Blue sky’s ahead!

Aw, No! Yeah, nah, um” I mumbled.

“Chigger, I told this lady you could make her a cheesecake for their booking and even reminded you yesterday” quipped Laura!

“I know Laura, I’m sorry, I’ll sort it” was my reply. I had agreed to make a cheesecake for a booking that I had completely forgotten about!

“Dam Scotty, I’m in trouble now, what we gonna do man?” I mustered to my co-worker.

“Ill give the cheesecake shop a buzz chigger, we will sort it” retorted Scotty.

“Chigger, sort it!” demanded Laura. She was wild and rightfully so. I still struggle on the baking cheesecake front, especially back then, fourteen years ago, yet improvising my way out of the shit is still one of my stronger points!

…

After moving back to Tasmania from Melbourne, my old roomie had informed me of a place down at the old Inveresk tram yards that were looking for a cook and potentially an apprentice if things worked out well.

My step-sister had called me up just after Christmas and informed me the old man had cancer again and he couldn’t be buggered fighting tooth and nails to get through chemotherapy and radiation! I sort of couldn’t blame him either, as much as it scared the living daylights out of me, my old man dying, so I was on plane back to the old home town of Launceston within a month!

I had spent the majority of my teenage and adolescent years being pissed off at my Dad for letting my sister die, since the age of twelve and this had caused nothing but drama for everyone, especially yours truly ever since! Kitchen life had started to sort me out, coupled with getting away from the wrong people. If anything, at least I had worked out on my own that my sister dying in a house fire was not anybody’s fault before my old man croaked it. I figured it was best to finally get a qualification and do the family name proud and sort my quarrels out with my father!

I needed to get paid as well as attempt not to get back into bum ways with old friends and acquaintances. The lads and lasies at Blue seemed like the good sort to get around so soon enough I was in!

Life in Launceston had always been a strange place for me! Growing up without a mum left me a scruffy kid of sorts and I had never really fitted in anywhere until I got to Melbourne, except with other ratbags! I never really held anything against those around me that felt the need to tell me I wouldn’t amount to much because I had a hard time as a kid dealing with my dead or dying family, yet it never stopped a burning desire in me to send back a big ‘F%$k you’ back and make something of myself. If not just for me, but to do something with myself to repay my father for busting his nuts in order to give his kids a good life, whilst being a single father to four ratbag kids. Not to mention the five other step siblings we would acquire in my early teenage years.

The main two players down at Blue was the head chef, Joshie, and the Maitre d was a bald man, who were the owners. My old room-mate from Melbourne’s friend, Stevie, was the apprentice. We had Greggy in pot wash and larder. Laura, one of the main waitresses, was your typical mother figure within the work place! She was always pulling you up on things that didn’t seem important, as all mothers do, but the sort of stuff that helped keep you in tow with what was expected in hospitality that a couple of rat bag apprentices had no idea about back then. We had a smoking hot blond waitress, who would for the most part frock about in vee neck shirts that would display her bust in the most distracting and manipulative way, yet we thoroughly enjoyed it and most importantly, she was very good at her job! The other main playersr were Smithy, Carly, Captain Dan, Nessy, Carmen, Nickos, Mairi and probably a few others, but these were the core members of the Blue family over my time there!

A bunch of hard working hospitality players who knew how to party and have each other’s backs when service started! An ideal network and workplace to help get me through the inevitable upcoming struggles I would edure that I hadn’t really had previously, nor accepted when my sister passed away in my early teenage years. Even if I didn’t get down with all the fuss about food, I would always have something to fall back on once I got qualified and worked out what I actually wanted to do with my life. Something my old man always harped on about growing up!

Blue cafe was absolutely buzzing day in and day out when I started. A wood fired pizza oven, quality fresh ingredients that we would prep most days from scratch! Fresh cakes, cookies, open faced fresh sourdough sandwiches and pretty well the tastiest and cheapest coffee in town! Stevie and I had even started rocking up close to half hour early for a while when I started! Trying to beat each other in to work, all in order to feed our inner pyro-maniac tendencies for the day and light the pizza oven before the other one arrived! Once the oven was roaring, one of us would then trot over to the Kmart complex to pick up fresh tomatoes and other bits and pieces from Coles or The Veggie shed to prep as much as we would from scratch daily.

The Café is stationed out front of the University of Tasmania’s Art department and Tram museum, so we had our fare share of artistic natured clientele, not that those kinds of scallywags could afford much more than a coffee and something from the tight arse menu we would provide for them.

I remember getting drunk one day with one of them, a chap named Bob, with whom I had somehow agreed to buy a painting from, that was to be a valley with mushrooms and some kind of hut stationed at the top of it! Sure enough, Bob had rocked in a few weeks later with my painting, which I had forgotten all about! 300 big ones was the damage for his artwork, which took me the best part of 3 months to pay off on my ‘2nd year apprentice’ wage of about $350 a week.

…

The Inveresk tram yards is the foundation of metal works and tram building in Tasmania which was erected way back in the 1870’s, and the current Blue Café building was their power station when it first required one!

After the powers that be from our mother land, England, had decided Hobart was to be the states Capital back in 1820, Launcestonians were starting to feel somewhat raped and neglected due to their status as the states’ capital being removed and handed to Hobart town, so they needed something that would make them feel like more than just a colony to where the criminals of England were sent or released to once their time was up! Something that would help to remove the ‘hated sin’ stigma that accompanied the burden of being a convict colony! The kind that only comes when the only thing really going for the state, and especially Launceston, was the free labor provided by the convicts that were transported from England on a regular basis!

After Australia’s first railroad was established between Taranah and Oakwood in 1836, out near Port Arthur on the states east coast, Launcestonians presumably had their first seed planted in how they can make their mark within the Great new southern colony of Australia. Around this time is when Launceston would attempt to start ridding themselves of their status as being convict capital of Tasmania, alias Van Diemans land back then. They would soon look build a metal works within the Inveresk precinct, Launceston.

Horse and cart were the main means of transport between Hobart and Launceston, or anywhere else on the Apple Isle since white man and the native land owner’s first arrived. The idea was first presented to build a rail line between north and south in the 1850’s, Launceston and Hobart town, and a survey was launched in 1855. Launceston’s southern counterpart, Hobart Town, was understandably jealous of its northern neighbour attempting to obtain the central show piece to such a proposal, the state’s first metal workshop and railway workshop, so therefore threw everything in their tool kit to prevent such a thing from happening. After just over a decade of political red tape imposed by politicians in Hobart town, and the easing of economic depression in the 1850’s and 1860’s, the first sod of soil would be turned in 1868. The Inveresk railyards were opened in 1871 by the big boy himself, Prince Albert, the Duke of Edinburgh. Finally on the 10th of February 1872, the railway was officially opened by Governor Du Cane, and the steam powered locomotive would endure in starting to bring Tasmania away from its convict dumping ground reputation.

The current Blue café building was erected through 1911-12 and was first utilized as a power station, then as a pay office before all operation’s ceased within the precinct in 1994.

My employers, Josh and the bald man, would then launch Blue Café in 2003!

…

After sending Scotty out through the pizza oven woodbox door and over to the cheesecake shop in the middle of service, we were able to serve up our promised cheesecake. From memory there were no complaints sent back my way! No news was and still is good news in this world, and especially hospitality!

Our delightfully cleavaged waitress would a few years later take purchase of the mighty Blue Café, whilst still maintaining all the things that made the venue such a great place to wine and dine. The Cafe has only just recently been purchased again by one of Launceston’s, and Tasmania’s, most renowned chefs and restaurateurs.

I had just recently seen a Facebook post from the team down at Blue Café offering vouchers in exchange for fresh fruit and vegetables. The plum tree at home had been copping a pasting from the local Rosellas and I had experimented with all the gels, sorbets, jams and lollys that an unemployed chef could muster during plum season, so the boy and I loaded up a Woollies bag and ventured down to Blue Café in order to trade a plum or fifty for a coffee and a voucher! After trading up for my desired venom, I returned later to get amongst a ham and cheese toasty, the sort of toasty fit for God’s and King’s! Bone shaved leg ham, goey AF melted cheese, thick cut sour dough, house brewed relish and micro planed parmesan cheese grated all over! It was great to chew on some fine mung from the Blue chefs. Really simple food pushed to its limits, the chefs there surely know the craft that is cooking! I personally would have loved a bit of well-seasoned tomato wedged in the middle, for acidic and texture purposes, yet I’m never complaining when I’m on the other side of the pass.

Of all the places I could have ended up starting my apprenticeship, at that given time in my life, the correlation between my father’s influence on myself and the constant throw backs associated with him and his teachings are as profound as ever to this day in relation to Blue cafe and my time spent there! His careers as a fitter and turner, Tafe teacher and Blue’s presence outside the metal workshops and University, coupled with his teaching’s in foraging and hunting in order to barter for money and feed yourself, to his constant encouragement in getting around genuine folks that would push me to get better, yet not bring me down or exploit me in the process.

The party life would eventually be my down fall after a couple of years at blue café, the same as most chefs whom choose to party as hard as they work! After taking a two week holiday in order to re-charge and quell my thirst for a beer and then nearly getting into a fight with the bald man over something stupid. I would return for a single day and then choose to walk away. A few of my old crew members are understandably still a little dark on me for abruptly walking out, and understandable so, yet as long as the bald man and Joshie know the reasons why, I can rest well knowing all is good!

The moralities and professional support provided by the owners at Blue café had allowed me to overcome the personal tragedy of my father’s passing, through reminding me that no matter what happens in your life, the world keeps turning and you still need to get up every day and perform! No matter what happened in my life or my co-worker’s life while employed at Blue Cafe, we still got in and made it happen! Until we couldn’t anymore!

From Joshie instilling an ability to just get in and have a crack and put a dish together, admit it when it’s no good, then having a group of co-workers that encouraged you to learn how to grow and make it better, as opposed to savagely belittling someone because that’s what you did in school or that’s what Manu does on TV! Stevie and I were first year apprentices who were encouraged to step up and take charge of nearly every aspect of the kitchen! It wasn’t always peaches and cream when we made a mistake, yet we were given the right encouragement to grow and prosper from the leaders in place!

Probably one of the biggest lessons I took away from the big bald man, was his advice in relation to those close to me that continued to bring me back to the depressed roots of my tragedy ridden childhood and my struggles in dealing with that during those times, which had sure enough returned with my presence back to Launceston! When we as people make the decision to grow, learn and prosper, there will always be people that knew the old person and that through the fear of losing that person or the perception of that person, those people will inevitably attempt to bring us and keep us down! Whether it be an old head chef needing you back, old friends that never had a crack at life that want to hang out, other kids you grew up with that are still stuck with the same mindset they had back when you were growing up, people will always be there, pulling us down! Even if it is out of only wanting us back just to hang out again or come and provide a service that feeds their own inner ambition! When we do grow and over-come the setbacks and trauma that life throws at us, those people lose your company or skill set, or how your own hopelessness makes them feel better. The loss in that comfort, or profit, in the old you scares them more than it scares the person being dragged back into the gutter of sorts! This advise rains true in way more than just cooking good food for mine!

Growing up in a small city like Launceston, an old convict town, you soon realize that even if someone does not know you directly, they know someone who thinks they do, or used to think they knew you! Once you are bottle stamped and branded in the minds of those who knew you growing up or at any other time in your life, there is nothing you can really do to change those views. If it helps people to feel better believing what they felt and how you make them feel when you were down for the count, then so be it, it’s always best to leave them to their own demise, as opposed to being swallowed by it.

The Blue family were truly one of the best hospitably environments I have ever been a part of and although it didn’t end well when all was said and done. Without the guidance of Joshie and the bald man, the mothering nature of the ladies that worked the floor, the banter and camaraderie shared between Stevie and I, then this aspiring chef writer would have never reached the heights I have reached so far! This place gave me the sort of confidence and skills that would help me overcome the belittling environments I had returned to that had plagued my childhood. Ones that would and will only bear fruit provided I fully distance myself from those kinds of people and environments! The same goes for anyone really. If you want to make good of yourself, then get away from those that look down on you and get around people that are going somewhere themselves! Hitch a ride, learn your craft, work hard, help each other out and maybe know when to put the breaks on when comes to celebrating your achievements before you lose sight of what your doing and where your going! Every restaurant in the world is choca-block full of celebratory beverages, just waiting to help you wind down from a hard day on the grind.

If your ever down at the Inveresk railyards, be sure to get in and grab a coffee or a bite from the new generation down and Blue café! I reckon most of the new crew would end up in ICU if they were to come and party with us fossils back in the day, but this new generation are more that capable, I’m sure you will like what you can see and taste!

• After naively betting Joshie one day that Queenslad would take out New South Wales on the Blues home turf in state of origin Rugby League, I was in debt for four free Sunday shifts. My last shift to pay my debt was earned working on the bar for an all night doof doof party. Around 7am whilst we were in clean up more and nearly all our guests had gone home, a Mr John Howard walked past n his morning stroll. We all raced out side to see the man himself with his entourage of security. We were all kind of like stunned mullets at first not knowing what to say. Then someone pipped up with ‘wanna buy a chainsaw Johny!!!’ Big Johny then stepped in front of his entourage and quipped ‘that’s great then’ and he was outta there. The lovely lady in the photo was the only one who had the sense of daylight to get photo. Truly great days at Blue Cafe!