When they come tails I nearly die

Posted on April 25, 2012 by

OK, so the last post was a bit somber, with a whole bunch of shit about people dying and then some of Shane McGowan’s best dreary vocals. But we said (warned? threatened?) that the next post would be more interesting, so here is our report on our first ANZAC Day in Wagga.

To start it off, here is what we had to shape our expectations: a couple of articles about how much of  a drunken mess the day is/can be:

The ANZAC Day march seems to be the biggest event in Wagga! It gets a much bigger turnout than the 'Town and Gown' academic procession that happens each autumn.

Hmm… sounds just like a hockey game in Canada! We quickly started to realize that this was not your typical day of remembrance, as we might know it in Canada. So, with these stories in mind, we had to make some decisions about how to engage with the day (especially since we had a day off work). The first idea was that, despite the fact that we were entertaining an international visitor (a potential new colleague for Lisa), it might be best to spend most of the day at home. That was the simplest (safest?) plan. The second idea involved venturing out to learn more about the local approach to remembrance… drinking and all. That seemed like a more complicated plan, since we realized that we would need a local (knowledgeable!) person to interpret things and guide us through the day. We were also a little concerned about doing so while hosting an interviewee for a job at Lisa’s work… but hey, if you can’t go to the pub for some drunken’ two-ups, do we really want you as a colleague? Perhaps this would be a good “field” test.

No, this man isn't shading his eyes from the Australian sun. He is the commander of the Army Recruit Training Centre in Wagga (aka Blamey Barracks, aka Kapooka) and he oversaw the march, saluting everyone who went past.

So, our first stop of the day was the ANZAC march. No, not the dawn (6am!) service; that just seemed crazy. We decided to attend the 11am service, which was preceded by a 10:30am march down the main street of town. This was a very personal event, with family members standing at the sidelines to support their sons/daughters in the military; it also included descendants of veterans, soldiers and war widows. Interestingly, there were many people wearing medals; young (even very young!), old, men, women… and we realized that while “Medals may only be worn by the veteran [in Canada]. It is a criminal offense to wear military medals that someone else has earned” — the same is not true here in Australia! Here, there is an exception to the rule: “War medals are not freely available for wear by all. Medals are only to be worn by those to whom the medal has been conferred. The only exception to this ruling occurs on Remembrance Day and Anzac Day. On these two occasions, descendants may wear the medals of deceased recipients but only on the right breast.” It was really quite special to see so many families on the street, with people clapping their hands as the vets went by. Very touching! We all waved our Aussie flags (handed out to all bystanders) with pride.

When we first saw signs advertising ANZAC Day two-up at the local pubs, Dan wondered if it was sort of the same as 'two fisting'. Well, it isn't, but he did that anyway.

And then… it’s off to the pub! After a quick lunch with our international visitors, we enlisted a couple of other friends/colleagues to go out on the town for the ‘two-up’. ANZAC Day pub visits aren’t just like going to any pub. You have to think it through. Strategy #1: go early; if the drunk-fest begins at 12pm, you’re probably safe until about 4pm. After that, especially as the sun goes down, all bets are off (excuse the pun). Strategy #2: take an Aussie with you; if you’re venturing into the pubs for a once-a-year gambling fest, you’ll need someone to guide you through the process. Strategy #3: have a budget and take a small bills; bets of $5 and $10 are good fun, but leave the $50 bills at home. Strategy #4: watch, listen, have a drink… and then bet when you know how it all works. Strategy #5: leave while you’re ahead!

So what is all this crazy two-up business? This is a game invented in Australia involving the tossing of 3 coins and betting on whether the majority will land “heads” or “tails.” You can read lots of details online about the game. The key thing to remember is that it is illegal to play in public EXCEPT on ANZAC Day. We realized that if we didn’t go and play we’d have to wait another entire year before we could say “been there, done that.” After some careful planning about which pub would be best (not dead, but not too wild), we settled on the William Farrer Hotel/Pub in the CBD (our first choice, The Duke of Kent, was dead; The Farmers Home was our second choice, but it looked a bit too crazy; Farrer was just right). They had pitched a huge tent outside of the pub for the two-up game, with lots of security. It was packed! We saw Lisa’s stylist, a couple of real estate agents we’ve met, the owner of our favourite veggie shop… the entire town was in that pub (or one of the others in town)! And they were betting lots of cash.

The two-up ring. From farther back, one might have thought is was a cockfighting event with all the yelling and betting going on.

Here’s the scene: picture 500 people in a big tent. Everyone has a drink in one hand and some hard, cold cash in the other. People will tap a $5 or a $10 bill (or a handful of bills!) on their heads if they want to bet that when the coins are tossed, at least two will land “heads” up. They yell out “tails” if they want to bet that the spinner (the person tossing) will “tail them”. You tap the person on the shoulder and take the bet; the person betting on tails holds the money. The coins go up, come down and you settle your bet; if you were betting heads you either get the money handed to you or you just walk away, after nodding to your opponent to acknowledge defeat. If you were betting tails, you either hand the other person their winnings, or you nod a thank you. Then, another round. And another. And more drinking. And another. Oh my god… get me out of here! Young, old, men women… everyone was involved. You watch for awhile, then your money starts to burn in your hand, and you’re off again. Thank god this only happens once a year! In all, we were in the pub for 90 minutes; we spent the first hour watching, having a pint, having the rules explained, getting a feel for the event. Then Dan went into the betting ring. Lisa agreed to give him 4 $5 bills to start him off. In the span of a quick 30 minutes, Dan lost only once and came up $35 ahead! We left at that point… better to have some cash in pocket then go home broke. But others were betting $200 at once! What is really interesting about this is that it is just friendly betting among strangers. Yes, you can play against the pub for a potential larger win, but most of the money actually changes hands in ‘side bets’ – just regular folk happily passing cash around. There seems to be no concern that someone might rip you off. It isn’t that kind of environment.

It was only 3:45pm when we left, and there was a long night ahead still…and as the drinks were poured, we expected that things would get a little bit raucous. But, all in all, it was a fun event with a neighbourly feel to it. Betting against complete strangers, while you shared a laugh and watched people of all ages coming together. There were many veterans there, enjoying the day… and making a bit of cash on the side. We’re sure to be back again next year…

As an aside, what makes this really interesting is that it might only work in Australia because of the almost impossible to counterfeit polymer bills. Betting involves handing complete strangers your money. There is no worry you won’t get it back if you win – there seems to be no cheating. But if you happened to be a counterfeiter in a country where that is common (Canada…US…Argentina…), you could easily take the other person’s cash, pocket it and hand back fakes. All you would have to do would be bet tails all the time so you were the one holding.  Maybe that is why Australia adopted polymer money. And look out Canada – as you’re adopting the Aussie-created bills later this year, a good game of two-up may not be too far behind.

Posted in ANZAC Day, Australia, beer, bogans, holidays, pub, small town culture, two-up, visitors, wagga | Leave a comment

what are they marching for?

Posted on April 23, 2012 by

There are 3 main industries that support Wagga: agriculture, education, and the military are the biggest employers, and the role of that 3rd one is going to be much more prominent this week as Australia celebrates ANZAC Day.

This rock at the entrance to the Blamey Barracks (more commonly known here as Kapooka) is the precise point where new recruits at the Wagga-based army training facility become soldiers.

ANZAC Day commemorates an event in 1915 that saw the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps enter World War I with the Allied Forces, the April 25 landing at Gallipoli that ended up being a bit of a blood bath. Over the course of the campaign, an estimated 120,000 soldiers were killed, and while the majority of them were Turks and Brits, about 8700 Australians and 2700 New Zealanders died. Another 35,000 or so diggers were wounded in battle. Proportionally, compared to the countries’ populations at the time, this was quite high. Gallipoli is also quite relevant to Australian military and political history because of the isolation of Australia – this was the first international military campaign they were involved in, proudly going in support of the British Empire. However, given the mismanagement of the campaign by the British, Australian confidence in the superiority of the British Empire took a huge hit.

The ANZAC memorial in Sydney's Hyde Park is a pretty spectacular place.

So while there is recognition of Armistice/Remembrance Day here, like there was in Canada, ANZAC Day is the bigger day for honouring the military. In Wagga, there will be a dawn service (at 6am, to mark the time of the landing at Gallipoli), followed by a ‘pilgrimage’ to the War Cemetary (just down the street from us). After that, there is a parade and another service at the Victory Memorial Gardens. We will probably go to the parade, just to see what it is like, and stick around for the service after it. Doubtful we will make it to the early morning one though.

We didn’t ever go to the Remembrance Day services in Canada, even though Dan’s dad served in Europe and was a long-standing member of the Royal Canadian Legion and participated every year in the service. Remembrance Day didn’t seem to have the popularity that ANZAC Day does here. In Canada, most people worked on Remembrance Day; in most provinces it wasn’t even a school holiday any more. But in Australia, ANZAC Day is taken seriously. There is no school, no government offices are open, stores aren’t even allowed to open until after lunch.  It might be that Gallipoli and the ANZACs have remained in popular culture here better than World War I in Canada: people eat (either commercial or home-made) ANZAC biscuits, cookies that are similar to what was sent to overseas troops in WWI. There is the movie about Gallipoli with Mel Gibson (probably all that most Canadians know about that battle).  And one of Australia’s best known folk singers wrote a very good and popular song about the aftermath. And while it might seem a bit sacrilegious to post a British/Irish version of it here, this is a) one of our favorite bands; b) this version is one of Dan’s favorite songs; and c) Bogle was actually born in Scotland so the Pogues are almost as Australian as he is.  This is a pretty sad song (warning: really sad…) but maybe if there was something this powerful from a Canadian perspective, more Canadians would keep the sacrifices made by Canadian soldiers and their families a little bit more in the forefront of their minds.


And on that note…next post will be a bit more of a lighter look at ANZAC Day with ‘drunk yobbos’ and ‘two ups’. Stay tuned…

And as a disclaimer, we in no way know how accurate  our description of Gallipoli or ANZAC Day is. Much of it was from wikipedia.

Posted in ANZAC Day, holidays, military | 4 Comments

All beauty must die

Posted on April 20, 2012 by

One of the great challenges of living “away” is that we live in political limbo. We can’t vote here, as we aren’t citizens; but we can’t vote in Alberta, as we’re not residents. Sigh… It’s difficult to be so politically connected and, yet, so distant from the immediate process. Over the last few weeks we’ve been following the details of the Alberta election, through our friends on Facebook and Twitter and through Canadian media, as they have posted missives about the upcoming vote in our (second) home province. It’s been really difficult to watch! It’s as though our hands are tied and we’re being held hostage, while forced to watch a bloodbath unfold. Yes, folks… the Wildrose Party, under the wild leadership of Danielle Smith, may well prevail in next week’s election. We’re sorry… really sorry… that we can’t vote with you (or against you, depending on your “persuasion”…though we doubt many of our friends/followers/readers are persuaded that way). So, herewith, a few tips, for those of you with voting rights.

This pic says it all! Get out there and vote.

First – please remember that “strategic voting” can actually work, especially in the wilder regions of Canada. Now, for the record, we’re on the left of the spectrum (remember that diagram Dan made during the federal election…). We’ve door-knocked for the NDP. We lived, for years, in the only NDP riding in Alberta. We think Sarah Palin is nuts (entertaining, yes! But silly, nonetheless (Dan edit: we don’ think she’s nuts, she is nuts…that isn’t a judgement but an absolute, and even she probably agrees.). However, in Edmonton, voting for the conservative party can (at times) be the lesser of evils. That said, you may be best to go with the Liberal or NDP candidate; it all depends on your local riding and see what makes sense given the candidates and traditional voting patterns. (Dan again: wow, I never thought I would hear Lisa say that voting for the conservatives would be OK unless she had somehow convinced me to move to…hmmm, where? Tajikistan? Kryzigistan? some other third-world banana republic?) It’s a very right-wing culture in Alberta; so voting for the conservatives can actually save you from the depths of a greater evil. To get you motivated, a few examples (with thanks to the Edmonton Sun – traditionally known as a right-wing rag, but hey… very useful at the moment):

What Danielle Smith has to say on university behaviour codes: “It is perfectly reasonable (to) expect its students to refrain from practices that are biblically condemned, and sign a pledge not to get drunk, swear, harass, lie, cheat, steal, have an abortion, practise the occult, or engage in sexual sins such as premarital sex, adultery, homosexual behaviour and viewing of pornography.”

WTF?? At least she didn’t say that uni staff had to behave as such. Whew…we might have had to look for new jobs (or been forced to moved to Australia. Hmm… why did we move?).

These are some other guys you can vote for (Brian Mason & Raj Sherman)... but do so at your own peril! Although Brian is technically "electable" (based on historic voting patterns), the NDP and the Liberals don't really have a hope in hell.

Here is what Danielle Smith has to say on abortion: “… Any politician who challenges the status quo gets pilloried by the media, abortion rights groups and opposing politicians … Yet, second- and third-trimester abortions are a horrific practice … Most Canadians respect that the decision is between a woman, her doctor and God, but I’m sure they also agree that the taxpayer should not be on the hook to pay for it.”

Wow! Really? Is this the type of person you want to have in charge? And if the woman’s god and doctor agree, shouldn’t it be publicly funded?

In fact, there is a Facebook site devoted to “The Crazy Things Danielle Smith Says/Does“. It would be funny, if it weren’t true… Then there is the story of candidate Allan Hunsperger who wrote a fascinating entry on his blog in 2011, noting that if gays and lesbians didn’t change their sexual orientation they would “suffer the rest of eternity in the lake of fire, hell.” Seriously?

And no, this doesn’t just affect Alberta. If the Wildrose are successful, the tenor of elections could change across Canada. Alberta is one of those places that has a lot of power, even though they think it all rests in ‘the east’, which is all that communist area east of Lloydminster (but only as far as Quebec; the French are dead to many folks in Alberta, and the Atlantic provinces are just a drain on the public purse; at least, that’s what we heard many people say when we lived there)… But really, a lot of the political and financial clout does reside in big sky country, and if some bad shit happens there, the crazies in the rest of the country will be motivated and mobilized to turn Canada into another Texas.

You too can burn in hell... if you vote for the wrong party.

So, although we never really considered ourselves ‘Albertans’ we are…and, more importantly, we are Canadians, and also just…how do we describe this…citizens of the world who care about other people’s freedoms and rights and well-being. So, we implore all our friends in Alberta to:

  1. do your homework. Read the papers, Google the election details, whatever. Just try to be educated about the issues and what you can do about it.
  2. vote: it is your right, and with that right comes an obligation to be part of the political process. If  you can do that, you will make us happy. But we will be even happier if you
  3. vote with a goal in mind. Yes, voting on emotional or ideological grounds is important, but sometimes voting against another one is more useful and beneficial in the long-term.

And for people outside of Alberta who have friends and relatives there, please discuss the issues with them and try to make a difference. We don’t want crazy people running the country… but even though Alberta is guaranteed to have a crazy  undesirable premier, at least you can help it being one not completely wacky.

And in the words of some other caring, young folks out there, “We must stress, we are not affiliated with any party — not funded by or organized by any party. We are simply young people who have a strong opinion.” [Lisa edit: they took the words right out of my mouth; I never thought I'd vote PC either... but having lived in T-Towne, in one of the most uber-conservative ridings in Alberta, I can see how that might happen]

Posted in Canada, Edmonton, voting | 2 Comments

Mood Indigo

Posted on April 15, 2012 by

As we were hanging out in Beechworth and its surroundings over Easter, we started to think about that area of northern Victoria as becoming our new Jasper. Jasper was our retreat area, a fairly quick trip from Edmonton into the mountains where we could relax and have fun. Now, after two trips to the region, covering the local government areas of  Indigo Shire (Beechworth, Rutherglen, etc.), “The Rural City of Wangaratta” (including Oxley, Milawa, Whitfield and the King Valley wine region), and Alpine Shire, we’re sure that this will be a common getaway location (though we haven’t actually been to Alpine Shire yet; it borders on the other two shires, and people tell us we need to go to Bright, Gapsted, and Myrtleford, so we’ll get there sometime soon).

One of the main draws of this area is that it is culinary heaven. Milawa actually calls itself a ‘gourmet region’. It has a great cheese factory, an olive (and everything related) shop, and a winery with an amazing restaurant. Oxley has a great winery with another good restaurant. We wrote about these places back in January.

An unassuming place that looks about the same on the inside as it does outside, the Green Shed could hold its own in a major city.

Beechworth, however, seemed to go one step beyond. There were three absolutely amazing restaurants in a city of about 3500 people. Provenance, where we were staying, is one of the top ones in the country; we ate there twice. The Green Shed was a cool, old green brick and tin building, heated by a fireplace, that also had incredible food. Our waiter was a cool farm boy with a passion for dirt bikes and a burning desire to visit Canada (he asked us lots of questions). The third was Gigi’s – maybe not up to the level of the other two, but still pretty spectacular. Gigi’s is sort of Italian/Australian, whereas the others are a wacky fusion of Australian with Asian and Mediterranean influences (Green Shed has both dolmades and curry on the menu!). And 10 km down the road, there was also the Stanley Pub, which isn’t as much a pub as another fine dining establishment.

You don't expect desserts like the ones at Provenance in a small town. This was...well, the dark thing was a licorice semifreddo. No idea what the rest of it was, but it was tasty!

Slightly more down scale was the Beechworth Bakery, which sells very good bread and pies (meat…and probably fruit but we didn’t notice). And those are just the places we tried. There were several others that looked worth checking out, but we only had a few days.

In terms of food retail, there is a huge organic shop that blows away anything in Wagga. Lots of fresh produce, and some really great finds such as dried chanterelles (imported from France, but we bought a few packages because they were a really good deal). And a good cheese shop – Larder – that also sells house-made preserves.

And of course, there are wineries and even a brewery (where Dan bought a really cool cycling jersey). There are something like 19 wineries in the Beechworth area, and they make some pretty ‘premium’ wine. Many of these produce very small batches that retail in the 3-digit per bottle range. The only real problem with wineries this small is that they don’t actually have cellar doors – it isn’t worth their time to give away samples of wines that most people aren’t going to splurge on anyway, and when you only make about 300 bottles of something that is already very sought after, why bother? When you get 99 point ratings in the national newspapers, you don’t have to give out samples…

There are a few wineries with cellar doors though. We only went to one: Pennyweight. These people are pretty good at marketing themselves in the town. Not only can you get their wines at the good restaurants (we had a Gamay at one restaurant and then one of their dessert wines another evening, with dinner) but there are two ways to get to the winery. You can drive there on the road, or cycle there on the Murray to Mountains Trail, which we did. And most other visitors there at the same time had done the same thing…most of the people sampling were holding helmets. One ‘driver’ actually noted that all the healthy people there made her feel guilty! Of course, marketing wine to cyclists isn’t really easy; how do you get them to buy a case if they can’t carry it home? Well, you offer free shipping, which we would have taken advantage of but instead just said we would come pick up our purchases the next day on our way home.

An idyllic setting at Pennyweight, on a cycle trail, where you can buy a bottle of wine and a cheese plate for the patio...then not have to drive home. You just have to figure out how to not fall off your bike.

We quite like Pennyweight. They make good wines, and they have bio-dynamic certification.  Before visiting, we weren’t sure what this meant – was it sort of a notch below organic? But no, it is actually a more stringent certification. They have to be organic, but also have as little impact on the local environment as possible. Not sure exactly what they do (probably minimal irrigation, etc.) but whatever it is, the results are great. The family who runs it come from generations of wine makers (Rutherglen pioneers) and this one son wanted to break out and do something different.

The bike trail that Pennyweight backs onto is another attraction to the region. It is a huge cycling holiday area, with at least 15% of the vehicles you see on the road having bikes on a rack. There is something really special about being able to ride to a nice restaurant for lunch and stop at a winery on the way back.

We did get to meet some other winemakers from Beechworth at the festival markets, some good, some not so good… Both Amulet and Indigo have cellar doors but came to the markets – we didn’t make it to their properties – with some good to very good product. Others, who shall remain nameless, came with…well, if you can’t say anything good about them, don’t say anything at all.

Herbs from this courtyard garden flavour much of the food at Provenance, including scrambled eggs that were among the best we've had!

There is also a really good wine shop in town, selling wines from Beechworth, Rutherglen and King Valley wineries that don’t have their own retail operations. This is where we found some really great stuff! The guy also stocks some European wines and a handful of ones from better wineries with cellar doors (Pizzini in King Valley, Stanton and Killeen in Rutherglen, for example) but mostly it is really rare and fantastic local vino that most people will never taste.

So yeah, northern Victoria is a gold mine for foodies. What more could you want besides gourmet restaurants and primo wines? How about apples, chestnuts, berries, etc!? Fruit is so much better when you buy it from the farmer who picked it that morning. And here’s a weird fact: strawberries there have two seasons – spring and autumn. So we got some fresh autumn strawberries along with apples…never heard of such a bizarre fruit cycle in Canada! And a brewery with an interesting selection of pale ales…that will warrant its own post after our next visit.

Three of the honeys tempted us enough to buy them: Red Box (a gum tree), Tasmanian Manuka (Aussies pronouce it Monica, not Maa-new-ka), and a generic local honey infused with vanilla bean!

And a honey factory and store that sells a huge range of interesting honeys; in Canada, we would have clover, and dandelion, etc., honeys, but here we sampled various kinds of box and gum and other native tree and flower honeys…some not to our liking, some we brought home (WK, you will like this place!)

Sure, the hills there will never replace the majestic mountains of the Jasper and Banff national parks, but we’re pretty happy to have found a high elevation getaway.

Posted in apples, Beechworth, cheese, cycling, fruit, mountains, pie, small town culture, wine, wineries | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

my little golden horseshoe

Posted on April 12, 2012 by

When we booked our accommodation and restaurants in Beechworth for the Easter long weekend, we did it early because we reckoned that being a long weekend, and the last one before winter sets in, it might be busy. Little did we know how busy! Maybe if we had done a bit of homework, we would have…

Northern Victoria takes pride of ownership of one of Australia's most famous criminals. Ned Kelly is everywhere!

Every year on the Easter weekend, the town of Beechworth grows from about 3500 people to…well, this year they estimated somewhere between 15000 and 20000. Over the weekend, they host the Golden Horseshoes Festival, celebrating the day that some guy shod a horse with golden horse shoes way back when…blah, blah, blah…we didn’t actually pay that much attention to what was going on.  Whatever it was that happened, the real importance of it is that it is actually a celebration that doesn’t involve Ned Kelly. That part of north eastern Victoria is very tied to the life of Australia’s favorite bush ranger (their term for criminal!) and everywhere you go you see references to him. The Beechworth Bakery even has a Ned Kelly pie and Ned Kelly Damper (spinach and carrot bread…quite tasty!). But this weekend he was sort of in the shadows.

So, what happens at the festival in this small ‘mountain’ town? A market. Another market down the street.  Some street performers and buskers. A music stage. Some sausage sizzles. Another market. A parade. A motorcycle muster…just your typical small town Aussie weekend really, but with a lot more people and a lot of energy. And another market.

It's not a market unless someone is giving away samples of wine! We bought some really good shiraz from these interlopers from Central Victoria.

The first market was your typical Australian morning market: gold coin entry (that’s $1 or $2 coin) to wander around a flea market environment with everything from grannies selling home-made jam to people selling Chinese-made crappy toys. What sets them apart from Canadian flea markets is that there is usually a winery or two offering samples…what more could you want at 9 am on a Saturday morning? This is where we bought our chestnuts (which are a bit of a pain in the ass to prepare, but make a damn fine risotto!).  Second market was the ‘food market’ – much smaller, a lot more wineries! We bought some really good wine, which we were later told was a bit controversial because the people were from Heathcote, which is about 225 km away, and they were seen as interlopers in the Beechworth wine region! Oh well, it wasn’t like the best of the Beechworth wineries were there, and these interlopers were the best of the bunch at the markets.

They said that this wasn't a real golden horseshoe - the originals were on display in the jewelery store on the corner - but we think maybe they were.

At noon was the highlight of the festival: the reenactment of the shoeing of the horse. Completely hokey! But entertaining and enlightening for someone who has never seen a farrier in action. The horse was a bit anxious about performing in front of the crowd, but took it all quite well really. For his troubles, he got to lead the parade. Unfortunately, we missed the start of the parade because we were having ice cream and listening to a bluegrass band.

The parade. Wow! Another highlight of the festival. It was, again, a bit hokey, but you could really see how much effort and enthusiasm the people put into this event. The floats and other ‘entertainment’ in the parade were creative and fun, and the audience was having a ball. It went for about 3 blocks…that covered pretty much the whole town.

It doesn't get much better than a Sound of Music-inspired float with drunken yodelers.

It was far superior to any small-town parade we have seen in Canada, and probably better than most big city ones even, and we will attribute that to the lax (or lack of) alcohol consumption laws in Australia. Parade participants are much more interesting when they are drinking!

After the parade, things calmed down a bit. The crowd at the main stage drifted away, the market vendors packed their wares, and the street performers headed to the pub for a pint or two or twelve.  As the sun set, the streets were noticeably quieter. The main stage area, on Camp Street (one of the main streets) looked like last call at a wedding reception: tables full of empty bottles and parents stagger-dancing with their tired children. It was actually a bit sad for the Canadian ex-pat musician who got stuck with the closing time slot. And then there was a night market – the first time they had done this. Pretty much an assortment of vendors from the earlier markets, with a couple of new ones (including a new winery…yay!).

These enterprising kids set up a rogue table away from the official markets to sell tarts. And at $2 a piece, these tarts were one of the best deals ever. Their table was at the gate to our b'n'b, and the kid in the middle is the owners' daughter. The tarts were made by one of the best chefs in rural Australia!

Sunday was a lot more low-key. Probably 2/3 of the crowd was gone…though we didn’t go to the outdoor church service, which might have been very busy. We went birding instead, though it might have been interesting to attend a service on a large (very large) rock in a park, beside a historic jail, with cannons on it. Strange. There was also a motorcycle muster and show, a family bike ride (we avoided that, though later in the day, while cycling to a winery, Lisa did almost run over some little raggamuffin who couldn’t quite figure out how to share the trail), and mountain bike races. And maybe the saddest part of the weekend was that there were still music stages set up…we felt really sorry for the guy playing solo at the end of one street, with an audience of two. And one of them was the sound man. And then it got even sadder when we walked by again and realized that the other person in the audience was the next performer, and when she went on he didn’t even stick around to hear her. Bad planning on someone’s part. By mid-afternoon Sunday, Beechworth was back to its sleepy self; the streets were open to traffic, the ATMs were working again, you could get into a coffee shop. All that was left was a special Easter Monday farmer’s market (where we got some good produce for the week, including some dirt cheap apples).

So it was an odd event. Totally unexpected, but something that we think we will go to again. It wasn’t that the festival itself was anything spectacular, but it made a fun vibe in the town at a great time of year to visit that part of the country.

And a reminder: enter our contest!

Posted in apples, Beechworth, cycling, farmers market, festivals, holidays, horses, market, mountains, small town culture, wine, wineries | 1 Comment

chestnuts roasting on an open fire

Posted on April 9, 2012 by

Easter weekend was a bit confusing, as we went on an autumn getaway on what we normally think of as a spring weekend. And to make it more confusing, we experienced temperatures ranging from about 3 to 29 c., in an area where both apples and strawberries are currently in season. WTF?

Walking through this courtyard at Provenance one night after dinner, we came across a brush-tailed possum. Rural Australia is really cool!

On our New Year vacation, we met people who told us we needed to go to Beechworth, a well-preserved, historic gold-mining town in north eastern Victoria. It is sort of on the north edge of where we spent NYE, in the heart of one of the Victorian wine and food regions. Taking their recommendations, we booked in at a B’n'B type place called Provenance, which boasts #31 on the Gourmet Traveler magazine top 100 restaurants in Australia.

The apples we know what to do with. The chestnuts...well, first you have to prepare them, then figure out how to serve them. Our first experiment might be risotto.

Provenance, Beechworth, and Indigo Shire (Australians, like Hobbits, use the term shire for regional government areas) were all we hoped for, and maybe more.  A town of about 3500 people at an elevation of about 56o metres, Beechworth’s prime industry is officially tourism; given that most of this tourism is based around wine and food, their prime industry is really culinary delights! While Provenance was probably the best place we ate all weekend, all our meals in the region were amazing and we had a lot of incredible wines from small (and fortunately sort of obscure…) producers in the area. And we came home with apples, strawberries, beans, lettuce, carrots, chestnuts (fresh chestnuts!!! of course we don’t know what to do with them, but we will figure it out), all in season at the same time. As well as some great bread, honey from Beechworth Honey (more kinds of honey than you can count…), and a lot of cheese from a side trip to Milawa. And, of course, a boot full of really great local wines to keep us stocked up until our next venture into a wine region.

There is so much to say about this weekend that it will probably take a few posts. This one will cover a few ‘highlights’. The big thing was that when we booked the trip in January, we did it based on the fact that we were going to have a four-day weekend for Easter. We didn’t know that it was the biggest weekend of the year in Beechworth, when about 15000 people descend on it (actually ascend to it) for the Golden Horseshoes Festival. So we were lucky that we not only had our accommodation booked but that the OCD one of us (Lisa edit: You’re welcome!) had actually booked all of our meals.

With the restaurants all full on Saturday afternoon, people on the streets resorted to eating whatever they could find. Or whoever.

There was a bit of a glitch because after learning about the festival, we did a last minute change on what day we would go to Milawa, leaving us with no lunch plans for Saturday in Beechworth. And when we did try to eat, the only place we could get into said it would be an hour for food. We ended up getting samosas and onion bhaji from a trailer at the festival… The town was so overloaded with people that both the ATMs broke down, and all the credit card/EFTPOS machines in town were out of order! The NBN can’t come soon enough to regional Australia…

Another cool thing about Beechworth is that it is part of the Murray to Mountains cycling trail that we wrote about at New Year’s. The original trail runs from Wangaratta to Bright, with an extension from Wang to Milawa. But there is a ‘spur line’ about 1/2 way down the Wang-Bright line, going from a town called Everton to Beechworth. So we did a bit of cycling.

Going down into the gorge was easy. Coming back up? Let's just say that Dan and some guy we met on the trail had a nice chat at the top while Lisa and the other guy's partner came up the hill.

First, on Friday, we did a short tour of the Beechworth gorge (coasting down for 2.5 km, struggling back up the other side…), then drove to Milawa and rode to Wangaratta and back, stopping at a winery for lunch. Dan is extremely proud that Lisa rode 45 km that day! On Saturday morning, while Lisa slept (NO WAY WAS I GETTING BACK ON MY BIKE!), Dan did a 45 km round trip from Beechworth to Tarawingee and back. The first half was a bit of a ‘white knuckle’ ride, partly because it was only about 7 degrees out and he forgot his gloves, but also because it was a 500 m drop over the first 13 km. Which, of course, means a 5oo m climb on the way back… Down took 45 minutes, back up 65! But he thinks it was worth it to be out on the trail while mobs of kangaroos were hanging out having breakfast.  Sunday, the two of us rode the ‘pushies’ (Australians call bicycles push bikes, and some shorten it to pushie) even farther up the hill – a 9 km ride with 250 m climb to a little village called Stanley. A bit of a slog, but worth it because we were going to a great pub for lunch. And then we just had to roll back down the hill to a winery…

An amazing sight, the yellow-tailed black cockatoo in the wild! Sorry this isn't our photo. We do have some, but they are horrible.

The trip up to Stanley also had a real highlight of the trip: we saw yellow-tailed black cockatoos! These birds aren’t ‘rare’, but they aren’t common. And they don’t live around Wagga.  They are quite spectacular. We went hunting for them again on Monday with the car, and managed to find them again, and think it was possible it was the same group of four. They were pretty elusive.

And these cockies weren’t the only good bird sighting we had. Just as we checked in to Provenance, there was a stunning red and green male Australian king parrot in a tree in the courtyard. And on a Sunday morning walk in town, we also saw a female. And we got up close and personal (to the point we think they might have been swooping at us to get us away from the young ones) with a bunch of crimson rosellas. And more close encounters with kookaburras. And on the way home, close to Wagga, we saw a lot of birds of prey: some nankeen kestrels, a black kite and one of the biggest, coolest birds in Australia – the wedge-tailed eagle. These things have a wingspan up to 3 metres, and while their preferred diet is rabbit they have been know to take out joeys (baby roos) and lambs!  Yikes!

To make up for stealing someone's photo of the black cockatoo, we will let anyone who wants it have this photo of a male king parrot. Dan took it and is releasing all copyright...

Coming up in the next post, more details about the festival, some of the great restaurants and wineries we visited, etc…

Posted in agriculture, apples, Beechworth, birds, festivals, parrots, rosellas, wine | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine

Posted on April 5, 2012 by

It’s Easter weekend, and being public service employees we get 4 (and 1/2 – as the Uni gives us a bonus leave!) days off. So we’re heading out for a few days of autumnal rest and relaxation. Which is a bit odd, because usually we think of Easter as being a spring thing, when we can expect the snow to be melting, and maybe some early flowers coming up (April showers bring May flowers… except in Oz, where things bloom at weird times and people think that Easter is the onset of winter).

Not being Christians, we don’t actually know of any better Easter songs for the title of this post than the one we chose. And that leads us to the point of this post.

Knowing what this is can be very valuable to you. Read on...

This weekend, we are celebrating the one year anniversary of this blog! And many of you have probably noticed that the titles are sometimes brilliant, sometimes stupid, sometimes cryptic. They at least make sense to Dan…but he is a bit weird. Many of them come from this idiot’s taste in music. So to mark this anniversary, we are having a contest. Unfortunately, to win, you have to get inside the head of a moron…we want you to explain where some of the titles come from [Lisa edit: Good luck! I've lived with the man for years and still can't figure out how - if? - his brain works].

Here’s the basics: of the 93 posts so far, the titles of 38 of them (including this one) are music related. Sometimes it is as easy as a title, sometimes a pun on a title, or sometimes a lyric. To make it a bit easier for you, 24 are titles/puns, and 15 are lyrics.  Your mission, should  you accept it, is to tell us: 1) which 39 posts we are thinking of; 2) what the song was (for 24 of them, that is quite obvious); and 3) the name of the artist.

If you pick Marie Osmond as the performer for one of the songs, you won't get a point. She may (or may not) have done a version of one, but it isn't the one you are thinking of.

Scoring: For the easy ones that are just a title/variation of a title, each correctly answered question gets  you one point. There are a couple of tricky ones, but really not too hard. For ones that involve lyrics, there is bonus point for each one. We’ll give you an example (using a real answer, but one we gave away in the post): if you say that the post Capital Radio was named after the Clash’s song Capital Radio, you get 1 point (you must identify both title and artist).  Easy. Everyone can have one point without thinking! It’s our Easter gift to you. The lyric ones are a bit tougher. For example, for the current post that you are reading, if you properly identify the song the lyrics are from and the artist, you will get two points.

In total, there is a possible total of 54 points.

Some rules though. As we said, you have to be inside the moron’s head to win…so if you correctly identify a song but have the wrong artist, you don’t get any points. No part points – it is all or nothing.  And if you come up with something we don’t know, no bonus points, sorry. Happily, Lisa (the sane one of the duo – unless you count the cats, who are also less moronic than Dan) will tabulate scores and decide on the winning submission. Being a professor, she’s got a keen sense of fairness in marking assignments like this one; but, she’s also a hardass, so you need to be sure that you have all of your i’s dotted and your t’s crossed.

There are a couple of very tricky questions in this contest. This is the answer to one of them. Or another one...

The winner will be the person who gets the most points. Simple! In the case of a tie, whoever was first to submit their list, wins. To enter, put your answers into a Word doc (or Excel spreadsheet or something similar) and email it as an attachment to waggadventure@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions is Monday 23 April 8am Australia EST (that’s Sunday 22 April 4pm MT, 6pm ET in Canada). Pay attention to these instructions; again, Lisa’s a hardass marker!

Now, the best part: why would you do this?  Because there is a great prize!  Or more accurately, a choice of prizes. There is only one winner, but you get to choose your prize.

Here’s what we are offering:

Dan remembers a lot of really useless crap, including this horrible band from the 1970s that he used to hear on CFOS. However, though he heard them in Ontario, they were Australian.

Option One: For an international winner who we know, personally, we will 1)  pay for 3 nights accommodation for you and one traveling companion in any city in Australia if  you come to visit us.  We will, of course, be there too!  And we will also take you and your companion to dinner at one of Wagga’s best restaurants when you are here. There is no expiration date on this, so you can win now and collect any time. And it is also transferable…so, for instance, someone can pass it along to a child, friend or parent (as long as we know them, and like them… we don’t want to spend time with any dweebs).

Option Two: For an Australian winner, someone we don’t know, or someone who won’t be coming to Australia, we will put together a huge prize package of every bit of Wagga and other local town memorabilia we can find and mail it to you. So you will get things like a Wagga wine cooler bag, an apron from the Junee Licorice and Chocolate Factory, whatever we can round up. Depending on where you are, we will either mail it from here or post/hand deliver when we are next in Canada. If you are an Australian we know, we will also throw in dinner anywhere in Wagga if you happen to be in town.

Speaking of the 70s, knowing what this is might be useful.

(For accuracy, if you win as an ‘international’ but when you come to collect you don’t plan on leaving for a long time, we will still consider you international and you get to choose Option One. Not many people fall into this category…you know who you are).

And then there is the bonus question!  If the winner is an international person who chooses option one, and can guess within 10 points (high or low) the number of hits we have had on the blog in the first year, they also get dinner at a great restaurant in whatever city they choose to claim the accommodation prize. If this is somewhere like Sydney or Melbourne, that means probably something owned by Neil Perry… This is an amazing bonus deal! Trust us…we’re foodies. And there might be some sort of concessional prize for an Australian who answers this correctly…we’ll negotiate something.

There's a theme song for where this image is from, but that wouldn't be a correct answer. Lisa will give bonus points for someone who explains this photo though.

So have fun trying to answer this quiz. As for how we are celebrating Easter (while you slave over this to win a fabulous prize), we are off to what we have been told is one of the nicest places to visit in the region. We will report back in the next couple of posts. But for now, all we will say is that though there will be some healthy active parts (we’re taking our bikes) it will 4 days of decadence, a lot of wineries, and even a brewery or two. My sins are my own, and they belong to me.

Posted in contest, little river band, music, trivia, visitors, wagga, wagga wagga | 1 Comment