It has now been eight years since we emigrated to Australia for a year, just as spring was beginning which was fantastic for us as of course we were leaving England just as autumn was limbering up. Spring gave way to summer and by the time Canberra autumn started in about April and by then we'd had a full year of conditions admirable only for celebration with the bbq grills. What we couldn't be prepared for was the winter which was vicious but weird. During the day the sun would bring the mercury to twenty degrees and at night it dropped to anything down to -5 with a bitter wind that blew in off the Snowy Mountains that sit to the south between Canberra and Melbourne.
That xmas we rented a villa at Jervis Bay on the New South Wales coast with a group of pals where we had Christmas dinner cooked on a gas barbeque in the pouring rain. For New Years Eve we were home in Canberra and on New Years Day we went up to Sydney for a mini break and on the second I met up with an old pal who was on holiday and we travelled to the Sydney Cricket Ground for the 2nd days play of the 5th Test. By this time it was all up anyway, the Australians were already 4-0 up and the English were looking at the probability of a whitewash. Worrying times.
Nevertheless, we had a fantastic day. We saw Alec Stewart become the 3rd highest Test career scoring batsman, Steve Waugh was breaking Allan Border's aggregate for the most matches as captain of Australia in Tests, and that afternoon he passed Sir Don Bradman's record of twenty nine Test centuries, though naturally the Don did it in significantly fewer games.
In the evening, we nearly did something that does not generally occur in the English language and for dinner opted for a German. The thought of pork, potatoes and cabbage won't generally figure much in the choices but eventually we ended up in a pub which had a great big charcoal barbeque in the middle of it and customers brought their own meat to the bar with them and they threw it on the bbq grills for you and then you paid for chips, salad or veg. It was fabulous and in fact quite common in Australia, although the charcoal barbeque was normally found outside.
One more thing which is common and is I consider to be Oz's primary gift to world culture, is having a betting shop housed in the pub too. This is due to most Aus towns other than the capital cities are actually so small that they need to double up in jobs and because it has to be the same regulations whether in town or country, this means that you can stop at the butchers, go to the pub and order a wet while your grub is being cooked on the gas barbeque or charcoal barbeque and get a bet on the next race as you're eating it. And when you've done and if you haven't thrown away all your cash, you can get a case of beers to speed you on your way home because the pub might have a bottle shop (off licence) on the premises as well. Your dedicated reprobate can only have a better day if somebody passes him to the remote control to the pub's television.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article.koistop.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites