, muted in colour and sound, with a sweeping arc of floor to ceiling window giving onto the flat grey of Bass Strait and the rain-filled skies, with Bridport nestling on the headland opposite. Even the teenager is impressed.
are clothed in caravanning gear, a medley of hats, plaid jackets and jeans, but are greeted by a waitress who is surely listed in the world’s Top 10 sweetest. Seeing my son’s bucket hat, a blue corduroy confection embroidered with “Weet-Bix”, she enquires with a chuckle how many he’s had that morning.
The lunch menu is designed to appeal to locals as well as those who fly in for golf in their chartered jets. On this off-season weekday, the tables are occupied by a mix, making for a merry tinkle of conversation and crockery.
We order predictably according to gender: salt and pepper squid with apple, shallot and peanut salad, and Angus beef burgers on Turkish buns with onion marmalade and the lot, plus fries. We add a Clarence House Estate sauvignon blanc from Tasmania and a Langmeil Prime Cuts shiraz from the Barossa, and a brown soft drink which can remain nameless.
While waiting for our meal, we birdwatch, and notice the couple at the neighbouring table have brought binoculars to facilitate their twitching.
This country was once a rich source of food for the Aboriginal people of the pyemmairrenerpairrener clan, who kept the heaths and plains behind the coast open with fire for grazing by native animals which could then be hunted. The coastline, lagoons and estuaries provided abundant seasonal food like mutton birds, swans, ducks and seals. We have seen a hundred or so native black swans in the saltmarsh paddocks by the driveway on our way in, and sooty oystercatchers on the verges. From our table, we watch as a pelican soars past, needletail swifts rocket from the dunes, and a sea eagle causes an audible stir with a brief fly-by.
Food and drinks arrive, the bouquet of my sauvignon blanc leaping from the glass. The teenager inhales his burger, the husband eats his with messy relish, and I savour the tender squid, offset by the salad’s tangy peanut dressing.
Two glasses of wine leads to one thing in our family, and that’s dessert. Sticky date pudding with Meander Valley cream and walnuts, and cheesecake with raspberry and white chocolate should not be forgone. They arrive with three forks, generous serves adorned with edible flowers.
Afterwards, my companions forage for golf balls in the dunes by the concourse, while I take a work call, and unintentionally impress my colleague by telling her where I am. “I hope the golf is going well!” she writes in a later email. I don’t tell her I only went for a Top 10 lunch.
Fiona Stocker is a writer based in the Tamar Valley. She has published the books A Place in the Stockyard (2016) and Apple Island Wife (2018). For more information, see fionastockerwriter.com.
