The Australian Chronicles

By Mary Ann Kerzel

Food

After recovering from our exciting trip from the airport, we decided to do a little exploring. After all it was still morning! (I thought we already put in a full day.)

Right across the street from our hotel was a huge city park called Fitzroy Gardens. There were big stands of trees that formed a canopy over the sidewalk. Into a place full of lush green grass, hills, flowers, trees and people we strolled. Don’t forget to look the wrong way for cars when crossing the street.

“ Hey, look, the Good Year Blimp! What’s that doing here? Did it follow us here? Boy, that must have been a trip!”

Everyone walking was talking on cell phones. Apparently that’s the only phone most people have. Everyone seemed to be doing business on the run. I really didn’t notice people using their cell phones while driving like in the US.

As in the US taxi drivers are crazy. They just zip here and there and for no apparent reason make a U turn in the middle of the street and streak off! Didn’t see any limousines any place. But we did see a lot of people on motorcycles and bicycles, especially messenger service people.

Many vehicles have the big tubular extended bumpers on the front and back. Seeing the driving explains much of the reason for them. The rest became apparent on our 800-kilometer drive from Melbourne to Sydney. I saw a very large kangaroo dead on the roadside. Deer running across the highway in the US can total the front end of a car, I’m sure a large kangaroo, emu, goat, dingo, wombat or koala could do quite a bit of damage too.

Most of the cars and trucks in Australia were Japanese or Ford. They have several big Ford plants in the area we were visiting. The strangest car I saw was the Australian car, the Holden.

Dinning in Australia is different to say the least. We usually ate at the hotel, buffet style but most other places only serve a la carte.

Australians love focaccia sandwiches. “We like focaccia bread. Let’s give it a try, I’m hungry.” You know how we Americans love MEAT in our sandwiches. Not so in Australia, they love their veggies! A nice slice of tomato, a big leaf lettuce leaf, a few other greens, some chopped carrots, a few julienne cucumber sticks, some mystery spread and you got a great sandwich.

“Where’s the meat! Right there under the lettuce stuck to the mystery spread. Where?” If you look really hard you can find one wafer thin slice of lunchmeat!

“Tried that, what’s next?”

“PIZZA! All Right Pizza! We’re going to have P-I-Z-Z-A!”

“Where’s the sauce!”

“Where’s the cheese?”

“Where’s the pepperoni and sausage?”

“WHERE’S THE PIZZA!”

Australian Pizza:

Start with focaccia bread (kind of like Boboli crust). Add some veggies like onion, red bell peppers, mushroom and if you’re lucky a slice of tomato. Add a little sprinkle of cheese, bake and you got pizza?

My estimate is that they put about one tablespoon of some white shredded cheese on top an entire large pizza. I don’t think that it was mozzarella because one there wasn’t enough to taste and two it didn’t melt!

I had a baby so-called pizza at the hotel. It had a piece (a curd or two) of feta cheese on top. We tried one last time for a supreme pizza. Same thing with black olives and several kinds of lunchmeat shredded up and put on top.

Okay, so sandwiches are out, pizza is out. Salads aren’t bad. They’re a little on the bitter side. There are some greens on the salads that look like weeds to me! I don’t know what they are but I didn’t break out or anything after eating them.

Pastries were fun. They were at every meal at the buffets in the hotels, very mild flavored and not real sugary sweet. I don’t think they have any cane sugar in Australia just honeybees.

Many TV commercials tout the benefits of fiber and say you can be healthy by adding even more fiber to your diet. They certainly take it to heart with grains and fiber being so important. Bread, bread, bread, fruits and veggies but “Where’ the beef!”

We were warned before we left for Australia that if we wanted a hamburger not to ask for a “hamburger” because that is exactly what we’d get. A nice grilled HAM patty! “That’s easy, I’ll just ask for a beef burger! Problem solved.”

“It’s late, we’re tired and hungry so let’s just get room service tonight.” B-E-E-F B-U-R-G-E-R with chips (fries).

“Yes, room service, I’ll have a beef burger cooked well done. Oh boy I’m going to have me a hamburger. Yes!”

I was not prepared for what was under that big chrome dome on my plate! I got me a real genuine Australian Beef Burger. Aside from no ketchup or slice of onion, there was lettuce and slice of tomato and on top was a nice big FRIED EGG! You heard me right; a fried, a big fried egg on top of my beef burger! Club sandwiches also come with a fried egg inside!

It wasn’t bad but I prefer my fried eggs on a plate next to my bacon or sausage for breakfast.

So far what I had enjoyed eating most was the fresh fruit. Fresh fruits were served with every meal. I tried new and exotic fruits like passion fruit, tamarillo, and kiwi. They are all filled with lots of little black seeds. The smaller the fruit the more seeds it contained. It was kind of like eating a little mango slime with a handful of birdseed.

David loved the seafood. Stacks and stacks of oysters, clams, and mussels. Platters full of octopus, squid, scallops and many different kinds of fish filled the buffet table. There was a huge pile of pink prawn.

Wait a minute there’s something wrong with those shrimp. It’s the whole entire shrimp! Shell, tail, legs, more legs, head, feelers and…BIG BLACK BUGGY EYES!!!!! They looked like big soggy raisins!

“I like shrimp, naked headless ones! Not ones dressed in full armor looking at me with those huge black buggy eyes! Got any chicken?”

David ate one shrimp. He couldn’t deal with fighting through all that armor and legs to get to the meat. I couldn’t look at them. Maybe if they had little beady eyeballs!

Everywhere you look they serve fried eggs, scrambled eggs and omelets, so where is the chicken? In Sydney I finally found chicken on the menu. No seafood buffet for me. C O R N - F E D - C H I C K E N. I’ve been looking for those words.

“I’ll have the roasted corn fed chicken au jus and a salad.”

David was still having a great time feasting on seafood at the buffet when they brought my dinner. It was such a beautiful sight to behold. It was a beautiful perfect golden brown whole chicken, the size of my fist!

“This isn’t chicken! This little thing couldn’t possibly lay those huge fried eggs they serve on top of beef burgers!”

As near as I could figure from all the darkish gamy tasting meat and the size was that it was like a Cornish game hen. Not the US Grade A corn fed bird that I was expecting. Mr. Perdue’s chickens are giants compared to this bird!

Tonight is “Barby Night”! Oh, boy grilled MEAT! Fish…no. Pile of skewered prawn…no. Here we are, M-E-A-T. There were platters of silver dollars size pieces of red meat. They were labeled so you knew what you were eating.

Okay I’ll try the sirloin steak, kangaroo, venison and lamb. I’m a good sport and I NEED PROTEIN! They grilled it the way you wanted it and brought it to your table along with several kinds of mustard

Well, I couldn’t tell the steak from the venison from the kangaroo. They all had that same gamy flavor. The lamb chop was easy because it had a bone.

There were a couple of meals where I ate good old USA Quaker granola bars and peanut M&M’s that I brought with me.

ALRIGHT!! Mickey De’s! We’re saved-real food at McDonald’s! A burger, coke and fries! WRONG-O!!!!!!!!!!!! The fries were all right like the old ones but the burger wasn’t right and had that gamy flavor. The coke was passable but NO ICE!

NO ICE ANYWHERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No ice in drinks in Australia!!!!! I like cold icy drinks not warm soda!

I found one thing that they didn’t mess up…butter!!! Butter and rolls or butter and bread. So now I have three food groups, butter, bread and fruit!

After two duds at McDonald’s we decided that KFC and Burger King (Hungry Jack’s) would probably be worse and didn’t bother trying them.

Bacon in Australia is okay. You get the strip and the “Canadian Bacon” part all in one piece. Sometimes it comes with a few chips of cartilage for the challenge and probably the fiber!

The best meals we had were at a Chinese Restaurant in Chinatown in Melbourne and a German Restaurant in Sydney. The Chinese was the absolute best! We ate there twice.

The Lowenbrau was a quaint little place with twinkle lights in the trees and tables barely big enough for two place settings. We went for the special sauerkraut and sausages for two. First they brought us a little basket of bread slices and butter. With a little rearranging we got the basket situated all right. Then the waitress came with two logs about 8-10 inches in diameter and 12 inches long? David and I just looked at each other as she put them in the center of the table on end next to one another.

When they brought the huge platter of mashed potatoes, sausages and sauerkraut and put it atop the logs, we figured it out. Pretty nifty. I don’t know where they would have put that platter without the logs because the table wasn’t big enough for it. We had a good time and stayed late talking.

Hot Dogs – we don’t even want to go there. The foot long hot dog looks a lot like an Oscar Mayer hot dog only longer. The taste and texture is all wrong. I think they may use veal to make their hot dogs and sausages. Then again it could be all the preservatives and dyes we put in ours that make them taste so good! The “bun” for this dog looks like a mini loaf of “Wonder Bread” that some how they put the dog down through the center of it. Then they slip a neat snug fitting little bag over the whole thing.

Condiments are the next stop. NO KETCHUP! Their tomato sauce is like a real cheap watered down catsup here. Okay, maybe it will kill the taste or add some! My taste buds are getting so confused. Then I find a squirt bottle marked American Mustard-----Yesssss! NOT! Our mustard is yellow not brown! At least it will fill the empty space in the pit of my stomach.

I saved the best food for last. Have you ever heard of veggemite - you know, a veggemite sandwich! It comes in a cute little package like jelly at IHOP. It sits there on a plate along with those little jellies. Well, I’ve got to try this. It wouldn’t be right to come all the way to Australia and not try veggemite.

Someone once told me that veggemite was peanut butter in Australia. Well, let me tell you, the closest it gets to peanut butter is sitting on the plate next to the jelly packets!

Veggemite is concentrated yeast extract. It’s the color of apple butter and tastes like they took a gallon of soy sauce and cooked it down to syrup!

ARGH !!!!!!!!!!!!!

YUCK! My tongue was curling up as I was trying to scrape the veggemite off! No salt in any food in Australia! All the salt in Australia is in veggemite!! Quick, give me a warm coke even a bad hot dog, get this flavor off my tongue! I’ll give any thing to lick a bunch of stamps!!!! Yuck! Phooey!

“Choke!!! I take it back, Australian food is good just don’t make me eat veggemite, PLEASE!”

I ran into a friend of mine the other day and he told me about his stint in Nam. He got some R&R with some Australian service men. They were all feasting on dried bat and gave him some. “Yuck! Phooey!” “Hey mate, how about some veggemite?” “Okay. ARGH! Quick, give me some bats!”

Veggemite is one flavor you will never forget!