Bub in Oz

First: The food scene in Brisbane is an image of what it would be in America were it not for Earl Butz: Food prices are considerably higher, even accounting for inflation; corn syrup is an unknown. (Of course, it helps too that Bundaberg is just a few hours away). A 375mL (12.6oz) can of Coke is amazingly tasty (cane sugar!) and amazingly expensive (2–3AUD or 1.65–2.50USD).

Second: Darwin missed out by settling for the Galapagos. As the reader well knows, the fauna of Australia are amazingly different than anywhere else in the world (and much cuter too; what evolutionary pressures might have selected for cuteness, I wonder?); less well known, but likely equally obvious in hindsight, is that the flora is similarly different—including their flavor. Which means that Australians have at their disposal an immense range of spices, herbs, and flavorings that are uniquely theirs.

But you wouldn’t know it for eating the food; no-one here takes advantage of this vast gustatory palette (except the aborigines who have been dining on it for millennia)—what’s available is the standard array of Anglo-Saxon fare, a good selection of Asian food, and of course some Anglo-Asian fusion. In other words, were it not for the ubiquitous meat pie, you might as well be dining in St Louis.

The good news is that there is a new trend in Australian fine dining, a trend that looks to the flavors of native flora and fauna to create a new cuisine: It is not fusion, it is not post-modern, it is something genuinely novel: Something else Mary didn’t know. (Indeed, I take the very existence, obscurity, and singular flavor of native Australian cuisine to be a strong empirical argument that Mary did in fact learn something new, but I leave that for my fellow philosophers to work out.) Those who create it call it “Advanced Australian Fare” (to distinguish it from “Modern Australian”, which as the name suggests, is largely fusion), a cuisine that applies French techniques to native ingredients. And, you must travel to Australia to enjoy it. This is an imperative, not a declarative. You really must. Until you do, you live in a black and white room.

And so, after dining at Tukka in Brisbane’s West End, Amy and I learned something new. I can say that (the next sentence notwithstanding) mere description, even photography, doesn’t do justice to the flavor of the native ingredients: Our meal was both exciting and delicious. Rather than repeat what is already available, I invite the reader to open the restaurant’s glossary of native ingredients in another tab to consult as you read.

Here then was our menu for the evening. (A quick note: In Australia, what we call the “entrée”, they call the “main”; what we call the “appetizer”, they call the “entrée”.)

Appetizer: Goat carpaccio with pine nuts and pine nut dressing, the portions just large enough to stimulate the palate. Not at all native food, but very good nevertheless. Sadly, I eagerly tucked into mine before remembering the camera; know that the presentation was much better than the photo suggests.

Entrée: The next course was an introduction to native ingredients.

1. Kangaroo proscuitto
2. Kangaroo links
3. Kangaroo knackwurst
4. Smoked emu
5. Emu links
6. Smoked crocodile
7. Salad with lilly pilly, macadamia, and bunya nut
8. Lilly pilly berries
9. Desert lime berries
10. Blue quandong berries
11. Davidson plums
12. Muntries
13. Damper bread with desert lime
14. Crushed macadamias with assorted native spices
15. Macadamia oil
16. Apple and fennel

The meats are much like you would expect (only not quite!). But the berries were the star of this item. I rather enjoyed the desert limes, which were chewy and citrusy. Amy liked the Muntries quite a lot. We both loved the lilly pillies, but the ones in the pile (no. were much more sugary than the ones included in the salad (no. 7), and the sugar hid the flavor of the berries a bit. Finally, the macadamia oil had a wonderful and delicate flavor; alone it must have represented half the cost of this dish.

Main: Unlike the entré, which emphasized ingredients, the main emphasized how they could be used with traditional preparation techniques.

Amy had the braised wallaby shank with celeriac purée and lavender jus. Wallaby tastes much like kangaroo, but milder.

I had the szechuan pepper crusted emu fillet with parsnip fondant and chili and chocolate jus. Although emu is widely raised in Mississippi, or at least used to be, I’ve never seen it served in the States. It was served rare, and was surprisingly beef-like. The seasoning, however, was anything but familiar: the flavor was distinctly Australian, and that’s about the limit of my ability (and, I dare say, anyone’s) to describe it.

We left dinner at that; as noted above, food prices in Brisbane are much higher than we are used to paying, and so we left off wine and desert. I did have my first truly good martini in Brisbane (I cannot say why bartenders in this city cannot execute such a simple drink), which deserves note if only because it was our bartender’s first. Well done.

On a final note, Acadia was very well behaved for dinner. She had a small bowl of roasted potatoes (of which she ate perhaps three), and spent much of the evening reading quietly to herself.

Finally, for the curious: The Tukka website has an excellent introduction to the history of food in Australia.

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Throughout our trip I have been interested in looking at the homes here. The architecture is quite different, and there many homes that are done in a very distinctive style. These homes are called Queenslanders. They are almost always raised off the ground on stumps, and they usually feature a very large veranda with a decorative porch railing. Often the railing is made of a Victorian style iron. The roofs are usually tin, and are a little reminiscent of homes in southern Louisiana. I’ve taken tons of pictures of these homes, as well as more modern style homes. Each of these photos can be clicked on to make them bigger.

Here is a famous hotel called the Regatta. It displays the victorian railing featured on many of the Queenslander style homes.

More modern homes:

Here’s out building- the Dell Lodge. It is pretty ugly compared to all the other buildings.

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Here are some of the birds I have met here in Brisbane. The birds here are awesome! Here’s a little video of Acadia & I feeding some birds at the lakeside at UQ.

Here is our friend, the Australian Magpie. We see him everywhere, and he likes to beg for food. His call is the most distinctive sound I hear here, except for maybe the kookaburra. Check out the MP3 on the link to hear his flutelike call.

These are Australian Brush Turkeys. They are all over the city, and Acadia thought they were hilarious. They hang out everywhere, and there are often two chasing each other around quite dramatically.

We have also seen a lot of the Australian Raven . He is everywhere and pretty noisy.

This bird is the Australian White Ibis . He is everywhere, and there are signs telling you not to feed them because they have become a bit of a nuisance because they like to hang out where people eat and ask for food. But they are so cool, I did one a bit of bread.

This is a pigeon dressed up in a hat. Actually he’s a Crested Pigeon.

This gorgeous, but incredibly noisy creature is the Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo. When these guys fly near you, and they fly in big flocks, it is very loud. They make their presence known.

This outgoing little fella is a little Dusky Moorhen.

And I believe these are Purple Swamphens .

We saw lots of the Noisy Friarbird on Stradbroke. He wouldn’t sit still for a picture though. Listen to his call on the website. It’s very unique. Some fellow birdwatchers told me he was called a leather head, and that he was a scavenger bird. But turns out that’s not quite right. He eats fruit, insects, etc.

This sweet little bird is the kookaburra. Listen to the MP3 of his call. The first night we heard this we thought there were monkeys nearby. It’s a crazy sounding bird, but he is so adorable looking.

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I don’t have any pictures of him because he is too fast, but the Noisy Miner is quite common here and not very friendly. One of them attacked Don’s hat, and a whole gang of them flew in and demanded bread while we were feeding the other birds at the lake. They were really aggressive and a little scary.

I never did figure out what my one legged friend was. He’s just a good old Australian Brown Bird, I guess!

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On Sunday, we went to a nature park in the Brisbane Forest  called Walkabout Creek Wildlife Centre . After a long, twisty, turny bus ride that made me somewhat carsick, we arrived at a nice little place that has conference facilities, a restaurant, gift store, hiking trails, and critters. Since we had to walk 650 meters up hill from the bus stop to get to the centre, we were ready for lunch as soon as we got there. The Green Tree Frog Cafe was reasonable and very nicely positioned so it feels like you are dining in the tree tops. Here’s Don & Acadia at the table. Acadia had just said something she thought was funny.

There were three turkeys in the tree next to us. Dad would have loved it.

The main reason for visiting the park for me was to see a platypus. And we did see him in his tank swimming around. I couldn’t photograph him because he was moving too fast and it was dark, but he was a very cute little critter. I also wanted to see the wombat. He was quite photogenic. Here he is taking a nap.

And here is a sweet little wallaby that was hanging out eating some leaves. We were in a big enclosed area with him. He didn’t want us to touch him, but we did see him up close.

After we had our fun looking at the animals we went on a real bushwalk. We hiked 6 km, and Acadia was good the whole time. We hiked for 2 hours, and she just rode in her carrier and enjoyed herself. Here she is with me. Acadia & I look pretty tired and this was taken at the start of the hike.

And here’s a nice view of the trail.

We were so tired when we got home, but Don still cooked a wonderful dinner for us (as usual) and we still managed to get everything ready for our big trip to Stradbroke Island the next day.

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Yesterday was Friday and we headed out early to travel to a town called Ipswich. We caught the ferry to the train station in Toowong, where we caught a train.

I noticed the local swallows like to catch the ferry sometimes too. Here there are sitting on the boat.

It was about a 45 minute ride and it was really pleasant. Acadia napped on the way.

Ipswich is a suburb of Brisbane, and the town hosts the Workshops Rail Museum which is pretty awesome.

They have a lot of old trains here and do maintenance and repair work on some trains. There are also a lot of nice displays about the history of rail in Australia, as well as information on current rail developments worldwide. There’s also a big play area with a little car on tracks you can push your kid around in. Acadia loved that.

Here she is checking out a very cool model with Dad.

And here’s our family photo.

Here is Acadia on a little train ride. She loved pushing the button to make the horn blow.

Don really enjoyed the museum since he’s really into trains. It was a really nice place.

Afterwards we wanted to go to this lovely park, but we couldn’t quite figure out how to get to it on foot. Here we were looking at it from a bridge.

We had read that there is a flying fox colony that flies over the river at dusk, and we wanted to be down in the park to view it. But we also wanted to get something for dinner, so we ate at a shopping center that overlooked the river while I looked out the window for the bats. I wasn’t sure I knew what to look for, so I kept thinking the things that looked and sounded like birds may actually be bats and that seeing the bats was not at all exciting.

And THEN, I saw them! I couldn’t get a good picture, but they looked like this.

They were HUGE & unmistakeably bats. We viewed them from the bridge over the river, where some flew over us and some flew under us. It was so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes. I love bats, and in the U.S. we only have small microbats. These large bats are called megabats, and unlike the bats at home, they have big eyes, eat fruit instead of insects, and they don’t echolocate. They are called flying foxes because they have sweet foxlike faces. The kind of bats we saw were probably the black flying-fox that looks like this up close:

And they grey-headed flying-fox who looks like this:

There are four species of megabats in Queenland, and these two have colonies near Ipswich. They all go out to feed at dusk every evening and fill the sky to create a beautiful site. I used to work as a guide in Austin, telling people about the bats that roosted under the Congress Street Bridge Those bats are beautiful to see, but these bats are so huge it’s a very different experience to see them flying over. I could have used a helpful guide in Ipswich. Good thing I’ve got the internet!

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