Yes indeed, we got our second lemon from our lemon tree! The lime tree is slow to produce gin and tonics for us, so far just that one lime ages ago, but the lemon tree is going strong. The big decision was of course what to make with our second ever home grown lemon – Hugh decided to make lemon curd! YUM! I don’t think I’ve ever had lemon curd before and boy, is it ever tasty. Hugh made french toast with fresh blueberries and lady finger bananas and instead of maple syrup, we slathered on lemon curd:
While I’m talking about breakfast items, you’ve previously heard me lamenting the lack of what I consider excellent bacon. I honestly think the first thing I will eat whenever I next step foot on North American ground will be a pile of crispy bacon! (Chris S – you will have to join me :)) Geez, I miss that stuff. Here the bacon is much bigger, thicker, and fattier – so if you’re a real meat eater, you’d probably love it. But I like my bacon to be smoked, very thinly sliced, and (over)cooked to carcinogenic perfection. We’ve been making do with diced bacon, something I don’t recall ever seeing in Canada but it is terrific. However, Hugh found a grocery store in Emu Park that carries this:
The butcher will slice it really thinly for us, so it comes out almost like proper bacon:
It’s OK but just doesn’t compare to the plain ol’ bacon I know and love. For my Aussie friends, this is the type of bacon I’m craving:
Mom and Andrea will be here in 2.5 weeks (YAY!!!) and Andrea is sourcing Miss Vickie’s chips to bring with her, but I don’t think she’d be able to smuggle bacon in 🙁
Still on the topic of food, last weekend Hugh and I went out to the RSL (similar to the Legion in Canada) to have dinner and listen to some live music. Back when we first arrived in Australia, the RSL was one of the first places we went to as we could hear a jam session from the AirBnB we were staying at at the time. We bought raffle tickets then and won 2 draws in a row – each time winning a leg of lamb! Well, they were having a raffle again last weekend and we bought more tickets and noticed that we had the same series of numbers as last time over a year ago. And would you believe it – lucky ticket #41 won for us again! The tickets each time were a series ending in 1’s – so the “ones” are what “won” 🙂 This time our prize was a $100 gift certificate. The RSL is our lucky place. Something I love that they do at all the RSLs here is have a moment of silence at 6pm every day to remember those who have and have not returned from service. Always makes me teary and grateful.
As this weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving (which I totally forgot about until Barb messaged me earlier this afternoon!), something we’re very thankful for is living so close to so many beaches that barely have any people on them. When driving to yoga last weekend, I snapped this photo of Mulambin beach:
I’ve been trying to get a good photo of this beach for ages, but there isn’t anywhere to pull over at this particular spot. Will have to see if there is a walking path tucked away somewhere because I know I’ll be able to get some magnificent photos from this angle. Last weekend Hugh and I also went for a walk on Lammermoor beach:
I’ve previously shown you photos of what I call Wonderland Mountain in the background – the hill is coated with something to prevent erosion onto the road below and it always reminds me of the fake mountain at Canada’s Wonderland. We’d never actually walked up to it this way, we’ve only driven or biked by on the road at the base of Wonderland Mountain. Yesterday we biked up by the mountain on our way to Rosslyn Harbour and saw lots of turtles in the water – turtle nesting season has begun!
While on a “smoko” (break) from woodturning, Hugh took a photo of some birds at the Men’s Shed:
That’s a blue-faced honeyeater in the foreground and a noisy miner in the background. Earlier this week, I got this video of a bird in our bird bath:
I think it’s a juvenile little friarbird. I say “I think” because little friarbirds are generally very skinny birds whereas this fellow looks quite plump. Must just be all fluffed up from his day at the spa.
No interesting insects for you this week, just a plain ol’ grasshopper trying to make friends with the glass bugs I have clipped to our screen door:
On another screen, we had a gecko the other day. Nothing unusual about that, there are geckos everywhere, but the way he was positioned was so prototypical I had to take a photo!
Isn’t that how all the metal geckos you can buy to put on your wall or fence look?!
Reptilian creatures always make us think of Arizona. Playing Farkle also makes us think of Arizona as Gary and Jo got us hooked on this game. We have played so many games of Farkle with Gary and Jo and back home in Canada and never once have we ever seen anyone end up tied but that is exactly what happened in Hugh’s and my game the other night!
Speaking of games played across continents, my students were doing a practical exam on Friday and they were choosing a game/song to play with the simulated client. They chose the song Head and Shoulders. One of the students couldn’t recall the tune so another one sang it for him. I stopped dead in my tracks. It’s not the same tune as we have in North America!! Same words, different tune. Here’s the Aussie version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS-lbKtPXpo How strange is that! UPDATE: My sister let me know that she knows both versions and isn’t sure which she learned first (check out this YouTube video if you can’t think of the London Bridge version). I therefore googled and found this information about the 2 versions. According to Wikipedia, Canada and other British-influenced countries tend to use the London Bridge is Falling Down tune – but Andrea was raised in Canada and Australia is obviously a British-influenced country, so this will remain a mystery!
OK onto new vocabulary learning. I mentioned “smoko” earlier (you don’t have to smoke to have a smoko, it’s just a break from work for anyone :)). Another phrase I heard recently is “frock up” as in get dressed up. Now let me tell you about a North American term they do NOT use down here, which I learned the hard way. “Crapshoot” is not a word here. While describing something unpredictable at a team meeting at work the other week, I said, “it’s pretty much a crapshoot.” I immediately knew something was wrong by the look of shock on everyone’s faces. Unbeknownst to me, even though the game of craps does exist here, the term crapshoot does not. So my colleagues’ Australian ears heard “crap chute” and thought I was talking about a bodily function. Yikes! I’m quite sure I use that term all the time and I suddenly worried that I’d used it when teaching. I asked my students the next time I saw them and they said they don’t remember me ever using it. Either that’s true or the shock and horror of the experience has blacked the memory out for them.
I know I’ve mentioned at some point how popular sheds are here. When I heard “shed”, I thought “garden shed.” No. The sheds in people’s back yards here are practically as large as their houses. This being a major outdoor activity part of the world, people need to store their caravans (trailer/RV), ATVs, boats, etc. so sheds are BIG. Our house came with a shed:
That’s not our garage, no, we have a 1.5 car garage attached to the house. This is a separate edifice. Now we don’t have a boat, ATV, or caravan so Hugh decided to make good use of some of the excess space:
Our friends Kevin, Rod, and Phil have requested that Hugh install a full golf simulator. However, until our raffle ticket winnings increase exponentially, this is what we have to offer:
When not occupied with all things golf, Hugh continues to tweak our backyard landscaping. We re-oriented one of the little gardens and needed to put a peg in the ground – we had forgotten that another similarity to Arizona is the ROCK SOLID “soil” here. Hugh actually had to get a drill to bore a hole before we could hammer the small peg into the ground:
Remember how I said we had some crazy dry days like in Arizona the other week? Well this week we had a crazy sweaty day. Check out the dew point:
A great example of humidity not being high but with the dew point being super high, we were dripping in sweat. It only lasted a day and we’ve been back to perfect weather conditions again.
Some other Australian curiosities. These garden “gnomes” are popular:
They’re meerkats 🙂
Also, emerald green is a popular colour in women’s clothing. Unless things have changed in the last 18 months, you just do not see much green clothing in North America, but it’s everywhere here!
Some big franchise store names here will sound familiar to you:
- Coles (but not a book store, a grocery store)
- Woolworths (but not a discount department store, a grocery store)
- TK Maxx (same as in US, just swapped out the J for a K, no idea why!)
This morning there was an artisan market in downtown Yeppoon. I think I’ve mentioned that the arts community is much less vibrant here than we’re used to, but we lucked out today! In addition to being an outstanding pickleball player, our friend Catherine Boreham is an incredible fine artist and we ordered one of her classic pieces today! Can’t wait to get it. And then we also bought a breathtaking photo from drone photographer Matt Harding (Aaron – maybe he’s a relative!). Will send photos once both are up on the walls – so excited to have art from both Canadian and Australian artists now!
(Sorry, had to step away for a few minutes to watch the SpaceX Starship launch – holy cow, they did it, they brought Super Heavy back to the launch pad 6 minutes after take off and caught it with mechanical arms! Tears actually came to Hugh’s and my eyes, I can’t believe they pulled this off on their first attempt and we got to watch it live! Super Heavy plus Starship together are the size of a skyscraper and they brought Super Heavy back to earth from 5,000 kph to arrive at the launch tower so slowly and precisely that the mechanical arms could literally catch it so the rocket doesn’t damage a landing site when returning. I am floored. Go SpaceX!!!)
OK, it’s way too hard to top watching that launch so I’ll save other Aussie tidbits for another time. So much to be thankful for this Canadian Thanksgiving. And the best is that mom and Andrea arrive in just over 2 weeks!
I hope all of my Canadian friends and family are having a toast to something you’re thankful for this weekend. Sending our love across the miles!