Roo steak or Vegemite?

I’ll take the TimTam, thank you.

One of the best ways to discover a country on your first visit is through food, and on that score I made a wonderful discovery of Australia on our recent International Media Visits program sponsored by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). Fortunately our itinerary included a lot of walking – we had some really, really long walks – which justified the need for – ahem! – substantial nutrition.

Our first meeting was at what turned out to be a rousing dinner at Don Quixote on in downtown Sydney, four blocks from our hotel beside beautiful Hyde Park. The dinner was a getting-to-know-you for the eight international journalists – from Brazil, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, and the Philippines – and our DFAT hosts, and we got off to a good start indeed, with animated and near rambunctious conversation all around the table, even before the sangria flowed. We had gambas ajillo, paella, cochinillo…did I in fact leave home? The music though was decidedly un-Filipino – a mix of Elvis Presley (would you believe “Wooden Heart”– really!) and saccharine 60s and 70s love songs by a one-man band who was probably at his prime in the 60s and 70s.

We had an early flight the next day, and breakfast was – as is common in most of the inns in Australia which do not have a 24-hour coffee shop – delivered to our rooms the night before. Two slices of bread, two packets each of butter, marmalade and Vegemite, a pack each of milk, juice and fruit. The rooms were equipped with a hot water pot with tea and coffee service, a toaster (the pop up kind we had when I was a kid), a microwave, two-burner stove, plus pots and pans, chinaware and flatware. It was convenient enough for me, but my healthier-minded colleagues chafed at the toast (usually white bread, but we did get multi-grain twice) and hunted for muesli at the convenience store.

A word on Vegemite. We were told we could not leave Australia without trying Vegemite which, as best I could gather, is a soy-based paste used on bread. Near-solid, gooey toyo, if you will – at least that’s how it looks. The small packet doesn’t come with instructions, but Warwick, our DFAT host, told us to spread it lightly – emphasis on lightly – on warm toast, and top with a fried egg. I didn’t venture to try it there and instead brought the Vegemite home (also for show-and-tell); the other day I did as I was told and it was okay – not great, but certainly better than it looks.

The mining town of Broken Hill (pop. 20,000, with 50 Filipinos) is very quiet on a Sunday morning; fortunately the supermarket was open so we could stock up on water, fruits (the peaches were lovely) and a little junk food (Aero mints for me). That was particularly important for my colleague from India, since he is vegetarian, and we were headed out to Willcania (pop. 600, although the official number is, I was told, around 234) where an Aussie “barbie” awaited us, roo steak and all.

In the bone-chilling outback wind the barbie fire was a welcome spot, the lamb sausages were delicious, the steaks were Aussie-sized (meaning huge) and the roo steak…well, it was too healthy and lean (not a hint of fat) for me. We had potato salad, rolls, and the most amazing, delicious lemon meringue pie I’ve ever had, made fresh by one of the ladies of Willcania. If not for the country’s honor (I didn’t want them thinking Pinoys are so matakaw) I would’ve had a second piece, but there was just enough to go around, so I cleaned up every crumb on my plate.

Breakfast at the Willcania Motel, owned and run by transplanted Sydneysider Paul Brown who reminded me of the mythical lumberjack Paul Bunyan, was whatever you wanted, cooked and brought to your room; my neighbor, from Rome, dropped in for a chat, and we had a pleasant breakfast together. Lunch was prepared by the ladies of the mission: hearty sandwiches, fruit and scones with jam and clotted cream…shared with the townspeople and especially the Barkinji (aborigines) children, it was a heart- and stomach-warming meal in a town forgotten by time in the starkly beautiful outback.

Back in Broken Hill, an invigorating afternoon walk around town worked up an appetite, and though the group had decided to look for a nice restaurant – with tablecloth and real glasses, please – to have dinner that evening, I was irresistibly drawn by the aroma of sausages on the grill in the park, and it was good, eaten “Aussie-style” wrapped in a slice of white bread!

That evening, we sat at a long table at the Astra Hotel’s dining room for a leisurely and most pleasant meal. I had a wonderful roasted spatchcock, with a richly fruity glaze. Only on our third day together, it seemed like we had been pilgrims together forever: jokes didn’t even have to get to the punchline for us all to be rolling with laughter.

There was no time for breakfast the next morning as we had to be out in the desert at dawn for a moving ceremony atop a bluff among sculptures carved out of desert stones. The vastness and splendor of the outback stretched farther than the eye could see, flat and bare forever and ever, tinged oh so slowly by the rising sun, and the wind relentless and cold – you cannot but be awed.

Piping hot coffee and then a full breakfast back at the motel dining room – served by a Pinay who has lived there for 32 years – were most welcome for this pilgrim nearly frozen to the bone. But there was lunch to look forward to, at a restaurant perched atop the wall of a mining pit. We were warned about the size of the house burger, and only our Father Ralph from Nigeria took up the challenge; it indeed was a BIG challenge. Here we celebrated the birthday of Tiago from Brazil, with a cake and candle and off-key singing – much to his embarrassment, I am sure.

Our farewell dinner at Broken Hill was at a Chinese restaurant (there are five in town), despite our Polish colleague’s reluctance about Asian food. Run by a Cantonese family, the food was fast, hot and had basically two distinct tastes: braised and fried. And no – Peking duck was nowhere on the menu.

Back in Sydney and then Melbourne we literally had the world on our plate: from gourmet sandwiches at a lunch meeting to nouvelle cuisine on a harbor cruise, pasta and salad at a religious retreat house (a couple of us unknowingly nipped some sausages from the buffet of another group) to a Portuguese burger (in honor of our Brazilian, who was hankering for tastes of home) followed by gelato. And through it all there was toast and Vegemite, and the promise of TimTam, that quintessential Australian chocolate-coated biscuit that is – surprise! – more expensive there than it is in Unimart here. I hope my colleague from Rome got some to bring home, as he was the most fascinated by the confection, which now has about five variations.

You can gain several pounds just by walking down Lygon Street in Melbourne; the sights and aromas of Italian cooking are that potent, especially since this is the sidewalk dining capital of Australia. We had a working lunch at Brenetti, delicious saltimbocca as we discussed Australia’s multiculturalism. Dinner was to have been Greek – Melbourne has the largest population of Greeks in one city outside of Greece – at KriKri in Chinatown (how’s that for multiculturalism?), but it was jampacked so we headed back to Lygon, and we made our way to Spaghettata and a table al fresco, of course. A generous basket of garlic bread and a dish of olives and mushrooms in garlic and olive oil would have been more than enough, but of course you still had to have a proper dinner, and the portions are generous to the point of overwhelming. Fortunately it is a good dozen blocks back to our apartment, perfect for walking off all that we had eaten and perfect too for having a gelato in a cone along the way.

Our last meal as a group was amidst the beautiful rolling hills of the Yering Station winery, the oldest in the region. Naturally the wine took center stage, expertly critiqued by our German colleague, who is very knowledgeable about wine and drugs – the latter as reportage rather than consumption. Here we toasted the birthday of Yago, who is from Rome, our “man from the Vatican,” our “shadow Pope.”

This may be strange by way of a travel journal, but a lot of memories of this trip were made at the lunch and dinner table, around the “barbie” fire, even over sandwiches and hot dogs and gelato in the cold night. There is of course so much more to our visit – and to Australia – but I think you will agree that this is a fine place to start.