Monday marks Australia Day and The Stumble Inn and Ned’s are the only spots I know thus far that will celebrate this antipodean holiday from the land that gave us Crocodile Dundee, vegemite, and Dame Edna.
The Stumble Inn will open bright and early at 9 AM, and will screen the Aussie cricket match and have food and drink specials, including six VB for RMB100, as well as a slate of Australian beers, such as James Boag’s, Cascade, and Crown.
At Ned’s, it will be happy hour prices on some beers all day long. Anyone buying an Aussie brew gets a Ned’s beer holder.
Note: This event is BYOB (Bring Your Own Bilby).
Oy, we are one shrimp short. Does anyone have another? (photo: istockphoto.com)
Will you north Americans ever get it right?
It’s P – R – A – W – N. We NEVER throw a shrimp on the barby, only prawns.
If they have Cooper’s Red, I’m there…
@ 8 Songs,
I beg to differ: Another *shrimp* on the barbie. You must be from New Zealand…
Cheers, Boyce
8 Songs is right, Boyce!
“Shrimp on the barbie” was a phrase invented for a marketing campaign featuring Paul Hogan aka “Crocodile Dundee”. The marketing campaign was intended to get Americans to come to Australia as tourists.
No Australian, outside the context of getting paid megabucks to appear in an American television advertisement, would _ever_ say “shrimp”. For any reason.
Prawns. Green prawns. King prawns. Prawn cocktail. Fried rice with prawns. Off like a bucket of prawns in the sun. Prawn crackers. Internet Prawn. (Ok, that last one was made up!)
The only exception is the native freshwater variety. We call them “yabbies”.
You’re stepped into the dingo doodoo now, Shannon.
You write: “No Australian, outside the context of getting paid megabucks to appear in an American television advertisement, would _ever_ say “shrimp”. For any reason.”
You might then want to consider the following, spoken by an Australian in a nonfictional, non-ad context:
“Shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, sautee it. There’s, um, shrimp kebabs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo, pan fried, deep fried, stir fried. There’s pineapple shrimp and lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich… That’s, that’s about it.”
Ouch. Like a Rod Laver backhand down the line…
Cheers, Boyce
Umm, you do know that line’s from “Forrest Gump”, right?
Spoken by Mykelti Williamson’s character, Bubba?
I can’t remember where in the deep south the character was born, but Williamson’s from St. Louis, Missouri!
Shannon,
That’s what they *want* you to believe. It sounds pure Aussie to me…
Cheers, Boyce
The same conspiracy that makes Phar Lap, Jimmy Barnes, Crowded House, Colin Hay _not_ Australians, makes Bubba-from-the-Gump-shrimp-boat _into_ an Australian…
Hmmmm…
OK. I’ll buy that for a dollar!
I guess the Budweisers are on me!
Hang on a sec Shannon, let’s not give up the fight so easily. Boyce quotes a line from a North American film as his source for what Aussies say???? (And a film that was a poor facsimile of the original book, to boot.) He who has never stepped foot onto our fair land (the very one girt by sea), dares to tell us what we say? Then as a riposte he flings the lowest of insults at me – calls me a Kiwi. Clearly designed to get a rise out of me….
Boyce, I will bet you a case of VB if you look in your treasured “Australian to Chinese Dictionary, you will not find the word shrimp anywhere. You will find prawn at least once, as in “come the raw prawn”, as you are doing here.
Not only that, I will chuck in a dozen prawns…..
8 Songs,
I can’t take that bet.
Of course, the dictionary doesn’t use “shrimp.” After all, the book’s production was contracted out to a Kiwi. If only a true-blue vegemite-chomping, tinnie-sinking, chinwagging Aussie had written it…
Cheers, Boyce
8 Songs,
Look at it as part of the penalty we’ll continue to pay forever for the sins of coves like Paul Hogan and Steve Irwin.
I know, I know. You put on a funny hat, a funnier accent, pull out all the old pre-WWII slang your grandfather used, and it does help you sell a bunch of movie tickets / wildlife “documentaries” to the Septics.
But the payback’s a bitch…
Agreed Shannon. I went and saw “Australia” last night. Cringed through the first part especially. Since when did kangaroos ever move a muscle in the middle of the day? Since when did only half-caste children get stolen – full castes were too. And Hugh Jackman’s “Crikeys” were simply awful. David Wenham doesn’t know how to play a bad guy. Our Nic was unconvincing as an English Toff, and Bryan Brown didn’t look comfortable. Jack Thompson was at least trying, though his character was a parody.
But the story was disjointed and too long. It certainly did not hold the Chinese audience’s interest.
Getting back to the point, my theory is that the northern Americans are simply jealous of their Commonwealth cousins down under. They simply can’t throw a prawn (or a shrimp) on the barby because it’s usually too bloody cold there. They can’t play cricket. They can’t pop down to the beach for a surf before breakfast. They don’t know the words to immortal songs such as “Football, Meat Pies, Kangaroos and Holden Cars”. You’ll never see a Canuck team on the MCG on the last Saturday in September, or at the SFS a week later. When did a Canuck horse ever win the Melbourne Cup?
They couldn’t even beat us at Murderball in the Paralympics.
8 Songs,
Frankly, I think North Americans are only jealous about one thing when it comes to Australia: the classiness of its citizens. At least, that’s what a drunk Aussie told me last night.
And the reason a Canadian horse hasn’t won the Melbourne Cup. Either a) because no one has heard of the race, or 2) because your race tracks, like the water that whirls down your drains – goes the wrong way.
Cheers, Boyce
Regarding SHRIMP on Barbie, in Australia we say PRAWNS, SHRIMPS is so foreigners can understan Australian english. I cook PRAWNS a lot and will open an Australian seafood restaraunt in Beijing in spring. Then you all can raste the real Australian flavour of BBQ Prawns etc SEAFOOD AND EAT.
I wonder if any Australian critics from America have had the pleasure of going to Sydney at all, and wether they know any more then your favourite Hick cowboy former President Bush. I will produce a film in China about an Australian cowboy/farmer who comes to Beijing to collect and inheritence, you will have to see the movie to know more and enjoy our wonderful/colorful language and of course PRAWNS. Take that yankee’s.Enjoy the crisis that you have started, we wont forget you tomorrow on AUSTRALIA DAY.
EDIT….taste the real Australia flavour.
Having read all the comments, I thought I was on Humphrey B Bear and you know what happened to him recently, don’t you? It is about time Aussies stopped being so paranoid and thinking they know it all. It is a matter of having an inferiority complex here. Our American friends have a far more alluring accent, are twice as likely to get the girls, aren’t as full of shit as Aussies who by the way make it a hobby. Australian rules football is for sissies, Australian Moives make me cringe because the accent is a turn off. So in other words, you all look like a bunch of morons getting up here on your soap boxes.