(Bulldust Diary keeper , Peter Burleigh, reflects on outback culinary arts during the Camooweal to Renner Springs, NT, leg .)
Waiters in the outback are often twenty-something English, Scottish or Irish kids working in the middle of nowhere to get their visas extended. The government gives them an extra year if they work out here for at least three months. Their employers seem to think waiters don’t need to know anything about food or the serving of it, and these kids certainly don’t. On the other hand, given the very limited choice of crap on the menus, what is there to know? Dinners finish early, around 7.15pm when the chef turns into a bar patron.
Waiters in the outback are often twenty-something English, Scottish or Irish kids working in the middle of nowhere to get their visas extended. The government gives them an extra year if they work out here for at least three months. Their employers seem to think waiters don’t need to know anything about food or the serving of it, and these kids certainly don’t. On the other hand, given the very limited choice of crap on the menus, what is there to know? Dinners finish early, around 7.15pm when the chef turns into a bar patron.
“Haven’t got mash. Haven’t got vegies. Bread rolls are all gone. The Special – (tonight it was Crumbed Steak, for Christ’s sake) - is gone.”
“So what have you got?”
“Steak.”
“What about the Barramundi? Is it fresh?” He sighs with impatience. “I’ll ask.” A pause. He returns. “It’s fresh frozen in Yepoon (a town about 3000km away in Western Australia). It’s farmed, they freeze it and then we get it.”
“So what have you got?”
“Steak.”
“What about the Barramundi? Is it fresh?” He sighs with impatience. “I’ll ask.” A pause. He returns. “It’s fresh frozen in Yepoon (a town about 3000km away in Western Australia). It’s farmed, they freeze it and then we get it.”
When our orders, all steak, arrive the sauces and donenessess are all mixed up. But you don’t complain. They mean well in their bitter ‘I deserve better than this job’ style, but if you don’t smile all you get is a slamming kitchen door. You can’t eat your principles.
Soon after dawn the landscape cringes in the sun’s heat, even in winter. There are no features along the horizon and it’s easy to believe you can see the edge of the world. Luckily the road never reaches it. Between Winton and Cloncurry the land is dead flat, as if ruthlessly sandpapered by a vengeful god. The lines of trees in yesterday’s landscapes were signals of creekbeds. Now they’ve disappeared. The land’s veins have dried up.
Soon after dawn the landscape cringes in the sun’s heat, even in winter. There are no features along the horizon and it’s easy to believe you can see the edge of the world. Luckily the road never reaches it. Between Winton and Cloncurry the land is dead flat, as if ruthlessly sandpapered by a vengeful god. The lines of trees in yesterday’s landscapes were signals of creekbeds. Now they’ve disappeared. The land’s veins have dried up.
By the time you get beyond Winton you’ve passed more signboards that claim “This is the Gateway to the Outback”. There are more gateways than there are in the Cloncurry saleyards. I wonder if Tim Winton, the novelist, adopted the name of the town. There’s precedent: John Denver, Denzil Washington, Billy Birmingham, Lord Melbourne....some of the lesser known are Dennis Manangatang, Alice Alice Springs, and Bruce Mount Isa.
The towns are fewer, now almost half a day apart. The price of fuel is rising according to some weird ratio between capitalistic opportunity and distance. There are more 4WDs and camping rigs. The Nomads are on the move, cocooned in their big air-conditioned cars, pulling their suburban living rooms behind them.
ROAD WARNING : As you read this dit , Burleigh is once more on the road making astute observations about the neurotic state of the luckiest nation in the expanded cosmos - heading to the leafy and sodden lair of old travelling companion, Peter Steedman , aka the Black Knight and a former MHR, who is down to his last Bentley and a pair of made in China perished gumboots .
