The Passion of the Shells, Back to Perth

We woke up to a lovely day. This is always a bit unpleasant after you have driven miles and miles to a nature spot to be rained upon. Nevertheless, we soldiered on.

And now, some art appreciation, as brought to you by the wife and decorator of our cozy little weekend cottage. Ahem.



The mirror reflects our appearance, but the sea-shells reflect our origins. Here, Mindy has attempted to convey the incredible stretch of evolutionary time. Gastropod shells confront homo sapiens here; this is what we have come from, and this is where we are going.



Yellow is a color not commonly associated with the sea, but it is associated with the rise - and set - of the sun. Has Mindy's arrangement of shells here an expression of her own trepidation about the aging process? Does she seek solace in the eternal, physically perfect shape of the nautilus at the center, as a poignant reminder of what she has lost, and what she must face in the near future?



Here Mindy expresses her opinion on the essential emptiness of life, the vast void that is the Indian ocean - a stretch of sea, leading to nowhere in particular. Kalbarri leans out to the wind, and so does Mindy's soul - she wishes to explore, to step across the oceans into the mysterious and perfumed lands of Asia, Indonesia (beyond the churning waters) , but yet her responsibility and her culture holds her back. The sea grasses wave at her, as if they are saying goodbye to someone who has no intention of actually going. Will she plunge into the sea, someday? Is that what this masterwork is attempting to convey?



Oysters are closeted, closed-up creatures, and this floral-style arrangement produced from their shells is a profound expression of the ennui and sexual dissatisfaction of the Australian married woman. They are clamped up and dry, now, but once were moist and....oh god i can't go on make it stop make it stop oh god oh god

We stopped to chat with our proprietor in the driveway as we packed our stuff up. He was attempting to control his son's recalcitrant and violently adorable Lhaso Apso puppy, with little to no success. "So what does your son do?" I asked. He had mentioned the other day that his son was, rather ambigously, in the "outback." Whatever that meant.

"Oh, he works in the mines, way up north, for Rio Tinto. He's a chemical engineer. Pulling down plenty of money. My other son does that too. Five weeks on, make a pretty penny and store er' up, head on back. I did that too when I was starting out."

I had envisioned Working in the Mines as something involving hard hats and impoverished West Virginians with missing teeth, so this was a bit of a surprise to me. "Good lord, maybe I should work in a mine," I said.

Lyn chimed in to mention that even clerical workers In the Mines make somewhat ungodly amounts of money. Apparently there is a vast Australian mining secret that has been hitherto unrevealed to my American brethern.

"They've got five mines just about to open up near here, along the coast," he added. "Geraldton and Kalbarri are just going to explode, you'll see about that. Smart young people should go on up to the mines for three years or so, save er' all up, and buy real estate. I bought this spread for 200,000 and now I can turn it over for 500,000 - yes, real estate's the way to go in WA, one hundred percent. Won't ever go down, but up, and up, and up. The kids these days just want to buy a fancy car and a fancy house, but they should just invest, invest in real estate.."

I internally boggled, as I seemed to recall everyone in the state of California making the exact same claim about two years and then regretting it about as much as anyone has regretted anything. I asked Lyn about it in the car, as we headed to the sea cliffs, and she filled me in. "Western Austalians all seem to believe real estate is incapable of going down."

"Do they ever watch the news? Did they somehow manage to overlook that whole real estate bubble kerfuffle?" I said, all agog. (Great word).


The ocean goes on a bit out here.

Then I remembered: they're Australian. They don't have to pay a lick of attention to our USA affairs if they don't particularly care to do so. Just like us, Aussies take extreme pride in their self reliance, independence, and personal ability to make a dollar or two, particularly in the form of turning over houses.



We turned off to the sea cliffs, which were behaving wonderfully in the absence of driving rain and wind. The cliffs are indeed astoundingly beautiful, and I've never been to a place where one experienced such a visceral sense of being at the literal edge of the earth, the place where land stops and segues (for a terribly long distance) into sea. The sea far below had turned glass clear again, and little brown Australian kestrels wheeled below the outlook. There were no whales. The lighting was fantastic: the sight of the cliffs in the morning made all the rain and ennui of the day before entirely worth it.



"I'm going to invest in real estate," I told Lyn, pointing to the top of the natural bridge. "Going to open a Hungry Jack's and a drive-in motel right there. Make a bazillion dollars and die inordinately happy."



"Yeah, you do that," she said.

Here, have some informative signs. Don't say I never did nothing for you.







We made a last-ditch attempt to catch the pelican feeding that supposedly occurs every morning at exactly 8:45 on Kalbarri beach. There was an older man, doubtless a member of the Old Bastards club, holding a bucket of herring. There were lots of families standing around the Pelican Feeding Official Viewing Ground, eagerly anticipating the arrival of the 5 foot tall winged beasties.


You think you're so great, seagull. I bet you do.

Except the pelicans didn't show, the jerks. You'd think free fish would be enough to do it. As it was, we spent about five minutes dejectedly watching silver gulls squabble over fish, straining our eyes for the sight of a big white pelican soaring over the horizon. Nada mas.

"Back to Perth, then?" Lyn said.

"Seems that way," I said. We headed out of town.

I drove for a short while, which was all right actually, mainly because there was no one on the road who I could demonstrate my tenous grasp on left-right dynamics to. I kept on turning on the windshield wiper instead of the blinker. Stupid down under. The ride back to Geraldton was fairly benign: we passed by the Pink Lake again, which had not declined in pinkness one iota, and the trees were still bent over, and the green pleasantness of spring was still in the air. I went in to buy a Diet Coke at the Northampton roadhouse and was flirted with somewhat pathetically by the counter boy.

"Are you from around here?" he said, hopefully. Perhaps he was imagining a romantic date at the Fish BBQ, or something.

"No, no, I'm afraid not," I replied. No one is, you poor, dear sod, I thought, as I walked out the door.



We stopped at the Dome in Geraldton for lunch, in lieu of paying an inordinate amount of money for nouveau lunch Cuisine.

Dome really deserves its own paragraph, as it is Australia's exact equivalant to Starbucks. For the zoology types, Dome has successfully filled Starbucks ecological niche - Starbucks was unable to make it in Australia, despite the company's doubtless dogged attempts to put down roots in Oz. And Dome is indeed nice. The shops are attractively designed, with a lot of wood and a distinctly Gallic gilded interior. The coffee is good and plentiful, once you figure out how to negotiate Australia's bizarrely obtuse method of ordering. Insofar as I could ever work out, a Flat White is coffee with some milk in it. Don't ask me how this differs from a latte.

The food is all right, cooked to order, and will do in a pinch, which is more then one can say about anything edible Starbucks dishes out. Finally, Dome's parent company possesses the inordinate wealth required to plonk down shop's in exceptionally primo real estate. Geraldton's branch was situated right on the beach, where we could watch the breakers thump in benath a sparkling blue sky.



I had a perfectly serviceable Greek salad....



And Lyn had some microwave-quality cannelloni. Well, you're always in dangerous territory with cannelloni, says I. They're not to be trusted, as Italian foodstuffs go.



We drove on to a nice little beach outside town, con lighthouse. It is the only steel British made lighthouse of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Thought you might care to know. The sigh on the beach warned of rip tides, man eating sharks, deadly jellyfish, and sea snakes, in case you might consider taking a little dip. Oh, Australia.


Geraldton has some big ass cargo ships comin' through. The guidebook said this is in fact one of the primary attractions for locals on weekends. Everybody turn out to see the big ass boat come in! Bring the little nippers! Well, okay, then.

The ride from then on back was through fairly featureless outback, punctuated by the occasional kangaroo corpse and unspeakably terrifying Road Train. Road trains, if you don't know, are pretty much exactly what they sound like. As we got within spitting distance of Perth, in the Swan River Valley, we discovered that it had got quite cold in our absence. It's always a bit of a cognitive dissonance thing when you're indisputably in Australia, yet still freezing your butt off. We entered the bizarrely American style suburbs, and were pretty much home free.



LOOK A WHALESHARK IN SUNGLASSES OH THE HILARITY

Another moment of cognitive dissonance for American tourists here. Australians, especially in WA, love freeways, suburbs, and big box megastores just as much as we do, and construct them in pretty much the same way and in the same locations. This leads you to moments of dozing off in the car or whatever, looking out the window and thinking, "Oh, San Jose! There's the Ikea!" then being confronted by a dead kangaroo or a roundabout or someone in an unspeakable school uniform to jar you back to your senses. It's weird, is what I'm saying.



For dinner, Mike had thoughtfully picked up some uber-delicious Aussie lamb chops. He served this with an equally delicious mustard-shallot-honey sauce, which I need to have the recipe for post haste. I hope you're reading this, Mike.



And we had some asparagus wrapped in CUSTOM MADE bacon. Yum.

The Perth Zoo and Awesome Laksa

Australia has weird animals. This may seem blindingly obvious, but their weirdness is really quite interesting on a biological level. Australia's long term isolation and the curious dominance of marsupials means that its critters move, behave, and look very different from most of their foreign counterparts. Australian animals entertainingly and creatively fit the niches that animals like deer, pumas, squirrels, and foxes fill in other regions, swapping out different traits and means of locomotion for others as they see fit. As an amateur evolutionary biologist, I totally plotz when I get to see Australian animals in the flesh.

Australian zoos are especially fabulous because they can (obviously) acquire creatures that just aren't exported to American collections. Tasmanian devils, numbats, bilbys, potoroos, frogmouths and other oddities are common enough in Aussie collections and extreme rarities elsewhere. Naturally, visiting the Perth Zoo was high on my priority list, and it luckily didn't disappoint. It's a small but extremely well cared for and laid-out collection, with impressive landscaping and plenty of room for the inmates to roam. The nocturnal exhibit is especially good - a great chance to view a lot of Australia's native mammals in their natural, darkness loving state. And haven't you always secretly wanted to see a bilby? Come on, don't lie to me. I can see it in your eyes.


The Jabiru, Australia's iconic wading bird. This one was having an exchange of opinions with the small kingfisher nearby, which got all fluffed up, stabbed at the bigger bird, and made pissed off AWK AWK sounds. The whole thing pleased me more then I can say.



Blue tongues are fairly ubiquitous in Australia, and are regarded with some affection by most locals. They're affable, fat little guys who often sneak into homes through dog doors and steal the family pet's food. They also lay waste to garden snails and other backyard pests, rendering them very popular as backyard pets. They don't do a hell of a lot. As in, nothing whatsoever. Their toungues really are electric blue, in case you ever got the urge to french kiss one.



Frilled lizards are fantastic creatures, and I didn't really know just how much so until I saw one in the flesh. The keeper was flipping the little blighter crickets, which the lizard ran about partially on two legs in a hilarious shambling motion to get at. He half-heartedly put up his frill when poked gently but obviously was not feeling threatened enough. They're incredibly endearing and surprisingly intelligent looking animals - sort of like scaly little bulldogs.




This is a fairy penguin, WA's native penguin. They're very common at Penguin Island, near Rockingham, and can be fed and ogled by tourists who take the ferry over. I'm fairly indifferent to penguins but these are scruffy and cute little buggers. They float on the surface of the water and only rarely dive, so don't expect astonishing underwater acrobatics from them. They mostly stand around on land and look discontent during the day, which is nothing if not cute.



This is a Bush Stone Curlew, and it is nesting, and it is profoundly apprehensive. I always wondered why birds in zoos don't become totally accustomed to having people staring at them all the time. This could be related to the fact that they're birds.


Here's more on the mighty Bush Stone Curlew. The picture of one freezing into a bizarre position because HOLY CRAP DANGER is very, very amusing.





Grey kangaroos sunbathe in a fashion remarkably similar to our own. Down to shifting around and grunting when the sun moves. I feel you, man. I feel you. At the zoo, the kangaroos are allowed to wander around and follow their hearts vis a vis interacting with tourists. Since you can't feed them here, they ignore you completely. Kangaroos are capitalists too.

I looked for the adorable and striped numbat in the impressively leafy numbat exhibit, but couldn't find it (shocker). The numbat is one of West Australia's native marsupial predators and is also among its most endangered, having been pushed out of its habitat by invading species, primarily foxes and cats. The Zoo participates in the enormous Western Shield program, an ambitious attempt to protect native species and eradicate interlopers throughout the west coast. They conduct fun events like annual toad drives, wherin you can stomp on (horrifyingly large) cane toads in the name of conservation. I want to do this very badly. In fact, it seems like about a third of the exhibits at the Perth Zoo have a sign discussing the evil and duplicitous ways of cane toads, in case you didn't get the point at the other 35. This is actually not excess, though - a little research on the cane toad reveals these South American aliens really ARE that bad.



This is obviously a crocodile. However, crocodiles are goddamn terrifying. It is hard to express how true this is, especially if you've never seen one of these primitive horrors in the flesh. It sort of makes you question religion. And maybe the nature of creation. Maybe the universe is actually a hostile and cruel place that is actively out to get us and devour us and make our lives deeply unpleasant, maybe end them quickly and horrifyingly in a splash of blood, gore, and violence.

After the zoo, I ambled over to the waterfront at South Perth, which boasts a large number of extremely expensive cafes full of people with the benefit of expense accounts. Not being among their numbers, I trekked around and found Munch Delight, a lovely Singapore-Malyasia cafe in a small shopping center. Superb. Even more pleasingly, it was very reasonably priced, akin to finding a magical Unicorn in Perth's panoply of ridiculously expensive restaurants.



A big bowl of seafood laksa, and very well executed indeed. I loved the rich, extremely pungent flavor of the seafood in tandem with the chili and the coconut milk. It's definitely strong stuff so should be avoided by those who don't free base fish sauce (like me). A winner.



I also horked down a plate of sauteed greens with garlic sauce, which is simple, sorta healthy, and among my favorite things to eat in the world. These were super rich, generously served, and had a lovely topping of crisp garlic. Aces.

Sailing with Australians (and One Kiwi), Sandgropers and Gropers

Sailing With the Aussies



My aunt Lyn is an avid yacht racer. This all sounds very fancy and evokes mental images of wine events, women in white bikinis lounging on the prow of massive white ships (in Capri) and mind blowingly fantastic luxury. This is actually a total fallacy. A "yacht" can in fact be defined as "a sailboat of most descriptions," and yacht racing in the smallest class takes place on sailboats that have been stripped of all imaginable luxuries. Further, high-speed and intensive yacht racing can, apparently, be a nail biter sport involving incredibly close near misses, close proximity to chilly water, man-overboard situations, and other unpleasantry. One part of the legend is true: there is a lot of booze involved. And chips. But only at the yacht club afterwards.



I was thrilled to find that the Swan River around Perth is absolutely teeming with moon jellyfish, in all shapes and sizes. I was under some impression that Moon jellies are only found in the extreme deep sea and at educational aquariums, when in fact they occur in astonishing numbers all over the place in Perth. This was pretty cool. Apparently their stings are only minimally painful, which is also nice to know. I enjoyed trodding on the dead ones that washed ashore on the beach - they squash quite pleasantly. They're a lot firmer then you'd think by looking at them.

We boarded the ship and I met Lyn's sailing team, who are all lovely professional women who enjoy hauling rope and getting very close to jellyfish in their free time. But they do get to say their hobby is Yacht Racing. The woman who owns the boat is in fact a Kiwi. Making the distinction is very important. It is also Very Bad if you mix up their accents. Beware. Ask pointed questions before making an assessment.


My aunt lives here, at the Raffles. Pity her.

The day we went out, as it turned out, there was no wind. Nada. None. It was unsure if the race was actually going to happen or not - but it did. Very, very slowly. This was fine for me, as I had to do barely any hauling of rope whatsoever, and I was not entirely sure how one actually goes about hauling rope. I mostly just got out of the way of the crew, who busily hauled rope, put up the sails and took them down again, and exchanged greetings with the sailboats passing very, very close to us, entirely too close. I spotted thousands upon thousands of jellyfish, and was quietly unnerved by the enormous, terrifying, and omnipresent pelicans. Lyn was even astonished when we actually got *snacks* - hummus, crackers, and Australia's perennial favorite, ginger beer. Luxury had come to yachting again!



We then adjourned to the Yacht Club to drink wine and eat deep fried things. Apparently chips are an integral part of the yachting experience in these parts, as well as good New Zealand sauvignon blanc. I like this sport a lot. I even got a commemorative sail because I didn't fall off. The food at the Perth Yacht Club is surprisingly good as well. I had the grilled "groper" fish. I have not yet determined if the fish is actually a sexual predator or if this is just an alternate spelling for "grouper."

Okay, okay, they really are called Gropers. The Blue Groper in fact, a commonly eaten and fished critter in Western Australian waters.



The nickname for WA residents is "Sandgropers," which actually refers to the mole cricket, a very large and disquieting sand digging insect. So now you know.

The Pavlova Controversy

Australia does have its own culinary traditions, primarily pertaining to baked goods (shocker). Two iconic Aussie treats are pavlova and the Lamington, a couple of snacks that can be found just about everywhere in both Oz and New Zealand. My aunt was kind enough to bring me examples of both the other day. A brief explanation for the ignorant. I like to write about Very Important Things, you see.

A Lamington is, in simplest form, a yellow sponge cake rolled in chocolate frosting and coconut, causing it to resemble a furry brown square. (Charming). Lamington's are often filled with jam or cream - raspberry jam in the case of the specimen you see above. Many people react with revulsion and horror to sponge cake and coconut, which is a bit odd since both are tasty additions to the dessert pantheon and do not deserve the reputation they carry with them. Australians and Kiwis are nuts for Lamingtons and often hold Lamington drives for schools and charities, which are probably like a cake walk minus the pedestrian element. The 21 of July is now designated as Lamington Day in Australia. I love humanities willingness to declare national holidays revolving around cake.



The Lamington got its officious name from one Charles Cochrane-Baillie, 2nd Baron Lamington, who was the Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901 - not exactly a long reign. One day, Baron Lamington took his entourage up to the hills to escape the horrible heat of Brisbane, and tasked his French chef, Armand Gallard, to produce something exotic and interesting for his pals to consume on very short notice. The chef thought quickly and came up with the Mighty Lamington. There are about a zillion more theories about the Lamington's origin, of course - some say they resemble the hats the Baron used to wear (in which case he had horrible taste in headwear).

As for the Baron himself, he was certainly not a pressure-washed Aussie icon of goodness and light, which pleases me to know. The Baron apparantly disliked the cakes named for him, dismissing them as ""those bloody poofy woolly biscuits". It appears that he was fine with the taste but disliked their fame - doubtless no one could talk to him for years afterward without referring to Those Cakes, the cakes, and no government official is ever pleased with being associated with baked goods forever more. He shot a koala right out of a tree in 1899, much to the horror of his companions. I love this guy.

A Lamington recipe can be found here, if you are feeling exotic.



Pavlova is another hotly contested Aussie baked good, primarily because no one - Australians or Kiwis - can agree on who actually invented the stuff. Pavlova is, simply enough, a meringue in the shape of a cake, prepared with egg white, sugar, white vinegar, vanilla, and cornflour, and is almost always served with cream and some sort of fruit topping - often passion fruit, kiwi, or strawberry. Australians claim that it was invented in Perth in 1953 by Chef Herbert Sachse to recognize famous ballerina Anna Pavlova, but Kiwis beg to disagree. Most research indeed indicates that a Kiwi chef created the dish in Wellington when Pavlova stopped there. Professor Helen Leach, a culinary anthropologist, has even put together an entire book devoted to Pavlova history, called The Pavlova Story: A Slice of New Zealand’s Culinary History. Pavlova appears to be Australia and New Zealand's answer to Southern BBQ: universally loved and consumed, and just as universally contested and argued about.

I find the stuff incredibly delicious, and Pavlova carries the added benefit of being pleasingly low in fat and calories. It's a mystery that it hasn't hit big-time in the USA. Hopefully I can get the stuff in Cambodia. Fingers crossed.

Australian Food: A Primer

Australian food. It's not a topic that really comes up often in the annals of culinary research. I suspect that most non-Australians think Aussie food is some combination of British and American glurgh with a small infusion of interesting "bush" meats - kangaroo meat pies, sandwiches made with emu, so on and so forth. This is at least partially accurate. But I've been pleasantly surprised by the variety, freshness, and flavor of the food I've sampled in Australia. Perhaps the old meat pie and shrimp on the barbie mythos is unfounded and specious after all. Let's take a closer look at Australian food.

But first, some history.

Prior to the arrival of Captain Cook and his merry (hah) band, the Aborigines subsisted primarily on food they hunted and gathered. Australia's warm climate supported a prolific and tasty native flora and fauna, and as a result, the Aboriginal people rarely practiced substinence agriculture as we know it. As the Aborigines have resided in Australia for upwards of 40,000 years, their knowledge of local foods or "bush tucker" remains unsurpassed. Bush tucker has experienced a mild upswing in popularity among outdoorsy Australians, and guides can be purchased at most tourist bookstore. "Bush tucker" can include a startling variety of foods, from Macademia nuts and native fruits to goanna monitor lizard and bacony witchetty grubs. Coastal aborigines subsisted primarily on seafood and fish and lived a stationary lifestyle, whereas inland groups followed the goods from place to place as the seasons changed.


Aborigines also enjoyed feasting on honey ants, whose swollen and enormous rear-ends apparantly make for good eating.

This was, of course, entirely too idyllic and simple to last. In 1788, the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay from England, carrying 751 and 252 marines with them. These British settlers were unused to native Australian foods and had a hard time of it at first, as most steadfastly refused to take note of Aboriginal hunting and gathering technique. Indeed, according to Aussie Info.com, the original British settlers brought with them "familiar dishes such as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, Irish stew and steamed pudding were, for most of the year, totally unsuitable for the harsh climate and conditions." Settlers attempted to transplant English foods onto Australian soil with substantial success - and the introduction of a large number of ecologically disastrous species in the process, from bunny rabbits to deer. They also brought with them rum, which was valuable enough to serve as a currency in Australia's earliest days. (This holds true into the modern era on college campuses)

Some report that food in Australia is incredibly expensive. This is also accurate. Standard issue salads are 15 Aussie dollars, and entrees at "nice" restaurants can get into the mid thirties and forties. Eurgh.

Since the olden days, Australia has undergone a considerable renaissance in terms of fresh and organic ingredients, and its considerable immigrant population has brought a number of new recipes, techniques, and flavors to the table. Downtown Perth's selection of ethnic foods is roughly equivalent to that of California's. There's just about everything on offer, from Korean to German to Portuguese to Chinese. Emphasis on the Chinese restaurants, of which there are roughly a zillion. Local celebrity chefs incorporate native Australian ingredients and preparation methods into their high-end cuisine, producing distinctive and uniquely Australian flavors.

There is considerable overlap in American and Australian tastes. It's not hard to see why. Both are new countries formed from former British colonies, overlayed onto an existing and ancient local food culture. Both Americans and Aussies are incorporating old foodways and new into a harmonious and delicious expression of distinctive local flavor. Both nations, most importantly, have an incredible affinity for french fries (chips) and drive-through fast food joints. (The fast food drive-throughs are on the other side here. This is both mind-blowing and comically obvious when you first notice it)


Incredible looking tiger prawns at the Fremantle fish market.

Grocery stores here have been another pleasant surprise. They overwhelmingly feature attractive, fresh, and seasonal produce. Meats and seafoods are varied, ultra fresh, and appealing, in both appearance and flavor. Specialized butchers, fishmongers, and bakers abound and have set up shop in standard consumer shopping malls, meaning that shoppers can get food prepared and selected by experts, rather then resorting to the catch-all of the supermarket - though they have those, too. Ethnic grocery stores are everywhere and are usually well stocked with all manner of esoteric ingredients. Everything, I reiterate, is extremely expensive. Groceries are at least cheaper then those of any of the countries under the Euro regime at least, which is a small consolation.



Australians love Vegemite. Vegemite tastes like condensed evil and can probably be used to ward off vampires. I can't explain it. It is made from dark yeast extract and its continuing popularity is totally unexplainable by modern science. This is a nation that possess jam, marmalade, and cream. WHY?


Wine is super popular in Australia, and for good reason. Australian wines are often seriously good. Western Australia and the Perth Hills have a number of superb wineries, and most of them offer tasting rooms, high-end restaurants, and special events. (See the truffle dinner I experienced last week at Darlington Estate). The wine region looks eerily similar to Napa. Go figure.

Restaurants are everywhere and are heavily patronized. Australians, like Americans, are fascinated by food, food TV shows, and food journalism, but do very little actual cooking. Fast food is enormously popular, and chains include standard burger n' fries joints such as McDonalds and Hungry Jacks (Burger King) to chicken shillers (KFC, Red Rooster, Nandos) to sandwich shops (Subway). There's also a profusion of cheap and snappy ethnic places - think quicky Chinese food, Turkish bread (pita) sandwiches, and plenty of German sausages.



Cafes and sit down restaurants adhere to surprisingly high standards of freshness and taste. On the downside, almost every non-ethnic restaurant seems to have the exact same menu. There will always be a Caesar salad, prepared with a weirdly sweet mayonnaise dressing and plenty of lean Aussie bacon. There will always be a big bowl of chili mussels, prepared with a spicy tomato sauce. There will always be fish and chips, served with a side of sweet chili sauce and sour cream. There will always be fried salt and pepper squid with herbed aioli, and there will always be some variation on the burger, made with chicken, beef, or whatever the chef feels like at any given time. There will almost always be a pumpkin soup, some sort of berry cheesecake, and an in-house cappuccino bar. The list goes on.

Italian style coffee is extremely popular, especially in the Perth areas "cappuccino" belts. Many Italian and European refugees settled in the region after WWII and bought their food and love of caffeine with them. This historical incident means that excellent coffee and tea is available just about everywhere, often in scenic coastal spots.



Ethnic restaurants, as previously mentioned, are all pervasive and have just about every cuisine you can think of on offer. They're a great option if the tasty yet exceedingly derivative offerings of the continental joints are beginning to get to you. They are also (usually) the more economical choice, although it pays to look at the menu first.


Farmer's markets are common and feature a healthy variety of seasonal produce. In other words, they are exactly the same as farmer's markets everywhere else. The farmer's market near Applecross in Perth is excellent: fresh fish, locally raised meats, organic fruits and vegetables, and a profusion of coffee stands. And the Best Croissant Ever.

A final quirk of the Australian restaurant experience relates to service. In other words, there is not much of it. A healthy majority of restaurants, even the high-end types, require you to order and pay up front. Sometimes you take a number and the food is delivered to your table, and sometimes, you go up and get it yourself. This all becomes a lot more pleasant and understandable when you remember that no one expects you to tip, or at least not tip more then a buck or two. Australian servers are, after all, paid a living wage.

As far as expense goes, I can offer no recourse to those horrified and disgusted by the sheer expense of Australian food. Prices are driven up primarily by geography. Australia is an isolated nation with a relatively small population and not a lot of land suitable for agriculture or ranching. Perhaps an Australian visit is a good time for a budget motivated diet regime. Just an idea.

Next post will feature some common Australian food products. Shockingly enough, kangaroo is not among them.

Downtown Perth, The Horrors of Northbridge, King's Park (Again) and Some Bizarre Art

Decided to spend the day in the city of Perth proper, maybe have a look at the Art Museum. Perth, like most non-American cities, has an efficient, clean, and speedy train system that the locals bitch endlessly about. Perthians, for God's sake, can it. Try living in New Orleans, okay? We have a bus system that takes you nowhere you need to go and is populated primarily by people who reek of SoCo and emotional despair. The street-car is even worse. (I myself have been One of Those People nodding off and drooling on the shoulder of innocent bystanders I don't even know. Not to claim that I am morally superior. I miss you so, New Orleans). The point is, Perth's public transportation is superb and they should really appreciate it and be grateful that their odds of getting shanked or barfed on when using it are slim to none.

So we took it into town and headed to the Art Museum, which is both extensive, attractive, and free. Well, you're supposed to make a donation. If you feel like it. Such optimism.

The special display featured Australian artist Patricia Piccinni, who has made the internet rounds quite extensively with her profoundly disturbing human-like animal works in just about every possible media. Her resin based figures are incredibly realistic and seem plausible enough in reality: sort of the thing one very well might imagine in a fever dream on the New Orleans RTA system. Yeeps. She's fascinated by the relationship between human and animal and mother and child, and takes great delight in conflating the two: think lots of fleshy things with meticulously attached fur, a curious attraction to the marsupial and the milk-scented and sort of icky. But sweet, in a horror-show kind of way. It's fascinating stuff. I wouldn't want it in my home.



Well, except for The Stags. This is fantastic. She made these out of resin then painted them. I believe she somehow convinced an Italian car-leather company to specially produce stuff for her art.


Piccini has an affinity for savage and plausible creatures that would dearly love to devour your face. Exhibit One.


Exhibit two. This statue is life-size and is placed in the middle of the room, so you have the experience of walking into a room full of 1800's vases and pretty landscape paintings of rocks and find this thing right up in there. The sign indicated that the creature has decided to latch onto its caretakers face in an expression of misguided and desperate - indeed, uh, suffocating - affection. Me? Nightmare. I hate baby things - human, animal, whatever - and they unnerve me to no end, especially when they leap and hug your face so you can't breathe.Piccinni has an amazing ability to completely and utterly squick me out. She needs to make horror movies.


DON'T DO IT KID DON'T DO IT


OH GOD DON'T LOOK INTO ITS....eyes...eye? Dendrites? Gums? oh my god it's going to latch onto my toes that dangle over the edge of the bed unsocked and it is going to hang there all night long and i am going to awaken and know exactly what it is that is hanging onto my toes and then i will evaporate into pure fear

I have no idea what to make of this at all. Ask me later.

After that, I needed restorative calories. I always need restorative calories. As my aunt observed, "We are all held hostage to your stomach." I have no witty retort. If it is any consolation no one is held more hostage to my stomach then myself.

For lunch, we "toddled over" (christ I can't get used to that I just can't) to Tasik Indonesian in Northbridge. My aunt used to work over in this section of town, and had eyed this place with some curiosity for a while. However, she couldn't cajole her Australian coworkers into eating there (for shame!) and enlisted me. The restaurant is set in a converted and colorfully painted house, and is very pleasant place to eat.



My aunt had the rendang daging lunch special. Rendang is a fantastic braised beef curry with coconut and plenty of chili, and this was a good one - good smoky chili flavor, fall apart meat and plenty of it. For Perth, Land of Crazy Expensive Food, the special was a good deal. Something around 10 AUD.



I had the chicken Soto Ayam and the Capcay Goreng, Indonesian style sauteed vegetables. Soto Ayam is traditional Indonesian chicken soup and is delicious stuff. Sort of like traditional American chicken noodle soup but with actual flavor. I've made it before - you boil a chicken then pick off the meat and use the stock for a broth, along with other spices. Then you toss in some noodles and some veg and some chili and devour. Totally delicious stuff.


Capcay Goreng - sauteed vegetables with ginger and garlic. Not a culinary revelation by any means but awfully pleasing when you just want some damned greenery.

Speaking of Northbridge. Northbridge is reputed to be the sin and horror capital of Perth. There are bikie (bicycle/motorcycle) gangs, prostitutes and topless dancers, random errant kidlings and worst of all backpackers wandering around, just waiting for an innocent suburban soul to glass. Glassing, in case you were not familar, is the Australian battle tactic of whacking someone about the face with a broken bottle until they shut up, go away, or (occasionally) die of blood loss. Not superlatively pleasant, but also not particularly likely to happen to you unless you're in the habit of insulting the virile manhood of big ugly guys named Brucie at 3:00 in the morning. The Northbridge I saw was no more seedy then the rest of clean and pleasant Perth, other then a noticeable increase in the number of signs with foreign languages on them. There were also people with tattoos and piercings hanging outside backpackers hostels (the kind of people I will be associating with, rightly or wrongly, for the next god-knows-how-long.) Basically, I failed to be shocked and reviled by the urban grit. I imagine Perth does have its "feral" (as a Aussie friend put it) areas but I do not think that Northbridge is likely to be the site of your violent and unprovoked murder.

The Perth newspaper had a shock tactics type column on WEAPONS SEIZED BY THE LOCAL POLICE. These included such nightmarish horrors as: brass knuckles, smallish cooking knives, and a big stick with some nails stuck in it. OH GOD HIDE THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN AN ORGY OF VIOLENCE AND HORROR AWAITS US. I remember playing with all these things on a fairly regular basis as a ten year old in the woods. I am not, insofar as I am aware, a violent felon.

Anyway.


Lyn decided to head home, so I went back to King's Park. This involved a fairly plesant jaunt up Hay Street, until I reached the entrance. I headed up Fraser Avenue, which is planted with lemon-scented gums. The trees were "officially" planted in 1929 as evidenced by the plaques set up by local stand-outs in front of each, but turns out the original trees were red-flowering gums. These trees promptly up and died, and were replaced in 1938 by lemon-scented gums, which have grown large and majestic in the ensuing years.


A banyan tree of considerable size. I like banyan trees. Nothing else to say at this time. Check back soon.


More paper daisies. Look, they're pretty. And papery. Quite strikingly so.


I walked past the bridge, which I seem chronically unable to tire of, then headed down the path into the extensive preserved bush area. There was no one around and I had it to myself: it was nice to look at the native plants. Plenty of evidence of the fire that raged through here a couple years ago. Australia, like California, is subject to an inordinate number of bush fires.


Some lovely hanging purple flowers on the trail.


The view of downtown Perth from the park is not unlovely.



Aaaannndddd pan right.


My aunt lives in this blue tower, near the Canning bridge. That's the Swan River out front. As you can guess, it is not an unappealing place in which to reside.

I took a nap in the park and headed back via the still-pleasant train. Everyone in downtown Perth wears black. My blue coat drew stares (and compliments). Do not know why this is. Sociological experts? Anyone?


For dinner, I made gingersnap porkchops with beet greens and sauteed sauerkraut. This was an attempt to make maximum use of our new found and delicious bacon, and was not unsuccessful. Everyone done loves a porkchop.