I think I am finally getting the hang of things here. I now know that Woolworths is a huge supermarket chain, Burger King is Hungry Jacks, sweets are lollies, crisps are chips, chips are hot chips, sausages are snags, rugby is football and football is soccer.
One thing that was a very pleasant surprise was just how green everything is. Australia is the country that makes up most of the continent with the least trees in the world but you would not believe it if you came here. Admittedly there is the huge middle bit with hardly any but the edges are full of them and they are massive, even Ian had forgotten how big they are.
The other delightful discovery is that so many of the trees flower and there is something in full bloom all of the time. When we arrived the jacarandas were in flower so there were gorgeous purple trees everywhere, in Sydney there are some residential streets where jacarandas are the trees planted along the roadside so the whole street is lined with purple.
My absolute favourites (so far, something else might spring in to life next week) are the frangipanis in the first picture, as far as I can tell they flower all the time. Not many of the trees are deciduous either so there is no really grim period with just bare branches, although that must mean no excitement when the first buds appear.
Ian has been telling me about the Sydney Royal Easter Show for years and the day finally came around for me to see it for myself and it really lived up to all the hype. It was sensational, a bizarre mix - sort of Sydney slick meets Women's Institute.
It was held in the Olympic Park and we took the train down from Newcastle right into the venue with only one change. When we arrived at the station at the crack of dawn we went to buy tickets but were told travel was included in the ticket price if we were going to the show - astonishing as we were travelling from another city!
The first thing we walked through was the huge funfair and then, Ian couldn't wait any longer and we headed for the vegetable displays. It is the centenary of the battle at Gallipoli this year so most of the displays were dedicated to that and were amazing.
Onto Arts and Crafts. The effort that goes into this section is just staggering, I now have a picture in my mind of a whole industry of country women on remote farms churning out crocheting, knitting, feltwork, embroidery, mosaics, paintings, quilting, leatherwork,quilling(?), scrapbooking!, lace making and so it goes on and everything labelled quaintly as made by Mrs so and so, it reminded me of my grandmother and her neighbours who all addressed each other as Mrs. Most remarkable of all were the cakes, there were hundreds of them so many that I have added a page of pictures to the blog for anyone interested in seeing more. They were so elaborate and intricate we could not imagine how these women had transported them, some for thousands of kilometres and many along unsealed roads.
On top of all this excitement there were the animal competitions, these are deadly serious because to win a category at the Royal Easter Show is like winning Crufts and can make a huge difference to the value of a farm's livestock.
Then my personal favourite, the woodchopping. I could have watched this for hours, it goes on constantly for the
whole two weeks of the show and the quantity of wood they get through is incredible. We were lucky enough to see the presentation of the prizes for the Jack and Jill paired sawing...look what takes the place of champagne on the podium.
The New South Wales state elections took place yesterday and,although I am not eligible to vote yet, I went along with Ian to see if voting was any different here than in the UK.
It was completely different! Voting is compulsory in Australia so the turnout was a world away from the slow dribble of people wandering into the local church hall in England. Polling day was a Saturday too and, as with most events in Australia, had something of a party atmosphere about it with sausage sizzles and bouncy castles at many polling stations.
Voters can go to any polling station in their electorate to vote and there was even a website to visit (sausagesizzle.com.au) where you could find out which polling station was going to be laying on the best entertainment!
However, voters need a bit of sustenance here as voting itself is exhausting. When they arrive, the voters are given instructions on the best way to vote for each party. When voting for the Lower House (like the Commons) they can either choose to use preferential voting below the line where they number their choices or, if they would prefer not to do that, they can choose to vote above the line. This is selecting just one candidate which will automatically add the preferences chosen by that party, for example, the Labor party would have the Greens as their second preference, the Fishing and Shooters Party third all the way down to the Liberal Party as their last choice. Luckily there were only 5 candidates for Port Stephens.
Then, as if that wasn't complicated enough, we move on to the huge ballot paper Ian is holding up. This is for the Upper House (like the Lords). Again the electorate can choose to vote above the line, accepting the preferences of the party they have chosen or they can number their preferences themselves below the line where there were........wait for it....280 candidates, so you could go into your polling booth and number all the way from 1 to 280, no wonder there was a queue!
It was Ian's birthday at the weekend and we were delighted to see Zoe, Gill, Steve, Karen, Rob, Edith, Matt, Imogen and Georgia raising a glass to him, or gravy boat in Rob's case.
It actually poured with rain all day on his birthday, which is very unusual where we are, we get very little rain. So we racked our brains for somewhere to visit that was indoors then remembered we were a bit curious about Tanilba House which is in the next little town to ours, Tanilba Bay.
We had heard that Tanilba Bay had been the place originally chosen for the Prime Minister's country residence (it never happened, they built it in Kirribilli in Sydney instead) and we mistakenly thought Tanilba House had been built for that purpose. It wasn't but it was a splendid place to visit and certainly somewhere we will take our visitors. The house was built in 1834, which is old for a building by Australian standards and the original owners were given several convicts to build the house and tend the vineyards, there was even a little cell for use when a convict misbehaved. The present owner keeps a part of the house open to the public and it is stuffed full of an eclectic mix of bits and bobs, some of which match the history of the house and some don't at all but it is great fun. She shows visitors around herself then makes them a cup of tea.
We really are living a different life here. I have added a picture of my set up when I do the washing. Our washing machine hasn't arrived yet so I use the laundromat that is down at the marina for the boatees. I cycle down with the laundry in Monty's trailer then sit on the bench reading my book and watching people setting off for a day's fishing. It's a tough life.
This truly is the lucky country, we have started winning meat now! Club Lemon Tree, opposite our house, holds a free raffle for members every Friday so we trot over, collect our free tickets and settle down with a beer to see if we win anything. Meat raffles are common in Australia, not like in the UK where they only happen in Shameless or Yiewsley, they are everywhere. So we won some this week then scuttled off home quickly as Norm Bakker the Elvis impersonator was warming up to begin his set. Norm performs there quite often, I think they phone him whenever they have a gap in the schedule, some of the bands are quite good but Norm is rather more of an acquired taste.
The house renovations have hit a crucial point, the bath is out and we went down to Sydney to buy the new kitchen units on Thursday, IKEA again but this time we found one with a decent car park and didn't take the caravan, so not nearly as exciting as our last visit. We are trying to get these big, messy jobs done before all our goods and chattels arrive from the UK, having lived with very little for nearly five months, I can't think why we need all the stuff that is coming. We will have it delivered here then plan to build a big shed in the garden of our other house to store it all in while we travel about, why we didn't just sell most of it before we left I don't know.
The New South Wales State Elections are happening this week (more about that soon, the voting system is so complicated here it needs a separate blog post) and the candidate posters were up everywhere as we drove through the Sydney suburbs, I can't help thinking this guy might have considered a name change to help his chances of getting votes.
It was the Newcastle Show this weekend and we went along for the day. Country shows are big here, the Sydney Royal Easter Show is apparently a huge affair but this one was a fair size made up of a funfair, a big central arena which was hosting showjumping on the day we were there, food and drink halls, animal competitions and a whole hall dedicated to showbags.
Showbags are a big deal and feature in all the advertising way above anything else. They are basically a carrier bag with a picture of Barbie or Thomas the Tank Engine or similar to denote boys or girls ranging in price from $2 to $20. They contain a selection of useless plastic rubbish and a couple of sweets (called lollies here) and, as far as I could tell, it was the quantity that increased with the price, not the quality. They are exactly the kind of thing Zoe would have driven me nuts for when she was small, thank goodness we didn't have them in the UK.
Several schools were on trips to visit the show and these boys were wearing their school uniform, they must go to cowboy school.
There were various places where people were showing their animals off and having them judged, sadly the animals weren't the most interesting, some cattle but mostly pigeons and chickens. There were hundreds of categories of chicken and pigeon prizes, I can only guess the guy in the picture won the tallest pigeon competition.
The part of the show that took my breath away really was the arts and crafts section! Crafts are big in Australia, especially in the more remote country towns - not much else to do I guess - and there were hundreds of examples of knitted, crocheted and embroidered work, some truly awful. Any Pulsfords reading this be warned, you may think knitting a few vegetables is an innocent pastime but it can get out of control and lead to this! Mind you, even I have to admit the koala tea cosy is quite cute.
