Beachliness Part 1: Jervis Bay Straya

My critics have brought to my attention that Laura in Singapore does not provide enough coverage of beaches. This is not surprising, as we're not really big beach people. But I do aim to please!

Upon extensive consideration, I am hereby launching the Laura in Singapore 7-point Beachliness scale!

We were repeatedly educated, mostly by strangers, on the whiteness of the Straya beaches near us, particularly Hyams beach (pronunciation varies: Strayans seem less sure of this). Here is a pamphlet for colour reference.

Apparently, white sand is good, but I'm uncomfortable that this seems unfair to brown or darker-skinned sand. I was a bigger fan of this multi-coloured mosaic of shell sand. See what I did there?

The second point on the LiS Beachliness scale is boatiness. Here, you can see an extensive view, along with a navy boat. Reasonable boatiness.

Here, however, we saw a real actual submarine. This is clearly full boatiness points.

We hiked longerfars to see a very old boat.

This beach was cold for Strayaland, but shipwrecks get bonus boatiness points. No one was harmed in the making of this shipwreck, which is the S.S. Merimbulla from 1909, built in Scotland.

The third measure is prettiness. While clearly a subjective measure, I'm the only judge. Here is a good one.

The fourth measure is desertedness; people are not desirable on a beach. Bonus points for completely difficult to reach.

The fifth measure is wildlife, which is a more core LiS value. Straya had a few good rockpool creatures.

The sixth measure is the availability of activities, which can include anything from hunting for treasure, to sportliness. For Straya, I will count rock-hopping and dolphin watching, especially since we saw dolphins twice. Struggled a bit with sun protection, mind you.

The seventh and final beachliness measure is availability of cocktails. Here is where Straya's beaches fell short. Yes, I realize some measures can be paradoxical, like many things in life. No cocktails here:

Jervis Bay Straya Beachliness Review

Sandiness: 1

Boatiness: 1.5 (submarine/shipwreck bonus)

Prettiness: 1

Destertedness: 1

Wildlife: 1

Availability of activities: 1

Availability of cocktails: 0

Total: 6.5/7

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Straya Foods

In Straya, we went to Pelican land.

Strayans think pelicans are boring, but they're actually really cool, and we saw one turn it's flappy beak-pouch inside out while preening.

The pelicans showed us the way to the oysters, fresh from the oyster farm. They were so good that we went back for more. There were escapee oysters all over the beach, which does not make for good swimming.

We tasted the wines, which is always a bit silly, since obviously they taste good, being wines. We also tasted the Ethiopian food. And by tasted, I mean ate it all before breathing, since we love it so.

In the land of Straya, there are no Quakers, so the oats were made by multiple uncles called Toby.

At first, I was concerned with this image of one of the Uncle Tobys, but I realized it was just his spouse helping him to sober up and pull himself together before marketing the oats.

Of course, you can eat the 'Roo, but it's gamey, so you don't really want to.

Then we explored the land of Strayan candy. The secret of the Caramilk is that it has an imposter! Clearly inferior to the real Caramilk. (Turns out there are actually 3 separate bars for 3 different countries, and that Cadbury is uncreative on names or cheap on trademarks.

Here are the more interesting local delicacies. Violet crumble is neither violet nor particularly crumbly. The Curlywurly is a half sized chocolate bar sold for the same price, the Chokito involves a suspicious amount of puffed rice, and the Caramello Koala is just what you give whiny children.

Looking for sexism and the glorification of the crime underworld in your candy? Try Big boss candy sticks. Minimal flavour and bad fashion.

The re-emergence of nerds is both surprising and delightful. Wait, that sounded sarcastic, yet I'm very serious about nerds. Delicious.

I'm less enthused about Wallaby poo bites.

And the worst candy in Strayaland was Yoghurty. Even the mascot isn't worried you'll want to eat these things.

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Why aren't people more excited about Spear Lilies?

The land of Straya has unusual landscapes.

This is our best selfie. You may spot an animal if you look carefully.The xanthorrhoea, which sounds like an uncomfortable infection, is the grass tree, which has exceedingly pleasing symmetry. However, if you touch it, which is hard to resist, it will try to cut you. It's known for its ability to resist fires and droughts.

Got dirty bottles? The bottlebrush plant's flowers want to help. They turn into a seedy pinecone looking things after a while.

Ah, zen-ful symmetry.

Gum tree seed pod, which is in fact not Strayan, I think, despite them having gum tree songs.

This plant is mired in mystery, since the plantdentification app says it's aquatic, but we were decidedly on land.

Here's a vermillion waxcap mushroom, which knows it's cute.

But my absolute favourite Strayan plant is this one, taller than traffic lights. They should put it on their coat of arms, except the Emu and Kangaroo would be dwarfed.

Thank you to Pat for helping me to identify the giant spear lily (gymea lily), whose rosette can grow up the 5m in height, and its leaves 3m. Look at that rosette action!

These plants gave us the idea that Straya should grow the similar-looking agave in their arid lands to make tequilla-like hipster agave spirit. But then we found out that they already do.

Given our lack of plant knowledge, we went back to the city.

Here, they had fancy drinking fountains with doggie spouts. Very nice, but not suited for cold climates.

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The Land of the Chiko Roll

We went to an exotic different country where they have strange creatures!

The humans wear their masks quite differently here. It seems to give this one shapely legs.

Speaking of shapely, did you know that wombats have square poos? We've still never seen either wombat nor the poo.

In this land, they have short pickup trucks called utes.

Here's one on the road, for scale.

The utes line up nicely to the signs warning of flooding, which have confusing height and grammar. The locals failed to explain this to me, and tired of my questions.

The locals here do not like it if you call their world upside down, however, they install their dryers upside down, unvented, and don't think that's funny.

We learnt more about traditional Australian breakfast foods. This is a bacon and egg roll, which is neither an eggroll, nor particularly round. You have to eat it with BBQ sauce.

These exotic people love their unusually named coffees, but I prefer toasted banana bread. It's cake that you toast with butter and eat for breakfast!

If it all feels too healthy, you can pour up to 2L of custard onto it. The locals also weren't too sure what you're supposed to pour custard onto, which made me worried about their cultural knowledge.

In this land, chicken is a flavour that you can see.

Our most amazing lesson was about the chiko roll. The chiko roll is like a deep-friend eggroll snack, that you eat with ketchup. But, it has no chicken in it! It is basically full of beef and cabbage mush, not unlike a Texas hash. Strange, yet easy to digest, I guess.

Many things here are strange, but the local cat loved Barry as much as the cats on our island do.

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