Downunder Diary May08 - June08
by Guest Author
These tongue in cheek diary extracts are from Australian immigrants Andre, a frustrated camel man, his wife Bianca a real madam and their energetic two boys Tyle 10 and Keal 8, who share their adventures and experience of everyday living Downunder.
Garden Duty May 08
With less than two weeks to go before my outlaws were to arrive I was sentenced to two weekends hard labour in the garden. I felt a bit like those poor prisoners that you could get to work for a small fee in their sexy green overalls. They could at least escape if they wanted to. After the fourth blister burst on my hand from digging I resorted to the Aussie way and bought some potent weed killer. The instruction on the bottle: Do not go near the sprayed area for a week, gave me the rest of the weekend off so I fired up a potjie, opened a cold beer and sat back and relaxed until our mates arrived for afternoon tea. We convinced them to stay for dinner and after abusing the red wine left over from the recipe they had no choice but to also stay the night.
Having escaped the hard labour in the garden the previous weekend, the following weekend resulted in twice as much work. This then caught up with me as I fell out of bed on Monday morning and dragged my aching muscles to the bathroom. I now realize why Sam, our gardener back in SA, never worked fast and spent a large part of the day leaning up against his shovel. Even though I felt like I just crawled out from the bottom of a Sharks scrum, where the Waratahs had been red carded for malicious behaviour, the results seemed worthwhile. The only rugby I care to discuss is Tyles performance for his club on Saturday where two of his bone crunching, try saving tackles were not enough for the team - which went down by 3 tries to 1. We may have to invest in some head gear for his mothers sanity.
Outlaws Arrival June 08
Oumie Anoet and Oupa Hans arrived in one piece after Annetjie had been singled out by the sniffer dog in customs for trying to smuggle in an apple in her handbag. The weekend was spent catching up and showing the Ou-toppies around between their jetlag catnaps. On Monday we took them out on Naartjie were we stumbled across some fishing boats and decided to drop a line. With the help of our imported expert, Oupa, we landed 12 reef fish before pressing on to Horseshoe Bay, which was as good as always with crystal clean turquoise water. The ride home was a little bouncy as the wind had picked up but Annetjie politely held on to her hat and the boat with a white knuckle grip.
The Ou-tops are over the jetlag and are now in full swing with household maintenance and spring cleaning the house, which took Bianca a week to clean. Im steadily putting on weight with the designer sandwiches that accompany me to work each day. Its great having them visit, as our quest to sample all the Australian wines is gathering momentum.
No Good Gambling July 08
Gambling in Oz is huge and even makes some members of my family look like amateurs. Im not a big gambler myself and in fact most of the machines Ive played have never paid out, that includes the ATM from time to time. On Friday we went down to the pub for a colleagues birthday lunch where I was introduced to the frenetic world of gambling. Australians not only have four National Lotto competitions, KENO (a national bingo comp), Pokies (1 arm bandits), TAB betting on anything that moves and races from horses to horses with buggies and even dogs that all participate around the country ensuring a full 12 hours worth of gambling every day of the week. Anyway bottom line is I bet my lunch money on the first three races and went back to the office miserable and hungry.
Miss: A decent Boerie roll (Here its called a sausage sizzle which is a thin sausage in a folded slice of bread)
Dont miss: The yellow helicopters that fly over looking for that affirmative shopper and those silly two prong plugs that you need to wedge in to work
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