Sunday Fete Fun

It's been a long time since I went to a school fete. But when my friend Paul told me that the school his boys attend, St Brendan's Catholic Primary School at Moorooka, would be having one this weekend, and that his Beatles tribute band would be playing there, I decided it was time to renew my acquaintance with a good school fete!

It started with a Trash n' Treasure sale in the courtyard of the school. Lots of books, games, clothes, and general bric-a-brac. I picked up these two cute glasses for about 50c.

Then out the back through a fabulous food court that was a true multi-cultural fare. From Sudanese afternoon tea, Vietnamese spring rolls, English strawberries and cream or Devonshire tea, a Tongan barbecue, Ethiopian coffee to a good old Aussie Lions club steak sandwich or sausage sizzle, there was something for everything. It was a fairly breezy day today and the scents being carried throughout the school grounds were absolutely heavenly.

Outside there were the traditional fete stalls. Sweets and cakes, plants, a silent auction, lucky dips and tomobola, face painting, raffles and lock and key games.

But one special new kind of fete stall that I am starting to see pop up at fetes and fairs these days, in our lovely multi-cultural city... a henna tattoo stall.

I've always wanted to have a henna tattoo done. Those of you who know me know that I love the permanent ink, I have three tattoos myself. And while henna tattoos are not permanent, they're a beautiful form of ink body adornment that I've always had a fondness for. So I decided to indulge and have my left hand hennaed.

Beautiful huh? It's even nicer now that it has dried and set.

Finally we settled in to enjoy Paul's band, ironically called "The Beetles". They did a fantastic and fun set of the early Beatles stuff before we had to scoot.

I enjoyed them and so did their audience, which were of all ages.

I really must make the effort to get to more fetes and fairs around this city, they're always such a lovely way to spend a weekend afternoon.

The Willow - Moorooka

Today I had planned to go to lunch at an Italian restaurant over at Tarragindi, but when we got their they had closed, so instead my friends suggested The Willow over at Moorooka.  It's the pub on Beaudesert Road, at the bottom end of the shops.

They have a lovely big "beergarden" area, not really a beergarden but an outdoor kind of deck that is a restaurant.  Huge, spacious and cool once all the doors and windows are open, it's a nice area to sit for a Sunday lunch.  I ordered the steak sandwich.  It was HUGE!  Good tender steak (and not a scrawny thin bit either), bacon, egg, cheese, beetroot, onions, tomato and lettuce, served with battered chips and a side salad.  The side salad was a tad bland but there was so much of the chips and steak sandwich I couldn't eat everything so I didn't bother about it.

After a couple of hours sitting and talking with friends we decided to have coffee and dessert, so I ordered one of their two dessert choices (they could use a couple more choices really), which was chocolate mud cake with berry coulis and ice cream.  Absolutely divine.  The mud cake wasn't too sickly but was still fudgy, it was good quality vanilla ice-cream, and the berry coulis was made with real berries.  Really scrumptious, and they do a fairly good coffee too.

All in all, a pretty good find in the suburbs.