"Can you take your own wine into a restaurant here?" Joy asked the Italian security-guard, built bantam-bouncer-weight face origami smile-lines, giant, explicative hands, at the doorway of 'Liquorland', grungy busker on the pavement tuning guitar, evening crowds in raking sun down Elizabeth Street.
"Of course you can," replied our consultant, "but... they will charge you three or five dollars... er..."
"Surcharge?"
"They call it 'corkage' as if it's a bottle-opening service, a little old fashioned, since most wines are screwcap nowadays," confided our authority, leaning conspiratorially in.
"Well, they can hardly call it 'screwage'," I flashed.
"They should, though," said Joy, and we all shared a grin.
"Have a good evening out. See you guys again."
2
So we free trammed to the 'Nan Loond', Russell Street, free China tea, screwage five dollars, and ate clean all our plates (oh, the appreciation) paid up and dragged swilled bellies, pigs 'Spirited Away', trotting off to riverrun. First our cloven hooves on Federation Square with its installation of square tile cobbling, each unique, the whole a riverbed, a beach, a reach, with so many features - and from overview, ooh at nonpareil, bright-night, sequined scapes - and to see 'The Defiant Girl' on whose hauteur-tilted head, heroically snubbing cursed world, lights bestowed a Mandarin mustache and rectilinear goatee.
Then down to riverside itself for 'handcrafted' ale - all dreamy lampage and dazzle that sci-fis up dark 'scraper outlines, diffusing in black water..
But walking back through station porch, the very same busker tuning up Elizabeth Street was playing... Wii theme, heavy metal style!
Scatter of coins!
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