Weekend At Burnie's
Sun Herald
Saturday August 23, 1997
An artists enclave gives sleepy Clovelly a time-warp feel.
In our restless cityscape, the search for stimulation often brings people to the brink of exhaustion. Toxic lifestyle burnout can be counteracted only by peace and quiet, yet the urge to go hunting and gathering coffee and sugar drives many of us out into the fray on the laziest days.
If you're fed up with the frantic pace of the cafe business, then a little slice of laid-back country ways won't go astray. Burnie Street, in the sleepy eastern suburb of Clovelly, is such a gentle place in the sun. In a short cluster of shop fronts built just before the 1920s, a small community of artists - photographers, painters, weavers and breadmakers - have created a country-style idyll in just a few years.
Down the road, Clovelly Beach can be reached through a tangle of foliage and unfurling flame trees. This modest little beach shimmers like an impressionist painting, seemingly protected from modernity by a 19th- century time warp.
As beaches go, it enjoys an unspectacular reputation. It was Little Coogee until 1914. In 1834, William C. Greville bought 20 acres including the foreshore of the bay for #40. Since then the council has cemented most of the shoreline of the deep bay, making it a sunny lounging area for the swimmers and snorkelers, who are attracted to the natural floor of an ocean pool protected from high seas and sharks by a barrier of rocks and rock pools. The beach itself is short. There is, of course, no surf, but at night strange glimmerings under the water betray the presence of eager scuba divers.
If you get hungry after a swim or long walk (head north for Bronte and Waverley cemetery, south for Coogee beach), there are not many places to go unless you head back up to Burnie Street (just five minutes' walk away).
The Burnie Street Deli does great, hearty breakfasts (hash browns and fried tomatoes) as well as fresh fruit juices and gourmet pies, cakes and biscuits. Across the street at 23a is The Direction Of Cure Homoeopathic Drugstore, with Cure painted in swinging gold copperplate on the old shop front window. The Cure is a new concept with an old-world feel. It serves great coffee (Lavazza, $2.50 a cup), sweets from the Tart Sisters (lemon curd and raspberry almond), homemade fudge, portuguese custard tarts (from Fleur de Lys in Bondi), pistachio biscuits dipped in chocolate and vegan cakes. There are also fantastic Victoire sourdough baguettes (one of the best breads in town), oatcakes with Mersey cheese ($4.50), tuna and green bean salad ($7.50) and savoury tarts ($6.50 with salad).
But while all these may cure your hunger, what about symptoms of inner unease? Not many cafes can do much for these beyond soothing music and herbal teas. Cure stocks the Husk range of organic infusions ($3 a pot). Dream blend promises "an aromatic cup of reverie made from nature's choicest organic agents of slumber", lavender, chamomile and Hawthorn berries. Calma is made from rose petals, lemon balm, peppermint, aniseed and calendula.
But there's more. Philippa White, the energy behind the espresso machine, is a fully trained nurse with 15 years' experience (she has just finished a five-year stint at the hospice at St Vincents in Darlinghurst). Her partner, Jinks Dulhunty, a filmmaker and designer, is also a practising homoeopath, who studies at the Sydney College of Homoeopathy.
Being such experts in caring for people, the pair have decided to incorporate some of their healing gifts into this new venture, adding fresh karma to Burnie Street. As well as a library for browsing (titles include Medicinal Plants, Bush Food and the Readers Digest Complete Family Guide To Homoeopathy), the Cure stocks Helios homoeopathic kits ($65), Bach flower remedies and homoeopathic remedies in liquid form ($7) for everything from jet lag to sunstroke. The day we were there, customers had come in with nappy rash, toothache and sciatica. All were treated, but, says Dulhunty, "we always urge people to see a doctor for a comprehensive diagnosis".
The beauty of homoeopathy, she says, is that it has no known side effects and the doses are so minute as to be safe for pregnant women and infants. While nobody really knows why it works, it is one of the most widely accepted traditional alternatives to western medicine. It has been practised for 2,000 years and in Britain doctors refer 40 per cent of their cases to homeopaths.
Funnily enough, coffee, along with toothpaste, is one of the strongest antidotes to homoeopathic remedies. "We embrace life's contradictions," says Dulhunty heartily. "We're not purists here." The Cure is more a salon "or a speakeasy", she says, where you can have your poison and take the cure at the same time (adjusting the dose to counteract the coffee).
The apothecary decor of The Direction Of Cure (also the name of the fourth law of homoeopathy) is central to its charm. Cabinets with displays of little brown bottles (as well as shiny tins of Serie Oro Exquisito Anchovies) are all food for the curious eye, along with a huge old wall map of the world.
Australia and New Zealand lurk behind the espresso machine.
© 1997 Sun Herald
