Australian Barbecue!

Last week we were invited to a BBQ by one of Justin’s colleagues. The party was not actually to be at R’s house, but at the slightly out-of-town house of friends of his. It turned out to be an interesting high ceiling entirely metal structure, somewhat like a Quonset hut, but rectangular. The house was set on the highest knob (hill, also—incidentally—slang for a certain male body part) around, providing beautiful views of the generally flat countryside around. A mob of wallabies grazed below. It seemed a bit scary to live in a metal house on the highest point in view, but the fellow who lived there, W, said he comforted himself knowing that it’d never been hit by lightning yet.

The actual “barbie” was an old indoor-style heating/cook stove, wood-fired with a wide, round flat griddle top. Meat and vegetarian sausages were thrown on, plus some tofu cutlets and potatoes sliced thin. People got so full on all that that the kangaroo steaks never made it on the grill. I introduced the idea of grilled fruit with bananas and peaches, and M taught us about wrapping up feta cheese and putting that on. Everyone agreed that it was all very “yum.” And of course lots of beer and wine were being had by many (this being Australia, and Northern Territory specifically).

We all ended up in the pool even though (a) we were full, (b) some people were soused, (c) it was really, really dark, (d) there had been occasional flashes of lightning and gathering clouds all evening, and (e) it really wasn’t hot nor the water very warm.

Conversation was witty, serious, hilarious, raunchy, and absurd, but never dull. At one point when we were all in the pool in the dark, the Aussies were offering up various Aussie-isms and making us guess what they might mean. One guy regularly did really great impersonations of an Aussie (that is, an unreasonably angry redneck version, also called a "yob"). The conversation took a particularly silly turn when several guys decided to try to describe to us all the great (or maybe “great”) street performers they’d seen in Sydney on New Year’s Eve. There had been a juggler who did a kind of light and sound show by having the balls hit electronic plates on his forearms; this description led to a lengthy argument between R and S about whether the juggler had had 3 or 6 balls. Another favorite were two clowns who had a caravan with a little verandah. R was unable to express in words (other than the obvious alliterative one) just how Funny these clowns had been. It became clear to the rest of us that R had been in an especially, shall we say, receptive state to appreciate these really fantastic performances. The best description, though, was provided by W who had seen a singing cowboy whose horse was decked out in fairy lights.

A good time, as they say, was had by all.