Fish and chips as they should be
Maclaey Island provides a reminder of the way things used to be done, and what fish and chips used to mean.
Island Feed:
The cheese and spinach roll I had for breakfast sat comfortably in my belly as we rolled through the choppy waves towards Macleay Island. Ever since I started working with my dad again my pastry consumption had sky-rocketed. He gets a pie and a coke, I get a cheese and spinach roll, then we’re off to work. he the carpenter; I his helper.
During the week we work all over Brisbane, bouncing from site to site. On Saturdays, we go to the island. My parents bought a block of land there last year and now we spend our weekends building the house.
The island is a forty-five-minute car ferry from Redland Bay through tidal waters that range from Caribbean blue to mangrove mud brown. Macleay isn’t exactly what you picture when someone says they bought land on an island off the coast of South-east Queensland, but it has its own charm. It got a reputation for skulduggery and crime over the years, doll bludgers, drug dealers and the like were its renowned occupants. Up until recently you could drive an unregistered car out there. Even now you can tick off your own road worthy. In reality I haven’t seen those aspects of the island too much. All I’ve seen is an elderly population who enjoy fishing and a touch of sailing, perhaps having lunch and a beer at the pub. When the ferry glides onto the concrete ramp at the southern end of the island, if the prawns are running, the shallow waters are full of families in tinnies casting nets.
The island is narrow, a main road stretches down its spine from end to end and streets reach out for the coasts. Our plot is about halfway up, not far from the only petrol station on the island, which charges prices like it knows it owns the market.
Vegetation wise, again it isn’t exactly an array of palm trees and sand dunes. Paper barks, grow almost everywhere. Out back of our lot young pines shoot for the sky next to an old mango tree. The grass grows quickly, vines come from everywhere and climb anything, bugs of all shapes and colours buzz at knee height and ants colonise under every pile of timber. Green tree frogs leap from the wet timber when you get too close.
There is a lot of building sites, my parents aren’t the only people catching onto what looks like the only affordable housing market in the greater Brisbane vicinity. There are three real estate agents. Every weekend we see more young families in amongst the white haired crowd. This place is about to blow, despite the lack of road access.
That day was humid as all get out. My dad and I lifted sheets of tin high above our heads to the roofer — Bob, a surfy dude with a six-pack a day body and a few questionable views — who slid them into place, slowly covering the open space. Watching a roof go up is like watching a thought come into reality. In my dad’s case, a lifelong dream.
At around one o’clock, I was sent to get some lunch from the fish and chip shop before it shut for its customary two-hour break from two ’til four. At the pub near the ferry port I picked up a case of XXXX Bitter and was charged island prices. Sixty-seven dollars later I was on my way.
Pete’s Place is the last shop on the right in a dilapidated strip mall. An old tinny flipped on its stern, stands upright. Inside in thick black lettering is a list of fish on offer: HOKI. COD. FLATHEAD. BARRA. CALAMARI. WHITING. FLAKE. SNAPPER. SALMON. Because of the sign, the shop feels distanced from the other places nearby, all of which were shut for the day. Outside the screen sliding doors a lone old codger seated at a fake marble table, his bucket hat pulled low over his eyes.
Inside was familiar. Greasy off-white cinderblock walls. The hum of freezers mixing with the whir of a fan directed at the kitchen. Packets of noodles stacked on a shelf near the door were out of place but made sense here. A sign on the counter read ‘Must Try Asian Soup’, written in red texter.
Instead of the soup, I settled for the classics: beer-battered snapper, calamari, chips and three tubs of tartare sauce. There is never enough tartare, plus I didn’t know Bob’s sauce to fish ratio, and I wasn’t going to come up short on mine out of politeness.
I waited outside at a square timber table that had lost all its finish from the sun and was strewn with grease stains. Around the table was a wall of sturdy palm trees. I flicked through a few dated fishing magazines someone had left on table from the stack by the door but quickly lost interest in the whopper Damo had reeled in late 2017 sat listening to the rustling of the palms the sounds of the kitchen inside.
When the food came out, neatly stacked in two fold-up boxes and covered in a thin sheet of paper, I knew why Pete and his workers could shut down for two hours in the middle of the afternoon. Similar to the petrol station, they owned this market. Just smelling the fish, I could tell it was supremely fresh. I jumped in the van, carefully balanced the food on top of the beers and sped off back to the site, grabbed three beers from the box and threw a few in the esky. I squeezed some lime on the chips and calamari while Bob and my dad were coming down the ladder grabbed a couple chippies. Chewy and browned with just a hint of crunch, the chips had a nostalgic feel about them. They reminded me of getting a big bag of hot chips for six bucks from the corner store in my youth, before it became a gourmet burger joint. They reminded me of a time when fish and chip shops were just that, nothing fancy. The calamari — the crumbing falling off where the lime juice had soaked in, revealing pure white strips of flesh — had a similar appeal. Not fantastic, just what the menu said, plus a few extra rings thrown in for good measure.
By now the other two had joined me. ‘Did you get enough tartare?’ my dad joked while cracking a tinny and ripping a piece of snapper in half. Bob leaned back, shirt off, snapper in one hand, beer in the other, knackered.
Where the chips and calamari had been run of the mill, the fish brought the gusto. Light and crispy batter, that is usually only gloated on the menu but never appears, coated big juicy flakes of meat. The tartare, melting on the hot flesh after being spread on with a chip was smooth and lacked the chunks of gherkin I love, sufficed none-the-less. In a highly contextual pairing, the Bitter when down superbly.
Soon after the food was gone, another island tradie transplant came along, a plastic bag of Gold’s in his hand. One beer turned to three as the stories flowed under the silverly underside of insulation. Saturday work calls for long lunches. With a few beers in us the work seemed more bearable, the sun had dipped behind the clouds for a quick siesta and we were done before you knew it.
Macleay Island is likely in for a big change over the next couple of years as younger people start to move out there, bringing with them all the things younger people like. Craft beer, poke bowls and matcha lattes seem just over the horizon. I hope that Pete’s Place never has to change. I hope they keep having their long lunches. Above everything else, I hope they never considers adding curly fries and brioche-bun-burgers to the menu.
