“Hey, beautiful!”
The shout comes from behind a stack of wicker chairs inside a darkened restaurant.
A tiny figure steps forward and waves the arm of a well-loved vacuum cleaner in greeting.
It’s 6.07 am. When Pamela Aranguiz steps into someone’s morning, they are pinioned by the world in her smile.
If you need a smack of sunshine wrapped in a “welcome to family, amazing person!” smile, hang near Pamela’s empire in the heart of Mudjimba any time between 6am and 10pm.
Later in the day, her vacuum may morph into a chilled prosecco, sip of home-brewed grappa or a lush lamb shank with the command, “eat with your fingers, my darling!”
Stare at her crimson Valentine shoes long enough and she will whisper, “Love … they are filled with love.”
Somehow, in that moment, the shoes, her, you ― will become just that.
Not many years ago, mostly brush turkeys and loneliness strutted the evening air of Mudjimba Esplanade on the Sunshine Coast.
Like hunger, loneliness is a signal that pleads for nurture, with COVID reinforcing the cruciality of human connection.
The brush turkeys still strut, but according to the locals Pamela’s ‘show’ now adds a heartbeat to this once-quiet town.
Feathers quivering, Brazilian performers spill onto the road from her Florentina’s Trattoria.
Or tango dancers tempt with rhythmic dreams in her Las Tapas Bar.
A young man croons Sinatra. A First Nation singer draws people into the outback’s red dust, while Afghan born Frankie, sporting a handle-bar moustache, crafts a wicked cocktail.
Customers harpoon their favourite table and over-indulged pooches canoodle under alfresco tables. Children sit, fascinated.
Pamela, the Chilean/German/Spanish dynamo, orchestrates; soothing a new employee, spinning customers into friends, she welcomes.
Above all, she welcomes, as the spirit of her Tata, her Mediterranean grandfather, raises his glass to her.
Her Tata engraved love, respect and heritage into Pamela’s childhood heart.
She breathes in the Mediterranean streets pictured on her trattoria walls as she talks about him.
“I speak fluent Spanish, read it, write it, dance it … to keep that culture for our granddad,” she says.
Tata’s family table in Sydney was all food, wine, his stories.
“Treat ladies like crystal glass!” he would demand of the boys.
But Pamela treats everyone this way.
Beginning a fashion career at 14, for 33 years she “loved making women feel beautiful, no matter what shape or size”.
She managed her first retail business at 18, and her customer service skill helped nudge her into the toughest service industry: hospitality.
Friends asked her to improve their Mudjimba business with those skills, and the waitress went on to buy the place.
“I knew nothing about hospitality, but I thought, I like this,” she says.
With Viktor Tresku (whom she calls Mr Fix-it) as a silent partner, she now calls up the joy of her Tata’s table every night except Mondays.
“Mondays are mine for friends and champagne,” she says.
Pamela’s past holds tough times though, and one miracle.
At 29, working full time and step-mum to her partner’s five children, including four-year-old triplets, out popped her miracle: son Daniel.
She’d been told she would never bear children.
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Pamela says she walked away from the difficult relationship with Daniel’s dad when her boy became old enough to understand what ‘difficult’ looked like.
Life as a single mother was the toughest of times.
Three years ago, Pamela asked her then-19-year-old miracle to leave his apprenticeship at a five-star Sydney restaurant to manage her Mudjimba kitchen.
It was an apprenticeship he’d sweated blood and garlic to win.
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But now, with a success under his chef’s apron, Pamela says “it’s his time to fly”.
COVID willing, he will unfurl the wings of a mighty heritage to Pamela’s contacts in Spain, Italy, Canada, or Chile.
A future without her son nearby looks different and is as-yet unexperienced.
But she has friends and much-loved customers around her: her Tata has angels on the ground watching over this ever-giving heart.
Florentina’s Trattoria and Las Tapas Bar is at Shop 4, 13-17 Mudjimba Esplanade, Mudjimba, 5448 8110.
