Monthly Archives: July 2010

Goodbye Telstar

General, Photos

Ford Telstar Ghia on the tow truck after being written off in motorway accidentAfter being involved in a car accident on the Gold Coast M1 in late June, my trusty 1989 Ford Telstar Ghia has been written off by my car insurance company.

I’ve been tottering around in the Telstar for the better part of 10 years and only now is the odometer finally approaching 200,000 kilometres.

George & Jude bought it for me as my first car while I was at university, which was a massive upgrade from the family Ford Falcon XM ute with distinctive blue cobra stripes. It was powered by a 2.2L 12 valve 4 cylinder engine, which even in its hay day probably wasn’t the most performant engine, nor particularly free revving – however I suspect that might have been part of its recipe for longevity. I still remember how excited I was, especially when I realised that it had a velour interior, power windows, power mirrors and wait for it, oscillating air conditioning vents in the front!

In that time, I really haven’t had any major problem with the vehicle either mechanically, in the interior or on the exterior of the car. It gets serviced once or twice a year, I put fuel in it and it just goes. On the mileage front, in my mix of highway and city driving to and from work, I get approximately 500km from a tank of fuel and over 550km if its strictly on the highway.

I’ll miss the Telstar, it has been a great little car and served myself and Claire really well over the years. Now I just need to find an adequate replacement and hope that I have a hassle free existence with it as the Telstar has provided.

Bumbles Cafe Surfers Paradise

Food

Bumbles Cafe Surfers Paradise Gold CoastThis evening I was lucky enough to have dinner at a small, quirky Surfers Paradise restaurant named Bumbles Cafe. It is located on River Drive at Budds Beach and has a great outlook over the famous Gold Coast canals with their luxurious mega mansions and super sized cruiser style boats. The site was originally a convenience store and in January 2000 was converted into a small cafe with a handful of tables and a bench seat. Over the years, that has grown to now seat sixty inside spread across a split level floor and four general dining spaces, coupled with alfresco dining for forty.

By the look of it, Bumbles take a lot of pride in their menu and keeping it seasonal and fresh. We were eating from the menu of the month, which had three courses with 4-6 dishes in each section. I chose a lemon risotto with Morten Bay bugs for an entre, snapper on a bed of beans and a sticky date putting for dessert. All of the meals I had for dinner were excellent, well cooked and flavoursome. With so many other delicious options on this months menu alone, I can see why people return to Bumbles restaurant for dinner.

I’ve known about Bumbles as a cafe from 2004 when I first moved to the Gold Coast as it is walking distance from one of our offices, however didn’t realise that they had such an excellent dinner service as well. I would absolutely love to go back and sample some of the other items on the menu at some point, which will no doubt be different but equally as scrumptious.