Good-bye, Hello

After the riding trip, I had only one more day in Victoria before I boarded a plane heading for Australia’s island state, Tasmania. I was leaving behind the free-settled gold-rush state for the convict-settled apple state. (Tasmania has traditionally been the location of most of Australia’s apple growing —an industry founded when the Bounty’s famous [...]

Queen Victoria Market

I have both written and spoken, here and elsewhere, about dining in Australia, so if you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that I think that Australia is a splendid destination for those who like to eat.
In Melbourne, one of the most wonderful manifestations of the excellence of the food options in Oz [...]

Sheep and Seafood

There is the usual range of jobs on Kangaroo Island that one would associate with a small town near a geologically significant tourist destination—workers in government, retail, hotels, and restaurants, park rangers, scientists. But the majority of the non-tourist income is from sheep ranching and seafaring—or, more specifically, fishing. I was too early for the [...]

Australian Food

Last month, I joined Australian Pastry Chef Naomi Levine for a presentation given to the Culinary Historians of Chicago. Naomi talked about (and had samples of) several classic Australian sweets, then I rolled into a discussion of Australia in general and Australian food in particular. WBEZ, the local Public Radio Station, recorded our presentation. They [...]

Going Bananas in Carnarvon

Continuing south, we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn. A relatively small, white sign marked the crossing, sticking up out of a sea of dry, red dirt. It did seem as though one could almost see the curve of the Earth, there, however—probably because the vista was so broad and so open.
In another few hours, we [...]

Check Out My Other Blog

I had originally thought that this blog would be all I’d need—that I’d share other travels and interests here. However, this is pretty clearly a travel blog, with most of it’s focus on Australia, so I decided to start another blog for my equally serious food interests. That blog is The World’s Fare.
The original idea [...]

Pavlova for the Holidays

The holidays seem to be all about eating—so I thought I’d offer a recipe to enjoy during your festivities. While traveling around Australia, I had several encounters with a really lovely dessert called a Pavlova, named for the great ballerina.
While Pavlova is massively popular all across Australia, where it is viewed as a fair dinkum [...]

Dining Down Under

Those who know me well are probably wondering why I’ve said so little about Australia’s food to this point. (Well, I do talk about it in the book, but haven’t said much on the blog yet.) Actually, I have written a lot, it has just been other places. For example, I did the piece below [...]

Fascinating Figs

One of my stops on the Atherton Tableland was at Yungaburra, to see the famous Curtain Fig (a section of which is pictured below). While the premature death and fall of the host tree made this ficus particularly interesting, all figs are pretty intriguing.
• Ficus (the botanic name for figs) is a group of about [...]

Australian Tea

While visiting the Atherton Tableland, I was delighted by the sight of some of the region’s glorious tea plantations. Blankets of emerald tea bushes swept across landscapes and up mountainsides. It was simply gorgeous. I had been drinking Australian tea for a couple of weeks already, and it was wonderful seeing it growing.
The first tea [...]