By Trevor Pepys
Noosa Yacht & Rowing Club
Friends and neighbours recently invited us over for dinner and, between courses, serenaded us with a gorgeous arrangement of the old Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer classic, Moon River, made famous by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s.
Trevor hasn’t been able to get the tune out of his head ever since, particularly ambling along the river the other night, with his huckleberry friend, two drifters, off to see the world.
Now I know most of you cretins will be more familiar with Cold Chisel’s Breakfast At Sweethearts than with the aforementioned golden nugget of ‘60s popular culture, but it seemed to fit the moment perfectly as Trev pushed the bride up the two flights of stairs to first stop of the evening, the Sunset Bar at The Boathouse, there to witness another glorious golden moment over proseccos, as the orb dipped below Mount Cooroy in a psychedelic blaze of colour, if you’ll pardon the mind warp into an era slightly after Moon River.
Time to move on, as we did, to an early sitting at the endearingly BS-free Noosa Yacht and Rowing Club.
Trevor has fond memories of whiling away long afternoons, beer in hand, bare feet almost dangling in the river, shooting the breeze with the village rascals on the skinny deck of the old tumble-down Yottie that once hung over the riverbank in front of the tennis court on Gympie Terrace. A quarter of a century has passed since the Yottie moved upstream and upmarket and became the “biggest little club on the coast” in its fancy Ken Robinson premises.
Happily, the casual, friendly ambience of the old club has continued at the “new” over a couple of decades and renovations. The Yottie has always drawn an eclectic clientele of locals, and Trev merrily table-hopped to chat with former pollies, moguls and tycoons, as well as a few old river rats, before settling down at a corner table to a bottle of Squealing Pig pinot gris ($39.90) a pleasant Kiwi drop from the Marlborough region whose label is almost as clever as what’s inside.
The Yottie menu is not vast, but it fits the Trev criterion that when eating by a river you should eat what’s in it, by boasting a good selection of seafood choices. On this occasion we decided to share calamari and chips ($24.90) and the house specialty, mild chilli mussels ($18.90). The calamari itself was adequate, but the pickled ginger accompaniment saved it from ho-hum. And the star of the evening – third time in a fortnight for Trev and yet to be disappointed – was the generous bowl of mussels, served on the half-shell in a delicious chilli Napoli sauce with rye bread.
There are several places around town that do good moules, Sindo’s at the Junction being one of them, but the Yottie’s is Trev’s fave rave, at least for the moment.
Doing the ramble home, we were lured into fireside bar stools at Whisky Boy by the thought of a nightcap flight of single malts. This far into the festivities, Trev’s brain simply can’t deal with the enormity of the whisky menu at Noosa’s best whisky joint, so the purchase of a flight provides simplicity as well as variety, and on this occasion, it was the damn fine Macallan Fine Oak that put a spring in his step all the way home.
The verdict? Well, you can’t beat the Yottie for a good feed and a slice of the true Noosa village experience, but in truth it’s our river that’s the star. Anywhere you can look at it while popping a cork and having a graze will do Trev.
Noosa Yacht & Rowing Club, Chaplin Park, Gympie Terrace, Noosaville. Phone: 5449 8602.
Open lunch and dinner, bookings advisable.
