review

Subaru Outback XT

With demand being high for Rangers, it seemed a good opportunity to explore selling my Ranger, and to look into a different vehicle to use for road tripping and daily use.

I had thought I didn't want another SUV in the traditional sense. I've driven 4x4s and utes for the better part of 15 years now. So, my thinking was that it was time for something new and different.

I explored potentially an EV, looking at small ones like the Cupra Born and larger in the Polestar 2, along with things like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV 6. But none really fit what I wanted it for; a road tripping vehicle. EVs wise I'm still unsure regarding availability of charging for my use case.

Eventually after knocking out all the traditional SUV-type 4x4s and other types of vehicles, along with various front-wheel-drive options, I'd narrowed it down to an all-wheel drive wagon. Of which there are not a lot of those on the market. It's basically Audi, Volvo and Subaru. Audis are expensive, Volvo are at the end of their fuel-based development lives and heading to all EV soon, which left Subaru.

And after some research, and several test drives in Subarus, I found myself focusing on the Subaru Outback.

Having tested them out, and doing plenty of research I thought this was the best ideal vehicle.

Subaru Outback, side.

I thought it was everything I wanted, and for a time it was.

It was something sporty, well, sportier than what I'd had previously, fun, and a sunroof!

It was a petrol engine, something I'd not had for more than 15 years. I'd mostly preferenced diesels for their range and fuel availability. 

But I'd made a decision, I wanted a change. And it was to a Subaru Outback.

And for a time, I actually really liked it, the all-wheel drive really made it feel planted on the road. It was fun to drive. There was great utility to having a lifted wagon. Although after having driven utes for the better part of 10 years, getting used to now having a boot was something new to remember and to use. 

Reverse parked in; Federation Square car park.

After having had utes where to most effectively park I needed to reverse it into a parking spot all of the time, I found I was still reverse parking the Subaru, even though I could easily have driven in nose forward without any issues. And getting to the boot after reversing in was a little more tricky I discovered.

Everything was going swimmingly, I'd done a few of my 'New Adventures'-type day trips and was planning a 'test road trip', probably to Canberra, as it's a great drive either along the Princes Highway and then along the Monaro Highway, or even along the Hume and back through the Yarra Valley, a good short road trip. Maybe even a further afield trip to test its long-range road tripping abilities.

Parked nose-in at the airport.

But then I had to pick my dad up from the airport, and that's when I should have realised that there were problems. Although it was with me, rather than the car, which is almost worst, because I can't blame the vehicle for this failing.

As mentioned in my airport parking blog, the drive up was actually surprisingly easy, an easy enough drive up, free from stop start traffic.

Unfortunately on the return journey, there was a lot of stop-start traffic, and that's when I started to get an ache in my knee. 

I didn't think much of it at the time, I'd been in the garden in the days before, and done some walking and other stuff, plus I'd driven up there. Maybe it was nothing, I didn't think much of it.

Then it was a few weeks later and I was driving back from the city, and again in stop-start traffic, and a little bit of an ache in my right knee and a little bit in my hip. I just thought, again, I'd been out and about walking around the city. Nothing really to be concerned about.

Then these things continued to happen, I thought 'it's a different vehicle, maybe I'll just reset the seat and steering wheel etc'.

Subaru Outback interior

When I'd picked it up the car the sales guy kinda loomed over me to change the seat and steering wheel settings while all I wanted to do was try and relax and work out the best way to sit. (He'd sort of leaned into the driver's window, kinda personal space invading.)

So I set everything back to base setting, lowered the seat back and pushed it all the way back and set the steering wheel to its most neutral position. Got out of the car, locked it, walked around a little bit. 

Then unlocked it, got back in as though it was a new vehicle. 

Then I set it all up, and it was comfortable, and then I went out for a long, slow-ish drive around familiar roads, stopping to adjust the seating etc to be comfortable, as you can only really know how it feels when you're driving, rather than sat in your driveway at a stop.

I thought 'yes, I've fixed it'.

I left it for a few weeks, and it seemed okay, although I was just running errands etc, nothing terribly hard or any lengthy driving.

And then there went a few days where I'd not driven at all. 

However, then I went to see my grandma, and was in some traffic, not exactly stop-start traffic, just general traffic and light-traffic with stop lights.

And then the pain was back, in my right knee, and also travelling up to my hip. 

Now it was about problem solving; what was this pain, what could I do to mitigate it and work out what it was that was wrong.

It was me. 

Long legs, and the more relaxed seating position of a car. It was just not working for my body shape. 

Jeep Wrangler in Tasmania.

Before the Rangers, I'd had a Jeep Wrangler (loved that vehicle, leaked despite replacing all the roof/door seals twice, I’d never have one again, but I absolutely loved it), the Jeep I'd had for a number of years with no concerns comfort wise. It also had quite an upright seating position, you sat and drove it more like sat in a chair than lounging. 

The Rangers too, at least how I had the seat set up, I put it into a similar position as I had in the Jeep, that more upright sort of position with my legs.

With the Subaru it was more of a car-like sitting stretched out experience. Once I worked out this was the problem, I tried to replicate this seating position I'd had in previous vehicles, I couldn't not to the same extent. It's just the wrong shape of vehicle to have that sort of seating. But I tried, and again tried to change the seating position to mitigate the pain I was experiencing.

Then I tried driving it for some time, and it didn't really help, I wondered 'am I tensing now that I've tried it in a different position?', 'is it me now trying too much?' so I reset it again to a more relaxed potion, so I wouldn't need to have as much tension on my leg / hip area, to see if that changed things.

It didn't. 

So then I started to wonder 'is this just in my head?', was I positioning myself weird, tensing oddly, and there was just something that I was doing, or thinking about doing that was causing my body stresses.

So I got others of my family to sit in it, and at first they couldn't see where I was coming from, and then told them to keep switching between brake and accelerator; simulating being in stop-start traffic, and they agreed, that they could see where I was coming from.

Beyond this issue of myself, there was one quite large issue with the Subaru, which I had resolved to live with, although annoying. It was its conservativeness regarding fuel economy and the distance to empty it reported.

It had a 62L tank, and would report about 500km to empty, no matter how I drove it, how I reset the trip computer or fuel efficiency monitor.

And on 1/4 of a tank all it thought it could do was 80km. 

I'd used the trip computer to actually calculate how much it could do, and it was closer to 750km. 

That in itself was not a deal breaker.

The pain, however was not something I could live with.

I'd at that point avoided really going out, unless it was absolutely necessary, because of the pain, and the worry of the extended effects of said pain.

So, much to my disappointment, not to mention annoyance in myself and my body I needed to be rid of the Outback, and return to something familiar. (Not a Jeep Wrangler, although I did, very briefly consider it). 

I've always considered failures as a learning opportunity, albeit the larger ones more than sting, they do inform the future.

Yorkshire Tea Malty Biscuit Brew

I have had a second cup of this tea, only to write this review up, the first cup I had began as ‘oh, this should be interesting’.

I had actually seen this, and its companion “Breakfasty Toast & Jam” tea in the supermarket in the past, and only bought this example to try because it was discounted and on special, otherwise I wouldn’t have indulged in such and unknown quantity. 

Opening the box it’s in a foil packet, it has the best before date on the front.

The tea bags are ‘tea pot’ style bags with no tag on them, and they’re in sheets of two which are joined by a perforated edge.

Smelling the bags themselves, they’ve got a very rich malty, maybe with a wisp of vanilla, it makes for a very biscuity smell to them, it’s kinda unnatural, especially in a tea context.

Back of box.

The ingredients on the box lists; Black tea, and then “natural flavouring (3%)”, but doesn’t elaborate further than that as to what the natural flavouring is.

Making the tea I used a regular mug (one of those Pantone colour mugs 375ml capacity), they’re not my usual mugs I use for tea. My regular mugs are a bit bigger, but I had my doubts about this brew the first time, and again this time.

Into the mug I added one slightly lower than level teaspoon of sugar, then let the bag sit for 4-5 minutes according to the box’s instructions. 

Then I added just a touch of milk.

Contents of the tea bag.

While the tea sat for its journey in the water I opened up one of the tea bags and emptied the contents out onto a plate.

It looks like tea, but there are bits of something within the tea contents. I assume this is the “natural flavouring (3%)”.

Smelling the mug, again it’s that sweet malty smell, like a biscuit, and unlike something you would expect from regular tea. Even a mug of tea you’d dropped a biscuit in. I feel like you’d need to drop a whole packet of biscuits into a mug of tea to get this scent out of it.

The flavour is a sort of uncanny valley where you know something’s off, something’s wrong but you’re not really sure what it is. 

It’s actually perfectly fine for the first couple of sips, there’s the tea flavour in the background and in the foreground this malty, biscuity flavour.

But then as you have more of it, it becomes kinda overpowering, like it’s the only thing you’re tasting.

The malt flavour is the strongest component that comes through when having a mouthful of the tea. The sweetness of the biscuit flavours seems to be more present in the scent coming from it when you go in for a sip of the tea.

When I had my first mug of this tea, I only managed half the mug. And it made the room I was drinking it in smell a bit like the brew itself. 

Yorkshire Tea Toast & Jam and Malty Biscuit on supermarkt shelf.

For this second mug I’m sat in the kitchen with it. 

And I’m now about half way through the mug, to write this up, and I think I’m just about done with it.

I am a tea drinker; Nerada. Just their standard black tea.

Very occasionally I’ll get an Earl Grey, also Twinnings “Australian Afternoon” is nice in the morning if I don’t want to break out the teapot. 

Would I buy this again? No. 

Although I am kinda still tempted by the Toast & Jam variety, only in a sort of ‘how much worse can it be?’ sort of experience, to compare and contrast to this version.

Golden Gaytime Biscuits

Wandering the biscuit aisle when I was at the supermarket a week or so ago these biscuits caught my eye. 

Golden Gaytime inspired biscuits, made by Griffith’s™ Marvels.

Golden Gaytime Biscuits packet.

Golden Gaytime Popcorn in supermarket.

I quite like Golden Gaytime ice creams, and have tried in the past Golden Gaytime popcorn, which was alright, it was mostly the Golden Gaytime flavours with popcorn as a vehicle to carry the chocolate and toffee flavours. 

These biscuits are pretty good, they’re a biscuit, with a coffee crème filling, covered in chocolate with the signature Golden Gaytime biscuit crumbs on top.

Golden Gaytime biscuits in packet.

Interesting thing was there were several of the crumbs that had become detached from the biscuit in the plastic tray, and eating those I was surprised to find that they’re not that sweet. Not as sweet as I expected them to be, they are very crunchy though.

Ingredients and back of packet.

But the most egregious thing about these biscuits, Golden Gaytime, an Australian brand, and Australian icon, yet these biscuits are made in New Zealand?!

The biscuits themselves are pretty good, I probably wouldn’t eat more than one or two in a sitting, but I’d buy them again. 

The District Docklands east car park

I went here for the Car Expert Open Day. I've never been to this car park. I don't think I've ever actually driven to the Docklands either. Have been to the Docklands in the past, but have usually come in via the tram. It's just an area of the city I've never found I've needed to go to.

Getting to the car park itself is very easy, coming off the CityLink going over the Bolte Bridge it's the first exit onto Footscray Road where there's significant roadworks going on. 

Then it's the first right onto Waterfront Way, and then I used the Waterfront Way entrance, but there is another entrance around on Little Docklands Drive.

The height limit is 2.17 metres, which should be fine for all passenger vehicles on the road at the moment.

You need to stop at boom gates and push a button for a ticket, the machine prints your numberplate on the ticket, and it is reading your numberplate into the system as well as I'd find out upon exit.

The passage in is a little, not confusing but basically if you're in there for 90 minutes it's free, which is presumedly to cover people who are going shopping at the Woolworths which is on the same site, and there are defined 90 minute parking bays again I presume for this purpose.

Then you continue through until you locate a ramp up for 'staying longer'. I went up to the staying longer level as I wasn't sure how long I wound be staying at the Car Expert Open Day. 

View of the city from the car park.

As I made my way through the car park I did briefly glimpse at a parking ticket machine in the middle of one of the levels. 

However once I made it up to I think the third level I didn't see another ticket machine, not at the lifts and stairs where I walked up to the roof where the Open Day was being held. 

I did notice once I wandered up to the Open Day area that there was a second lift area which might've held a ticket machine, but I didn't explore that.

The car park itself looks new and well kept, the bays large enough for my ute, although I reversed in to get the maximum use of the space there.

Upon departing I had not spent 90 minutes, I'd only been in there a little over an hour, but I had the ticket ready and my wallet ready just in case. And I was looking around for a ticket machine just in case.

There were a few A-frame signs placed directing towards the exit which eventually led me to hard to line up for exit.

As I slowed down and readied to insert the ticket the machine showed an animated smiley face / thumbs up emoji and the gate opened allowing me to exit. Which evidently meant it was reading the numberplate as you entered.

Little Docklands Drive and neighbouring car park.

The exit was on Little Docklands Drive. I realise now looking at the map I should have just gone straight ahead, as that would have led me to Footscray Road and turn left onto it.

Instead I made the mistake of going down St Mangos Lane, which led me back to Waterfront Way, but meant I had to do an awkward u-turn in front of Observation Drive. 

Which was...inelegant, I at least was going slow enough that when I hit and mounted the curb it wasn't too bad. I should've just gone around the block again and gone out on Little Docklands Drive.

Canberra 2023-08 -4- Woolworths Ready Meals

in

I bought Woolworths' ready meals, mostly as I wasn't sure if I wanted to cook anything extravagant at my AirBnB accomodation, although there were plenty of cooking appliances to do so. Perhaps if I go back I'll feel more comfortable doing so.

Having browsed Woolworths (Canberra Airport) for a while, I was going to do lamb shanks, because they could be microwaved to reheat, and then maybe a steak, because there was an induction hot plate. Do potatoes with both because I could pre-boil them before doing the steak and they could sit in their water while I cooked the steak. But then there was the question of a sauce, would I buy some garlic butter, or try and do a sauce in the pan? 

As it was just a single induction hot plate I knew I'd need to juggle what I wanted to cook.

However, then I found the ready meals area of Woolworths and decided this would be the way to go, at worst I figured it'd be okay.

Day 2 - Chargrilled Sage & Onion Stuffed Chicken Breast with honey glazed carrots (plus Brussel's sprouts)

This was surprisingly good, only a passing resemblance to the picture on the box, but it was good. It did need salt.

I'd bought some sugar snap peas and asparagus to have along side it, as these could be halved without too much problem.

The vegetables that were included; the Brussel's sprouts especially were a surprise as they maintained their texture really well, the carrots too had flavour.

The chicken was slightly overcooked, but not inedibly so, and the sage stuffing was a little stodgy.

All up fairly decent.

Day 3 - Wine Infused gravy cracked pepper rump steak

Plated up. (Forgot to take a photo of the box).

This was less good than the chicken, still okay, I would say it's like a fancy airline meal. It was perfectly edible, a flavoursome sauce, and the mashed potato was surprisingly flavourful and textured. The included mushrooms in the sauce was a surprise. But it needed the addition of the vegetables I had on the side.

Red Oxx - Big Bull Roll-up bag

This is one of the most useful bags I use for going on road trips. It's a bag that basically combines a luggage roll with packing cubes. 

It's incredibly well constructed, made not just in the USA but Made in Montana, which is stated on front. 

It's my go-to road trip clothes bag.

The bag unrolls to a length of 915 mm and you have 6 mesh pockets where you can store (and stuff) clothing for a time away. I particularly like it as it means fewer things to unpack and repack - a problem with packing cubes especially. Unrolling it or hanging it up you can see everything you've got within, without needing to unpack further. It also means that when it's time to leave I just roll it back up and take it back out to my ute. 

Unlike packing cubes, which are great, but you can forget things, this it's all attached, it's one thing to remember to grab. 

I have a separate dirty clothes bag that goes elsewhere, so this just contains clean clothes.

If I were doing longer trips than this bag could handle I'd probably pack a duffle bag with extra clothes and then at a point when this was mostly empty of clean clothes I'd cycle in new ones. But this can handle a surprising amount of clothes, rolled or stuffed in and then the whole thing strapped up.

When I bought it back in 2017, it was kinda pricey, but fine enough for a bag at $285 USD, plus $55 USD postage to Australia, totalling $340 USD all up. But now looking on their website it seems inflation and increased costs has got to its price quite a bit and it's now $450 USD, although postage is still $55 USD.

If I were reading this at this point I would probably be thinking 'is it worth it?'. As of 2023 that price of $505 USD is about $685 AUD. Looking through a site like Rushfaster.com.au and sorting price high to low on their various bag categories it reveals this price is way up there in the high prices of bags.

But...there's nothing much out there on the market that completely replicates it. However I'm not sure I would buy this now at that price, back in 2017 it was a gift to myself. Now though I think I'd just go for a duffle bag with compartments, or maybe one or two duffle bags that I'd just cycle clothes through or something. 

Full dimensions:

50.8 cm L x 20.3 cm W x 20.3 cm H rolled up
When open and laying out flat: 91.4 cm L x 50.8 cm W x  7.62 cm H (pocket height)
Capacity: 24.4 litres
Weight: 2.38 kg

Mrs Mac’s Microwave Beef Pie

When my oven started to be a bit problematic I found myself looking along the freezer aisle in the supermarket at the food items that didn’t require an oven. 

In the past microwave pies have just been oven pies that you could put in the microwave, usually on a bit of paper towel, and then maybe you’d crisp it up in the oven.

However I’ve tried the microwave hot chips in the recent past, and they do surprisingly well in the microwave. They’re ‘good enough’, they’re not as good as oven chips, but if you’re craving some hot chips then the microwave chips did a decent job.

So when I saw Mrs Mac’s Microwave Beef Pie in the freezer section of the supermarket I thought I’d give it a go.

It’s alright.

When you get it out of the freezer you need to cut off both ends of the package, but you leave the pie in the package and put it on a microwave safe plate.

Crinkly bag after microwaving.

Then it’s into the microwave for 3 minutes 15 seconds. 

The package comes out of the microwave quite crispy, and the pie comes out…not soggy. There’s a small level of crispness to it, it’s still relatively pale. 

It comes out quite hot, I did a lift test from the pie crust edge and it supports its own weight without any collapse in the middle from potential sogginess. 

It was quite hot, so I couldn’t do a bite into it test. 

I added sauce, and started to eat it, and it’s fine. It’s a perfectly serviceable meat pie, it isn’t soggy, the bottom is a little firm in places, but still fine to eat.

I bought two, so there’s a second one in the freezer, but would I buy it again? I’m not sure, I think it’s good enough to have in the freezer in case you don’t feel like doing lunch or dinner and is there as an option. 

Kangaroo in My Kitchen by Ethel Sloan review

I was intrigued by this book’s garish 1980s cover and its promise of “one American woman’s devastating experience of life down under”. 

Front cover of ‘Kangaroo in my Kitchen’ by Ethel Sloan

After flipping to a random page where she’s traipsing around town seeking out “dimes” for a washing machine I thought it might be a Karen-esque sort of opinion piece from an entitled person who came to Australia expecting it to be exactly like America.

But what actually is is a little more insightful.

What reviews that there are online comment say “nasty, vicious diatribe against Australia and its people, particularly the women, by a privileged American woman who clearly did not wish to be there”.

It is all these things, but that doesn’t make it a bad book. 

I read in a couple of hours in between other things. 

It’s insightful because it’s not viewing Sydney or moving to Australia through rose-tinted glasses “not even a pinkish hue” as the blurb says.

And this less than rosy perspective is what makes it interesting. There are likely a lot of perspectives of people moving to Australia which are positive, in video or audio mediums those would be the ones that have been preserved. 

But this more critical perspective probably only lives in the letter pages of magazines, letters to family and friends, and perhaps the occasional letter to the editor in a small newspaper. 

Images (aside from the covers) are from Wikimedia Commons from 1970/1971, and one from 1969, to illustrate the environment she probably would have seen.

It’s 1970/71.

Ethel Sloan’s husband Bernard (Bernie to Ethel) has been offered a 2 year placement in Australia with his advertising company. They’re sending him out to Australia to “Americanize” the creative department in Sydney.

Ethel explains that Bernie’s been with the agency for 10 years and she thinks this 2 year move is a chance for him to try something new. Ethel isn’t a fan of new things. 

Ethel by her own admission is happy with a boring life, a samey life, the same discussions, visiting the same places, same friends and parties etc. She’s got her group of friends around her. 

She’s just had their house repainted and got the furnishing and layout just as she wanted it and the bathroom leak has been fixed. Plus they’ve just got new whitegoods!

It’s all just…nice.

And now Bernie is talking about going to Australia for 2 years?!

One of Ethel’s questions in the early chapter of the book was “what about tennis” to which her husband challenges “you think there’ll be a shortage of tennis in Australia?”

This is weirdly something which will crop up later in the book.

What’s interesting in the following couple of chapters in the lead up to the move is the lack of ‘information availability’ as I came to think of it as I read through this thin tome. 

It’s something I noticed reading it from a 21st century perspective, and something I’ve not really noticed reading other history books which are usually published in the last 10 years or whatever looking back rather than a contemporary account.

Ethel doesn’t know what to expect, the information she has comes from the World Book Encyclopedia and her friends.

And the brochures about Australia which simply adds to her concerns / confusion they show surfing but also skiing, she takes many suitcases including her ski gear because she thinks she’ll be able to go from the beach to the slopes regularly (aside from one holiday away it doesn’t seem like she escapes Sydney much). 

The weather in general seems to fill her with much angst, and no one including the company moving them to Australia seems to tell her what to expect.

She speaks to several people who give her conflicting information; it’s warm, it’s cold etc, leave your fur coat at home the Sydney weather is lovely, but you might need it, you’ll freeze at night. 

This latter one does pan out to be true.

She introduces us to her friends who are fine, if unadventurous. 

Waikiki, beach and high rise hotels; Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii. August 1970. File:Hawaii, United States (28252953655).jpg. (2022, August 12). Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved 05:48, June 9, 2023 from link. Author: Urbain J. Kinet

But she also paints them as widely read / widely informed, especially compared to Australian women. 

The actual travel to Australia Bernie turns it into an extended holiday, first they’re in Maui (rather than Honolulu) which Ethel likens to Georgia.

What contemporary photos I could find from a quick search for both these locations and that Ethel describes it as being mostly under construction (they also stayed in one of the older hotels) I can imagine Ethel’s disappointment.

On from there they go to Tahiti and New Zealand, in the latter she enjoys herself, seeing the natural wonders it has to offer, seeing the sheep that look like fluffy clouds. They go mountain climbing and a policeman on a motorcycle escorts them to the zoo after they get lost, and they enjoy sulphur baths and see a power plant that doesn’t use any oil. 

I suspect if Ethel and Bernie had moved to New Zealand in the 1970s instead of Australia in the 1970s she might have written a more positive book than this one.

Upon arriving in Australia, or just as the plane is getting ready to land Ethel’s angst of appearances rises up

Upon hearing the local manager for the advertising agency would be meeting them at the airport she is understandably anxious, asking Bernie why he didn’t tell her?

“He had the gall to ask me what difference it made. What difference? My hair was a disaster, my clothes looked as if they have been squeezed into suitcases, the boys looked like urchins, we all looked like refugees, and he wanted to know what difference it made.”

This does come off as a bit dramatic, but I think her anxieties are real, and she’s just moved across the globe and her husband has been less than honest with her. His boss meeting them at the airport is not exactly the way Ethel would want the first meeting to happen.

Tom Middleton, the manager of the Sydney agency meets them at the airport.

Upon seeing the Australian men, women and their children waiting for Ethel and Bernie (and their two kids) at the airport terminal Ethel observes they all look like they’re from the 1950s. 

Which is an interesting observation, there’s often accounts of people saying in the past and even recent past that Australia feels like it’s 10 years behind the rest of the world. And in the 1970s coming from the US to Sydney it probably felt like a bit of a time jump in difference. 

Expressway, Woolomolloo (1970). File:70-755 Woolomolloo, Sydney 1970 (51217728742).jpg. (2023, June 3). Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved 05:38, June 9, 2023 from link. Author: wilford peloquin

The drive from Sydney Airport through the suburbs and into the CBD itself is less inspiring for Ethel she comments “not a kangaroo or gumtree in sight”.

She’s transported in a limousine with the Janice the wife of Tom and her kids (Paul and Steven). Bernie’s off with Tom Middleton.

Crossing the harbour bridge Ethel mentions that a bridge in Melbourne (the West Gate) collapsed recently. 

They’re then taken to some apartments after exiting at Kirribilli. 

First thing her oldest remarks on is how cold it is. Which is weird as everyone’s in flowery dresses at the airport. 

And Ethel remarks on the blue skies and sunshine as she’s driven out to their first house.

Janice has helpfully filled the kitchen with the basics in the fridge; milk, butter, orange cordial, sweet cream, eggs and lamb chops (which were stamped with 39 cents a pound). The cupboards held instant coffee, loose tea, bread, Weet-Bix and Vegemite - which Ethel describes as “a mouth burning vegetable extract which Australians smeared on their bread”.

Janice also brings out a quart of Scotch which they get stuck into waiting for the men to arrive.

As they go to bed on their first night in Sydney they both change into their nightclothes remarking how freezing it is. 

It seems they arrived in October 1970 or possibly 1971, (based on the references to the West Gate collapse) being a thing of conversation I'm considering it October 1970.

Looking at the Bureau of Meteorology’s monthly climate statistics for that era in Sydney the maximum mean temperature for October 1970 was 23.6ºC and the minimum mean was 13.6ºC. So while it was cool it wasn't freezing, even drilling down to a day-by-day data level it was only ever just below 10ºC. Perhaps it was just unexpectedly cooler than Ethel had been expecting?

I know Australian houses especially of that era didn’t have the greatest of insulation, but it’s still an odd observation. Unless (as Ethel seemed to lament often) she was expecting heating/cooling in the house to keep it at an even temperature. 

Manly, Sydney (1970). File:70-757 Manly, Sydney 1970 (51218653178).jpg. (2023, June 3). Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved 05:40, June 9, 2023 from link. Author: wilford peloquin

Ethel gets a Mini Minor to drive around in, apparently that’s as much as they think women can handle, and she starts looking at real estate adverts. 

She also gets her kids enrolled in school and faces the public school system where her kids get the cane, it doesn’t go well.

Apparently her kids in the US went to a school with a TV studio and pottery kiln. 

While at the first school she sends her kids to, they’re expected to go across the road to the milk bar for lunch and they’re given free “curdled milk” twice a day.

That night Ethel goes home and cries about all the Australian kids who go to school to learn and instead are “were treated as animals to be tamed”. 

Again I wonder if this is hyperbole or genuine concern / culture shock for Ethel. It’s certainly insightful regardless. 

She remarks “We had moved not only to another continent, but another century.”

Then she tries the private schools:

  • Knox is booked out till 1984

  • Barker has forty-five children to a classroom

  • Pittwater drilled boys daily and sent them on survival weekends

  • "Progressive Wahroonga taught the boys sewing and the teachers wore saris"

  • "Masada was the nearest thing to an American school"

Eventually some Australians recommend the “avant-garde” Sydenham.

From there the book is about her settling in, if that is how to describe it into her life in Australia. 

Eventually after looking around Ethel finds a house, it’s a battle-axe block in Vaulcluse.

81a Kurrakirri Avenue, Vaucluse to be exact. 

Australia Square, Sydney (1970). File:70-783 Australia Square Sydney 1970 (51219510295).jpg. (2023, June 3). Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved 05:43, June 9, 2023 from link. Author: wilford peloquin

It doesn’t exist. Googling it was the first thing I did when I saw it written in the form of a letter addressed to Ethel. The road doesn’t even exist disappointingly.

But there’s enough detail about the house, the area and the people around that it definitely existed somewhere in Vaucluse.

Ethel goes on a hunt for tennis courts, finding them all booked out, but does eventually find somewhere to play.

The most interesting thing is that in these games the women going are going to mostly socialise, the tennis is just a framing for them to do so.

At the break they bring out the tea, scones, jam and cakes etc.

Meanwhile Ethel sits to the side with her yogurt, fruit and vegetables. 

This is one of the interesting insights in the book from a contemporary reader looking back. It was very modern of Ethel, being 39-40. She was fit, eating healthily (she even laments later when she hurts her back and starts on the valium) that she was putting on weight.

When she speaks to her neighbour (Kath) who sits by the pool tanning and smoking, Kath muses of herself that she needs to go on a diet for the coming season of socialising with her husband.

Ethel corrects her and says she can’t just diet she needs to exercise, something Kath seems surprised by the even concept of.

Again it’s this little insight into Ethel, that kinda reveals a lot.

Kings Cross, Sydney (1970). File:70-631 Kings Cross, Sydney 1970 (51218652878).jpg. (2023, June 3). Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved 05:45, June 9, 2023 from link. Author: wilford peloquin

She’s focused on her health, and when she injures herself even the doctors remark on how good she looks for 40, that she wasn’t one the “wrinkles” as Ethel describes the women of similar age to her that have been in the sun.

She didn’t have any cancers “burned off” as those of the other wives of the company men have. 

Ethel laments the lack of a PTA (Parents and Teachers Association) as that was where she did a lot of socialising and work. Instead she has to work in the tuckshop along with the other well off ladies who arrive in Mercedes, Volvos and Jaguars.

One of the people (or rather one of the kids her child meets) invites him to a birthday, their father’s name is Sir Whitlam Malcomb, which is definitely a made up name. Ethel describes him as newspaper, magazine and television tycoon.

I’m wondering if this was Kerry Packer?

There’s not that many newspaper, magazine and television tycoons who’d be around in 1970s Sydney.

Their house on Kurrakirri Avenue gets burgled at least four times, and while they do install an alarm it doesn’t really deter people. 

By the end of her two years also her Mini gets stolen.

If this is true, and it’d be weird for her to add in this to colour up her story, I can appreciate the trauma she feels of this frequently happening.

They go on a holiday to Alice Springs, there Ethel observes it looks like California because it was built for the American missile base. She sees her first “real” (ie American) supermarket. 

There’s air conditioning here and there.

During this trip Ethel does wonder some questions regarding "Aboriginal peoples", whom she and her children wanted to see. They’re told if they want to see them in their “natural state” they would need to go to Arnhem Land.

Uluru, 1969. (Couldn’t find any 1970 images)

File:69-1263 Ayers Rock, Australia 1969 (51215930168).jpg. (2023, June 2). Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved 05:56, June 9, 2023 from link. Author: wilford peloquin

They visit a cattle station in Ross River, they have an adventure to get to Uluru (or Ayres Rock / the Rock as Ethel describes it).

Out of everything in this book chapter 20 detailing her trip is possibly the most detailed. It’s got the most observations packed in, and if I’m honest I skimmed it before re-reading it while preparing to write this up.

In the end Ethel doesn’t feel a lot for Australia, when asked when she returns to the US was she glad they had done it?

The answer was yes, because it made her more of a patriot, made her appreciate all the advancements and everything that USA had. 

It’s…an interesting observation and I can sort of see why this book annoyed a lot of people who read it.

Back cover of ‘Kangaroo in my Kitchen’ by Ethel Sloan

I do kinda feel for Ethel, I think people who read this book ignored the trauma and anxiety she felt moving to Australia without a lot of assistance. Assistance the company had promised her and her husband which didn’t materialise. And all without much of a safety net. 

Information availability is this concept I keep thinking of when musing on this book. 

That she didn’t have a lot of easy available information to access to salve some of these concerns she had. Just an out of date World Book Encyclopedia (from probably 1968 with maybe a year in review update for 1969) along with a mix of local newspapers and various people’s opinions. 

Which I guess was what was available then.

I think it’s a great insight into one person’s experience.

I don’t know why it was published or how she got it published, but it’s been preserved as having been published.

It’s a decent enough read, some insightful observations and you can read it in a short afternoon.

Which heat pump dryer to buy

Fisher & Paykel 8kg Heat Pump Dryer DH8060P3 

(thought I'd get the answer to the question out of the way before I ramble on)

I've not owned or used a lot of heat pump / condenser dryers, but think I've worked out a little bit of what is and isn't good. 

ASKO T783C

First was an ASKO T783C, and that was...okay? It was actually my parents'. The best thing was that you could pull the condenser out and wash it out, something I discovered was not a thing with heat pump dryers, or at least the ones I would encounter later.

Needing to buy both a washing machine and dryer, but not really having a sense of what I was looking for in a dryer I bought Electrolux, because the washing machine I'd had previously had worked fine, but had needed to be left behind when I moved. 

I knew I wanted a heat pump condenser dryer, the Asko wasn't a heat pump just condenser. If I was using a dryer I wanted it to be the most efficient.

The Electrolux EDH3786GDW entered into washing / drying service.

It again was okay in a different way. 

EDH3786GDW

I never needed to worry about what clothes went in regarding temperature and heat, because it never got hot. It'd always get warm, and certainly warm enough enough to dry clothes. 

But it took forever no matter what setting you chose, even on the "cotton extra dry" setting, which was the 'everyday' setting we'd use on the dryer. 

It would sometimes take hours and the clothes still might come out a little damp. 

I'd sometimes do a washing load late at night then put it in the dryer on a timer for the next day and then after the 3+ hours it would take to dry not even a large load I might be able to do a second, but it would be hit and miss if I could do that.

Quick explanation of how all these dryers work.

Heat is generated, either through a heater coil or through a heat pump (which is basically a mini-air conditioner unit that just does heat). 

The heated air is blown through the drum and your clothes, the air then goes through the fluff container and then across a condenser, which condenses the air which cools it and the water is extracted into a container you empty (or into a hose that goes into the sink). 

The Electrolux EDH3786GDW also had a problem that is seemingly common with most (although not all) heat pump dryers.

With the EDH3786GDW dryer, after the fluff container the air, and more importantly any fluff that makes it through the fluff container hits the condenser. 

The instruction manual for the Electrolux EDH3786GDW just states to vacuum this out with the brush attachment.

You also can't be too aggressive when doing this because you'll damage the fins of the condenser, it is these fins that gives the air lots of surface area to condense on.

Even after vacuuming this frontal area of the condenser there's still some fluff left. I eventually worked out how to get it out is that you need to stand there with a toothpick and painstakingly and carefully tease out all the remaining fluff that has sort of congealed there.

When I found I needed to get a new dryer, as the Electrolux died one day and the repair was going to be a little over half the price of new one, I elected to get a new one. 

Beginning my research I looked through the big three shops that are JB HiFi Home, The Good Guys and Harvey Norman.

I didn't want to have to wait and wanted to pick it up myself, so Appliances Online was out. Plus kind of needed the dryer sooner rather than later. 

Then having narrowed it down to the models they stocked I found the manufacturer's websites and downloaded the manuals for all the models of dryer they had on offer.

What I wanted, and what I hoped existed was a dryer with a secondary filter, one that sat after the fluff container (or the "lint container" to give it its proper name) and the condenser. It seemed like this would be a sensible thing for a dryer to have.

Only one in my researches actually had this secondary filter.

The Fisher & Paykel 8kg Heat Pump Dryer DH8060P3.

The Fisher & Paykel DH8060P3 was surprising on first use, especially after the Electrolux. It gets surprisingly hot. If you're there when the cycle ends and open it up, your clothes are properly hot, in the same way that your clothes felt coming out of an old school dryer.

Fisher & Paykel DH8060P3

It's got a few weird quirks, none of which would stop me from recommending it to anyone. 

The presence of the condenser filter more than makes up for any odd quirks.

On the Electrolux (both dryer and washing machine) there was a way to turn off the noise it made when it finished a cycle. 

On the Fisher & Paykel it's a button on the control panel that you have to disable every time you do a load, and it has two settings for the signal to sound "Damp Dry" and "End".

The outside gets surprisingly hot on some cycles, maybe I'd just become used to the terribly not hot Electrolux, but it was a surprising difference. 

It does mean it heats up properly and I can get a load of washing dried in a short amount of time.

Audi S4 45 TFSI quattro

Recently I had a car in at a dealer getting an engine warning light, and check engine light sorted, I was told it might take an hour…or longer, so they had a loan car sorted for me as it turned out to be the latter.

I was given an Audi S4 45 TFSI quattro, which according to the rego was a 2020 model.

The car I was leaving with the car dealer / mechanic wasn't an Audi, and this was the first Audi I'd driven.

Starting the car up it initially seemed a little unsettled, but as I drove it, this feeling seemed to go away completely.

Upon leaving the car dealer I didn't really take it for a drive, I departed for home; driving in the city's inner suburbs and then mostly on the freeway home, driving for a bit more than an hour.

Steering was very light.

My every day vehicle is a 2018 Ford Ranger Wildtrak. 

I sort of will use it as a yardstick to the Audi, mostly because it's my every day vehicle and it's comparable in production year, more so than the car that was being fixed.

My Ford Ranger has these driving aids; radar guided cruise control, speed detection in the dash, lane keeping assist.

Additionally in cabin it has sun visors that slide (so you can cover the whole window), Apple CarPlay and a touch screen.

What the Audi A4 doesn't have is the odd thing.

It didn't have a touchscreen. While it does have Apple CarPlay, you control it via a wheel / dial control in the centre console. While the wheel is also a circular D-pad control type sort of thing depending on the menu you have to mostly use it as a wheel to move around rather than a D-pad.

The Audi A4 does have radar guided cruise control…and that's it as far as I could tell. It's also got some sort of radar guided safety system, it kept flashing a red light in the instrument cluster when I got too close to a car in front, which I couldn't work out how to disable so I just ignored it.

It does not have lane keeping assist. But it does have blind spot assist (which my Ranger does not have). It's in the form of a large orange square light on the side of the wing mirrors that gets quickly annoying. The wing mirrors are also a very odd shape, contorting the available space to see stuff in it in odd ways.

The sun visors in the Audi also feel weirdly light and plasticky, and they don't slide, which was surprising, considering how big the doors / window glass is compared to the sun visors.

The whole dash was air vents. It was an interesting design choice, which I'm not sure I liked.

It had a digital instrument cluster, which was fine it's probably something I would get used to if I drove this car, but it looked like it needed some shading or something adding to the dials just to give it some sense of depth and reality. They looked dated in an odd way.

There's a digital instrument cluster in my Ford Ranger and if I was being optimistic I'd say it's practical. It's got an analogue display which is in the middle and a digital display to the right. It's practical, but looked a little dated when I bought it. But functional, and now it's…functional.

Unfortunately in the Audi it looks modern, in a sort of late 2010s sort of way. 

The view interface is fine, it's very smooth, it's just not very….I don't know. It's functional, but sort of stylistically functional, enough thought has been put into it that it most definitely is designed but…it's sort of trying to straddle the unreality and realness and not quite doing it.

The display in my Ranger is functional, but it's not trying to be anything other than a functional gauge (although the digital circular rev counter display in the Ranger is also terrible in a pretend sort of way).

On the instrument stalks there's also some oddness. 

The indicator stalk was very firm, I felt it required too much force to engage. 

Audi also seemed to have eschewed dials/rings on the instrument stalks for switches. Such as on the cruise control stalk, to adjust the radar guided cruise control distance (from the car in front) it's this lever switch that you click up and down. 

On my Ford Ranger it's buttons on the steering wheel. 

And on the windscreen wiper stalk to advance the speed is a switch to be rocked left to right.

These switches feel like you need to brace the stalks when adjusting them.

The two "real" displays on the instrument cluster are temperature and fuel, which are indicated by lights along the side. It's an…interesting choice, that sort of interrupted the clean look of the instrument cluster. But I guess there's some utility to having non-screen-based gauges.

The interior was very ergonomic, with my arm on the centre arm rest the volume knob and other controls were easy to hand. 

I could imagine this being a good car for tedious drives to and from work and other places. 

The centre arm rest also has a wireless charging plate to charge your phone. I used Apple CarPlay to connect my phone rather than messing around with bluetooth to connect to different car.

Which means I didn't experience much of the Audi menu system (aside from discovering the lack of a touchscreen).

On my drive back to the dealer I discovered that the location of the wireless charging plate (in the centre arm rest) did not allow for very good airflow, resulting in my phone overheating just before my arrival. A not great thing considering I needed it to scan in for the COVID QR check-in code upon arrival back at the dealer.

The speakers were really good, and I could hear a subwoofer somewhere in the rear. I heard stuff in some of my music I'd not heard outside of listening on a stereo at home or with good headphones.

On the whole it's a very good...'car'. It was perfectly fine to drive, it's well designed where it needs to be, with some odd quirks. It just didn't have much personality, it'd be a great company car, or as I was using it loan car.

V Pure mark 2 review

New bottle & label design

Recently I bought a bottle of V Pure and noticed they'd changed the design of the bottle. 

Upon tasting it, I realised that's not all they've changed.

This is V Pure mark 2, a new version of V Pure, originally released in mid-late September 2017 (see my review of that here).

It's in a different-sized bottle to the others in the range at 330 ml. 

Flavour wise, it's sweeter than the original V Pure, but not as sweet as V original. 

V Pure mark 2 nutritional information

Looking at the nutritional information of V Pure mark 2 per 100 ml:

  • Sugar 7.9g per 100ml

  • Caffeine 31mg per 100ml

  • Guarana Extract 160mg per 100ml

Which is similar to V Pure mark 1:

  • Sugar 6.4g per 100ml

  • Caffeine 31mg per 100ml

  • Guarana Extract 241mg per 100ml

The difference being the amount of guarana extract which has dropped, while the sugar has risen. 

With V Pure Mark 2, the ingredients list has also increased to 6 ingredients (V Pure Mark 1 had 5 ingredients). 

Ingredients: Apple Juice, Sparkling Water, Lemon Juice, Guarana Seed Extract, Caffeine From Green Coffee Beans, Natural V Flavour.

V Pure mark 2 bottle back - ingredients

The new ingredient over the mark 1 is the "Caffeine From Green Coffee Beans". 

I do wonder if caffeine as a separate ingredient was added to drop the amount of guarana needed in the V Pure Mark 1, in order to get a similar effect. As I would think the guarana would be the priciest portion of the drink's ingredients. 

The bottle is different on the mark 2. The mark 1 bottle was a glass bottle with white stickers on the front / back. The mark 2 bottle is a glass bottle with a plastic wrap around label. It includes a line down one side with makes it easier to rip off. I'm not sure if this would enable better recycling than the paper labels of mark 1. But it means that the label and bottle are much easier to separate. Although I wonder of the recyclability of the plastic label / wrap.

I'd probably buy V Pure mark 2 again. If it was sold in cans in the 275ml configuration in the supermarket then I would definitely. But at the moment it seems V Pure Mark 2 is confined to convenience shops and petrol stations.  

Essence Real Brandy Custard review

I bought this 340ml tub of custard to go with some left over Christmas pudding I got from my grandmother post-Christmas day.

When looking at it in the shop I suspected it would be nice because it only has 4 ingredients. Cream, eggs, caster sugar and brandy.

Ingredients

No thickeners, no stabilisers, no xanthan gum. Nothing like that. Just ingredients that were I making custard for myself, this is what I would use.

This custard is delicious. It is so silky, so smooth, so...wonderfully made.
The brandy isn't overpowering either. I've bought some custards in the past which purport to be "brandy custard" but they are overwhelming in their brandy flavour.
Not this, there is that hint, the tantalising delicious hint of brandy, enough to know it's present without being shouted at.
You could, were you inclined to just eat this custard on its own.
I did...just to taste it before I put it on my Christmas pudding.
And the I had another spoonful.
And the I had it with my Christmas pudding.
I certainly didn't just 'drizzle' it over my pudding which is what the serving suggestion says, I had a bit more than a simple drizzle.

I looked on their website, and it seems they only make it for December, but their vanilla bean custard is available all year round. So I'll have to think of a reason I need to buy that one to give it a try.

Barker's Premium Cordial review

Around about a year ago now I emailed Barker's of New Zealand about the availability of their Blackcurrant cordial. I am something of a fan of blackcurrant cordial and was dismayed to find that it was (at that time) no longer available in Coles.

They replied back and said that there would be more in the new year of 2017, but to tie me over they wanted to send me a sample box of three of their cordials and that I should review them.

The box arrived a few weeks later much to my surprise there were three full bottles of cordial.

I opened one (the blackcurrant) and tried the other and intended to write a review.
But things got in the way and now I realised that they're about to pass their best before dates so I thought I had better write something about them.

Barker's Squeezed Blackcurrants

I quite like blackcurrant cordial, I grew up drinking Ribena.
Latterly I have been trying to cut back my soft drink intake (I'm also not much of an alcohol drinker), first it was cutting cutting back the coke and instead lemonade, then got rid of that for a Soda Stream and their flavour liquid stuff.
Then early in 2017 I cut that out and went to other things, mostly Barker's Squeezed Blackcurrant cordial.
I had, before finding Barker's tried all the others that are available in Australian supermarkets; Ribena, Cascade Blackcurrant cordial, Coles Brand Blackcurrant and Bickfords' Blackcurrant cordial.
Ribena, while I had enjoyed it for a long time, but had found it a little too sweet.
I had switched to Cascade's blackcurrant cordial for a time, and for a long time that was my go-to blackcurrant cordial, it wasn't as sweet as Ribena and it was Australian made. But then when Cascade was sold to Coke, something in the recipe was changed and it became more sweet than it had been and I started looking for another blackcurrant cordial.

Then I found Barker's, which tastes like blackcurrants. Which is as it should be for a blackcurrant cordial, but it's surprisingly hard to find one that isn't overpoweringly sweet.

Barker's isn't as sweet as the other blackcurrant cordials and it genuinely tastes like blackcurrants; with their tart earthiness coming through in the drink.

I drink the Barker's Squeezed Blackcurrants practically every day, it's my go to cool drink.
In the winter, later at night if I want a hot drink and don't want a cup of tea, a little bit of Barker's Squeezed Blackcurrants in a mug with some hot water makes a great late evening drink. Making it with hot water, rather than cold brings out flavours in it that you scarcely notice when you make it with cold water.

The photo is not of that free bottle they sent me, that's one of about 10 bottles that I have in the cupboard, just so I don't run out of it.

Barker's Redcurrant with Cranberry & Pomegranate

This was the other cordial I tried when I first got that box of three free bottles a year ago, and I tried it a couple of times and it's sat in the fridge until now, when I tipped it out as it had just about passed its best before date.

The smell of it, didn't inspire confidence, it had something of an air of 'hand washing liquid'.

The taste wasn't amazing. It was dominated by the cranberry, the red currants gave a sharp tartness to the flavour. It I had to say where the pomegranate flavour was it was probably in the aftertaste of the cordial.

Barker's Lemon with Lime Cucumber & Mint

This is less bad than the cranberry cordial. It again is mostly dominated by the lemon and lime. Again the finish sort of has the vague hint of cucumber, I'm not sure the mint is really present.
If the mint is present it's more for a sort of lingering coolness than really defined 'mintiness'. It's certainly a more adult sort of flavour, but I think it'd be more interesting as an additive to a cocktail or even a mocktail rather than being a flavour on its own.

In summing up I wholly recommend Barker's Squeezed Blackcurrants - Premium Crafted Cordial.
It is a little more expensive than the likes of Ribena, because it's a premium product. It comes in a glass bottle, the Barker's logo embossed on the bottle. The label even has a feel of having thought and time considered upon it, it's not a plastic label like some cordial.
I also think that blackcurrant it an under appreciated flavour, its tartness, its...sharp flavour is one that seldom turns up in drinks. Of the non-alcoholic drinks that are available, many, plenty are *sweet* but few are more complex than that. Certainly you can select something citrus-based, which will deliver a sharp tart hit of flavour without descending into overt sweetness (especially something like grapefruit juice). Outside of the citrus-based drinks are only a few 'other fruit' based cordials or drinks of similar ilk. Blackcurrant fills this space very well, being a flavour that is not present in a lot of foods sold in Australia, but is still familiar and welcoming.

Update 2019: Coles now no longer sell Barker’s, but you (and I do) buy direct from their Australian website if in Australia.

Update 2023: It now appears Barker’s Australian website stocks their cordials under two different headings. “Premium Mixers”; Blood Orange, Lime & Bitters. NZ Apple & Elderflower. Pink Grapefruit & Lemon. Lemon, Lime, Cucumber & Mind. And “Classic Fruit syrups”: NZ Blackcurrants. Lite Lime & Barley. Orange & Barley with Passionfruit.

V Pure mark 1 review

This is a review of V Pure mark 1, released in 2017, for the new version released 2019 see my review here.

An artisanal energy drink.

V Pure contains 5 natural ingredients, so the neck of the bottle says.

Apple Juice, Sparkling Water, Lemon Juice, Guarana Extract, Natural V Flavour

What the "Natural V Flavour" is isn't exactly explained. Given that it's got a 'wheat derivatives' notice on the bottle one might presume that the "Natural V Flavour" has something derived from wheat within it.

V Pure is pretty good. It's not as sweet as regular V, my go-to energy drink of choice.

The V Pure bottle is the same volume as the slightly larger V cans you can buy in the supermarket. That is the 275ml cans. These are marginally larger than the 250ml but obviously not as much volume as the 500ml 'double sized' cans. I find the 500ml cans too much in one sitting. While I might, if I'm out and about throughout the day consume 2 cans of V, I wouldn't want to all at once.

Regarding the sugar content the lack of it is noticeable, though not unpleasantly so, there's certainly a more tart flavour that comes from the lack of sugar. V Pure per 275ml serving has 17.7 grams of sugar while regular V per 275ml serving has 29.2 grams of sugar.

Will I buy V Pure again? Probably, it is less sweet and more interestingly flavoured. But it probably won't replace the regular V for me, in part because it is more expensive than regular V, but also because sometimes I'm looking for that hit of sweet tartness that V brings.

Fast & Furious 6 review

Hands down one of the silliest movies I’ve seen in a while.
And Battleship is one of my favourite movies.
Fast & Furious 6 was very silly, so much so it pushed suspension of disbelief to breaking point and beyond.

The thing about Battleship is that it knows it’s a silly movie, it’s a movie based on a board game.
It’s got aliens in it, there’s ships, most of them aren’t battleships (spoiler; there’s only one ‘battleship’ in the movie Battleship), the rest of the ships in Battleship are destroyers or other sorts of vessels.
Actually all this information is given in quite a simple way with a bit of footage and a short bit of dialogue so you understand the difference between a destroyer and a battleship. It doesn’t however impart the difference between a boat and a ship. But generally you can put a boat on a ship but you can’t put a ship on a boat.

Returning to the topic for a moment....
I watched this on blu-ray, and used the fast forward button more than a few times, it was the only way to get through this movie, (even my favourite movie Battleship I usually skip through the soccer scene at the start).

Fast & Furious 6 carries so much baggage from the previous films that its title/opening credits sequence serves as a “Previously on” for the movie.
Small mercies at least it wasn’t a character having a flashback sequence of all the salient events of the previous movies, that would have been worse, even more so if it included a voice over.

Fast & Furious 6 takes itself too seriously and it’s a film that shouldn’t be serious it should be a movie that knows it’s a bit silly, or at least know that what they’re up to is at least a bit silly. Aside from one mention of ‘James Bond shit’ there’s no acknowledgement that the events within the movie are practically impossible and outside the bounds of ‘normal’.

The setting for most of Fast & Furious 6 was London.
Maybe they were running out of interesting locations to shoot. My first thought was that there was some sort of money deal that meant they could shoot there. But skipping through the Wikipedia article for Fast & Furious 6 there doesn’t seem to be the word “concession” used anywhere in the article. “Tax” is used once in relation to them shooting in the Canary Islands who gave a tax rebate of 38%.

The early ‘Fast and Furious’ movies were a fun mix of fast cars, soundtrack and vaguely good looking people doing stuff in a vaguely real way. This movie just smashes a lot of the suspension of disbelief out of the way. It’s definitely not helped by the way it treats physics. Optimistically I would say that physics are treated in a cartoon fashion. But it’s the way they play it so very straight whenever they ignore the laws of physics. There are jumps and catches mid air and then when they land it’s against a car’s windscreen or something.
I probably would have had less problem with it if they had some of the characters, after having done this do the movie-style thing of coughing up or spitting out some blood. Giving you some vague indication that they were hurt rather than just shrugging.

With Fast & Furious 6 I just couldn’t help while watching the scenes in London, just thinking, that The Italian Job, the original 1969 one not the really quite awful other film from 2003 also of the same name, that was the best car heist film. It’s got everything in it, some great quotable dialogue, some great uses of cars. Iconic cars at that; Minis.

Also, I never really noticed how god-y Fast and Furious 6 is. Maybe I never really noticed it in the previous films, but there’s a fair amount of god-related stuff in the films which could have been avoided, so it was obviously a deliberate choice to have them in there.

Finally. I didn’t like any of the characters in this film.
Some like Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) playing Hobbs I couldn’t work out why he was in the movie. I seem to recall he was in the last one. Johnson is cartoon like in his presence on screen, and that’a against Vin Diesel who is also almost cartoon like. Both are buffed up, except Johnson is too much, just him being in a scene throws out any believability.

Going back to Battleship, with its silliness, basic plot and lots of explosions and big soundtrack with AC/DC on it, it makes you understand and like the characters very quickly.
It’s quite economical with how it establishes everything (even if there’s a soccer match at the start which wastes about 10 minutes of the movie). Most of the characters in Battleship are likeable, there’s moderately interesting and you kinda care about them.
I didn’t really care about any of the characters in this movie, the biggest emotive response I had to the characters was fining them irritating.

Double finally, as all movies seem to have a post-credits sequence then I’ll write a final paragraph after ‘finally’. Things that make little sense; Paul Walker’s character flying back from London to the US to be locked jail up to find out information that could probably have come to the characters with some hand waving and tech-related sort of scenes in London. Location choices; RAF Bentwaters standing in for NATO base in Lusitania, Spain. I recognised this one because it’s been used on Top Gear. It’s also only shown on an overcast day and at night. If it weren’t for the onscreen graphics you wouldn’t know where it was (ok, fine there was dialogue indicating that the characters were going to Spain). That overcast day could and should have been either re-shot on a sunnier day or had the sky repainted to make it look sunnier. There’s enough movie short hand that exist that says Spain = sunny. Not overcast. Even in a moody military scene involving NATO Spain it should have been sunny, otherwise it could have been anywhere.

Girt - The Unauthorised History of Australia review

“Australia owes its existence to tea, tax evasion, criminals and cannabis. With these four sturdy pillars as its foundation, what could possibly go wrong?”Girt - The Unauthorised History of Australia By David Hunt, pg.96

This book grabbed my attention because of its title Girt. As the name of this blog shows it’s a word a rather like and think should be used more often. Surrounded is such a long word and in many (fine a few) situations girt could be used. Of course, then to anyone outside of Australia you’d need to explain to them what “girt” means, but language should be used, it’s in the Australian anthem and should be used in more places than just “Advance Australia Fair”.

I was quite surprised by Girt, by its humour and what I learnt from it.
In short it makes early Australian history funny and interesting via the characters of history.

The tone of Girt is relatively light and the footnotes make it slightly comedic. The footnotes that are on almost every page are a sort of commentary of the text itself.

Girt is also fully indexed, which was something of a surprise that it was when I reached the end. So I imagine that university students when needing something to liven up an essay about Australian history can turn to Girt to fill up their reference list.

Girt was incredibly easy to read, with each chapter easily flowing into the next and everything told in vivid and amusing detail.
From Girt I have learnt the etymology of the word ‘grog’, who Trim was and that Bligh was a bastard who no one liked.

There are excerpts from letters throughout the book that help further illustrate the people that it covers and illuminate their thoughts and psychology a bit more than the writer’s commentary provides.

Some of the history in Girt I recognised, having learnt it in the long since past history lessons in primary and high school, but Girt really brought to life the characters of Australia’s history. Whilst reading Girt I felt more like I knew the men (and occasionally women) of history that fill the book (and history) and that should anyone mention Macarthur, Bligh, Major Ross, Bass and Flinders or Macquarie something that I’ve read in Girt will be conjured in my memory.

I hope that David Hunt has plans afoot for a second volume continuing to look at Australia’s history, continuing on from where Girt finishes.

V Not Orange

Not awful I think is my initial impression of V’s newest energy drink flavour.

It sort of reminds me of Berocca with all the gritty and other horrible bits taken out.
It is orange in the vaguest sense of the flavour of orange. Though orange specifics wise it’s probably closer to Sunkist or Fanta than it is to the spherical fruit that commonly grows on a tree in a grove.

There’s a flavour which isn’t passionfruit, isn’t even Passiona, but has a similar tang of...something to it, it’s not quite acidy, but it’s similar to those flavours.

I quite like V, the original normal bright green can / bottle flavour. I much prefer it to Red Bull and other energy drinks and rather like its strong sharpness.

V Not Orange is quite inoffensive, it’s not as acidy as V’s regular flavour and it’s not as outright awful as V Black (which was as though they’d got some coffee and mixed it with regular V; result; horrible).
V Not Orange seems to be aiming for anyone who doesn’t like the acidity of V regular. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing though. One of the defining points of energy drinks is their fairly sharp flavours. With Not Orange it’s more like Sunkist that’s had some extra something put into it, or Berocca that’s had sugar added.

Would I buy it again?
Maybe. I only bought it today because Safeway had it on special and there were only the huge cans of regular V.
It’s not that bad flavour wise, but it’s kinda as though they’ve decided to create a flavour that is less acid and more sweet than regular V.

Favourite movie of 2012 - Battleship

Battleship is flawed, relatively flawed, but still a great movie.

It’s a great action movie with a great huge scoop of science fiction, and it’s fairly shamelessly  just that.

That’s what makes it great and a re-watchable movie.

There is not a lot of drama or anything other than action in this movie, there’s a little bit of humour here and there.

It should be noted that this movie includes in its credits “Based on the Hasbro board game Battleship”.
If you go into this movie knowing this and expecting not too much from the movie it’s actually really enjoyable.

It looks amazing, on Blu-ray especially it looks wonderful, the colours are rich and intense, the setting of Hawaii and the sea around it make for some really intense visuals.
Inside the ships everything is still intense, yet muted.

Sound wise this is a great film to watch in a surround sound setup, it gives all 5 speakers a good work out and the sub-woofer also is given a good rumble throughout the action sequences.
But even with a set of stereo speakers, or even just a pair of headphones it’s full of intense sound that really helps to make this movie great.

But it’s not just action and explosions, there’s some good tactical scenes of naval warfare knowledge at work. It is quite fortunate that the aliens are not a “shoot first ask questions later” sort of species but follow a fairly easy to understand war laws or something that means you basically have to be aggressive towards them before they attack you.

Which means for a action science fiction film the civilian deaths in this movie are actually quite low. The only people who I think would die is a result of aliens taking out infrastructure.

Characters wise they’re all good though there’s no real character development outside of the first 20 minutes or so.

On that 20 minutes, it basically sets up Taylor Kitsch as one of the main characters Alex Hopper as a risk taker and youthful, they make sure he’s seen almost naked and shirtless within the first 10 minutes. His brother is Stone Hopper played by Alexander Skarsgård which is an interesting choice. Skarsgård is perhaps best known for playing Eric Northman in True Blood, or if you’re only into war-based drama then he played Brad Colbert in the excellent Generation Kill.
Within that 20 minutes is a soccer game, which seems present to bulk out the film and to cement the character of Alex Hopper as someone who despite joining the Navy is still a risk taker and hot head.
The other interesting casting choice of note is Rihanna, she plays Cora Raikes, whose name I didn’t really notice in the film, so that info comes from Wikipedia. She’s a Gunner's Mate Second Class (GM2), crew mate and a weapons specialist. Battleship appears to be her only acting role so far. I found her pretty convincing her character gets to shoot at aliens, get beaten up by aliens and fire weapons on Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer and also on an actual battleship, an Iowa-class battleship.

Yes, on that, only one genuine battleship appears in the film, though this is explained quickly and briefly at the start as to why the navy doesn’t have battleships much anymore.

Now, back to the flaws. It is those that make the movie, once you can acknowledge these flaws and move on or fast forward through them it becomes a great movie. Perfect movies are fairly hard to find, but it’s the imperfections that make you truly enjoy a movie because you know there’s some parts that aren’t any good that are a bit ropey. But you’ll still sit down and watch it because the rest is great and those ropey parts aren’t really that bad in perspective.

Iron Sky

Went to see Iron Sky the other day. It’s a movie I’ve been waiting some time to see, and it didn’t disappoint. Though I can see why it wouldn’t work for some people.

It’s advertised on their website as a “dark science fiction comedy”, and it is, though the dark part comes in at some very odd points.

Basically the ideas is Nazis went to the dark side of the moon in 1945 and now they’re back!

Iron Sky is a Finland - German - Australian co-production. In the history of cinema that combination of countries is not historically one that you see paired together.
At the start of the movie it’s evident that they went around to a lot of different funding bodies to get funding for this movie. Screen Queensland being one of them, but there were at least 6 different bodies/companies/people with logos at the start of the movie.
The movie was made on a budget of €7,500,000. 7.5 million Euros that’s $9.68 AUD, $9.56 USD and £5.05 GBP. In comparison a Michael Bay big explosions with lots of CGI film like Transformers cost $150 million USD. The movie based on a boardgame Battleship cost $209 million USD. A lower budget science fiction film like Serenity was $39 million USD, and finally a movie which shares similar production techniques (use of virtual sets and CGI) Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow cost $70 million USD.

It wasn’t just various funding bodies putting in money, this movie was also crowd funded to the tune of approximately €900,000, which makes this movie one of a handful of “crowdsourced” feature films.

Spoilers ahead now as I’m going to talk about the movie’s guts a bit.

I’ve read some reviews that say they don’t think this is a comedy / don’t think it’s funny.
I thought it was humorous and funny in places. I’m not really a big comedy movie sort of person, but I do like comedy and if the comedy’s really funny I’ll laugh out loud and occasionally snort because I’m laughing so hard (one comedian I think Adam Hills...or maybe Wil Anderson said that if you’re laughing that hard it means they’re really doing their job to make you laugh so much you have no dignity and snort...or something, I don’t really care, everyone laughs differently).

Maybe a crowd dynamic would have made me laugh more, you get cues from a crowd when to laugh. Did I forget to mention I saw it in a cinema with no one else in there with me, I had a whole cinema to myself. And yet Hoyts still gave me an allocated seat.

I have seen Star Wreck: In the Pirkining the previous work that many of the guys (the Finnish contingent) worked on prior to this film. The humour that is in that film is present in Iron Sky. The thing is it’s not American humour, it’s not British humour and it’s not Australian humour, nor is it German humour (probably) It’s Finnish humour. Not that I claim to be any expert on Finnish humour (nor German humour). I guess I recognise the similarities between Star Wreck and Iron Sky in how the comedy is working.

It’s quite odd, the humour is sometimes not really there. But sometimes is. It’s a biting, mocking humour against the United States, but there’s something else to it.

Broadly Iron Sky is set in the United States, on the moon and in space.

The President of the United States is played by Stephanie Paul playing a Sarah Palin-esque sort of President.
If this were a US-produced and written movie this aspect might exist, but it would have been played a lot more for its comedic and mocking style. But instead Paul drifts between playing it straight and playing it for comedy. It’s an odd mix of styles in a movie which is sort of comedy and sort of something else and sort of drifts between the two.

It’s comedy, but almost played straight most of the time but then occasionally it’s actual comedy.

The CGI in Star Wreck was amazing (Star Wreck pitted Star Trek-esque ships against Babylon 5-esque ships or actual Star Trek and Babylon 5 ships against one another depending on whether you’re watching the Imperial Edition or the original edition) and on this it’s no less amazing. There’s an excellent textual quality to all the CGI models used, all of the Nazis ships have a gritty iron sort of texture to them, they look rough and wrought.

There are also, as there was in Star Wreck a large amount of virtual sets or chroma-keyed sets, also known as blue/green screen sets. This is what Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow also used to create all of their world in the move. But in Iron Sky there’s also a fair amount of physical sets as well, with everything coming together seamlessly.

The actual use of virtual sets are only really noticeable on occasion and it’s usually because it’s taking up so much of the screen and moving that you notice it’s not real because of all the movement...meaning it has to be not real. Also some scenes where there is a real set that the actors are standing on and then the scenery around them is all CGI then it becomes somewhat noticeable. But it doesn’t detract from the movie, it just means that on occasion some of the backgrounds and other sets have a different textual quality to others.

Language is something I have to mention, it was glorious to have the Nazis all speak German. There were no people speaking English with faux-German accents, everyone who spoke German spoke German and then there were subtitles on screen. It just added that extra reality to this film. I think if they were speaking English with German accents it might have pushed the comedy in this over into farce or silly comedy.

Julia Dietze who plays Renate Richter in the film has said in an interview this is a movie that couldn’t have been made by Germans. I also think this is a movie that couldn’t have been made by Americans. For the quirky humour and for the fact that one of the main characters James Washington, who’s a black guy, he spends around 3/4 of the film in white face. Yep. The Nazis make a black guy white, it’s extremely weird. It’s made quite weird in the way the Nazis even the sympathetic one Renate Richter who just say; ‘yep okay that’s good we made you white, you should be happy’. And all of this is played straight, it’s comedic but in a dark comedy sort of way.

There are a lot of epic space battles in this movie. There is even an Australian space ship! Which I’m happy about.
Big epic space ship battles are not something that’s turned up in movies a lot of late, mostly because there haven’t been a lot of big science fiction films Star Trek the 2009 reboot movie had a few. But not too many have had small ships against big ships and little ships against medium sized ships.
It’s more been the realms of TV shows; like Battlestar Galactica and various Stargate series; SG1, Atlantis and Universe.

Costumes wise hats off to Peta Sergeant for being able to wear confidently the different costumes of her character Vivian Wagner, and also to the costume designer Jake Collier for creating them. These costumes veer occasionally into camp, but she’s got the sort of style that would make Servalan (from Blake’s 7) envious. It’s even lampshaded more than once.

Speaking of lampshading and troping, there are several throughout the film and you can go to the TV Tropes page to browse through them. But the reference that particularly caught my eye in the movie was there was a Downfall reference in the movie, for a few moments I couldn’t work out where I’d seen the scene before, and it was only as it played out, the editing matches the Downfall parody videos exactly.

Now to the dark part of the film which ends on a pretty dark end. There’s explosions and everything like that. But at the end, with the Nazis (on the moon) having been bombed into oblivion, the Earth’s greatest powers (in Earth and in space) turn on one another to try and grab the Helium-3 resources on the moon. This doesn’t end in a humorous way, it’s a very sombre and again odd way to end the film, yet it’s weirdly fitting.