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  :)