Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Who ate all the pies?

Juicy eh!
Australia is full of fruit. At various locations they have a Big Pineapple, a Big Banana and at Bowen halfway up the Queensland coast there's a Big Mango! Bowen is a fairly unremarkable town by the sea but it was the location for the filming of the Nicole Kidman film Australia....and it has a big mango designed to celebrate the fact that the finest mangoes down under come from Bowen. We were also hoping to sample some of Jochheims' famous pies. This was in fact the real reason we'd diverted off the Bruce Highway - it was one o'clock and we were ravenous - a tasty pie would hit the spot surely. But we were foiled - Jochheims was shut for a refurb!



I love Australian pies (New Zealand is even better for pies!) and they're not just beef and steak and kidney. On Jochheims' menu they have plenty of choice and I was looking forward to the curry pie. And so we drove round town looking for second best - but, alas, the other pie shop was also shut - apparently they'd decided to take a last minute, week long holiday! In desperation we called in a little baker's shop....they'd sold out of pies, "We've been very busy this morning for some reason." So we had to settle for some very tasty sausage rolls which were unaccountably sliced down the middle and filled with mushy peas - delicious!

Looks just like the sort of thing we'd find in Queensland - except that this is the inside of the gents loos at Dobbie's Garden World in Lisburn, Northern Ireland - we'd just done the Citypark Parkrun in Craigavon a couple of weeks ago and needed some lunch - for those in the know Dobbie's does a cracking lunch. I thought I'd try to fit this photo in somewhere as it is rather special. Do your plants need watering?










Saturday, February 25, 2017

More Tales of Aussie Ales

A beacon of hope!
Back on Australian soil the thirsty travellers were taken along to the Green Beacon Brewing Co's tap house in Brisbane - a great range of craft beers were available but we only had time for a brief couple of samples - the Wayfarer IPA hit the spot! Also called in at the Power House, a riverside bar which inhabits a former power station - a jug of 50 Lashes pale was spot on. And we also tasted a new beer from the Burleigh Heads brewery from the Gold Coast - this being Twisted Palm, described as a Tropical Pale Ale.

Flying for two hours up the coast to tropical Townsville we moved from 30 degrees to 34 degrees all with high humidity. Julian Assange is from Townsville, 'from' being the operative word. At about 7 a.m. the streets are busy and the cafes are overflowing - three hours later and it's like a ghost town reminiscent of Spanish villages in full siesta.
Tropical Oz.
Of course in weather like this beer is important thus we headed for the Townsville Brewery flagship pub which felt like a proper old Aussie Hotel (pub) but was in fact the city post office until twenty years ago. This photo shows that the city of Townsville is dominated by Castle Hill, which at 1000 feet above sea level, unfortunately offered no respite from the heat. So hot and thirsty we entered the pub and tried the Townsville Bitter, which in fact is more like a lager but it certainly did the trick.