Doughnuts

If you’re from Ballarat, there are a few things you get to know the more of a local you become. One thing treasured by locals is the knowledge of the best place to acquire hot jam doughnuts after hours. I am of course talking about the Hamburger Cart.

This is a favourite spot for me. It’s located in the carpark of Little Bridge St, between the Coles and Woolworth’s supermarkets. The seagulls gather in the wide open asphalt space once the cars start leaving. In the summer the asphalt smarts from the sun. In winter it sparkles with rain, reflecting all the neon and florescent lights around. The best nights in this car park have the sound of gulls and my favourite busker; a trumpet player who will play me La Vie En Rose for my spare change.

The doughnuts are cheap. $1 each for hot jam. The jam is inserted gracelessly. Usually four stabs of what must be a hot jam gun into perfectly fresh doughnut flesh, then stacked into a brown paper bag. This bag usually feels like absolute joy for me, but that’s because it’s mostly connected to memories of absolute bliss.

At the end of shows for Pride and Prejudice, I would get in the van with my cast mates, the smell of freshly cut buddleia in the van, and drive down to get doughnuts. We would sit in the car away from the wet and look out at the city, snacking in silence. Sometimes after shows you just need silence. Your heart just needs to ‘be’ in the world for a little while. It felt like our souls were snacking on the doughnuts, not just our mouths. Our hair full of hairspray, our faces either covered in stage makeup or freshly scrubbed. Speaking half in quotes from the show if we did talk. Sometimes it would be one carload of us. Sometimes it would be a few.

The other nostalgic memory was when I was desperately trying to get into climbing. It was always a challenge to get people to come with me. If only someone would come then I could get them to learn with me and we could go outside and belay each other. Eventually, a few buddies did get interested and we would finish climbing at the primitive little local climbing wall, our hands torn and our hearts full and we would drive into town just to get our mitts full of these doughnuts. On days we threw ourselves into the climbing our hands would find the doughnuts too hot to touch.

So if you’re from Ballarat and don’t know about the doughnuts at Hamburger Cart, or if you’re passing through and you want to taste a local legend, you’ll find them on Little Bridge Street from around dusk.

Photography assistant today was my sister Goldfields Girl. Jacket was an eBay score. Skirt is actually a dress from The Pretty Dress Co.