The Ultimate Ingredient

Bees foraging in the wild herbs, Greece.

I’d never much cared for Greek Salad before we visited Greece in 1990.

Theatre of Dinoysus, Athens. The dark dots are packaged cushions, for more comfortable seating for an evening performance.

But just over the road from our hotel in Athens, where polished tables with dusty chairs were shaded by huge-leafed trees in the park, we had to revise our opinion. A TV was perched at one end of the row of tables, while old men sat with coffee or retsina, flicking worry beads rhythmically as they watched US sitcoms subtitled in Arabic and dubbed in Greek. The picture wavered every time a bus passed, running over the cable leading to the TV from the kitchen across the street. The waiter brought our salads, dodging buses. We were tired and jet-lagged, and our appetites didn’t anticipate much of worth. But oh! The bliss of full-flavoured tomatoes, soaked in greenish-gold olive oil, with crunchy sweet cucumbers and feta from the mountains! Sprinkled over all was a wild mixture of herbs, hauntingly familiar yet unique. The heavy bread was drying out fast in the Athenian summer heat, but that only made it more suitable to mop the juices from our fingers, plates and bowls. An old man at the next table raised his glass to us with a smile and “Stin ygeiá sas!” (“to your good health!”) nodding in approval at our enjoyment. Suddenly we belonged, and everything seemed so right. The heat, the dust, the barefoot children playing in the fountain — it all was part of our enjoyment of this welcoming city.

A tired, jet-lagged Miss Eight, with her grandma, on the first day in Athens, at the taverna in the park. Athens, 1990.

“The Runner”, artwork in Omonia Square, Athens, 1990.

Later, on our tour on the Greek mainland, we wandered among tall, golden, fluted columns and admired archaic carvings, floating marble draperies against lapis lazuli sea. Each evening we were introduced to some wonderful Greek salads, even better than our first taste in Athens. I took mental notes of the best meals, to try and remember which ingredients made them so special.

A perfect Greek salad in the perfect setting. Paros, Greece, 2018.

Finally in our flat on Crete it was my turn to prepare this wonderful summer meal from memory, using locally bought ingredients. Each morning we’d slip out the door an hour after sunrise and shop with the local people for fresh produce. After breakfasting on home-made yoghurt and local honey, with fresh crusty bread still warm from the baker, I could be found in the kitchen cutting up tomatoes, cucumbers, onion and red capsicum, and putting it all into a bowl with olives and feta. We’d leave the salad to marinate in wine vinegar and olive oil, while we went out for the morning. But the salad, tasty as it was, was missing something. Without the sprinkle of dried herbs, I couldn’t re-create some of our most memorable meals.

We stopped for the view of the gorge, and smelt the wild herbs, crushed under the car’s wheels. Crete, 1990.

However, on one of our drives up into the hills, when we stopped to admire the stark contrast of craggy mountains against the perfect blue sea, I smelt a familiar but elusive fragrance. The herbs! Our car’s wheels had crushed the very plant, growing wild, that would provide the finishing touch to our lunch. I searched, following my nose, until I saw an insignificant little bush just behind the back tyre. Widening my gaze, I realised that the whole hillside was covered with the same low-growing, purple-flowered plant. Stooping low, I picked a sprig, instantly releasing that wonderful, heady fragrance, redolent of oregano and thyme with a hint of mint. The tiny flower distinctively identified the plant as a member of Labiatae, a non-poisonous plant family, but I could identify it no further. Picking a small bunch of these wild herbs, I laid the harvest on the car shelf under the dash and we got underway again. The air was so hot and dry, that the herbs were crisply brittle in a very short time. I sympathised with the plants, as I swigged the last warm dregs from my water bottle.

Spili, Crete, 1990. The village is perched on the side of the mountain, wild mint grew from cracks in the buildings.

We were driving into the mountains, ever higher, winding over impossibly narrow roads. Suddenly as if by magic, a tiny village appeared, with terraced houses clinging precariously to the hillside. The road took a sharp bend to the right as we parked beside the domed, white-painted village church. This place was special — water was plentiful, where the rest of Greece was in drought. This was Spili, where an ancient Venetian fountain channelled delicious spring water from the mountain side, through lion faces of stone.

Spili’s Venetian fountain, ice-cold on a hot day. Crete, 1990.
My husband dunking his head, Miss Eight beside him, and my parents-in-law filling water bottles.

Miss Three and Master Six, cooling off and drinking their fill.

Dripping wet children. Spili, Crete, 1990.

We hurried to the fountain eagerly, filling our water bottles with the deliciously pure spring water, wetting our faces and shirts deliberately in the process. Master Six put his face under one of the lion’s heads, Miss Three had to be lifted so she could put her starfish fingers inside the lion’s mouth with a little squeal of mock terror. I was reminded of Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. The water gushed with force, chilled from its journey through rock strata. Down in the square below, a fountain splashed, fed by the overflow from the spring.

The water flowed from Venetian lions which gushed into troughs wrapping around the square. Spili, Crete, 1990.

We were cool at last, refreshed and no longer thirsty. Reluctantly moving on from this miraculous oasis, we passed rustic shops selling the basic staples of this village – raki, bread, fresh vegetables, coffee. I saw herbs smelling similar to the ones I had picked, but with a larger leaf. Stumbling through the Greek alphabet, I realised the plant was wild oregano; but unlike any oregano I’d met before. The flavour was stronger, wilder, more complete.

Weeds grew plentifully on the side of the road. I bent down and picked a large sprig of mint growing through cracked cement. It married wonderfully with the scent of wild oregano which now filled the car on our return.

The worry beads I’d just purchased lay glinting up at me from my lap. Three sets for three people. One set for my neighbour – pure brass, glistening gold. The next for my dear friend, so full of life – ruby red, creamy lustre, interspersed with brass. The last set were Mediterranean blue, winking up at me like a mermaid’s eyes. They are with me now, reminding me of magical places.

Worry beads, komboloi, bought in Spili, Crete, in 1990. Still precious.

The meal was complete that day. We discovered that the final ingredient in a country salad is the country itself. By the time we reached Rethymnon that evening, the mint and the unknown herbs were crisp. My fingers easily crumbled the wild mountain herbs into a jar, with the aromatic combination sprinkled over fresh feta providing a finishing touch to our salads. The spring water from Spili filled our glasses as we drank to this wonderful place.

Wild thyme in flower at an old Venetian fort. Palaorchora, Crete, 2018.

For many years I thought that mysterious plant was Greek oregano, which will substitute well but it wasn’t the wild herb I’d picked on that Cretan hillside. It wasn’t until our return to Crete in 2018 that we saw hillsides covered with cushions of wild thyme, in flower. That was it!

Milking the sheep and goats up in the mountain village. Crete, 2018.

In 2018 we bought a jar of thyme honey from a roadside stall near Elafonisi. Drizzled over home-made yogurt, made from sheep and goats that we’d actually met personally (although they weren’t really into conversation) we had some wonderful but simple breakfasts. But our love of a good Greek salad — ah, they can never be beaten!

Knossos — Journey to the Past

Our three children (then) stand beside the symbolic bull horns at the Palace of Knossos. 1989.
This area was not accessible to tourists when we returned in 2018.

The sacred bull — this perfect sculpture dates back to Minoan times. Iraklion Museum, Crete, 2018.

As a child I loved reading mythology stories. Let’s face it, I loved reading everything. A magazine I subscribed to as a child had a lot of general information and science articles in it but the centre spread was always a favourite — a beautifully-illustrated episode of Greek mythology. In the years I subscribed to this magazine, I kept every issue in a binder and read and re-read them until they were virtually memorised. I can still ‘see’, in my mind’s eye, the story of Calypso weeping as Odysseus announces he must leave and continue his journey home to Ithaca.

The classic Minoan Greek key, the flower at the centre of the eternal spiral. Knossos, Crete, 1989.

Other myths were covered too, such as Norse mythology, Celtic mythology and tales such as “East of the sun, west of the moon.”

As I grew older I included more detailed studies of mythology in my leisure reading. I was finding that the more I studied science, the more my brain seemed to demand an equal portion of pure entertainment. Cramming for an exam would lead to an increase in displacement activity of trivia being involuntarily memorised.

As a result, when we first travelled to Greece over thirty years ago, we booked into whatever we could afford in tours of mythical places. We had three small children in tow, who had to be considered. My health was not good and back then I walked with crutches. So we planned to take our time. It was Jeff’s father who especially wanted us to visit his friends on Crete that had prompted the trip, but you don’t go that far from Australia without having a good look around while you’re there.

Three storeys down, natural light in the Palace of Knossos. My children were 8, 6 and almost 4.
This area was closed off in 2018.

It was while we were sitting with the children in the grounds of the Minoan palace of Knossos, eating the sandwiches we’d brought with us, that the germ of a story idea took root. I could feel the history and pre-history of the place and all those stories of the people who had lived there whirled around in my head. When I started to write fiction some years later, among my first stories were the ones from our travels.

The alabaster throne, Palace of Knossos, Crete, 1989. This was thoroughly walled off in 2018.

Alabaster throne room, 2018. In 1989 we were able to go down the stairs below this level.

The stairs leading down from the throne room. Note the small drainage ditch at the top of the steps. I had to reach past the barricade to the throne room to take this photo in 2018. Inaccessible.

In the next room to the alabaster throne, our son on this wooden throne wonders what being a king would have felt like.
Knossos, Crete, 1989.

The wooden throne, 2018. The alabaster throne is in the closed-in room to the left. Knossos, 2018.

When we returned in 2018, our aim was to visit the children and grandchildren of my father-in-law’s old friends. But on the way, I had places I wanted to re-visit and other places to add to my list. My Greek mythology stories have grown in depth and volume, and I wanted to feel those places again, to ‘talk’ to my characters and get them to show me around.

And, of course, as happens when we travel, more stories emerge to tell themselves. They tug at my sleeves for attention, jogging my elbow and putting words in my head that they demand be noted down.

These places are real. Mythology is built on their past, on their truths. These people lived, laughed and loved. And this time, we went into their lives, and the evidence of their lives, in much more detail.

Knossos was a focus for us. Our hotel was across the road from the Heraklion Museum where so many of the treasures of Minoan Crete have been preserved.

Minoan Crete is so much more than mythology. This was an ancient civilisation, advanced and capable, a world centre for trade. All world trade was routed through Knossos. The treasures of Mohenjo-Daro, the spices of the east, even amber from northern Europe. Irish gold has been found in Minoan Crete. This was the hub of the world in its day. The stories tell of the people, and the archaeology confirms so much more. The paintings, the mosaics, the decorations on pottery and the jewellery show a great deal of their lives, as well as the similarity of the culture with other parts of the world at the time.

It’s not just pretty trinkets. The palace of Knossos had a drainage system that flushed every time it rained. The efficiency of design meant that things just worked. And they worked well.

Looking down to a lower level. The drainage channel is clearly visible. Similar channels ran down the sides of each staircase. Knossos, Crete, 1989. This area is now completely inaccessible to tourists.

From the second floor. We walked down there thirty years earlier. Not any more. The site is fragile and needs to be preserved.

Steps where once we walked. Photo from 2018. Knossos, Crete.

The hill of Knossos was first settled, it is believed, 10,000 years ago in Neolithic times. The area is volcanically active and earthquake damage was one of the facts of life. But damaged buildings were generally rebuilt, bigger and better. With the wealth of the world concentrated in this one place, they could afford it.

The Queen’s Chambers. Photo taken in 2018 through a barricade. In 1989 we walked in here and through those doors. I believe it was the door to the right that led to an alabaster bathtub.

The alabaster bathtub that we photographed just off the Queen’s Chambers, 1989. Knossos, Crete.

Fragments of restoration dating from the days of Arthur Evans. Tantalising. Knossos, 2018.

The symbol of the labrys, the double-bladed axe that gave rise to the story of “labyrinth”. Knossos, Crete, 2018.

Samples of labrys, the bronze double-bladed axe typical of Minoan Greece and Knossos in particular. Iraklion Museum, 2018.

Another perfect bull sculpture, alabaster this time, with a range of decorated vessels. Iraklion Museum, 2018.

Above the throne room. Looking every bit 30 years older! Knossos, 2018.

In Iraklion Museum, a wooden model of the Palace of Knossos s it would have looked in its prime. 2018.

The end of the Minoan civilisation came less than a generation after the 1500 BCE eruption of the volcano at Thera, now known as Santorini. That eruption produced an ash fall over months which itself didn’t impact Crete much. But when that volcano blew itself apart, there would have been a towering tsunami washing back and forth across the Mediterranean.

The palace of Knossos was badly damaged, but it still limped along for a few years. However, it owed its wealth to its position in world trade, and when all your trading partners have been badly impacted by the destruction, economic and political power imbalances can kill an economy faster than physical destruction. Invading Myceneans, more warlike, would have opportunistically plundered what they could. By 1100 BCE Knossos was abandoned.

To visit Knossos today is to view a snapshot in time, in fragments. Much of the palace is a pancaked ruin, but Arthur Evans reconstructed segments of the palace to his own vision. He got some of it right, but the main treasures are in the museum these days, while archaeologists work to ensure that what we see in the reconstructions of the palace are as close as possible to what we understand the reality to have been. However, Evans’ work itself has become history and is, ironically, protected.

A glimpse into the past — peering into the scale mode of the Minoan Palace of Knossos, looking through a tiny window along an ancient corridor. Where did it lead? What were their lives like? Iraklion Museum, Crete, 2018.

Cats of Greece

Often when I travel, I have a writing project I’m working on, with the travel providing further research opportunities. And sometimes a place will bring unexpected experiences. In Greece, every cat surely has a story.

My first encounter with Greek cats was when our family visited Greece in 1989. We had gone for lunch to a taverna in a village to the east of Rethymnon. We sat in the shade of mulberry trees espaliered horizontally as an overhead canopy. Purple splotches showed where ripe mulberries had landed, and a number of cats prowled among the tables, looking imploringly at our meals. Below the apartment in Rethymnon on Crete where we were staying, we had seen some very large rats prowling a midden heap and decided against an evening walk down that lane. There seemed no reason for the cats in that area to look so scrawny and battle-scarred… hang on, those were very large rats, weren’t they?

Rats are everywhere around the world and there are parts of my own village that are to be avoided at night. Around our house, snakes move in to keep down the rats. It gives us a very strong incentive to get rid of the rats before the snakes move in. As for photos — it’s a lot harder to find snakes hovering around a table waiting for a titbit…

In Greece, the cats live in a symbiotic relationship with humans, and a predatory relationship with rats, mice and lizards. When we returned to Greece in 2018 I was ready to pay more attention to the cats. Allowing cats to roam and live freely is a very natural way to keep everything in balance. We’re just not used to it in Australia, where native wildlife is still very vulnerable to the hunting skills of cats.

Cats used to be worshipped in ancient Egypt. They have never forgotten this. Athens, Greece.

When we travel, we experience different lifestyles. What won’t work in Australia appears to work very well in Greece. In Greece, cats are indigenous creatures. Each cat has its own story, and even those who put down the occasional dish of food can only guess at some of their adventures.

Photographing cats in Greece is challenging — most of these images were taken very quickly, few cats were willing to pose. I had to be quick, and I had to be lucky.

While learning more about Greek cats, I once again found the connection with ancient Egypt. In Greece also, I was told, the god of cats is Bastet, the same as for Egypt. And the ancient Egyptian word for ‘cat’? It’s ‘Mau’!

In Greece we found cats in many places. Some were battle-scarred veterans, others were exquisitely perfect kittens. All appeared to be more than tolerated, they were welcomed and supported. While many were not strictly pets, but opportunistic hangers-on, they all appeared to be accepted as part of the space.

Truly, cats don’t have owners. They have staff.