Roo steak or Vegemite?
I’ll take the TimTam, thank you.
One of the best ways to discover a country on your first visit is through food, and on that score I made a wonderful discovery of
Our first meeting was at what turned out to be a rousing dinner at Don Quixote on in downtown
We had an early flight the next day, and breakfast was – as is common in most of the inns in
A word on Vegemite. We were told we could not leave
The mining town of Broken Hill (pop. 20,000, with 50 Filipinos) is very quiet on a Sunday morning; fortunately the supermarket was open so we could stock up on water, fruits (the peaches were lovely) and a little junk food (Aero mints for me). That was particularly important for my colleague from
In the bone-chilling outback wind the barbie fire was a welcome spot, the lamb sausages were delicious, the steaks were Aussie-sized (meaning huge) and the roo steak…well, it was too healthy and lean (not a hint of fat) for me. We had potato salad, rolls, and the most amazing, delicious lemon meringue pie I’ve ever had, made fresh by one of the ladies of Willcania. If not for the country’s honor (I didn’t want them thinking Pinoys are so matakaw) I would’ve had a second piece, but there was just enough to go around, so I cleaned up every crumb on my plate.
Breakfast at the Willcania Motel, owned and run by transplanted Sydneysider Paul Brown who reminded me of the mythical lumberjack Paul Bunyan, was whatever you wanted, cooked and brought to your room; my neighbor, from
Back in Broken Hill, an invigorating afternoon walk around town worked up an appetite, and though the group had decided to look for a nice restaurant – with tablecloth and real glasses, please – to have dinner that evening, I was irresistibly drawn by the aroma of sausages on the grill in the park, and it was good, eaten “Aussie-style” wrapped in a slice of white bread!
That evening, we sat at a long table at the Astra Hotel’s dining room for a leisurely and most pleasant meal. I had a wonderful roasted spatchcock, with a richly fruity glaze. Only on our third day together, it seemed like we had been pilgrims together forever: jokes didn’t even have to get to the punchline for us all to be rolling with laughter.
There was no time for breakfast the next morning as we had to be out in the desert at dawn for a moving ceremony atop a bluff among sculptures carved out of desert stones. The vastness and splendor of the outback stretched farther than the eye could see, flat and bare forever and ever, tinged oh so slowly by the rising sun, and the wind relentless and cold – you cannot but be awed.
Piping hot coffee and then a full breakfast back at the motel dining room – served by a Pinay who has lived there for 32 years – were most welcome for this pilgrim nearly frozen to the bone. But there was lunch to look forward to, at a restaurant perched atop the wall of a mining pit. We were warned about the size of the house burger, and only our Father Ralph from
Our farewell dinner at Broken Hill was at a Chinese restaurant (there are five in town), despite our Polish colleague’s reluctance about Asian food. Run by a Cantonese family, the food was fast, hot and had basically two distinct tastes: braised and fried. And no – Peking duck was nowhere on the menu.
Back in Sydney and then Melbourne we literally had the world on our plate: from gourmet sandwiches at a lunch meeting to nouvelle cuisine on a harbor cruise, pasta and salad at a religious retreat house (a couple of us unknowingly nipped some sausages from the buffet of another group) to a Portuguese burger (in honor of our Brazilian, who was hankering for tastes of home) followed by gelato. And through it all there was toast and Vegemite, and the promise of TimTam, that quintessential Australian chocolate-coated biscuit that is – surprise! – more expensive there than it is in Unimart here. I hope my colleague from
You can gain several pounds just by walking down
Our last meal as a group was amidst the beautiful rolling hills of the Yering Station winery, the oldest in the region. Naturally the wine took center stage, expertly critiqued by our German colleague, who is very knowledgeable about wine and drugs – the latter as reportage rather than consumption. Here we toasted the birthday of Yago, who is from
This may be strange by way of a travel journal, but a lot of memories of this trip were made at the lunch and dinner table, around the “barbie” fire, even over sandwiches and hot dogs and gelato in the cold night. There is of course so much more to our visit – and to
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