Easter Bilby

Happy Easter!  OK, a few days late but I had to get artwork for this postcard.  By now, you've gone through the initial supplies of chocolate goodies, painted eggs, jelly beans and ham.  Perhaps you've already made a raid on the post-holiday, 50% off sales racks in the stores.  Look closely, you may be surprised at what you find.  I sure was.

 Hello Easter Bilby and Easter Wombat.  You may be hollow creations of Cadbury chocolate  but you bring great joy to Australian children on their way to diabetic shock. Never mind those Easter bunnies, a reminder of the scourge they have become on this land after some farmer brought them in from Europe for hunting without realizing they had no natural enemies to keep their numbers down. A pox on them. We have the shy Bilby, with its looooong ears, loooong nose and looong tail to immortalize in mounds of theobroma.   And let us not forget you, O Humble Wombat, built like a fire hydrant with four legs and a hairy nose.  You have a cute name and are positively adorable with your fur the color of milk chocolate. munch, munch, munch. No wonder Aussies of all ages hold you in awe and fond memory.
     What is noticeably missing here are the mounds jelly beans that appear at Easter time in North America. And outside a few notable cultural cliques (like the Polish Heritage Centre), decorated  chicken eggs don't figure prominently in the celebrations.  Did I smuggle a PAAS egg dyeing kit into the country? Can't find it if I did.  That's OK,  I'm good.  And waiting for the 75% off sales.


 

Irish Need Not Apply

   Top  O' the Morning to ye. And for the rest of the day. I was not born Irish, nor raised by leprechauns.  But, by jiminy, on March 17, I am ready to speak funny for association and eat for the cause.  No, not that nasty looking American bar creation, green beer, but Corned Beef & Cabbage. Add a carrot and potato,if you like, and call it a New England Boil.  I get fainty just thinking about it.
   Keep fainting because I have discovered that Corned Beef & Cabbage is (like German Chocolate Cake) an 'American thing.'  Yesterday I went to the green grocer and butcher shop (you know, where they sell nothing but meat) and he didn't even have corned beef --called "silverside" here-- in stock.  Minimal stocks of cabbage at the green grocer.  Quick, run into the big grocery store....and even more disappointment. No packages of corned beef marinating in spices, no wheeled bins of accompanying produce, not even a plastic shamrock on the wall or green frosted cupcake in sight.

   Paddy, where are you?

   The Irish in this area  are forced to congregate in just a few bars with Irish names.  They advertise an "Irish breakfast"  of Black Pudding (a pork sausage made with pig's blood), bacon, tomatoes, toast and beans (ummm, that last bit sounds rather English.)  A few Irish bands and a Celtic dancer or two.  
   And not a slice of corned beef to be had. No parades. No greening a river. No shamrock-shaped baked goods. No special Masses. Few people outside JB O'Briens wearing green. Not a rainbow in sight. A sorry way to spend St Patrick's  Day, to be sure, to be sure. 

  

AC/DC

     A group of old men came into town. Long graying hair, craggy faces, comfortable paunches and riding in SUV's,  they could have been anyone coming in from the beach or heading out to the hills.  But these guys are special.

   In Fremantle, there is a statue of a particular Scottish emigre' whom you might not expect to be immortalized in such a way. Not a famous explorer, founding father, politician, priest or pioneer.  He did not die heroically (indeed, he is the poster child for not downing bottles of liquor as if bottles of pop) nor did he die old. Charismatic, driven with an appetite for thrills, this bagpipe playing man captured Western Australian fancy in a big way. He is Bon Scott,  long dead leader of a band favored by college guys, AC/DC. 

   And the band plays on. Somehow, recordings are not enough for people who enjoy songs with titles like "Highway to Hell" and "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" so Bon's  bandmates still tour.  Angus Young, wearing his trademark schoolboy uniform onstage, doesn't hold up to close inspection anymore and frontman Brian Johnson doesn't need elastic vocal cords to howl out hits first sung 35 years ago.

   So, for two (I suppose) magical nights, Perthians were thrilled that AC/DC had come home.  Grandpas brought their sons who brought their sons to the concert. The Premier (Governor) of WA was in the mosh pit. The TV news channels did liveshots. Everyone seemed abuzz over the whole "Acca Dacca" thing.
   I don't get it, but there you have it. Perhaps another look at music here another day. 

Funny Money

    When I first arrived in OZ, I took a look at the money and mused at just how odd it looked. For the record, the currency is: 5¢ (very small), 10¢ (slightly larger), 20¢ (bigger still) and a 50¢ piece (largest); two "gold" coins of $1 and $2 (which is smaller than the modest $1 coin)-these have taken the place of bills.  The bills are different sizes and colors for each denomination: $5 is light purple and the smallest, $10 is blue, $20 is red, $50 is gold (nicknamed a "pineapple") and the $100 is dark green (or so the rumor goes, they don't come my way for visual inspections).  Besides having the Queen's mug on each bill (this is a Commonwealth country after all) notable Australians appear on the bills-- some of them are actually known to the general public.  And, they are made of plastic, not rag or paper.
    Truth be told, it all looked like funny money.  The colorful stuff of board games played as a kid.  And here is a cultural difference.  If Australian bills look like Monopoly money to me, U.S. bills are boring and deceptive to Australians.  How can you tell the difference between one bill and another? (Apparently the different numbers, different presidents and reverse designs  are indistinguishable to the average inebriated Aussie backpacker.) But ask people who do a lot of travelling and they'll tell you that any currency not their own is just funny money.

     I remember thinking in those early days;  Would I ever spot this for real money if I saw it on the sidewalk? 

     I got my answer today at the Canning Vale Markets.  The market is only open for two hours, so the patrons are very determined locusts hovering about boxes & crates of produce and noticing nothing else.  And then I saw it.  Wait, what was that?  Could that purple slip be.......?  Yes, it was!  It took me three glances, but I recognized a $5 bill lying on the floor.  Did no one else notice?  Ha. It's real!  Finders Keepers. I almost laughed out loud, not because of the financial windfall, but because it answered a question hovering at the back of my mind for almost two years.   OK, it still looks funny, but at least  I recognize it as money.


     Stopped chuckling a few hours later when a fifty dollar bill fell out of Kev's pocket on his way to playing lawn bowls.  I'm keeping an eye peeled on all future walks.
     ><

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Winter Olympics in a Sunburnt Land

    As the final wrap-ups and analyses are made of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, while the last inflatable beaver is being deflated, during this last push to finally get people out of the ice rink where Canada won the men's hockey gold medal, let me offer a few observations of my own from a vantage point below the equator.

   It's true-- Australia and the Winter Olympics  are an odd mix.  For starters, the Games occur in the dead of summer.  The incongruity of watching snowy athletics while melting in triple digit heat is lost on no one. Second, snow-based sports only occur in a small area of New South Wales (the eastern state that contains Sydney) euphemistically called the Australian Alps.  Yeah.   So the majority of the native Aussie athletes tend to enjoin the "freestyle" sports. You know, the kind where you flip into the air and do some kind of acrobatic twisting before landing on your skis/board/plank/butt.  One doesn't need long winters to practice jumping and gymnastics. The imported athletes pick up the other sports.

   Total medal count from 20 female and 20 male competitors: 3. Two golds and one silver. Two freestyle females and one transplanted Canadian guy skiing the moguls.  Channel 9 replayed the glory and re-interviewed the gals in an endless loop. Occasionally, they replayed the fading glory of their athlete-turned-commentators, but good looking faces squealing and woo, woo, woo whooping it up make good TV.  This posed a problem with the Canadian guy, Dale Beggs-Smith.  Dale abdicated from the Canadian team early on because their training system interfered with his "internet business".   Dale's "internet business" has made him quite wealthy so he can train in his own time and can afford not to smile.  He is all business on the hill as he is at the keyboard.  He barely cracked a grin when winning the silver, didn't mug for the camera when being interviewed shortly thereafter, hardly looked excited on the podium.  Telegenic he is not.  And he didn't give  interviews to media organizations outside  of Australia.  The sports show at my radio station figured out why he keeps such a low profile:  Dale has gotten rich creating spam on the internet--one very good reason for staying below the radar.

    Channel 9's coverage of the Games was a bit of a "dog's breakfast".  They also had the broadcast rights to the Cricket- which is an all day sport, not  just a couple of hours.  Western Australia gets a lot of its "live" programming tape delayed from the east coast, so much of our Olympic coverage looked like this: delayed morning chat show until 9 am, a couple of hours of Olympic action (delayed, not live), Cricket, evening news, Cricket, sitcom, and at 10:30pm a round-up of the day's Olympic action.  They frequently tapped into the BBC's or VOC's play by play announcers- a smart move when dealing with sports one knows nothing about.  Channel 9's morning anchor did a competent job and one of their announcers, Phil Liggett, does a very good job describing what he sees without overreaching his knowledge of the sport.  Their evening anchor is just plain shocking. Eddie McGuire is liked for his background story, florid face and constant smile.  A real mate at the pub type...with the same mistaken image for having an opinion that counts. The slights to people (and apologies the next day) were a fairly regular occurrence. Truly an amateur interviewer (long wind ups to four or five entirely unrelated questions in one hit; questions a kindergartner would ask) he wasn't always accurate.  When interviewing ice hockey great, Wayne Gretzky, he talked about the "ball going into the net".  Luckily, it was in the middle of one of his long spew of questions, so either Gretzky didn't notice or graciously chose to ignore it as he picked one of the questions to answer.

   Kevin made an observation at the end of it all. It seemed to him that, especially during the opening and closing ceremonies, the hosts were more inclined to say "We are not the U.S." rather than "We are Canada."  My dear northern neighbors: your slip is showing.


   Yet for all this, I hung on as much as possible to the TV coverage.  There is something so very normal about snow in February, sports played on ice skates, cross country skiers with rifles strapped to their backs, toques  and giant inflatable beavers & moose.  Same time next year?

PIAF - Haircuts by Children

It's time again for that month-long arts extravaganza called the Perth International Arts Festival.  Fabulous event, something for everyone, I wrote about attending the Writer's Festival portion of it last year.  And I will attend Writer's Festival events this year, but I already know what my favorite part of this year's Festival is.

Haircuts by Children.  Never mind the whiney, we-don't-overpraise-our-kids enough description of the event [e.g. "Each stylish new coiffure proves that kids are competent and creative members of society who deserve our respect."] it is just a bit of fun. The kids of Roseworth Primary School were clearly excited about a huge supply of real heads (not dolls heads) to work on and took to their duties--under watchful eyes of pros--with proper import.  My style team consisted of Skye Watson and Jack Leighton-Jones. Skye tended to the details: the welcoming chitchat ("Is this your first time here?"), the obligatory compliments (" Your hair is very soft"), confirming the order ("So, we're doing a trim, style and color. Right?")  and hairdressing insider secrets ("My mum and nanna are from Scotland, that's where I get my beautiful red hair.")  Jack has an eye for the big picture: hair never stayed on the floor for long and the clips & pins were always in order.
The choices of service were clearly displayed at every station: Trim, Style, Mohawk, Whatever?!, Colors.  Having done numerous hairshows in my life, I opted for the full complement. After Skye trimmed my hair, made the sides shorter (er, much shorter), put styling gel in, combed and pinned it into place and applied hairspray.  Jack enthusiastically sprayed on the gold glitter. I was Stylin' ! It is not exactly even, but balance & symmetry can be so overrated. Doubtless that is the reason so many hairdressers signed up for the free haircut.


Roseworth Primary School, an ethnically diverse school whose students might not otherwise have been able to attend PIAF events, is also in charge of the Children's Choice Awards. They've been shuttled to events in order to be able to judge such categories as: Best Hair, Most Enjoyable for Old People and Most Cheering Applause. Bravo, Roseworth!


Appearing Rooms.  Not wanting the party to end so soon, Kev and I walked over to one of the art installations at the Culture Centre area.  A different kind of architecture, "...jets of water shoot into the air to create 'rooms', which disappear as quickly as they emerge." Too cool. And on a hot day, the temptation to walk through walls is great indeed.
Scouts Parade.  But wait, there's more.  What is an exciting day in the City without a parade?  Don't know why  Scouts of all ages (and both genders) were marching, but I was there for the entire thing. Only my secondary Hannah Montana cam was handy, but you get the picture.  Pity you didn't get to Perth for the Festival.


 

The Summer Kitchen

   Antebellum homes and people in equatorial countries have it right: all of the cooking should be done outside.  At least in the summer, anyway.
    Our townhome has a lovely,
white new stove. But the little beauty is not only electric, the heating elements are solid. It takes forever to heat up and twice as long to cool down.  This is not ideal in a home without air-conditioning in the summer. (Or any other time if you are asking the cooks.)  So, as a matter of self-preservation and adding a touch of urban bushman, we shifted the base of culinary operations to the back yard.

  And "yard" really is the operative word here.  It is narrow and also has to function as storage area, tool shed and lanai. We try to satisfy all functions without feeling we are in a junkyard. I insist upon that.  Our herbarium is split between the front porch (where onions, basil, oregano and rocket grow) and the side path (where mint & parsley thrive and green onions, chives, garlic give their best shot.) All close enough for clipping regardless of where one cooks.

Our Summer Kitchen is pretty much outfitted the same way our camping trips are: compact essentials gleaned from endless garage sale hunts.  Our two burner gas stove, the "Walkabout" model fits two small vessels or one large skillet with paella in it.  Outdoor cooking is also handy when somebody doesn't like the smell of the lamb kidneys I made just before he made the fishy paella.  But I digress.  Our gas can, a 1.25 kg "Jackaroo" (could these names get any more Australian sounding?) is as small as they come but the size works for us when it comes to space in the backyard, in the car and the time it takes to use it up.  Those large tanks are very heavy and are capable of keeping those mansions-on-wheels  retirees drive around in operating for awhile.  

You've seen outdoor kitchens- in photographs if not in person - and may wonder if our little set-up is really convenient. To this I say: We don't live on a sprawling ranch. Second, I spent a year cooking on a single burner which used hairspray can sized bottles of gas in Korea. Call me a spoiled One Pot Wonder with two burners and no need to change the hairspray can mid-meal.   And thirdly, one can get tired of tuna fish sandwiches five nights in a row. Boiling water is truly one of God's many miracles.