More than 40 years ago my late photographer mate Rennie Ellis and I wrangled a commission out of the late book publisher Kevin Weldon (sorry, some of the people in this story are still with us) to package a tourist guide to be called Bali For Kids.
Lounging around at the Blue Ocean beach bar in Seminyak, as we did in those days, we concocted a plan for spending Kev’s meagre advance. We would hire two Jeepneys – one for each family – and head in convoy for the wild parts, up in the mountains and then on to the north coast and the placid Bali Sea, long deserted by the tourists in favour of the surf and sports bar hub of Kuta-Legian-Seminyak. Along the way we would blow the minds of our cast of kids, three 12-year-old boys and two girls aged nine and five, and hopefully their delight would be conveyed through our words and pictures to families considering a trip to this still raw holiday island.
After a nine-year-old’s fight with a monkey, a five-year-old touching a snake in a cave and the boys constantly fighting about who got the dickie-seat, we coasted down the hills and into Lovina Beach, a stone’s throw away from the port of Singaraja, once the staging point for all tourism to Bali, but neglected for decades until the arrival of the Euros and the hippies, looking for peace. We rented rooms in a humble losmen on the beach and after a nasi goreng dinner and a couple of beers, Rennie and I escaped the fighting of boys and their mums and pushed off the beach in a jukung with a few local fishermen.
We didn’t catch much on our handlines but I remember sitting offshore in the still water and looking back at a few cooking fires on the beach, the kero lights of a village here and there, and always the background of the mountains, and thinking, this is already a piece of the past, a place to remember.
Last week Mrs Brine and I returned to Lovina for the first time in all those years, seeking a refuge from the madness of the south and a place to recover from the rigours of a couple of weeks of fabulous but frantic travel with the extended family. The ride through Singaraja was a tad busy but west of town a few kilometres we took a side road into the Kalibukbuk neighbourhood and pulled into the Rambutan Hotel. As old mate Michael Caton would say, you could feel the serenity.
Opened in 1989 by Richard Hood and his Kintamani-born wife Tini, the Rambutan has grown from a simple lodge set in a large tropical garden with flowering shrubs and exotic fruit trees into a variety of accommodation options, all totally old school Bali but with mod cons, hidden in the gardens between two shady swimming pools and a poolside restaurant. It was the perfect remedy for the Pererenan experience.
While none of the restaurants we tried in the Kalibukbuk back streets is going to set the world on fire, if you stuck to basics and fresh local produce you were fine. One evening I was about to order the grilled mahi mahi at the Semina Café when a fisherman pulled up on his bike with a huge mahi mahi strapped to his back, which he hauled through the tables to the kitchen. This mahi had my name on it, so I went back to make enquiries. The fisherman told me he’d caught it off the beach after a 20-minute fight, strapped the pulsing beast to his back and raced it up the road for filleting. Another 10 minutes later it was on my plate and it was delicious.
Just as we found 40 years ago, Lovina is full of pleasant surprises like that, the exception being our two-night stay at The Astina Hotel, built on the site of the old losmen, Astina Seaside Cottages, we stayed in all those years ago. I discovered it on one of my dawn walks around the village and on a nostalgic whim I slapped down cash in advance (not much) for a poolside room. I should have done a more thorough reccy.
The pool we looked out on was a mess of broken tiles and two fading signs, recommending caution when using, was symptomatic of the sad state of neglect that permeated every aspect of the joint’s operation, down to watering down the milk for the complimentary morning coffee.
With hindsight, we should have stayed on at the Rambutan, but the takeaway from Lovina after so long was that old Bali is still there if you really look for it.
Perfect Bells for WSL opener
Team Noosa didn’t fare so well at the WSL longboard tour opener at Bells Beach, and Australia generally missed out on the top spots, but congratulations to old campaigners Soleil Errico and Taylor Jensen for taking out both divisions for California in beautiful finals day waves.
Of course, Taylor has spent half of his year in Angourie for decades now, meaning we can claim him as an honorary Aussie. But for me the highlight of the event was the breakthrough performances of young Hawaiian John Michael Van Hohensein, better known as Johnny the Ripper. This kid is bound for glory. Just love the way he surfs, and he certainly gave Taylor a run for the money in a great final.
