Travel Australia for Adventures in Food, Wildlife, and Lifelong Friendships

Australia held me to the very last day of my six-month visa, and I still had not had enough. So, after three months in New Zealand, rather than get on the flight from Auckland in a homeward direction, I returned to travel Australia for another ten weeks, stretching out every last penny and flight deadline. I still have fleeting visions of emigrating from Canada to Australia, and I am still waiting for my Australian mates to visit me in Canada!

On my first trip through Australia, I stayed in some absolutely phenomenal hostels -- many of them were more like resorts, with swimming pools, restaurants, bars and great local tours and transportation. Use this handy booking engine to check out the hostels in Australia and book your beds or rooms in advance.

My intention on landing back in Sydney was of course to try to cram in as much more of the country as I could in a few short weeks, a plan that included spending some time WOOFing (more on that a little later).

Something even better unfolded before me when I found myself 'accidentally' hitchhiking out of Hall's Gap and was picked up by a woman who, as it turned out, had a habit of bringing home strays of all kinds. I happily joined her menagerie and stayed with her and her husband near Bendigo (birthplace of Australia's famous FourN' Twenty meat pies) for six weeks, cooking and gardening and building a friendship that remains strong today. My new mates opened their home and kitchen to me, traipsed around the Victorian countryside showing me the sites (including every pub within a five hour radius of Melbourne as well as a number of wineries), and introduced me to the Easter Bilby!

Within a week of arriving in Australia the first time, I begged for a job in a backpackers' hostel in Queensland's rainforest and for four months I peeled, sliced and diced to my heart's content for the roast dinners we served daily, along with many fabulous ethnic and local creations. While staying with my friends near Bendigo, I created some new dishes and treated them to some of my old favourites, and they treated me to theirs. Many of the recipes I discovered through travel in Australia will appear in the Australian Recipes Index over the coming weeks -- as for Australian food, well, like many things there, even sandwiches are different!

Do you want to hear more about hitch-hiking in Australia, the Easter Bilby and other Australian wildlife, Australian meatpies and roast dinners, a two-legged Canadian feral and her conquest of huntsman spiders in a sea of ivy, and what it's like to live in the rainforest and snorkel on the great barrier reef? Sign up to receive the Culinary Xen-o-Files by email or subscribe to my RSS Feed.