Australia Day 2009!

Rhino Beetle

Happy belated Australia Day! Only 2 days late, that’s not that bad. Anyway, the night before Australia Day we were invited over to one of Diva’s co-workers’ houses, Rob, but ended up going across the street to friends of his for an impromptu house party. Long story short we had a little tree frog visit us on the patio and then later got caught in the rain at 3am in front of the bakery and didn’t get to bed til 4am, thus missing out on the Australia Day morning festivities, like free breaky at the Surf Club and the Paddle Challenge- a race of paddling on a surfboard from Wategos to Main Beach, a couple km.
It rained on and off all day, but finally in late afternoon the skies cleared and it was beautiful. We decided to go into town and see what was going on, but as usual went to Aquarius first and stayed there. We had good reasons though. First, if you bought a drink you got free Aussie Day BBQ (snags). Second, there was an Australia Day Quiz with sweet prizes ($50 bar tab for 1st!) so we had to stay for that. We ended up getting a little assistance from a few “key” people, aka the people who made up the quiz, but even without help we would’ve won. One of the questions on the quiz that is worth mentioning was the ‘Sink or Swim’ question- Would a jar of vegemite sink or float when dumped/spooned into a jug (a pitcher) of beer? It sank. And then the bonus challenge was for an additional 15 points would anyone chug the jug of beer with the vegemite sitting in the bottom? One guy gave it a try, but after about 2 sips gave up. Then a guy on our team did it, the guy with the freaking Australian Coat of Arms tattooed on his back! Anyway, we won by a landslide and I didn’t pay for a drink all night, YAY!
After the quiz there was a Meat Pie Eating Competition. There were 3 contestants and they had a pile of meat pies- apparently also called Rat Coffins because they used to make them with none other than rat meat!- in front of them and the deal was to see who could eat the most pies in 2 minutes. It was both hilarious and disgusting. Somehow no one puked.

Meat Pie Eating Contest

The rest of the evening was spent harassing a rhino beetle (he would hiss if you tried to pick him up and we later set him in a tree) and having a good time despite the Aussie’s who were celebrating in pure Aussie fashion. You see it seems that unlike Canada Day and Independence Day, Australia Day is not a day to come together, unite as a country under one flag and be proud, setting aside any disputes or bad blood. No, instead it is a day to drink beers with your mates and a good excuse to make racist jokes. Or at least that’s what we noticed from a few people who wouldn’t normally tell that type of joke. Someone told us that in different parts of the country they don’t make much of a fuss about the holiday, Melbourne was his example, and that perhaps what we were witnessing was a result of all the rednecks in the area… the theme of the Aquarius party was Bazza’s Bogan BBQ after all.