kaiesha

Hi Tim and Liz.
You Must try fresh (cooked,cold and peeled) prawns and lemon juice. The best way! Sea caught, not farmed.
Our local Coffee from Northern NSW is also something to try. Low in caffiene, and very nice if roasted perfectly.
'Zendvelds' coffee is grown,harvested,roasted on site in a very pretty area near Byron Bay. Another place for you to visit.
Cheers

Neil_Oz

'Snazzy', has it occurred to you to buy guide books for the countries you plan to visit on this trip, or to do a little research on the Web? Your multiple questions have the potential to consume hours of work in aggregate, and many of them could be answered in other ways - ways that admittedly may require a little more work on your part.

How did you come to know of things like bugs, yabbies, mud crabs, bream and trevally? Why is it that the source of your information didn't answer what you're asking?

BTW, you'll avoid unnecessary embarrassment if you spell 'Sydney' correctly.

(Other Fodorites: is it just me, or does the idea of researching breakfast cereals before embarking on an overseas trip seem just a little odd to you?)

Snazzy

Neil:
I have spent hours doing research prior to discovering this board. I have over two hundred pages of notes. That's where I came up with all those foods as well as several restaurants such as "La Renassiance, Tetsuya, Swiss Pencils, Red Ochre...."

You'll notice that I didn't ask about lodging because that's already been booked and paid for. I wouldn't have asked anyway because I think it would be a question with too many variables.

I know how to spell Sydney but I still catch myself spelling it incorrectly from time to time. Obviously, this was a bad place to misspell it. (However, if you look at another one of my "copious and bothersome" posts, you'll find I spelled it correctly.)

(Also, see post on other thread regarding Federation Square.)

I asked about Cheerios because I snack on them a lot. They settle my stomach if I can't eat at the regular time. (I found Pat's answer about what you folks call Cheerios to be extremely helpful. Thank you, Pat.)

Several folks clarified the differences in the bugs and yabbies. Again, I found it extremely helpful. Thank you.

Muesli and Beet Wix are foods I'd probably not buy on my own but I think I'll look for them if customs won't let me bring my own boxes of Cheerios to snack on. Thanks, Neil and Possum.

I asked about Teuscher Chocolates of Switzerland because someone said they were, "The best," and are only sold in large cities so I thought maybe I could buy some in either SYDNEY or Melbourne.

With so much to see and do in a short time, I don't want to set in hotel rooms calling all over the city trying to find specific items. I just thought someone on the board might know.

I'm sorry I bothered you with what some of you consider to be trivial questions. Perhaps you should post a list of "proper questions to ask" so as not to "waste your precious time."
If you think someone's questions are trivial and too time consuming to answer, then don't.

Better yet, why don't those of you who are grumbling about the posters decide on exactly how many questions each person can ask. Then post.... Caution: only two questions per person per year or whatever you decide in bold type at the top of the forum!!

Be sure to add a spell checker to this forum since you seem to make fun of spelling and / or typing errors. That is just plain rude.

I get the feeling that I started too many threads. My apologies. I was trying to separate out Australia questions from New Zealand and I was trying to separate topics (food, recreation, etc.). Again, maybe posting "the rules" will save future posters from humiliation.

The forum in general was very helpful and I looked forward to your answers until today... But, the "behind the back type discussions and gumblings" by some are very hurtful. I am no longer eager to visit Australia. If this were a year earlier, I'd be cancelling our reservations.

Neil_Oz

Snazzy, if one negative post on Fodors would cause you to rethink your plans to visit a country I wonder that your sensitivity allows you to go anywhere.

You may have noticed that I'm one of several regular posters here who were doing their best to answer some of your questions, at some length. And yes, I then began to suspect that you were a troll, because your posts seemed to display some of the common characteristics of that breed. If my suspicions were unfounded I apologise.

I'm not so pedantic that I routinely correct posters' spelling and typos, as we all slip up on occasions. However, it does seem reasonable, and a courtesy to the host country, to get the names of major cities right. Sometimes a spelling correction is meant to be helpful, as the wrong spelling entered into a search engine may not return the matches you want. (In that purely helpful spirit, the cafe/patisserie you mention is "La Renaissance".)

I have plans to revisit your country, and if I started posting enquiries about San Fransisco, Tackoma and Butt, Montana, I'd expect an American Fodorite to have a shot at me - rightly so. I should add that once having my opinions offensively dismissed by one American poster because of Australia's origins as a convict colony has not caused me to revise my positive attitude towards of Americans or reassess my travelling plans.

A search of past threads will show that enquirers on the forum do pretty well, and I don't remember anyone being criticised for asking too many questions. Had I not suspected you of being a troll I'd be answering questions till the cows come home. As said, though, if that's unfair I'm sorry.

pat_woolford

Hi Snazzy, didn't think you were a troll either, but its a big country and certain food (fish and seafood especially go under different names in different states). I don't think prawns are shrimp either, from what I can remember as shrimp in UK, they are certainly not - but years ago there was a huge TV promotion directed to overseas markets on Australia featuring our one and only Paul Hogan "throw another shrimp on the barby". Translated, a shrimp is what we call a "prawn", which can come in anything from a tiny "schoolie" to a largish meaty creature, often known as a "king prawn". There are many varieties, tiger, banana, etc. They may be eaten in many ways, heads on or headless.

Red Ochre in Cairns consistently comes up in top 10 restaurants in area, and it does indeed serve wonderful, innovative food. But its not typical of what we usually dine on, we go there for a bit of a treat. I guess you could say up here its mainly Asian and Mediterranean style which is eaten at home. North Queensland (Cairns etc) grows an enormous amount of produce which is also found in SE Asia (fairly similar climate) including the sweetest, juiciest pineapple you'll ever taste, mango, pawpaw (red is much better than yellow),
sugar banana, lychees, as well as the more unusual mangosteens (the best!), sapote, jackfruit, durian (for those who are brave enough) rambutans, logans, japoticaba to name a few. And the very fertile Atherton Tableland, just behind Cairns will supply you with just about any fruit, veg., coffee, dairy product you can find, with the exception of stone fruit - the best of this is found in South Australia with its Mediterranean climate. So when you visit Cairns, duck into Rusty's market, Friday, Sat and Sunday morning - you'll love it. Try the freshly crushed sugar cane juice with lime.

ned

for heavens sake get a life. If you want to ask a question, ask a question, if you want to answer it, answer it, otherwise just move on....what bother with the self justification

Tassietwister

I think Kangaroo are cute so I will never eat them.

That is my self justification.

I will only eat UGLY animals.

Crikey now cows will sue me for discrimination!!

Snazzy

Thanks, Pat for the info. I'll check out Rusty's Market.
Love lychees and have always wanted to try Jackfruit and several others you mentioned.

Your website is really neat.

Judy_in_Calgary

Snazzy, as I recall, any place that sells hamburgers in Sydney and Melbourne offers the option of an egg in the hamburger.

The other thing about a truly Australian hamburger is that it has a slice of beetroot in it.

In Australia you'll see many Hungry Jack's outlets. They are the Australian version of Burger King.

This isn't related to food, but it is related to names that store chains have in Australia. Tandy is what Radio Shack is called in Australia.

Anyway, back to food. At this moment my little grey cells cannot recall if Australia has Cheerios breakfast cereal. Quite a few of the Australian breakfast cereals are North American look-alikes, i.e., they have a similar appearance, but they are manufactured locally, from local ingredients. For example, the have something that looks like Rice Crispies, but they call it Rice Bubbles.

In many cases the taste of a supposedly identical product is different. Australian wheat tastes different from North American wheat. Australian milk tastes different from North American milk, and so on.

In Australia they have an instant macaroni and cheese meal, nominally the same as Kraft Dinner, but it tastes slightly different.

Actually these differences are true between Canada and the U.S. too. Canadian and American Coca Cola, for example, taste slightly different. The Canadian version is slightly less sweet than the American version.

Anyway, Australia may have a Cheerios look-alike that is called by a different name, but I can't remember. If you like to snack on dry breakfast cereal, and if you can't find a Cheerios look-alike there, then Crispix might work. It's called Crispix in Australia and Chex in New Zealand. It consists of small squares of corn lattice, and it's manufactured by Kellog's. If I remember correctly, the Crispix here in Canada is a hexagonal shape. Anyway, it works on the same principle.

Something else that may work is Kellog's Mini-Wheats. They are similar to the Mini-Wheats available in Canada (the plain ones, not the frosted ones).

Something that my family and I like in Australia is Nando's Peri-Peri Chicken. Peri-peri is made from a kind of hot pepper, and it's Portuguese in origin. You can eat in Nando's restaurants. They're a sort of fast food chain, but a bit more upscale and healthier than McDonald's and Hungry Jack's (Burger King). You also can buy the Nando's chicken products to go. Not only that, but you also can buy Nando's peri-peri sauce in supermarkets and use it as a flavouring in home cooking.

The lamb in Australia is very good. I haven't been to NZ, but I would think it would be excellent there too.

There is a nice food court at the Queen Vic Market. Well, I call it a food court, because there is central seating. But the individual outlets from which one purchases the food offer better quality than the average fast food kiosk at a food court in North America.

The meals in the Chinatown precinct of Melbourne's downtown are very good and reasonably priced.

Something else that is common around Sydney and Melbourne is Devonshire tea. This is tea and scones (what are called biscuits in North America) with whipped cream and strawberry jam. (You can request coffee as a substiute for the tea.) Maybe they serve Devonshire tea in Queensland too, but right at this moment I cannot remember having run into it there.

Australians are very friendly, kind and hospitable. When we were riding the Puffing Billy steam train in the Dandenong Ranges outside of Melbourne, the Australian family with whom we shared a carriage pulled out a wicker picnic basket and insisted on sharing with us the mom's homemade Christmas cake. (We were riding the train between Christmas and New Year.)

When my husband and a Calgary friend went to a cricket match, the two Australian men sitting next to them insisted on buying beers for them.

An English colleague of my husband and his family had a similar experience. They pulled into a roadside picnic spot off the Great Ocean Road. There they found an Australian family who insisted they join them and share their picnic lunch. Afterwards, one member of the Australian extended family who was from New Zealand insisted that everyone get up and learn from him how to do the Hakka (Maori war dance).

I found it difficult to answer your questions when you initially came here and fired them off without any context. I did try, and managed to answer a couple of them. However, since you have returned and provided more context (nature of your trip, why you want to know certain things), I've found it easier to respond. For example, when I first saw your question about Cheerios, I went, "Huh?" and shook my head.

The thing is that in my time at Fodors I've seen quite a few weird and wonderful things. Some people who are in marketing come here and pose as travellers asking questions. Some school students pose as travellers so they can get easy answers for assignments. (I mean not just on the Australia forum, but on others on which I participate, e.g., the Canada one.) Sometimes students are up front about their agenda. They say, "I have an assignment, and I was wondering if you 'd be kind enough to help me out with an answer to Such And Such question." In that case, I'm more than happy to assist them if I can. But I prefer it if they're up front about their intentions, rather than trying to weadle the information out of us by being economical with the truth.

Anyway, when you initially arrived and fired off a battery of questions, I really wasn't quite sure which category of poster you were. I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were a genuine traveller until and unless proved otherwise. I did answer a couple of questions for which the information was at my fingertips. However, with respect to a couple of your questions, I found it a whole lot easier to answer them when you returned and provided some background on your forthcoming trip.

Hope that helps.

Snazzy

Thank you, Judy.
Speaking of Canadian soda versus U. S. soda, I remember when Canadian cans had two holes. One was smaller and you poked it first to let out some of the pressure. Then you poked the second. I think that was in Ontario.

I really want to get to Queen Victoria Market but I think the rest of the group is heading out each morning for the other places. We'll see what they are planning and how early they want to leave. Even if it is afternoon, I'll still go if I get a chance. It sounds like my kind of place.

The difference in beef taste -grass fed vs corn fed - doesn't surprise me. But I wonder why the difference in the taste of wheat? Different soils, perhaps.

Thanks, again, Judy.

Judy_in_Calgary

Hi Snazzy,

I just noticed another of your questions.

>>>Are there WalMarts in Australia? I know there are Targets...<<<

To the best of my knowledge, Wal-Mart has not yet made it to Australia. Australia does have Target, as you've mentioned, and Kmart.

It also has other stores that you would recognise from North America, all the way from big box stores like IKEA to small kiosks like Sunglasses Hut.

As I recall, Office Depot used to be in Australia, but sold its stores to Officeworks.

Bunnings is a large hardware store that is somewhat similar to Home Depot in North America. However, as is the case with supermarkets and green grocers, there still are many small, neighbourhood hardware stores.

As I mentioned somewhere else, Tandy is what Radio Shack is called in Australia.

One of the funny things about shopping in Australia, and just being in Australia in general, if you come from another English speaking country, is that it's the same but it's different. I mean, I experience the same thing in the United Kingdom. You see a huge sign advertising a tyre sale (with a Y instead of an I in tire), and it feels kind of weird, at least it does to me.

Also, Australians call the floor above ground floor the 1st floor. In that regard they follow the convention in the United Kingdom and Europe. I remember I was looking for a place that I had been told was on the 3rd floor during my first couple of days in Melbourne. It took me a few minutes to figure out that it was on what I thought of as the 4th floor. (It was in a situation in which I was using escalators to reach the desired floor, so I didn't have the reality check that elevator buttons would have provided.)

Another thing that happened to me during my first few days was that a store clerk asked me if I was all right. I responded that I was fine thank you, and then wondered why the staff ignored me. It turned out that, "Are you all right?" means, "Have you been served?"

These small differences mean that a traveller can stumble a bit as he/she tries to find his/her way around Australian society. On the whole, though, Australians are very friendly, very casual and very relaxed.

I think your question about the best colour of tennies to wear in Australia probably mystified the Aussies posters. I found Aussies to be sooooooo casual, that they would think you were dressing up if you merely wore matching socks. Well, that's an exaggeration, of course. But a question like what colour of tennies to wear really would perplex many Aussies. They would be lost for an explanation as to why a person was even asking the question.

This is in contrast to the Fodors Europe board, where many posters ask about the correct dress in countries like Italy and France. People in those countries (and in Montreal too) are known for chic dress, so I guess quite a few travellers feel a bit intimidated and feel some sort of obligation to be on their best behaviour, from a dress point of view, when they first venture to those places.

In my experience, Australians are more "gentle" if that's the right word in the south (I'm thinking of Melbourne specifically) and less gentle in the north (I'm thinking of Queensland). It's not so much that the people in Queensland are nasty. Rather it's that they have a dry sense of humour. Actually this is true to some extent right across Australia, but my observation was that it was more so the further north I went. They sometimes say something that takes you aback, and they say it with a straight face, but actually they're cracking a joke.

Although I haven't been to New Zealand, I've heard that NZ as a whole is a gentler and a more "introverted" country than Australia is. The degree of difference is perhaps similar to that which exists between the United States and Canada. I experience many Americans as more extroverted than many Canadians.

Again, when I travel in the United States, I experience that feeling that it's the same but it's different.

lizF

What Judy says is right and what we Queenslanders do is called "taking the piss out of you" done with no smile but inside we are cracking up and waiting to see what fantastic reaction the receiver gives. NZers are used to us now as it seems that half of NZ live up here and they too are very similiar but tend to be a little softer.

repete

I'd love to find a carpetbagger steak like the ones at Kingsley's in Sydney's CBD.

LoveItaly

Judy, I have known many people from California that have been in Canada and come home loving the scenic beauty but complaining about "how cold" the Canadians are. You are absolutely right, USA is more extorverted and they consequently do not understand Canadians personalities.

Personally, and I have only had the opportunity to visit the west coast of your beautiful Canada, have always found Canadians to be warm and welcoming. And love the sense of humour. And my daughter has dear friends all over Canada. They overwhelm her with kindness, e-mails, telephone calls, with sending presents through the post to the point she can not keep up with them.
Beautiful friends for sure.

Snazzy

Canada is one of our favorite places. We've been to all but three the provinces and found the people's personalities to vary from province to province. Several provinces have different ethnic backgrounds and perhaps that accounts for the differences.

Folks in Alberta have been consistently friendly and helpful each time we visited.

There is one province which we now avoid because the people generally speaking weren't as friendly. In an effort not to make anyone mad, I'll not name that province.

Likewise there are some states in the U.S. where people are not as friendly and helpful as others. I'll also refrain from naming those states.

And steering this thread back to foods... I did go in search of Canadian foods such as poutine. beaver tails (the pastries), tire, and fiddleheads on a couple of trips.

Canada was the first place I'd ran across potato chips flavoured in vinegar, ketchup or dill pickle. True, some stores in the U. S. now carry those flavours but Canada was the first.

I'm looking forward to trying to find the burger flavored chips in Australia that someone mentioned in an earlier post.

Snazzy

Grammatical correction: I'd run across...
Guess I need to start previewing my replies before I post.

Possum

LoveItaly and Snazzy,
Regarding your comments on Canada(even though it's slightly off-topic).... I've visited Alberta and B.C. and I loved every minute. I wandered all around Vancouver, and it is the "closest thing" to Melbourne I have ever experienced in my extensive world-wide travels. Similar city layout and definitely the same spirit.
Canadians are far more like Aussies than Americans are. No offence intended- just my personal opinion. I loved visiting the west coast of the US, but Canadians seem to share a similar sense of humour to the Aussies and the same sense of place. The same can be said of South Africans. People of both these nations just seem to "get" the Aussie sense of humour and how we "go about things".
If I had to "relocate overseas" in my work- I think I'd feel completely at home in Vancouver. The winter temperatures may be a real test, though!!!!
Possum

TurtleMichael

Hi Snazzy

Just read through this thread and I wanted to let you know that not all Australians are as rude as some people appear here. You are quite right to state that if someone finds the question bothersome then they should not answer it or give a condescending answer and direct you to a Guide book. Its plain offensive. There is a tone often in the Australian Forum which is not typical and so please dont take offence. I lurk here now and then and have come to the conclusion that there are quite a few people here who are over it and should find something else to do with their time.

Have a great trip.

Michael

Snazzy

Hi, Possum,
I think it is Vancouver --or maybe it is Victoria -- that is billed as the most British city outside of England.
Recently, I read somewhere that an Australia city is the most British city outside of England. Maybe it was Melbourne.
So it makes sense to me that the two cities are similar.
That's one reason I was into the "food thing" to compare the types of foods but it makes sense that there is an infusion of Asian, European, and Indian foods so it should be interesting.

Cheers.

Snazzy

Hi, TurtleMichael,
Yes, I'm over it.
It was more the separate thread where I was being talked about "behind my back" yet "in front of my nose" that totally seemed out of line. I thought the message board was to talk about travel not other posters.
If I'd been asked why I was asking about certain things, I'd have answered. But instead the question was posed to another poster instead of me directly.
As far as misspelling U.S. places, it wouldn't bother me. I'd just chalk it up to a cultural difference.
The way I was approaching this board was a chance to find out what folks who either lived or had visited an area thought about the foods. I wanted an idea ahead of time because I obviously can eat all the foods -- that caught my eye or that I've been steered toward -- in just a week. <grin>
However, I do have a good idea of where to start and if I run across a particular food such as Spanish mackrel or barramundi, I'll remember that someone recommended it and order it over something else - like, say a steak.
I've also learned where to look for certain things and that is a big help.
I've actually had a lot of help (such as eat Barramundi up north where it is freshly caught) through the Australia & Pacific Board and learned a lot of positive things.

Cheers.