It may have been too warm for my lightweight jacket, but it was beginning to feel a lot like Christmas standing outside the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica, California. I had flown from Washington, D.C., to the West Coast for the sixth Democratic primary debate and wanted to enjoy a quick drink after filing my last story that mild December Saturday night at one of the hotel’s bars and restaurants.
The Fig is an airy farm-to-table bistro with a black-and-white decor complemented by hanging plants and geometric accent lights. It’s named for the imposing Moreton Bay fig that welcomes guests onto the hotel’s grounds, and, tonight, the 80-feet-tall specimen’s intricate network of branches and above-ground roots was adorned with illuminated snowflakes emitting a soft glow like a cozy embrace.
I’ve always felt a kinship with California because of the Pacific Ocean. It’s the body of water that connects my two homes of Australia and the United States. Americans often complain about its chilliness, but that’s not my experience.
I was raised in Brisbane, a city with a country town mentality that’s wedged between two of Australia’s best stretches of coastline, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. Growing up 40 minutes from the beach, the Pacific Ocean holds a sea of memories. My family would frequently recharge over the Christmas-New Year break with the salt, sand, and sun on nearby Stradbroke Island, and I would join them when I could, commuting over Moreton Bay to the mainland via a ferry for work, as needed.
But here, in Santa Monica, I had discovered another link between Australia and California: that Moreton Bay fig.
The fig, a Santa Monica historic landmark since 1976, is a native of Australia’s East Coast, just like me. How this particular fig found its way to the Fairmont Miramar is a story that twists and turns like the evergreen banyan tree’s roots.
During the late 1800s, the Fairmont Miramar was the family home of John Jones, a Nevada senator and the founder of Santa Monica. According to local folklore, following the property’s conversion into a hotel by Jones’s wife and son after his death, an Australian sailor who doubled as a regular at the bar offered to settle one night’s tab with a fig he had aboard his ship, which was docked at Santa Monica pier.
The reporter in me may raise an eyebrow at the tale, but that fig, from an ocean away, made me feel closer to my other home during the holidays. And, with that, I strolled through the hotel’s front doors toward the bar, silently promising to pay my own check with cash.
