Angaston, South Australia: Too fat to fly

I know that when you read that headline you probably thought it was a story about me boarding a Japan Airlines flight. But, no, this is a story of sausage. You see, Aussies love their sausages. And as the following magazine article explains, even Aussie wildlife loves the tasty treats.

My Aussie friend Dr John once told me that he had never eaten a cheeseburger. I found that quite surprising, so a few nights later I took him out to dinner at a very nice local restaurant, one of the few places here in the Barossa that lists them on its menu. I ordered one for each of us.

John was visibly surprised when the waitress delivered our burgers to the table. He picked his up and carefully examined it closely from every angle.

Then he turned to me and said, “It has meat.”

“Of course, it has meat,” I responded quizzically. ”It’s a cheeseburger.”

“I didn’t know it would have meat,” he admitted, ”I always thought a cheeseburger was just a huge slab of cheese between two buns.”

But that was not the good doctor’s biggest surprise. The look on his face when he took his first bite was priceless. I really wish I’d had a camera to document the look of absolute ecstasy that spread across his face when that cheeseburger exploded across his tastebuds.

”Ooooh,” he cooed with delight. ”Let’s come back here with Jamie and Margaret so we can all have cheeseburgers.”

Instead of all-American cheeseburgers, Aussies love their sausages. If you’re invited to an outdoor barbecue you’ll undoubtedly be served a big ol’ pile of sausages. If you go to to a cricket or footy game at the Oval in Adelaide you’ll hail down a vendor to buy a sausage. Go out to dinner (or breakfast or lunch, for that matter) and odds are that sausages will be somewhere on the menu.

They like their sausages made of beef, sometimes pork, and grilled over a barbecue or a campfire or an ultra expensive Wolfe range or any other random source of heat. Then they tuck the juicy morsels into slices of bread and top ’em with mustard, onion strips, and sweet tomato sauce. Note that I said tomato sauce, not ketchup. Aussies view ketchup with disdain, and believe it is nothing more than an American gastronomic oddity.

According to a recent survey conducted by Taste.com.au, 67% of Aussies prefer beef sausages over the pork variety. 89% prefer sliced bread over hot dog buns. A similar percentage demand tomato sauce instead of mustard. And, finally, 82% think onions should be on top of the sausage, not underneath.

In other words, that too-fat-to-fly kookaburra is just another Aussie who loves his sausages to excess.