The pandemichas put a dampener on live music and theatre over the last few years, with the industry only now beginning to recover and live entertainment making its way onto our stages once again.
Thankfully, we’ve managed to get some of this entertainment out here in the countryside too. And thus this December we were treated to the Twin Town Players performance of ‘Murder at Aunt Agatha’s’.
Murder at Aunt Agatha’s is one of those classic who-dunnit plays, where all the characters are gathered in one house for the reading of a will. And in classic style, those characters keep getting murdered, both keeping the audience entertained and leading them to speculate on which character the murderer could be!
This production of Aunt Agatha starred many locals from the Rylstone and Kandos area, and was directed by the talented Ms. Cathy Heap. Spanning 4 days, the Rylstone Hall was packed with people eager to watch some live theatre once again. So lets work our way through the characters and the talented actors that brought them to life upon the stage.
The Earl Family
A comedic ‘nerd’ family, made up of a Mother (played by Rachelle Connellan), Father(Roger Heap – its rumoured that he got the role by sleeping with the director!),Daughter(Phillipa Kilminister) & Son (Ryan Gallaher). These characters are some of the few that have any brains in the play, though not a lot of common sense. The younger actors wore headsets in order to be heard by the audience and the family unit received lots of chuckles, before being unceremoniously killed en masse by poisoned ink.
The Vamvleet Family
Posh with a side of dark sheep. Mrs. Margaret Vanvleet(played by Leanne Bessant) and her daughter Alexandra (Kyrstal Thorn) are high society types that look down upon those around them, including their own relations. Leanne played a fantastic Margaret, a character prone to dramatically fainting, whilst Krystal shone as the petulant, spoiled Alexandra, always threatening to leave if it wasn’t for the money. Margaret’s other son, Reggie Vamvleet (Isabelle Furner/Big Angry Trev) is the black sheep of the family, fresh out of jail he turns up hoping for some inheritance money, spending his time either insulting everybody or sleazily flirting with some of the female characters. Isabelle played Reggie in a very ‘Fonzie’ style whereas the other actor, well… we will come to that later. Margaret meets her end via poisoned moonshine, Alexandra meets her end via a cliff and oddly Reggie is one of the few characters to survive.
The McSwine Family
Cousins, disturbing cousins…
Relatives of the snooty Vamvleets, these are the quintessential hillbillies which makes for a funny juxtaposition between the two family branches, played out over several scenes. The mother Mrs.Katie Mae McSwine(played by Owain James) and her three daughters(Emily Gallaher, Jess Gallaher & Janine Maw) are all extremely funny on stage and tick all the stereotype hillbilly boxes such as loving Elvis, drinking moonshine, winning spitting contests and, most disturbingly, having a crush on their cousin. And with the experienced thespian Owain dressed as the matriarch, that old tradition of men dressing up as women on stage was kept alive. The three daughters, all of whom were involved with the KHS production of Pricilla earlier in the year, came across very relaxed on stage and maintained character extremely well – it will be interesting to see their progression as actors in future theatricals.
The Movie Star & her Agent
Sounds like something out of Gilligan’s Island, but no. Gina Starlet (Mary Boxsell) and her long-suffering agent Maxie(Anne Attwood) have shown up looking for a share in the inheritance. Mary plays the faded-starlet character beautifully, and she and Anne share the most dramatic death scene in the entire play. The two of them choking to death earned a huge roar of approval and round of applause on the third night of the play, their dramatics delighting the appreciative crowd!
The Evil Siblings
The dastarly domestic staff in the front row
Bridgett(played by Kirilee Besant) and Hildegard(Ryan Attwood) were in the service of Aunt Agatha and are now hoping to scare off all the relatives so that they can get the cash for themselves. These are some of the more in-depth characters portrayed in the show – they are siblings but are pretending to be twin sisters rather than brother & sister, despite the fact that Bridgett talks with a French accent and her ‘sister’ talks with a German one. Part of the humour is that Hildegard really does look like a man in a dress, and for most of the play he seems the most obvious suspect to be the murderer. Ryan did a very funny and over-the-top rendition of Hildegard, and boy can that boy scream! Kirilee was fantastic as Bridgett, and would often improvise stage movements, like roughly shoving away the lecherous Reggie at random times, or fixing the blankets on the couch playing to the French Maid theme of her character.
The Lawyer, Aunt Agatha, Police & Prompter
Taking on multiple roles can be tough, but Chantelle Williams did it seamlessly. Chantelle provided the voice for Aunt Agatha’s recordings, as well as coming on in the last scene to arrest the murderer. Perhaps even more importantly, she was the prompter on side of stage, providing much needed help whenever anyone would forget a line. Full credit should also be given to Willow Connellan who was a dynamo backstage as well!
Willima Cleanyou, played by Belinda Innes, is Aunt Agatha’s laywer and is a very strong and stern character, showing the most authority in the play before the Detective enters. Belinda’s performance of this embezzling lawyer was flawless, never missing a beat!
The Leading Man & Lady
Two of the stand-out performances of the show were by Emily Gardiner, playing Rose Bloom, and actor of stage & screen Blake Prosser, playing Detective Sam Club. Rose is an overtly sweet character who is not all she appears, hiding the deviousness within, and managing to initially charm Sam. Sam himself is a hard-talking, no-nonsense gumshoe who turns up just before the end of Act 1, and his striving to find the killer is one of the main plot motivators for the second half of the show. Rose likes everyone whereas Sam suspects everyone, so naturally these two disparate characters develop an attraction for each other, even if it is short lived. Like Bridgett & Hildegard, these are two characters that are more fleshed out than most of the others, giving the actors a chance to display a range of emotions rather than simply playing a one-dimensional role, and both Emily and Blake were up to the task, delighting audiences with their performances night after night.
The Ghosts
5 local children – Allison George, Ellaria Jonkers, Ashton Thorn, India Jonkers & Ryder Robinson – played the Ghosts of Aunt Agatha, interjecting some welcome cuteness into a play that is otherwise all about murder and self-interested characters. The ghosts come on stage twice during the production, and the audience loved it every time!
And, er, the other guy…
If you don’t know the lines, just move around a lot
Yes dear readers, Big Angry Trev did strut the stage again, and strut is probably the best way to describe it – what I lacked in script-knowledge I made up in swagger.
Unfortunately the actor playing Reggie was sick for 3 of the 4 shows so I had to step in at the last minute and play the role. And it was very last minute – I didn’t meet the cast until an hour before showtime, didn’t get a chance for a single run through and said the lines out loud for the first time during the opening show! Despite having script in hand I still forgot a lot of lines and a lot of cues, so thankfully the rest of the cast were good at subtly prompting me or prodding me in the right direction.
It t’wernt me gov!
Reggie is a sod of a character, which made him a lot of fun to play! That said, all the horrible insulting things I had to say to Krystal, Emily, Jess & Janine, as well as the sleazy pick-up lines I had to use on Kirilee & Emily, made me cringe a little inside at times. But I found that there was a certain liberation with having been to no rehearsals – no one could get mad at me for missing cues and lines because I was stepping in last second, and I could pretty make up what the character Reggie was like as I went along – by the 3rd show I was swaggering around the stage, walking almost crotch-first, busting out insults and pervy comments right, left & centre. All in for some reason a slightly cockney accent. It was great fun! Full cred to the girls for getting their revenge though, Kirilee’s character was shoving mine a lot more than the script called for. And the cousins Emily, Jess & Janine enjoyed tormenting me/my character with overly-theatrical sniffing and plucking of head hairs – it was all I could do to not to burst out laughing on stage!
Part of the joy of community theatre is that it really is made up of members of the local community. This means instead of a bunch of egotistic actors all coming together in order to practice their art and further their careers, it’s regular folk from the local towns who have decided to put on a fun show. Murder at Aunt Agatha’s cast and crew were made up of husbands & wives, mothers & offspring and even 3 siblings from the one family! It also put everyone on a level playing field, there were 6 students and 3 staff from the local High School and it was pleasant to see how these teens and adults interacted with each other as peers, any pre-existing power dynamics from school now non-existent.
This all made for a warm and convivial atmosphere and this came out backstage, on stage and with the casts interactions with the audience, which every night consisted of a sea of smiles.
Full credit to the cast and crew for putting on a fantastic show! I heartily look forward to watching the next production by the Twin Town Players. And who knows, maybe they’ll need another sleazy cockney guy to show up at the last second again to join in with the fun!
Initial reports said the the Dunn Swamp Dam had burst its banks, though this was downgraded to it simply overflowing. However this overflow, combined with extremely heavy rains over the last several days, has caused the Cudgegong River to swell and overflow, becoming a roaring torrent rather than its usual sedate self.
To show how much more rain there had been compared to the last flooding, this time the Rylstone Showgrounds also flooded, one of the ovals becoming completely submerged and resembling more of a lake than a place to play football.
Find below two videos – one of the Cudgegong River itself taken from the John Hawkins Bridge, and the other of the Rylstone Showgrounds themselves.
And of course you can click the link below to compare the above videos to the flooding we experienced in March 2021. Who knows what will happen in March of 2023 – may be time to start investing in some sandbags.
After Bushfiresand Pandemics, apparently it’s now time for Floods here in New South Wales in Australia. We have had a huge amounts of rain in the last few days, causing massive floods in parts of the state.
Here in Rylstone we haven’t had terrible floods like other parts of the state, but a large amount of rain for our region nonetheless. 2 inches of rain less than a week ago, then 4 inches of rain in the last 48 hours, with far more predicted today.
Through Rylstone runs the Cudgegong River. For years of drought this river has resembled more of a creek than a river; a small and stagnant waterway that meanders its way through the small township.
Find below a few images and a short video of what that usually small & stagnant river looks like this morning (23/03/2021). These were taken from the It will be interesting to see what it looks like after even more rain today (Edit: Same size but faster flowing).
Living in a tiny town like Rylstone it is very much the case that there is only a finite amount of places to go out to eat. For great Mexican there is always Pepino’sand for a decent burger there is The Globe. However there are not many other venues, let alone secluded little café’s the romance the object of your affections.
This Valentines Day I did something that I don’t usually do. Being a relatively blokey Hobby Farmer I tend to stick to only 3 drinks in my life: coffee, water and beer. Wine does not come up on my radar except for something I sometimes I have to drink a glass of at weddings. There is red that gives me a headache, and white that I find bearable. There is the extend of my grand knowledge of crushed grapes. So I don’t generally do Wineries.
So this Valentines’ Day I stepped out of my comfort zone and took my wife to one of the few other places to eat around here – Naked Lady Vineyard.
First off, – misleading name for the place. Upon arrival, unlike Confest, there were no naked ladies. Not a one! No nubile wenches bereft of clothing lying around on a chaise’lounge or splashing about in fountains. It was in fact a lovely little winery a few minutes outside of Rylstone with a big barnlike structure in the center. So whilst there were no naked women, at least it meant I could look about in a relaxed fashion without my wife saying ‘Are you staring at that woman’s breasts?!’
Wine tasting was $5. For that you get to taste 5 or so different wines on the menu, and if you buy a bottle that $5 is taken off the price. My wife quite enjoyed doing this and I did try a glass myself, even if only I could go for the cheap laugh of sniffing it, swilling it around in my mouth and then looking for a bucket to spit it into.
My wife ended up purchasing two wines. I tried the white which was very nice. The red (according to her) was nice too. And… um… it was wine? Phew! Pushed my wine knowledge to the hilt with that one!
What goes well with wine? Cheese apparently. What goes well with cheese? MEAT! Though to be fair meat goes well with everything (I always thought Vegans might be happier if they wrapped their soy burgers in a bit of bacon). And much like Bootleggers, you could order a platter for two that had multiple cheeses and at least four kind of meat.
Classed as an Antipasto Platter (I’ve always been pro-pasto but that’s just me) this platter came with spicy chorizo, huge slices of cured ham, prosciutto and salami slices. It came with a variety of cheeses with varying bite, as well as pickles, chutneys, olives, strawberries, crackers and freshly baked bread goods.
Despite having swapped to beer at this point (they had 3 standard varieties) all of this did go very well hand in hand with the wines on offer. Indeed my wife and I quite happily grazed on the platter for nearly an hour as we chatted, drank, enjoyed the peaceful surrounds and the rare treat of each other’s company without our kids in tow.
So if you are a meat enthusiast, cheese enthusiast, wine enthusiast or even just want to have somewhere different to go to your usual pub or restaurant, I highly recommend Naked Lady Vineyard. And who knows, buy your partner enough bottles of vino and you might get to see a naked lady after all 😉
Yea-haw! Fried chicken! Get me some grits, a banjo and a bottle of moonshine and I’m in hog heavan, boy-howdy!
I love fried chicken. But so few places serve it these days because it is so unhealthy. You can get crumbed chicken anywhere, but not it’s fried friend. You can always go to a KFC I guess, but whereas it was my favourite food as a teenager I can’t stand the oily filth that it is has degenerated into over the decades.
So I was pretty chuffed when I took the family out for a relaxing lunch on a surprisingly mild winters day to The Globe Hotel in Rylstone and saw on their lunch menu Southern Style Chicken Burger.
This was a good sized burger with a very big chicken breast inside. And with burgers, like with all facets of life, the bigger the breast the better! This one certainly added to the height of the burger considerably.
There was a bit much slaw on the bottom for my liking but it really wasn’t too much and between it and the crispiness of the chicken it meant this burger had a lot of crunch value.
There was quite a bit of bacon popped in to the burger, and although it was quite fatty it was still pretty nice. There was your requisite tomato and onion, some cheese the menu didn’t mention, but it was the ‘special sauce’ that was the real stand out – for both good and ill – of the condiments.
It was hard to pin down what the special sauce actually was. Something like a sweetened ranch dressing but with a little bit of spice thrown in to give it a kick. While it was really nice and added some much needed moisture to what would otherwise be a dry burger, it was it’s distribution that let it down. On one side of the burger there was hardly any, leaving you wanting more. On the other side of the burger there was way too much, so much so you couldn’t taste anything else. In the middle it was perfect. Obviously whoever made the burger squirted it on top of the chicken without regard for evenness, which really detracted around the outer edges from what was otherwise a damn tasty feed.
So if you find yourself at The Globe and see it on the menu, I heartily recommend you give this burger a try. At $16 it’s not particularly cheap, but given its size and the amount of chips that come with it you will definitely leave full. Just hope they get that sauce distribution right.
It has been a long lament of mine that I have been unable to find a good Mexican restaurant in this country. Not having been to Mexico itself and sadly with no current overseas plans for the future, I have had to rely on what Australia has to offer.
I had fantastic Mexican when living in Edinburgh in Scotland, but that was a good 15 years ago. Every Mexican restaurant I have been to so far in this country has been a disappointment. There was one half-decent one in Melbourne, but also a slew of sub-par ones. The Tex-Mex venue in Bathurst is not what one would call proper Mexican cuisine and The Cactus Jam in Waarnambool was simply atrocious. Was I to never again sample good Mexican food?
When news got around that a Mexican restaurant was opening up in Rylstone, a town where you can count the places to go out for dinner on the fingers of a blind butcher, I was cautiously optimistic but couldn’t silence that little voice in my head that was saying ‘It’s just going to be another crappy gimmicky place with food that makes an Old El’Paso kit look good’. So along I took my family with my hopes not high.
Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong.
Subtle fashion sense
The food was excellent! Really great stuff! Not since eating atThe Kings Hotel in Bathurst have I encountered a restaurant where you get such a high level of quantity AND quality combined! Let’s have a look at what’s on offer:
As you can see from the menu pics, there are a solid seven different starters one can have, along with 5 mains and 1 salad. While 5 different mains doesn’t sound like a lot, each one can be customised to your personal tastes with a variety of fillings ranging from several meat options to those for vegetarians. Add to that over a dozen different sides and you have a lot of customisation options for your meal.
The Starter
Even casual readers of this Blog know I have a fondness for hot spicy foods, even when like the God SlayerHot Sauce they nearly kill me! So I couldn’t bypass the chance to try a plate of the Jalapeno Poppers(heat rating 2 out of 3) which I shared with my somewhat reluctant wife. Easily the best I have ever had! Stuffed with cream cheese and cheddar, then beer battered and deep fried! Yeah boi! The great thing about these were there was a good bit of heat to them, but what you tasted primarily was the excellent flavours of the food. Even my wife who is not a spice fan loved these, attesting to their quality.
The Mains
El Pepino
My wife had hers stuffed with chicken and it was damn tasty. She quite enjoyed the salsa fresca it came with too. Her plate runneth over to the point that she could not even finish her meal, as tasty as she found it.
Burrito el Grande
Fun to eat, even more fun to say!
Being a Deadpoolfan I was tempted to go the Chimichangas route, but couldn’t resist the sound of this giant Burrito. I had mine filled ground beef and blended beans. Given this meal already came with beans, I can attest that at 4am that morning they ganged up together to produce a wind that would challenge Cyclone Trevor that is currently threatening the top of the Northern Territory. So take a word from the wise, if the meal already comes with beans, don’t add more!
This meal came with plenty of sides such as rice, sour cream, guacamole and I made sure to sample everything separately before it all became one big mixed up mess. But both individually and combined this all tasted excellent and by the time I ate the last grain of rice from my plate my gut was groaning and my belt was under more tension than a Technobotat a Combaticon Convention.
Kids Meals
There are 3 different kids meals on offer. We ordered two and two extra plates so that the kids could have a Fajita each and share the Nachos.
The Fajitas were very good, but the toppings came out in tiny little shallow bowls you were supposed to tip on to your food. Given sour cream and guacamole don’t pour too well (and neither does our 4 year old) we asked for some spoons so the kids could serve themselves, like they do at home when we have tacos. Upon this request we were given two giant dessert spoons instead of teaspoons. So my wife and I ended up making the kids Fajitas for them which wasn’t a big hassle, though little spoons for kids in the future would be appreciated.
Since the kids were having beef with their Fajitas we ordered them chicken on their Nachos. At first we were taken aback by how plain the nachos looked, only having melted cheese and shredded chicken on them. But given that my kids, the little buggers, picked off all the melted cheese and chicken and just ate the corn chips underneath, more toppings would have proven a waste anyway.
Desserts
Watch this space. We had fully intended to order some Churros for dessert but all four of us were so full (again, my wife couldn’t even finish her whole meal) that none of us had space in our bellies for something sweet. So next time I hope to get a bead on what the desserts are like.
Drinks
Fruit in the glass = classy… or extra inebriating.
My wife had a couple of Sangrias which she quite enjoyed, and I tried two different Mexican beers – a Pacifico and a Negra Modelo. And these were nice Mexican beers too, actually brewed and bottled in Mexico rather than in Hobart and given a Mexican name, very tasty! Not like the ones you buy at your local Bottle-O.
Worth going?
Indeed! To feed four of us and have a few drinks for the adults it came to around $100, which is quite reasonable in this day and age. The food was great tasting and pletniful, the atmosphere was nice, there were novelty hats to wear (so commonly overlooked by eating establishments these days one finds) – all good! I had opportunity to chat with the owner before leaving and he informed me they used to run a similar restaurant in Sydney for 12 years and the experience certainly shows. So if you find yourself in the position to will be visiting the little township of Rylstone, book a table ahead of time (they seemed very busy!) and tell’em Big Angry Trev sent ya.
Have you eaten here and have anything to say? Pop it in the comments section below!
Rump & Ribs in Rylstone is a review of the food available at The Globe – a restaurant on the main street. It is NOT to make fun of that couple that just moved in on Piper street. You know the ones, the Spratts? Where the woman has a bulbous arse and the bloke is painfully thin? This is not about them. And shame on you for assuming it was and body shaming them, not cool! Comments along the lines that helooks like the lovechild of a skeleton and a xylophone and she looks like someone shoved an air compressor nozzle up her datehole and set it to ‘mega inflate’ are juvenile, unkind and all such commentary will be deleted from this blog.
Ahem. Anyway…
Back to the matter at hand
As I’ve stated in other meat reviews, any dish that serves up two distinct species of farm animal on the same plate immediately gets my attention (see my review of the E-I-E-I-O Burger in Melbourne). Whilst I was all tasted up to grab a mixed grill which always satisfies this craving, I couldn’t go past their specials board which had Rump & Ribs up for grabs.
Bones of a pig on top of the arse of a cow
This was…. ok. The ribs had a sweet BBQ flavoring which wasn’t too bad but the steak came with nothing on it but the ribs. The steak also came out as two smaller pieces which was quite odd, made it seem they didn’t have a full sized steak on hand rather than it was an intentional culinary decision by the chef. Also I asked for medium and got medium-well which is always an irritant. If you are paying $30 for a meal where the star of the show is a steak, the steak should be one whole piece and cooked the way you asked for. That said it wasn’t too bad, the salad made for a crisp counterpoint and refreshed the palette between meaty bites.
Other meals available at The Globe
Surf’ n’ Turf
Once again, this wasn’t too bad. The sauce was fairly creamy and the prawns were done in an interesting fashion, encased in a long cone resembling a parsnip. I do like big thick juicy prawns with a surf’ n’ turf to complement the steak and feel the meal could have benefited from going that more traditional route rather than the novel.
Sirloin Steak
My wife had this and like me she ordered medium and got medium-well (for a place that does medium to perfection check out my reviews ofThe Kings Hotel in Bathurst). Also her pepper sauce had way too much bite, like they had not refined it enough and had left whole peppercorns in there. The ‘yeah, it’s alright’ motif continued with this dish.
Kids Meals
What? Why is everyone looking at me?
The Globe does quite well here. The kids meals are big and they can pick which meal they want by colouring in an accompanying menu sheet which is a novel idea. The meals also include a drink and for $2 extra they get a desert. The Globe gets a great big tick from a satisfied parent in this regard.
Overall
Look, there is quite nice food to be had at The Globe but nothing stellar. However being one of only two places to get a meal out in Rylstone at night, it’s not like you have a lot of options to go elsewhere. Despite this lack of competitors they still provide decent meals at decent prices, the restaurant feels comfy with a big wood heater going and the barman has been super friendly and helpful the few times we have been there. You might not get dazzled but what you will get is a pleasant meal out with your family and on a cold winters night who could ask for more.
Oh, and leave the Spratts alone will ya! It’s their dietary requirements – he can eat no fat and she can eat no lean – it’s not their fault!
Got a review of The Globe of your own? Would love to read it in the comments section below!
