Tag: Kangaroo

Australia is so dry

Today will be the last in my series of cartoons about Australia. That is unless I think of something else inspiring before Wednesday. If you look up the driest countries in the world, Australia doesn’t even pop up anywhere in the top. But when you talk continents, Australia is the driest inhabited continent. The prize for overall driest continent would be Antarctica but only a few people who want to do tortuous research live there.

This joke is actually a homage to our tour guide in the Daintree Rainforest who came up with this joke saying we love people to immigrate but please bring your own water.

January 20, 2013
Australian Beer Tastes Like Piss

Today’s cartoon is an homage to the beer of Australia. In America we get Foster’s as pretty much the only import of Australian beers. You know the commercial “Fosters, Australian for Beer.” However, you won’t find it anywhere in Australia and if you ask an Aussie, they will tell you that Fosters is crap they can and market to foreigners (typically “piss” is used in the sentence as well.

Now I am not a beer connoisseur like another in our travel party. I like pilsner and lagers. Don’t like wheat beer, don’t like ales, don’t like Guiness. Hell most of the time a Miller Lite is good enough for me (got to keep my figure you know). The beer whiz in the party thought all Australian beer tasted like piss. Compared to the microbrews all over the United States, it definitely was a much weaker taste. And trust me we went all over. In fact, here is a little taste of what beers I drank.

Tooheys and James Boags (OK I know it is Tasmania not Australia) were probably my favorites. Four X was one my least favorite though it is the most popular beer there.

Sadly there was one Australian Beer that I didn’t get to try… PISS BEER.

From their website:

Aussies have been on the piss, getting pissed, drinking piss, drinking more piss and, most definitely, taking the piss for the past two hundred years. The amazing thing is none of us thought to bottle it earlier. (Too busy getting pissed, probably.)

January 9, 2013
Australian Recycling Efforts

So the story I am told is that there was a Kangaroo farmer in Australia. Of course you could find use for Kangaroo pelt and meat but what about all the by product? So he decided to take the kangaroo balls and make Kangaroo Scrotum Bottle Openers. Now he is a multimillionaire.

Don’t believe they exist? Well my friends take a gander.

Imagine if this guy got rich off this what the rest of us might come up with to give new “life” to typically discarded things. Ideas?

December 30, 2012
I love Kangaroo

So once again today’s cartoon was based in some semblance of truth. One of my top 3 things we did was visit the Australian Zoo (aka the Steve Irwin Zoo). Because of liability and stupid people, you don’t have the same level of interaction with animals in the U.S. as you can in Australia. We literally could enter the pen with the Kangaroos, Wallabies and Koalas.

BUT……………..as cute as they were and typically not being an adventurous eater, I only hesitated for a moment when I saw Kangaroo on the menu. Much like Ostrich or Buffalo is in the states, Kangaroo is a very lean meat. Unlike the other two it didn’t seem as gamey and was quite enjoyable.

One of the guides said we could minimize green house gases caused by cows by instead moving to a kangaroo diet for our meat. However, the guide wasn’t entirely correct. While the majority of methane that cows produce come from their burbs (an affliction that seemingly kangaroos are immune), the roos do fart. Yet the amount of methane produced by kangaroos is about 1/3 of that produced by cows. So why aren’t there kangaroo farms cropping up all over the states. Climate. According to this article “The meatier breeds do not thrive outside of the Australian climate. They are sensitive to humidity, which means that it’s very difficult to breed them outside of Australia.”

December 26, 2012
Australian Taxi Cab Drivers
Today’s cartoon is an ode to the wonderful men and women who drive the taxis all around Australia. I am sure most of them are very competent. So why the heck did you send the others to us? It was if someone had installed Apple Maps (notorious for getting people lost) in their brains. We walked most of the time but in our trip we probably took 6 cab rides. Here were the facts:
- 4 out of 6 drivers had no idea where we were asking them to go (even with cross streets mentioned)
- 3 of those 4 even had GPS
- Only one tried to use it unsuccessfully
- 3 of the 4 lost drivers were in Sydney
And it wasn’t as if we were going to some obscure place. But in Sydney, where we had most of the issues, it wasn’t limited to cab drivers. Walking one day without my map, I got a little disoriented on Sydneys spoke and wheel system of streets. I asked a cop how to get back to my hotel. He pointed in a direction that I knew was wrong even when I told him what street it was on.

Actual Cab Conversation:

Us: We would like to go to Nick’s Seafood

Driver: (blank stare)

Us: In Cockle Bay Wharf?

Driver: (bigger blank stare)

Us: Darling Harbour??

Driver: (puzzled look)

Us: Here on the map!

Driver: OK

Us (after many minutes of driving): I think you are on the wrong side of the Bay. The restaurant is on the other side

Driver finally uses GPS. Puts in a restaurant none of us ever mentioned and started off.

Us: That isn’t the restaurant. And I think we are driving in a big circle.

Finally the driver stopped about 1/4 mile from where we were going and pretty much gave up. Thankfully we were only charged half the meter rate.

Now to be fare, all of our tour bus drivers and the drivers as part of our transfer shuttles never got lost for a minute. This actually was the opposite of our experience in London several years ago. The cab drivers knew every little pub and alley everywhere. The guy who brought us from the airport got lost.
December 23, 2012
Tipping in Australia

To commemorate my trip to Australia (yes that is where I have been) I am going to do a series of cartoons that give you and idea of what it is like to experience the great Down Under. The Series is “Ken Groo with the Low Down on the Down Under”

Obviously the first in the series has to do with tipping and what is customary in Australia. You read the guides and ask people that have been there and you find out that tipping is NOT customary in Australia like it is elsewhere in the world. That is because they charge more and therefore pay a higher salary to waiters, clerks, etc. Well that is what they tell you.

What actually happens is that you are bombarded by Tip Jars everywhere. As an American we are accustomed to tipping for any service such as throwing in your change to the coffee shop clerk or putting in a percentage of the check for a meal as a tip. So it becomes confusing Down Under. Am I looked at as a cheapskate if I don’t throw in a tip? Or am I looked at as a sucker if I do because I don’t know any better. Luckily for me I don’t have a conscience so I went with the guides and screwed everyone out of extra money.

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I thought it was the end of the world already as my site crashed for about 6 hours. Something over my head with a php something so I updated it to the most recent version and then I could see the site but not get to the admin page. So I dropped it back to 5.2 and finally got back online. So sorry if anyone had trouble getting in. All that to say that just in case the world really comes to an end before my update on Sunday, remember when you see all the memes/cartoons about the end of the world, back in 2009, I was the first.

December 19, 2012