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Kangaroos are Not Kosher - Howie & Debbie Down Under

To Market, To Market, to buy a Pineapple Nov 14, 2009

Saturday November 14, 2009 – Noosa Heads

To Market To Market to buy a Pineapple

The wind shifted during the night. The lovely cool sea breezes flowing through the apartment turned into choking smoke from the fire on Noosa’s north shore. Windows closed in the middle of the night; back to sleep. And then, this morning the sun was shining and the fire was out! How ‘bout that?

Joanne is the proprietor at the Sun Lagoon Resort and she told us that the Eumundi Markets open at 6:30am and the best thing would be to get there early before the crowds and that we could have a great brekky there.

Brekky is breakfast, of course. Nothing here has a whole name; only a diminution or nickname. There are whole dictionaries which try to decipher the words. They are boring. It’s way more fun to hear the words actually used and then make up your own definition.

Like this one from a radio station in Rockhampton yesterday: Announcer: “You say stop and beat the Chop Chop and we’ll see how you do”. Definition: Who the hell knows?

The Eumundi markets are held every Wednesday and Saturday in the town of Eumundi. The population goes from, say, 12 to about 80,000. Getting there early is important if you’d like to park anywhere in the immediate 1.7 terrabyte radius of the town. We were there by 7:30am and still had to park halfway up a mountainside. That made it easy to get down to the market. Bet you can figure out how much fun it was (it was so steep; we had to use ropes) getting back up there later on.

Everything ‘cute’ and precocious is on sale at the market. And, of course, there are a few surprises and fun things. Such as: People are quite willing to have other people kneel on top of them in public. Reflexology; Shiatsu; Jiu Jitso; you name it. If there is a way to inflict pain on a fellow human being and do it in public it was available at the Eumundi Markets.

We enjoyed talking to The Real McCaul. Paul McCaul, that is. He makes leather goods from kangaroo hides and was only too happy to let us know exactly why it is that kangaroo leather is WAAAY better than cow leather. And that’s dinky di! (Now, how much better is it to say “dinky di” than “the honest truth”?).

We happened to be at the Eumundi Markets the same day that the Zapp family of Buenos Airies, Argentina was there, together with their 1929 Graham-Paige automobile that they have driven from Argentina to Alaska and now all over Australia for the past 9 years.

Herman & Candelaria have had 4 children on the way and the youngest son was born in New South Wales earlier this year. They named him Wallaby. They are financing their trip through sales of their book: “Spark Your Dream”. They figure another 4 years on the road and then they’ll settle down. No, I say, keep going. At least until you have a kid in Queensland and name her Platypus.

As we have learned, Queensland is pretty fast and loose with state ‘honours’. Tidiest Town; Friendliest Town; Town where you are least likely to be mugged during Daylight Hours.

Apparently they are the same way with Queensland State Icons. Turns out that The Big Pineapple in Nambour has earned that title. At least that’s what the brochure says. Well, let me tell you, the title is well earned. This is one big pineapple, for sure. Not only that, but this is the first big thing that we can actually climb to the top of and take a look around.

The plantation views from atop The Big Pineapple are quite lovely and the story boards inside as you climb to the top tell the tale of how the mommy & daddy pineapple make baby pineapples who grow up to be big pineapples that then get chopped up and sliced up and put in cans by a big multi-national corporation which then ships those cans by road train truck and train to the store to be sold by another big multi-national corporation. It’s pretty heartwarming.

It’s hard to believe that you can build an entire multi-discipline tourist attraction around a Big Pineapple but you can. You can drop about $50/person on the Plantation Train Experience; the Wildlife Reserve (wombats may be petted); the Animal Nursery; the Nutmobile ride; and the Pineapple Growing Demonstration (two years duration from planting to canning – we didn’t opt for this one).

Not only that, but at the souvenir store you can buy theme t-shirts which say things like: “My other car is a boat”.

On the other hand, you can buy a fresh whole pineapple for $2.50. We walked to the other end of the parking lot where there was a farmer’s market set up and bought one for $2.00 instead. I “heart” Icons.

Back in Noosa, we spent the afternoon at the beach. The sand is like white flour and the water is clear and it’s so warm and you can walk out for about 200 metro’s and it’s barely to your waist.

Daredevil Debbie steeled herself for another ocean adventure – actually going into the sea AGAIN and this time, maybe even getting her hair wet! Where will all this end? Next thing you know she’ll be running with scissors!!

For the second night running, we stayed under food budget by a mile by having a picnic on our balcony overlooking the lagoon with takeaway fish & chips from Blue Seas Fish ‘n Chips across the street from the apartment. The woman who works there is delightful.

She has family in Kitchener, Ontario that she visited with … for a year. She travelled across Canada and had great adventures in Cape Breton and Winnipeg. She can’t wait to visit Edmonton to see the big mall. She knows all about it. Actually, it’s funny but there are a number of people who have heard of West Edmonton Mall and quickly associate it with Edmonton once we tell them that’s where we live.

Let’s do the math here. They’ve got, oh, I don’t know… say, the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest living thing. We’ve got West Edmonton Mall, the world’s largest indoor shopping centre. How sad for them. How lucky for us.