Darwin

We extended last weekend with a couple of leave days and made another excursion to outback Australia. This time to Darwin, the capitol of the Northern Territory. Although NT constitutes about a fifth of Australia's total area only 1 percent of the population live here. There's plenty of space you could say. To get to Darwin you fly and the flight takes 4 hours. Yes, Australia is enormously big!

If I should summarise the stay in one word that word is HOT. It's incredibly hot up there. We had 33-35 degrees in Darwin city and a couple of degrees more on the trip to Litchfield National Park. Still this is the dry season and the worst is yet to come although we already felt like walking around in a steam sauna.

Darwin is known for having beautiful red sunsets and heaps of crocodiles. We're now not talking about lame american Alligators but Salt Water Crocs known to be the biggest and most aggressive in the world. In fact you can not swim anywhere up there without the area first being crocodile secured. During our stay in Aussie one person has been killed by a croc so it happens now and then.

So one of the days we went for a full day tour to Litchfield including Croc cruise on Adelaide river. It was all amazing. Stops at local outback pubs, swimming under waterfall, swimming in rock pools and studying gigantic termite mounds.
But the highlight was still the crocodile cruise. Each croc has it's own territory so every 25 meters there was a new one. They come immediately when they here splash in the water so you realise you wouldn't live many minutes if falling into the water.

The other days in Darwin we did a Harbour sunset cruise, walked the city and visited the Mindil beach sunset market. The sunsets are nice even if us as Gothenburgers are quite used to beautiful sunsets.
Darwin was completely destroyed by the Japanese during WW2 because it supplied fuel to the allied troups in Asia. Hence everything is built up after 1945 so it's a young city architecture wise. If you're interested in war history there is plenty to see but we skipped that part.

So would I recommend a trip to Darwin? Well the city in itself is not spectacular and it's extremely hot all year around but it's a different piece of the Australian puzzle that is worth to discover. Actually not to many of my Aussie friends have been there.

A local hero at an outback bar. Beer and a paper, what more do you need for breakfast?

You see a lot of road trains up here, max length is 53,5 m!

Swimming in a rock pool. Looks cold but is definitely not!

Wangi falls. You can swim into the waterfall

Yes, the sunsets are beauitiful!

 Cheers!

Country trip continued

Ok, so after the first day's adventure we headed of for Bunya Mountains, but first some words about Dalby. We have now experienced about about ten different small towns ( ca 10 000 inhabitants) in Australia and what strikes you is how similar they are. Dalby is a very good example. Streets are very broad in general and the main city center street is broad with 45 degree angle parking along the sides. In some corner you always find a "hotel" which is not a place where you sleep but a place where you have steak and beer. You also always find a little shopping center where the big food chains, Woolworths and Coles are dominating. Dalby is situated in a agricultural area surrounded by giant fields. A small river is floating through Dalby and in general the town feels quite wealthy. A quite nice place but unfortunately far from everywhere...

Dalby CBD

Dalby












So between Dalby and Kingaroy is Bunya Mountains, a national park with highest peak about 1100m above sea level. The area is most known for the big Bunya pines and a rich bird life. A popular place for campers and bush walkers. A nice place, well worth a visit, but frankly there are other national parks closer to Brissie offering same or better experiences.


Next place for staying was Kingaroy, the peanut capital of Australia. The main attraction here are the big peanut silos in the middle of the town and a local vendor called peanut van selling the nuts from a little stall in a corner. Don't know if peanuts are being outcompeted by cashew and other nuts but the general impression was that the town is closing down. Lots of empty premises, no place to eat except for Macca's and KFC and we were almost alone at the motel.
However they had a small museum with the story about the peanuts and quite a lot of old peanut farming machines which was quite interesting for a farmer boy like me.

The last morning I woke up early and decided to go for a morning walk on my own. The rain was hanging in the air but still it was a nice morning and I saw some nice birds like cockatoos and lorikeets. Then, while walking through a park I saw him, high up in a stand alone tree. Mr Magpie! I actually hesitated for a moment, thinking is it safe to pass but then thought I was quite far away from the tree so walked on. 10m past the tree he hit my back head from the left, bang! Ouch! I screamed "bloody bird" and started walking faster. Bang! strike number two from exactly same angle and now I started running. Although now maybe 50m away bang, there was strike number three. Kept running and when I finally stopped I realised I was bleeding from my left ear. I won't laugh at the swooping bird alert signs again!

Back to the motel for breakfast and then it started raining and it continued for the whole day. We visited a local winery and then made the 4 hour drive home in one go. An interesting thing at the winery. While we were tasting the wines a small group came in. They were not interested in any tasting but just bought two 25 litres plastic containers of the local port wine. I'm still wondering, what would anyone use 50l of port for? But since they actually sell it in those containers I guess it's not unusual.

Cheers

 Kingaroy with peanut silos in background

Kingaroy street view

A Bunya Wallaby

Country trip with wilderness

Last weekend was a long weekend in Queensland due to that the queens birthday was celebrated on Monday. No her actual birthday is not that day but since there are no public holiday during the second half of the year the Queenslanders have decided to celebrate in October! Hmm
Anyway, we decided to use the extra day to do a roadtrip to the metropolitan cities, sorry, towns of Dalby and Kingaroy, about 4 hours from Brisbane.
The intention was to see some typical small cities and also encounter some wildlife. It actually became a little bit too much of the latter which I will come back to. We also had the aim of seeing the southern hemisphere stars from a dark spot.
The journey started around 10am on Saturday and our first stop was in Toowoomba for lunch. Toowomba i a quite big and very green city about two hours from Brisbane. It's called the garden city and well worth a visit. However we were aiming for the small ones so continued straight after lunch. Two hours later we entered Dalby. This town has actually got its name from immigrants from Isle of Man between UK and Ireland who in their turn got that name from Swedish Vikings! Felt like coming home...  :)

Since it wasn't really time to check in at the Tourist park cabin we drove on to Lake Broadwater national park, aiming for a nice bird watching trail. We easily found the car park, turned off the engine and opened the doors. And everything turned dark...  What happens? What is this? The car was totally filled with mosquitoes in two seconds. Bloody Hell, what do we do? We had seen a Kangaroo mob 100 m before we stopped so we decided we at least need to take some pictures before leaving.
Probably the most stupid decision taken this year. We were literally covered by mosquitoes during the five minutes photo session. I counted 30 bites on my body that night. Luckily the kangaroos were at least willing photo models.

On the way back we saw three black snakes, almost driving over one of them. Research showed that red bellied black snakes are common in the area so that's our guess although they didn't introduce themselves properly. Yes, of course they're deadly!

Back in Dalby we found our cabin and then had a Chinese Smorgasbord. Yes you read it correctly. Chinese Smorgasbord, funny crossover kitchen. For the non swedish speakers, smorgasbord is originally a swedish word literally meaning "sandwich table" and normally a buffet of light cold dishes and bread. It's said to be one of only two swedish words in official english. The other is ombudsman.
After the meal it was dark so we just drove 10 minutes out in the middle of nowhere to watch the stars. Really beautiful and so worth it. A good nights sleep and then off to Bunya Mountains and Kingaroy
To be continued

Mythbuster

Before leaving Sweden I got a mission. To find out if the water swirls CW or CCW when emptying a basin or bath tube in Australia and if that is different compared to Europe.
Everybody knows that it is that way, not true?
But there are a lot of things that everybody knows... but still are not true. For example everybody knows you get cramps if you swim to close after eating. A couple of years ago I found that this was known only in Sweden, i e it's simply not true. Also "all" people knows it safe to sit in a car during thunderstorms as it stands on rubber wheels. Well, it actually is safe but has nothing to do with the rubber.
So back to the waterswirls. Before leaving Sweden I made some sample tests. I actually found that the swirls in a small majority of the trials were spinning clockwise.
Having done the same tests down under I can not see any obvious pattern. It seems to be more randomly.
So my only conclusion is that I can not confirm the theory. It might be true but then only if you do a large amount of samples under different conditions.
True anyway is that the sun moves the other way in the sky which feels a bit strange in the beginning. Of course it rises in the east but then since it actually moves on the northern part of the sky it moves counterclockwise. Yes it's obvious if you think about it but still feels a bit odd.
Another thing is that the star constellations when you look up in the night looks completely different from the northern hemisphere. There are much more stars here and no Big Dipper (Karlavagnen)

Cheers!

Aussie food

What is typical genuine australian food? When you ask the Aussies they get a somewhat wandering gaze and you might get the answer:
- Maybe a steak with chips...
- No that's international
- Ok so then meat pies and sausages
Yeah that seems to be the traditional stuff, pies and sausages.

The Aussies love barbecues. They cook and eat outdoors whenever they can. (Just like Swedes you could say but the difference is that it is not limited to ten sunny days in a year...)
A barbecue here is not necessarily same as grilling meat as in Sweden. It could as well be cooking on a gas driven outdoor stove. In the weekends you can see heaps of people using the public barbecues that you find in every park. i think it's considered a human right to have access to those.


What has happened in the last decades is that the food scene has been more and more inspired and overtaken by the asians. A majority of the Brisbane city restaurants and food courts serve asian food and there are all kinds, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean and most of all Japanese. And Japanese food is not only Sushi like home. There are lovely hot Japanese curry dishes.

Some general reflections on Aussie food:
- Australia is a third world country when it comes to cheese. In any swedish grocery store you would find 100 sorts of cheese with various tastes. Here, also in the main stores, you are happy if you find 10 and they all taste the same. And from all lovely cheeses in the world they import Jarlsberg!! The tasteless Norwegian crap :)
- Also bread is something you wouldn't write home about. They're still too stuck in the english heritage with boring toast bread.
- When they make hot dogs they first spread butter on the bread, the bread is also much bigger than what a European is used to. So an aussie hot dog is more bread and less sausage than home.
- Hamburgers are almost like home except for that they love to put beetroots on them!
- They have developed an own sushi style. Sushi here is not just raw fish but can also be e g chicken or ham (not raw of course) or lobster salad. and all sushi places have those.
- The national pride candy is TimTam, a chocolate covered biscuit tasting a little bit like Twix. They're lovely. You can't just eat one. I'm addicted.
- And then of course we have the vegemite. All Aussie's have grown up with it and most of them seem tolike it. It's an extremely salty spread that you have on sandwiches. Tastes like spreading a stock cube over your bread. To be honest, uneatable for a foreigner. It's an acquired taste that you need to be grown up with.







There aren't that many lunch restaurants as in Sweden where you actually sit down and eat. Instead there are food courts everywhere.

You find them in the city and also in all shopping centres. A food court is a number of restaurants that serves take away food but also have a common shared area where you can sit down and eat.
This is good because if you are a group with different preferences you could buy food from different vendors but sit together at same table. For lunch however most people just garb some take away and take back to their offices.




And back to the steaks. Yes the Aussies love steaks and there are a lot of good steak restaurants around. Often they are called something with "hotel" Below steak is from The Railway Club Hotel in Melbourne.

But I still haven't visited Norman Hotel with the wonderful slogan below. Their steaks must just be great!

Cheers

Hamilton Island, Whitsundays and the Reef

This week has been our first real holiday week since we came except for the Xmas and New Year in Sydney. We went to Hamilton Island to explore the iconic Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef.

On Hamilton Island, which is the main tourist resort place in the area no common cars are allowed. instead everybody drives Golf buggies so the main entertainment is to race around with those. 

Good fun!

Unfortunately we were quite unlucky with the weather during our stay. Windy and rainy it was. The experience from the reef was more about surviving in high waves than finding extraordinary fish or corals. 

Maybe it would have paid off to dive instead of snorkeling but also for the divers the sight wasn't that good due to the water motion. And from what we heard noone saw any turtles or sharks.

On the way back the waves was even higher and the "Sea flu" started to spread on the boat. People were throwing up everywhere but at least the Krusenvik's made it without.  The staff however did a great job to look after all vomating guys and actually seemed to have quite fun?! The statistical base is of course small but it seems asian people have worse "sea legs" than european.

We saw the same pattern the day after when we went to Whitehaven beach, known to be the most beautiful in Australia. Well we have only seen it in heavy rain so we might not have got a really fair view but it wasn't that fantastic. At least the wind wasn't that bad that day but still some asians got sea sick on the boat.

On Hamilton Island (and generally in Australia) there are lots of cockatoos. So instead of the pigeons at home these show up when you're having a picnic or sitting on the balcony

All in all, despite of the weather, we had a good week with good food, some swimming and exciting experiences.

And we learned the diver's sign for "Yes, I'm okey"  :)

 Our hotel was the big building to the right

 View over the marina

View from the balcony

Cheers!

A week in Melbourne

I spent last week in Melbourne. So now I have visited both the competing big cities Sydney and Melbourne. In Aussie there is a big rivalry between the two. Sydney is considered to be more busy, faster and fashionable .... whereas Melbourne is more slow and sophisticated. So what is then my verdict and how do they compare to Brissie. Unfortunately I didn't see much of Melbourne in daylight since I had to work, so most of my experience was Melbourne by night. Melbourne is actually a little bit different from Sydney although the differences described in media is a little bit exaggerated. But where Sydney is more narrow, hilly and a little bit worn down Melbourne is more flat, modern and built in a perpendicular pattern with broad avenues which makes it easy to find your ways and get your bearings. The drawback is that every corner looks the same.













Melbourne's main problem in the competition with Sydney is the lack of iconic places like the Opera house, the Harbour bridge or Darling Harbour. If you're not interested in a giant cricket arena there isn't much spectacular to see. Instead Melbourne is an event city with always something going on, There are also lots of culture an it's known for the huge amount of good restaurants. I can recommend Railway Club Hotel (interior picture below) or Rare, who both serves excellent steaks!

One thing I didn't like about Melbourne was the many homeless people sleeping in the streets and begging for money. Not the organised way as in Sweden but simply Australians that didn't have anywhere to go for the night. That we don't see much of in Brisbane.

So to conclude, if you're visiting only one city in Aussie, go to Sydney. Visit Melbourne when an event you're interested in comes up, like the F1 grand prix or Australian open tennis. Or if you're tired of crowded big cities, come to modern, familiar Brisbane instead!

Cheers!

Hot cross buns

Last weekend it was Easter, also in Aussie. Unfortunately I had to work during the entire long weekend due to go live for the project I've been on since we came here.
Long days on a air force base with no open restaurants.
The saviour is spelled Hot Cross Buns.

I had never seen these before coming here but  they have appeared in the stores for a couple of months. Now I have learned that traditionally they are eaten on Good Friday and that the white cross symbolizes Jesus death. There are different variant e g with chocolate and spices (from which I think ginger is the most prominent) but the original (and best) are the ones with raisins or currants. Most people seem to prefer them toasted with loads of butter.
So what do they taste? Are they good? Quite alright I must say although not that special. Something in between common bread and sweet buns.
However they are quite filling to your stomach and without them we wouldn't have come through the weekend!

Cheers

What does it cost?

One of the most common question we get when talking to people back home is - What are prices like in Aussie? So then let's take a look at the cost to fill up the fridge and some other costs. Speaking about fridge, have you ever heard about an esko? "When you go to the beach be sure to bring your esko" is a typical aussie phrase. Esko = kylväska. I think it's from the beginning a brand same way as Thermos.

But now back to the fridge. How much does it cost to fill it up? After 6 months we have quite good statistics and our grocery budget is about 20% higher than in Sweden which I think corresponds quite well to the general feeling. However there are differences between food types
- Beef is cheaper (This is a beef eating country)
- Chicken about same as in Sweden
- Pork slightly more expensive (About same as beef)
- Fish is expensive (Salmon double price!)
- Fruit and vegetables vary more than in Sweden but is more expensive than you could expect in a country where everything grows all year around. Potatoes is a confusing thing. Much more expensive.

Alcohol is surprisingly expensive. Everybody knows alcohol is very expensive in Sweden but the fact is it is not cheaper here. The difference is that you get quantity discount, sometimes 25% if you e g buy six bottles of wine. In fact you need the discount to come down to swedish prices.

Petrol is ridiculously cheap, half price to Sweden and rest of Europe. No surprise you see a lot of big thirsty 4WD utility cars.

Also the cars themselves are cheaper, especially the japanese and other asian makes.

Road tax and insurance are slightly more expensive.

Electricity and gas (yes most houses/apartments including ours have gas stoves and water heating) are like home.

Services in general are cheaper, e g you can get a haircut for $10=SEK60. I go to one of the inner city barbers and pay a high price, $30.

Eating out is slightly cheaper I would say, especially fast food. I will come back to australian food in another post

Accommodation costs vary of course a lot depending on location and city but in general apartment rents are higher. House prices however seem to be similar if you compare Brisbane - Gothenburg

Cheers

Cockroach races

Yesterday was Australian day, or as most people here say Aussie Day. It's a public holiday celebrating, hmmm, the fist British fleet coming to Australia in 1788 .




So what do the people then do? After looking through the menu for Brisbane we settled for cockroach races at the Story Bridge Hotel. A real scorcher from what we heard.






The race arena turned out to be a small built up village with food stalls, games, entertainment from a scene including a really great cover band and of course lots of beer.

For 5 dollars you could by a roach and join the races that were divided into 14 heats, each with three price winners.
I think you could actually also bring you own well trained roach...








The race idea is to empty a jar of marked up cockroaches in the middle of a circle. The one first outside the circle is the winner. It's still unclear what's in it for the roaches...









And if you don't like cockroaches you could of course do the more traditional Aussie Day celebration stuff like a garden barbie with the family or a day at the beach...


By the way, referring to last blog post about aussie beer. On this event I became a victim of advertising and bought a can of Pure Blonde. Marketed as 80% lower carb. Probably the worst bre the world has seen. Don't try that at home!



Cheers


Happy Aussie Day!

Australian beer

Those who like me were young in the late 80's and early 90's probably remember the beer brand Foster's. It was giant in Europe at that time and synonymous with Australian beer. So do the Aussies still drink Foster's?

The funny thing is that it has never been a big brand here! It's from the start a product created for international marketing, which they did extremely successful.  Since many years you don't find it in Sweden and although it still exists it's not easy to find in Australia either. But also back in the glory days it was a quite odd brand in Australia.

The largest brands now in Australia are XXXX (pronounced forex) and VB (Victoria Bitter)

XXXX is our local Queensland beer and brewed here in Brisbane. In general  Australian beers are pale, not too tasty and easy to drink. Similar to Corona or american beer. Some people would call them washy. That is good though for warm days when you're thirsty and really need to wet your throat. Also good with food. However nothing the connoisseur would write any novels about.To be honest I've tried quite a few of the Lagers by now and they are all very similar.

However there exists a real pearl among the shelves in the liquor stores and pubs, Little Creatures!

What a beer! It's not a lager but an ale and it tastes fantastic. Brewed in Perth from where you also get the brand Fat Yak which is a quite good alternate. Obviously Aussie beer should come from the west coast!

Cheers

BTW  You can actually order Little Creature from Systembolaget, only SEK 42 a bottle  :)