As the Northern Hemisphere cooks in the long tail of its endless summer, down here in Sydney it feels like the winter’s nearly over.
August can be one of those months that catches you out with surprisingly cool temps before things pick up at the start of spring.
Thankfully, we’ve had plenty of things on – including a trip to the tropics – to keep us warm or at least distracted.
From outstanding dinners with friends flexing their Chardonnay collections to my incredible trip to the Solomon Islands to Christina starting a new pursuit in high-diving to both of us hanging out at the Thai ambassador’s house, here’s a flavour of the month of August.
Cheers – Jim & Christina xx
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Sydney Brewery in Disguise
This afternoon is the last day to see the transformation of our local brewhouse – Sydney Brewery no less – into a famous if fictitious beer hall.
For the filming of the latest season of Colin From Accounts, Sydney Brewery’s Rozelle venue has become Echo Park Brewery with all the livery and branding, and also a very decent beer the brewers have created just for the show.
It’s amazing to see how set designers and stylists have managed to change so much of the space so it fits with the show’s aesthetic. I’m looking forward to seeing the results on screen soon.
And if you haven’t watched Colin From Accounts yet, give it a go. It’s funny, heart-warming and well-acted by a great Aussie cast including Harriet Dyer, Patrick Brammall and Helen Thomson.
Thomson was also in the Last Anniversary, which was filmed in the beautiful Simpson Cottage in Bundeena we visited and reviewed recently.
Chardonnay avec Gourmet
This evening, we’re at our excellent friends Michael and Louise’s house for dinner. A while ago, I mentioned the new ultra-premium range that Scarborough Wine Co in the Hunter Valley have created called Keepers of the Flame (you can read more about that here).
It turns out that the Scarboroughs make Michael and Louise’s favourite Chardonnay. In fact they’ve got a whole rack of the Yellow Label at home. This inspired a Chardonnay evening where these guys, who are tremendous chefs, matched food with some of the best Chardies we’ve had – including the bottle of Keepers of the Flame we’ve brought round.
We eat superbly and drink far too long into the night with some amazing wines from all over the world. What wonderful, generous, fun friends we’re so lucky to have.
Christina Takes A Dive
Check out Christina’s form! Born from the deep desire to be able to leap head first from the top deck of a yacht, Christina has wanted to learn to dive properly for years.
Thankfully, her friend Rex has similar ambitions and has found the one place in the whole of Sydney that does springboard diving lessons – at Olympic Park Aquatic Centre.
So now, as well as working towards her Second Dan jujitsu black belt, Christina is finding out the best way to hurl herself from great heights into a body of water. Good on ya, Chris.
Solo to the Solomons
This afternoon, I’m setting off (without Christina!) on a journey to a place that not many people have been to; to a country that, up until 100 years ago, still practised head hunting; to a nation that uses strings of shaped seashell fragments as currency.
I’m on my way to the Solomon Islands to become a Solo Boy!
It’s a fun term locals use to talk about themselves when they’re having fun. I try betel nut and spit blood, I wreck dive from the beach, I learn some Pijin and I get stuck into SB, the local brewery’s high-strength beer that locals refer to as ‘Sunday Bike’.
Drink too many SBs on a Friday and you wonder how you got home on Sunday. It must have been on the Sunday Bike!
I think I’ve earned the Solo Boy title.
Located just south of Bougainville and Papua New Guinea, and north of Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands is only a three-hour flight from Brisbane, but even its capital city Honiara feels like a world away.
This beautiful exotic archipelago of almost 1,000 islands and six distinct provinces is so rich in culture.
It’s a Pacific melting pot of Melanesian, Polynesian and Micronesian ethnicities that settled here around 30,000 years ago, and a history shaped by colonialism, Christian missionaries and WWII.
I’m travelling as part of a media trip by Tourism Solomons with the magnificent all-star PR Spike Parker-Brown, eminent travel writers John Borthwick and Eleanor Hughes, and the delightful Cheryl Patterson founder of diving and adventure travel company Deep Blue Adventures.
Our journey takes us around the capital, then to the Central Province where perfect beaches and majestic wrecks line the shores of tropical islands that freckle the immaculate waters. We travel to Malaita Province, the most populous region, to find sacred waterfalls, try local food and learn more about the culture here.
Solomon Islands has its own panpipe music, which is very different to the Andean style. Though if you ask a local, they’ll tell you they prefer a bit of Reggae!
Malaita is also where Solomon Islands’ shell money culture originated, and we’re here for the annual Busu Shell Money Festival. This two-day celebration is full of dances, parades and speeches – they even set up a live demonstration of how shell money is made (there are between five to eight arduous stages) for us.
Other than our group, there’s another random travel journo, a Spanish backpacker and a Dutch anthropologist at the festival. Everyone else is local. It’s a great honour to be here, but also an incredible experience to see a festival that’s been organised for locals, not tourists.
Back in Honiara, we explore more of Guadalcanal and its involvement in WWII. There are some harrowing stories of battles between the Japanese and American armies for this isolated spot in the ocean.
We finish the trip with a look at Pagoda Hill and a tunnel system the Japanese dug.
It’s been such an interesting journey seeing ancient cultures, modern-day impacts and a place that fewer than 30,000 people a year get to see.
What a pleasure, an honour and an experience to see the Solomons – somewhere so real, so unique and so friendly, and a place where tourism hasn’t yet ruined the object of its affection.
Wines for the Win
Back in Sydney, it’s nice to be home with Christina again. To celebrate, we decide to enjoy a glass of wine or two.
We kick off with the Single Vineyard Chardonnay from Marnong Estate in Victoria. It’s a beautiful, medium-bodied wine full of citrus and a soft creamy texture. That gunflint, struck match aroma just before you drink is one of my favourite things about a well-made Chardonnay.
We also dip our toe into the Terra Pinot Noir from McWilliams Wines, which – although it’s billed as their new table wine at RRP $19.00, drinks like a much more expensive bottle.
It has all the trappings of a modern Pinot: juicy strawberries and cherries, light oak and assiduously structured tannins, and shows not all Aussie reds have to be grippy, jammy beef bombs.
Thailand’s biggest Festival in Sydney
Christina and I are off a special event today at the Consul-General for Thailand’s grand house in Mosman.
We’re here to hear about the plans for the upcoming Thailand Grand Festival 2026 in Tumbalong Park, Darling Harbour 19-20 September.
It’s been four years since the last Grand Festival happened and that was in Belmore Park. You have to go back to 2019 since it’s been at Tumbalong, so this is a pretty big deal. In fact, this year is set to be the biggest Thai festival in Australia!
Check out the full festival programme here.
The event today is a taster of what’s going to be at this year’s festival, including traditional dancing, a fashion parade and a Muay Thai demonstration. There is also food of course, provided today by 2 Sisters Kitchen and Chat Thai, but there will be so many more outlets during the festival proper from the streets of Thai Town.
By the way, Sydney is now home to the second largest Thai Town outside Thailand in the world, just behind LA.
We hear from the Consul-General Mr. Naruchai Ninnad himself, who tells us this festival is a “celebration of the relationship between Thailand and Australia” and the “75th anniversary of diplomatic relationship between the two countries.”
With the theme of ‘Creative Life, Creative Heartbeat’, Mr Ninnad also instructs us “don’t just come to the festival, get involved.”
This taster suggests there’ll be plenty of opportunities to do exactly that. Cultural performances, art and craft, wellness, tourism and family-friendly activities promise plenty of things to ‘get involved’ in. There will also be some amazing prizes, including flights to Thailand, up for grabs.
The Thailand Grand Festival 2026 runs on Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th September at Tumbalong Park, Darling Harbour and admission is free.
The End
What bitter-sweet celebrations today. This is the end-of-season party for my football team. We really thought we were in with a chance of winning the league this year, but sadly, with a loss in the semi-finals against our old enemies Enfield, we fell at the last hurdle before silverware.
I don’t have any photos of the party itself (probably just as well!), so here’s a shot from one of the last games of the season. The pitch is a bit of a mess, but this has to be the most amazing place to play football anywhere. This is Birchgrove Oval on the Balmain Peninsula.
So, until next March, we hang up our boots and dream of what could have been.
At least the beer’s cold.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this Flavour Of The Month of August 2026. Here’s to plenty more where that came from!
Cheers – Jim & Christina xx