Australian story: blogging by mail II

I’m late to the Blogging by Mail 2 with Samantha. But she let me in as a latecomer and expresses her interest in I wasn’t born an Australian but an Englishman. So the traditional Aussie food parcel shouldn’t mean too much to me.But my wife Jackie is Australian. She and her assorted gang of travelers were recipients of these parcels from their parents. These gifts to saved them from the horrors of Marmite and the grim English food.Recipes for Pavlova and Pumpkin Soup would be faxed half way across the world as this wayward band of cooks stumbled through their first attempts at dinner parties. All I seem to remember was a large teapot full of Pims, boosted with the good part of a bottle of gin.I woke attached to an Aussie.At the time Australia was fashionable because of the Crocodile Dundee Movies. Plus Jackie was exotic. Her parents had a banana tree in their garden. It was only when I arrived here that I discovered everybody had a banana tree in the garden.Tim Tams and Cherry Ripes were the other favourite imports. Australian chocolate has a chequered history and most of what is eaten down here in cheap and cheerful candy.In the past couple of years, however, a number of boutique artisan chocolatiers have opened shop. But none actually make Aussie chocolate, apart from Kennedy & Wilson.I enclosed the Kennedy & Wilson bears are here because the company represents the new generation of chocolate being made in Australia plus we do have koala bears (but don’t eat them although when Auberon Waugh visited he asks a government minister why he had eaten all other wildlife except the Koala).This particular brand was designed in flavour by a wine-maker, Peter Wilson. The K&W chocolate is about half the price of Valrhona if you buy it by the kilo and tastes better. Personally I’m trying to avoid multinationals and sugary candy. This means I’m off Tim Tams although I have eaten my fair share in the past.I’ve also enclosed a couple of copies of Tomato Magazine, which should give a flavour of the Melbourne food scene.I also enclosed a bottle of beer from the Cascade Brewery in Tasmania, the oldest in country. Tasmania is a pristine environment with pure water and a violent convict past. It is a country haunted by the ghosts of the Tasmanian Tiger, a marsupial that looked more like a dog than a kangaroo, cannibalism, deviant sex and bestiality. According to Nicholas Shakespeare’s book In Tasmania, it was because of the sex and bestiality that Tasmania was closed down as a convict colony.Fortunately, they still make great beer.And wine. But I’m saving that for another time.