Grey Nomading, Eastern Suburbs Style

By Pearl Bullivant on December 5, 2013 in Other

Picture: The Bullivant family album

On and off over the past twelve months Pearl has been grey nomading around Australia, ‘Eastern Suburbs style’ – no Mazda bongo van for Pearl. The comforts of plane travel have allowed me to arrive in destinations as boho and ‘yoga-ganic’ as Byron Bay, Noosa, Moreton Bay, the Kimberley and Margaret River, all in the name of researching the yuppie ‘lifestyle’ whilst claiming a nice little tax deduction for airfares and accommodation along the way. Alas, through periods of homesickness and rages against the dictatorship of Campbell Newman, I have been compelled to watch re-runs of ‘Being Lara Bingle’ on my iPad, a series I deliberately missed the first time around but which satisfied my longing for the Eastern Suburbs coastline in all its pretentious glory.

Luckily, during my extended trip I returned to Sydney for a quick revisit of Clobaby Road, just in time for the grand opening of the Yummy Mummy Day Spa, a much needed essential service that will keep those appalling blonde BMW 4WDers off the narrow roads of the east as they are no longer forced to venture to ‘The Bays’ to seek beauty treatments. Instead, they can just double park outside Yummy Mummy, pop in for a shot of botox then drop in to Pasta Zu to pick up an entire week’s worth of ready-made meals.

The trips back also revealed that Fatty O’Barrell is planning to amalgamate the Eastern Suburbs into a huge Singapore (yes, property developers do own NSW) and that rudeness behind local shop counters remains, particularly in the form of Scott in David Jones menswear and the silly sales girls in Country Road who were so busy chatting loudly about their friend’s desperation “to adopt a black or Asian baby – either will do” that they forgot to serve their customers.

Unfortunately I must have been in Broome for Fashion Week when a memo was circulated around Clovelly informing all residents that the miniature poodle is the mandatory dog breed of choice on Clobaby Road. I’m extremely surprised that our wonderfully astute real estate agents aren’t using poodles as some kind of selling point in the Wentworth Courier now that Clovelly Public School is no longer trendy.

While we’re on the Wentworth Courier, where would I be without the ‘community minded’ Wenty keeping me up-to-date with their online version? I’m confused as to which ‘community’ the Wenty actually serves, but without it I would be ignorant of the fact that I will be returning to Sydney on Christmas Eve to a Parisian hairdresser offering “liberal, freer styles” and a homeware store that mixes “the sophisticated chic lifestyle of Sydney’s harbourside suburbs with an Australian take on the Hampton’s design ethic” and a “focus on understated elegance”. Alas, my ‘moral ethic’ will prevent me from shopping there.

Via the trusted Wenty I have been informed that nannies are now an essential part of any Yummy Mummy’s exercise routine and that if I combined “the edginess of New York’s SoHo with Parisian-like sophistication” I would end up in Potts Point. Real estate advertising in the Wenty still remains at its obnoxious best; I could buy a home that could “host a party for 200. 25 children could be neither seen or heard upstairs” and I now know that owning a beach house is “chi chi”.

What truly quelled my homesickness, though, was travelling through a Western Australian beachside suburb and being greeted by a ‘Camilla’ kaftan shop. Forget that the suburb is the wealthiest in Perth; Camilla claims she only opened her store there because she is “Piscean and needs to be near water”.

So Merry Christmas, sweeties – merry in the knowledge that the pretentious kaftan exists EVERYWHERE in Australia.

Pearlie xxx