Happy 4th of July, Comrade Americans!

Happy 4th of July!

As travelers over the past few years

(wow, that’s still weird to say)

Our history of celebrating the birth of our home nation has ranged from “cowboy guitars around a campfire” as interpreted by the people of Bora Bora, to launching fireworks into an Australian Blizzard.

No matter where we have been, we’ve done our best to take our traditions and blend them with the people we’re around.  To create a little celebration of America with local flair, if you will.  This year is no different

We enjoyed hot dogs:

100_3154Alongside other iconic American foods
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South Australia Grog Files

South_Australia_flagSouth Australia, AU

We didn’t plan on spending too much time here, however the Beast had other plans.  Upside, we got to see a zombie parade and ride the cross-Australia train. Downside, it’s hard to go wine tasting when your wheels decide it’s time for retirement in mid-trip. And led us to get creative in our transportation options

However even with the limited exploration range and curtailed time frame, SA did surprisingly well.   (to be fair, we had the inside scoop)  

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New South Wales Grog files

NSW flag

New South Wales, AU

Sydney, the Blue Mountains, Bondi beach and an Opera house – New South Wales is pretty much what all of us think of when we hear the word “Australia.”

Between driving the coast, bumming around Sydney and working in the ski resorts, we spent a good amount of time here and got to taste our way around.  We even got a chance to check out their most famous wine region: The Hunter Valley.

New South Wales was also the first time we found a grog that 2 sailors would choose to pour out instead of drink.  So, from our highest rating to inventing a new low there was quite a spread for New South Wales:

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Life passing us by

Baltimore, Maryland, United States

It is once again time for Greg’s birthday entry-

One can always rely on family to ask the questions everyone else is quietly wondering about:

“Greg, it’s been almost 4 years now.
Aren’t you worried about the world just passing you by?”

The exact words change from member to member but it’s a question family members have asked us more than once over the past 2 years.

And by “world” we know what’s meant:

Career, Paychecks, 401Ks, retirement, medical / optical / dental benefits, long term financial plan, you name it.  A life beyond the next 2 months and a gig that falls into the category of “reliable income.”  Something I can expect to have for an entire taxable year that will pay a wage somewhere near what someone of “our experience” should be getting.  One that would possibly involve trading in the sails for a desk…or at least a consistent cell phone number.

Freaking money people.  Cash.  An income. Jobs.  Mortgages and the like.

Or as some call it “a REAL life.”

When are we going to get off our butts and stop letting REAL LIFE pass us by?

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Pub Quiz!

Enroute Karumba, Australia

What chronicle of our many adventures tending bars in the remote outreaches of the Outback would be complete without a pub quiz?

first quiz question

Here in Australia many of the beers do you the courtesy of printing questions right on the bottle caps so their customers can all stay in constant training for that next pub quiz night.  Consequently, one works at an Australian pub long enough – pretty much about a week really – and one ends up with a working database of Quiz questions.

Questions that make you feel really, really ignorant – or, in Greg’s case, sometimes grateful for being a bit of nerd:

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The other side

Thursday Island, Australia

Thursday Island really excited us because it was, we were told, a really rare opportunity to spend some time with the native people of Australia.

Horn Island signWhich is, in case you’re wondering, a really, really hard thing to do.

We also came to find out that the “Aborigines” are not the only native people of Australia.  The “Torres Straight Islanders” are a completely different native people than the people of mainland Australia.  So we actually spent some time visiting Aboriginal sites in mainland Australia but while we spent time in an area where there were “natives” these natives were not “Aborigines”…kind of confusing at first.

In a previous post, we talked about our experiences with racism and sexism in Australia.

But we would not be fair in our reporting unless we explained both sides of the coin here.

Because the natives do not make this easy.

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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.

*****
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 –

*****

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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