Queensland Grog files

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Queensland, AU

 Greg has a long-standing belief that tropical climates produce some of the best wine.  His logic comes from visiting wineries in Florida.

Yes, Florida has wineries.  We’ll get to that later.

The short of it is that the environment does not lend itself well to heavy wines.  The climate of the tropics in general inspires beverages that are a little lighter, a little sweeter with fruit flavors often at the forefront and best served well-chilled.

wine coozyWhere, yes, you can actually make use of a personal wineglass cozy.

So the tropics pretty much inspire the exact kinds of wine we enjoy and the single winery we found up here did not disappoint.

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For the Diggers

Australia

 Pennies

Australian Friend: It’s called “two-up.”

US: Ok…so what’s the deal here?

Australian Friend: You flip two coins at once and bet on how many will come up heads.

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Now before you read further you need to understand that gambling is:

1)      Something that is everywhere in Australia.

2)      Something that we haven’t overly enjoyed

3)      Something we are forced to deal with every day working in pubs

With that in mind –

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US: That is a dumb gambling game.  Why would you even play that?

Australian Friend:  Well, we really only play it on this one day each year because, you know, they did

US: oh dammit, we’re sorry, we’re ugly Americans.

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The imperfect mirror

Thursday Island, Queensland, Australia

One of the things that we love about Australia is that it is, as Greg describes it, “like looking at a imperfect mirror at ourselves.”

20100320 - photo - la cruz marinaOr, yes ok it has been a while since we made a nautical reference so yes, like a reflection in a pool of water.  The point is that reflection is not perfect and there are many differences between our countries but of all the places we have visited Australia is the most like home:

  • We both started off as colonies founded by the same country
  • We are both a country of immigrants
  • We’re both, as countries go, large.  Really large.  As in “Europeans don’t get it” large.
  • We both managed to butcher the same source language – granted each with our own special flair
  • We both have to deal with issues revolving around lethal weapons

We could go on and we assume you get the point: As countries go, our two have a lot in common.  This is what makes Australia so very interesting: how they took a set of similar circumstances and ended up in a different place.  The choices we both made, as a people, and the results those different decisions had on where we both are now.

We didn’t want to bring this up until now because we really didn’t want it to taint our overall reporting, or our memories, of our experiences working in Australia.

At the same time it has happened at almost every place we worked and is especially prevalent at our most recent place of employment so it’s important we document it.  It’s not our best video; we recorded it for the audio so we could get our thoughts in the moment.

This article is about our experiences with sexism and racism in Australia.

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Thursday…now available in Island format!

Thursday Island, Queensland, Australia

After the arduous process of “studying” for our Responsible Service of Alcohol test we passed our course and became certified Australian bartenders!

Greg Tending barAbout 48 hours later came our first outback pub job over at Thursday Island, Australia.

One hitch – where the heck is Thursday Island?

Now we know what you’re thinking –

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