Tuck into our tasty list
NEWSPAPER COMPANIES ARE TASKED WITH TACKLING VERY SERIOUS AND IMPORTANT TOPICS. POLITICS AND CRIME TO US IS WHAT ROADS, RATES AND RUBBISH IS TO COUNCILS. BUT WE DO MUCH MORE THAN THAT. WE CELEBRATE OUR WAY OF LIFE.
There are many fond memories of my young years growing up in this tropical paradise. Camping trips, playing in the rain, swimming in Freshwater Creek and visiting Tinaroo Dam. Well, travelling to the Tablelands was fun except for the Gillies Highway part – my tender belly may have raised the white flag, and its contents, to those twists and turns on more than one occasion. But there is another little wondrous place my five-year-old stomach remembers well. Sam’s Pies. It was like a magnet every time we visited family at Innisfail. Around the bend, past the racetrack and golf course, up over the hill, across the railway lines before veering left and eventually finding Ernest Street. There inside a classic Far Northern cream cement building was baked-goods heaven.
The savoury perfume of pastry delights filled the humid little shop – once you finally bumped your way through the waiting bodies, that is.
Staff would disappear out the back through a door with flapping plastic fly screens before reappearing with luscious goodies inside paper bags.
Satisfaction would come when, after applying Worcestershire sauce (you can imagine tomato if you want), the lid would be lifted and gobbled up before delving into meat heaven.
Sam’s is gone now, a sad reality I was confronted with many years ago when on a holiday back to my hometown. I had boasted to my then-fiance that he just had to try the best. Hmmm, maybe all good things do have to end.
What’s your favourite pie haven in the Far North?
This is the question we asked our vast readership on our Facebook page last weekend and more than 1300 people responded with their tastebuds.
It seems I’m not the only one that has an affinity with pies. Today we reveal the top 10 and the list has a distinctly regional flavour.
From Port Douglas to Cardwell and west to the Tablelands our features team has gone inside the kitchens that produce these famous babies.
My new favourite, from Babinda, has taken out the title but I can assure you I had nothing to do with the result.
It appears I’m not alone in my appraisal but I am also partial to pies from Ravenshoe and Malanda bakeries.
Newspaper companies are tasked with tackling very serious and important topics. Politics and crime to us is what roads, rates and rubbish is to councils.
But we do much more than that. We celebrate our way of life, proudly highlighting the very best of who and what we are and what we like to do.
So sit back and enjoy our list in this weekend’s edition of the Cairnseye – then put the keys in the ignition and go discover these wonderful tastes of the tropics.