Aussie Icons

I Love a Sunburnt Country

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded Lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens,
Is running in your veins;
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies -
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.


I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of drought and flooding rains,
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me.

The tragic ring-barked forests
Stark white beneath the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
An orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the crimson soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart around us
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold;
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown Country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Written by Dorothea MacKellar 1906

January 26, Australia Day. A time to celebrate our national pride, to BBQ, parade and eat iconic Aussie foods. A day to play beach cricket with friends or family and to reflect on how damn lucky we are to live in a country at peace.

How fortunate a country, where the standard of living is high for most and education is accessible and encouraged, unhindered by propaganda. Where women have the right to vote, to choose for themselves and to earn in their own right and to be educated.

This country where diverse crops can be grown and all manner of sustenance can be cultivated in an ecology untainted by chemical warfare. Where no one has to starve and for those who are culinary advocates, it can be a food lovers paradise...

...I could continue to wax lyrical, but you know it already. I LOVE my home country.



For those who read The Vanilla Slice Blog, I have been too snowed under to post recently, but have two new reviews to post this weekend.


For lovers of the most iconic Aussie snack, you will find that I have joined PG & The Grocer in a you beaut blog reviewing Meat Pies. Visit us here for an orgiastic exploration of gratuitous pastry and gravy devotion.


So, it's back to a hard grind at the gym for me next week, before I become a candidate for Jenny Craig, Lite & Easy and Weight Watchers, whereupon I will start the blog - 'How to lose 20kg by cutting pies and vanilla slices out of your diet'.

'Av-a-good (long) weekend A-straya!

In Briefs

1. The Vanilla Slice Blog is the 'Featured Blog of the Day' at The Australian Index for being quirky and for profiling an Aussie obsession.

2. Gordon Ramsay admits to a low sperm count. Food critic Giles Coren has irregularly formed sperm. On the channel 4 food show 'The F Word' they examine the theory that eating refined and sugary processed foods, produce treated with chemicals, drinking sugary soft drinks and not drinking enough water contributes to poor sperm motility, irregular shape, dehydrated semen and a low sperm count.

To keep your custard in good shape, remember to drink 1.5 litres of water every day and to eat SOLE Food and Slow Food. Cook with the best quality produce you can afford, wear loose briefs and you'll evidently keep 'your boys' happy.

3. Having raised money for mens' issues - with beneficiaries The Prostate Cancer Foundation & Beyond Blue - Movember wraps up in the next day. Thankfully Mr Stickyfingers will be removing his itchy big moustache - inspired by Lemmy of Motorhead - where both custard and icing collect on tasting. Last year he modelled himself on Borat sans Mankini - fetching.....NOT!

Movember (the month formally known as November) is a moustache growing charity event held during November each year.

At the start of Movember guys register with a clean shaven face. The Movember participants known as Mo Bros then have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their moustache and along the way raiseas much money and awareness about male health issues, in particular prostate cancer as possible.

Movember culminates at the end of the month at the gala partés. These glamorous and groomed events will see Tom Selleck and Borat look-a-likes battle it out for their chance to take home the prestigious Man of Movember title.

2007 Movember Foundation. All rights reserved.

Snot Block update

The Spanish were responsible not only for importing the vanilla pod to Europe from Central America, but also for supplying Europe’s languages with a name for it. In Spanish it is vainilla, a diminutive of vaina, ‘sheath’ – a reference to the long narrow pods. The ultimate source (root) of Spanish vaina is Latin vagina.

Two more posts have been added to Vanilla Slice Blog. We stopped at the Orange Spot Bakery in South Australia enroute home from our stay in The Barossa Valley to sample their second prizewinner. The second visit was to the much-vaunted San Sebastian, in Mr Stickyfingers’ old stomping ground, Hampton. Next up will be Chimmy’s in Abbotsford, thanks to a tip off at the site, where we have allocated a page for suggestions. Feel free to let us know where your favourite is.

By hook or by crook, Purple Goddess and I will make it to Sorrento for an eat off of their two most famous, in the next couple of weeks.

Vanilla Slice Blog – the quest for perfection.

slice slice baby

My man zero is back with a killer slice,

I’m blowin’ up the mic,

Ya damn right, vanilla ice

With twice the punch,

I put the crunch on marky

And take the funky out of his bunch.

Hit'em Hard, VANILLA ICE

Yesterday The Funky Bunch Custard Crusaders traversed 200km in the pursuit of Vanilla Slice. We were in Mount Macedon and drove across to blustery Trentham and on to Malmsbury. We stopped in Castlemaine and travelled as far as Maldon, bypassing the award winning scones for their rumoured to be delicious 'Zen' organic slice, only to have our hopes dashed. Zen only makes their Mille Feuille style Vanilla Slice on Thursdays, and they sell so fast they need to be ordered in advance.

Pictured above is all we came up with. Although the Malmsbury Bakery was doing a roaring business, their photogenic Vanilla Slice was disappointingly merely adequate. A rock hard icing, dusted with icing sugar topped crisp pastry, sandwiching a cloyingly rich custard, that left a fatty coating on the lips. The consensus was that the good Bakers of Malmsbury had plenty of room for improvement.

Later this week - given the time - I aim to launch The Vanilla Slice Blog - a quest for perfection. The Custard Crusaders will review Vanilla Slices and Mille Feuilles on their travels, scoring the custard concoctions that they come across out of twenty, for custard, pastry, icing and the degree of difficulty in tackling the sweet slippery mass. Stay tuned for more.