Wondering at the state of Australian retail

The above picture notwithstanding, the whole Australian retail sector, from farm to fridge, sucks big time. As I recently said.

I dare you to look at the above picture of Mrs Speech and Big W's grand discount and not laugh, snort, guffaw or chortle. Okay, you can chortle a little.


An Australian-USA Thanksgiving, with some New Zealand thrown in, too

Mrs Speech and I know a lovely lady from Colorado. There's another woman who goes to church with them, who is from Indiana.

They got together and nefariously planned a pro-USA demonstration Thanksgiving celebration for Australian family members and friends. And a little bit for them too I guess.

There was also a very nice, elderly New Zealand couple.

I brought along some HD NFL to watch (Packers! Lions! Friday night football!) and we had turkey, mash, sweet potato, glazed carrots, green bean casserole, olives, boiled eggs, fresh bread, and other stuff.

We had soft drink too. Mrs Speech didn't have much of that because I kept stealing hers.

It was topped off by pumpkin pie, which is something that totally needs to catch on over here in Australia. Pumpkin pie is awesome, especially with whipped cream.

Afterward we sung some songs related to the states of Indiana, Michigan and Colorado, and watched some Youtube clips of Americana-type songs. Everyone had a good time and was satisfied.


Baking ourselves in a mid-morning Australian summer

A few weeks back I bought a new basketball from Rebel Sport. We had been walking a bit, again and we had passed the basketball courts at the high school a couple times.

They're absolutely beautiful. They had been resurfaced in the late nineties but wear and tear did them in a bit. That and the roots from the monster tree next to the court, which pushed up the far court like localised seismic activity; little rift valleys which meant you couldn't even dribble.

But they done been resurfaced and new hoops and backboards. So I dragged Mrs Speech over there Sunday mid-morning. Big mistake. We were there maybe twenty minutes before the heat got us. It was like being in an oven. The heat bounced off the court and sizzled us. We had no SPF or hats on. We had a bit of a walk home and took some pics of a babbling brook (DON'T DRINK THE WATER!!) and the turkey which scratches around the place.

He's built up a massive cratered nest thing. Mrs Speech wants to fatten him up so we can, y'know, Christmas...


Pricing the gobble-gobbles

Speaking of which, we were at the mall yesterday mailing off Jesse Tree Ornaments. We stopped at the supermarket yesterday and had a squiz at turkeys for Christmas.

If you're American, you have to know this one thing: we don't eat much turkey here. We have it at Christmas, wherein they might sell a few million, but outside that, not really. In fact, turkey is so synonymous with Christmas, that it would feel weird to eat it outside of Christmas day, unless you're having a turkey sandwich. But at $32.99/kg sliced that's pretty steep for most people.

Put in perspective, you Americans probably eat more turkey on one thanksgiving than we would in fifty years total.

Anyway, so we found a #34 turkey at the supermarket. That's 3.4kg/7½ pounds. It was thirty bucks. Down to twenty, it was.

My guess is closer to Christmas it will come down, and we might get something that size for ten to fifteen. That would be nice.

Couple interesting walks lately...well, interesting for the kind of stuff we've come along.

Our wee little strolls have lately taken us along the bikeway which cuts through the bushland near our house. They've been doing some renovations to it lately, including what you see to the right there.

Beyond the underpass which dips beneath Mount Gravatt-Capalaba Road, they basically closed the whole thing off. Of course I continued and dragged Mrs Speech over a metal fence in what is sure to be a violation of some council ordinance or other.

Mostly it's just a lot of orange temporary fencing to keep people from writing BAZ HERE '88 or something along those anti-social lines, in the wet concrete.

A few days back we came across a grisly mystery: a dead snake. And not just dead but mutilated! Cool. Totally ripped up in the middle with ants carrying what's left of its insides back to their nests.

It's a Sherlock Holmes because unless a bird of prey decided to have a go at the slithery thing on the ground, the only thing that really could have chopped it was a lawnmower. A ride-on one. And the grass in that area had been freshly-mowed. But snakes are skittish and it would have heard that thing coming a mile away and wriggled off to eat a mouse.

The game is afoot. Well, maybe not. Snake's gone now.

Saw another scrub turkey the other day. There's a Uniting Church which we sometimes cut through to get home, and they have a bit of undeveloped land in suburbia with some trees and a turkey's decided he'll make a home there, I suppose. It's always fun to see something that prominent running around suburbia.

However, not all animal experiences are fun. The other day a bug decided to fly right in Mrs Speech's eye as we walked along bikeways between Broadwater and Cresthaven Parks.

It was the size of a tennis ball. Mrs speech actually had me take a picture of the thing - for posterity I tells ya! Where can I get it framed! - so she could see where it was. She won't let me post it even though it's cool because she's holding her lower eyelid down like a zombie kid or something.

We used a tissue to get it out and were very thankful.

The days end later in Brisbane now, seeing as it's late spring (yay! summer!) and even though the other day we set off late we came home at just the right time. A Brisbane sunset is a pretty amazing thing, especially in the warmer months when the blues melt into picturesque purples and greens before sliding past the horizon. Nice to look at - even with the neon signs.

In what has to be classified as good timing following my recent post on poor customer service, today has brought us a little addendum to add.

We bought a package online the other day. Tracked it online. It eventually was delivered to our local post office. Because I couldn't get to the phone in time to let the truck through our front gate. A small hassle, nothing major.

I phone Mrs Speech who was out at the time, and ask her to pick it up.

She wanders in and is given the full double-barrel treatment by Sandy, one half of the couple who works there. No, you have to have the card we left in your mailbox. No, you have to have ID. No, you have to have evidence you live at that address. She gives Mrs Speech the full patronising tone.

So Mrs Speech calls me and lets me know. I call the post office and get Sandy.

"Hi, can I speak to Ian please." Ian's the other half.

"Who's calling?" Total pleasantness.

"Just a customer."

"No, WHO'S CALLING." Alright, now a little less pleasant.

Ian gives me the full run down. Their procedures changed two months ago, he says. He can't account for why we went in last week on one of our walks and he gave Mrs Speech a package without asking for any form of ID whatsoever. This is how it always has been. Walk in, walk out, no ID? No hassles.

No longer.


So I go in myself. Ian starts to give me the run down. Told him I don't care and that I'm just there for my package. Ian goes the whole childish bit.

"Alright, if that's going to be your attitude."

Starts calling me sir. You hurt my feelings. Now watch, as I put some artificial space between us! Mumbles something about avoiding future mix-ups.

Yeah, you can avoid future mix-ups by not treating us badly. That's how you can avoid future mix-ups. Dilettante.

Anyway, I got my package and they don't got my business again. It's a shame with the massive centralisation of services like the mail, that a local outlet wouldn't try their hardest to keep their customers.

That's what you get, sometimes.

Yesterday Mrs Speech and I went for our longest walk yet.

It took us the length of the Bulimba Creek bikeway, down Wecker road (the boring road), up an horrific hill that could have doubled as the downhill slalom for the Winter Olympics, and then basically through Mansfield and Wishart till we got home after 6:30. We left around 4:30.

And to our delight, we had not one but two brushes with scrub turkeys.

The first one was behind Broadwater Park. It was manoeuvred into us by another family which approached it from the northeast. Scrub turkeys are extremely skittish (maybe 'cause they know cranberry sauce goes so well with them) and they dodge humans before you can get anywhere near them.

This one though, ambled hastily down the path to Mrs Speech and I, desperate to escape the clutches of the family stampeding through the bush. It came within a couple metres of us as I urged Mrs Speech in hushed tones to not move. It headed off into the undergrowth.

The second one was scrounging for food near a temporary fence erected around some improvements to the path, being done near a bridge over the creek, a little way down. It scattered quickly down the gully. The video is not nearly as compelling. Our phone camera is a scrappy affair that needs to be upgraded smartly. It does however take nice pictures of angels.

We met a guy on our walk who we recognised from a couple weeks back. The first time we saw him, on the bikeway, he asked me if there was something further down to be concerned with. He had seen me waving my hands around like a crazy guy and wanted to know what to look out for. It was just a spider web.

We said hi to him and moved on.

On Newnham road, we had an interesting experience. A cop car did a u-turn right into our section of the pavement, tires squealing in high-pitched stress not five metres from us.

Seemed totally unnecessary given that they didn't light up the siren or anything. There's a donut joke to be made somewhere but I shan't.

We arrived back after dark to find the NRL Grand Final still on, so that was nice. I like me some football. Except when a guy's ear gets chewed. That's not fun.

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Mrs Speech is linking this blog post up with Covered in Grace's Monday Meet Up!



And, reminding you to go enter her fabric giveaway which ends October 3, 2012 EST and is open worldwide.

So we went for another walk today.

It was mid-afternoon and the BOM had predicted rain and possible storms. I checked the radar, and saw a big patch of yellow, red and black (the colours representing the strongest weather) coming from the west.

"Hey Honey, let's go for a walk," said I gleefully. Knew we could beat the weather.

Bad bad bad bad bad bad idea.

You know it's a bad idea when you're praying your wife and you won't get sizzled by lightning while desperately recalling Job 38:35.

It all seemed innocuous enough. We headed down the bikeway near our house (see pics here), at a brisk pace with white cloud above and greying cloud to the south-west. No biggie.

Up we headed into Broadwater Park, where I told Mrs Speech that I would like to continue down the bikeway. That is, further away from our house. She balked. I talked. We walked (back toward our house).

We hit Broadwater Road and she suggested we watch the cars for any wetness as a sign of rain nearby. Clever girl. I wouldn't have thought of that one. The clouds began to close in.

Ham Road is a horrible horrible hill, because it inevitably comes at the end of a walk, when you're already tired, and forces you to climb an incline for about 150 metres.

It's even worse when you can see the gathering storm clouds and your already-hurting legs unconsciously move much much faster as you wide-eyed-with-anxiety ponder what would happen if ten billion volts of electricity passed through you? Would it be like in that John Travolta movie? Would my IQ increase 100 points and suddenly I've figured out how my Wii can power my entire house while running on a glass of orange juice?

These are things you think about as the lightning escapes the clouds and discharges its fury. And then again, and again.

And still even as I was kicking myself for my stupidity, I wasn't done.

We had brought some cash with us because we needed a couple things from the shops. Nothing terribly important. But as we turned left on to Mount Gravatt-Capalaba Road and put the storm to our backs, my confidence increased. I was now looking at white cloud instead of dark grey. I didn't know how fast storms moved.

Five minutes later we exited the shops with the storm directly over us.

*aaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuugggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We crossed the road and speed-walked down the hill to our unit complex. Mrs Speech ran to our unit, the pattering rain harbouring horrible horrible thoughts that had left John Travolta and turned to what I would smell like as a piece of crispy bacon. I ran a little too.

We made it though. We thanked the Lord a lot.

And inside we cooled down, and the first storm of storm season 2012 passed in about twenty minutes.

There'll be more.

But I won't be walking in them, 'guarantee you that.

That's a scrappy attempt at a haiku. You don't want to see what an ode would look like.

I'm Mr Speech.

I'm trying to drop some weight.

Okay, a lot of weight.

Alright, several metric tonnes. Well, it feels that way.

I have dragged Mrs Speech for kilometre after gruelling kilometre on our walks, labouring up and down Brisbane's devastating landscape (see here, here and here). You know when kids get in the sandpit and use their bucket and spade to dig a big hole, and next to the big hole there's a big conical pile of sand? That's like Brisbane. Up and down and up and down again.


Tonight, we hit the most challenging route yet. Along Broadwater Road, which before an intersection with Newnham Road curves upward in a never-ending hill which never ends because it doesn't stop.

Then somehow we made it to the top, and went down Newnham Road, before we hit the Catholic School Hill.

The Catholic School Hill. Mrs Speech had not climbed it before. It had taken on an awed oeuvre of hushed reverence in our household, lest we upset the Catholic School Hill. Shhh. Don't let anyone hear you talk about the Catholic School Hill.

In reality, the CSH has nothing to do with the Catholic School. It just happens that St Catherine's Primary School sits astride the most punishing, sweat-producing, trauma-inducing mini-mountain which ever existed. We passed two Sherpas who came back down crying. This thing rises immediately after a gentle-then-not-so-gentle elevation of about seventy metres, suddenly coming upon you and devouring your last morsel of energy and self-esteem as it batters you with its steepness.

Climb me, will you???? Folly! Pure folly!

We climbed the thing though, our unoxygenated words coming between laboured gasps for sweet, sweet air. We climbed the Catholic School Hill. I felt like we should get t-shirts printed.

Then we turned onto Mount Gravatt-Capalaba Road, took a detour down Ham Road, back on to Broadwater Road, and round again on to MG-C Road and forty-five minutes later we were home.


Freedieting.com says that tonight I burned 1064 calories based on my age, weight and what I did for how long (the option "Hiking Or Walking At A Normal Pace Through Fields And Hillsides" seems to suit; 1hr45 minutes). Mrs Speech apparently burned less, I guess because she doesn't weigh as much as me.

1064 calories is a lot. I burned up a lot of energy.

A large Big Mac Meal with a shake is 1450 calories.

If you come back home from the east, as we did tonight, the Golden Arches of our local McDonald's rises like the diet-destroying monster that it is, sucking in all without the requisite power of will, who might dare to pass. If we come home from the west the view down MG-C Road still offers an almost telescopic view of the yellow sign they bulldozed lots of quite old trees for.

I wish I had a picture of this place. Mrs Speech got one a while back but it didn't come out great.

They built this thing and it's awesome. It used to be an assumingly dull place, effortlessly attaining the grit of a truckstop without actually being one.

Now it's a combined petrol station/McDonald's/McCafe. It's new. It's clean. It's schmancy. The layout could have been given more thought, but it's inviting and warm and in the middle of winter it was a wonderful place to walk to; the inviting aroma of comfort food and the soft lighting and post-modern mainstream trend decor beckoned deliciously for us to escape the cold and try our new McAngus burger!

We actually haven't been much. Not as much as I thought we would. It can get pricey and the big boys at the electricity company take cash, not excuses about inviting aromas and former faux-truckstops.


It's tempting. Tonight, was tough. My legs burned and my whole body told me that I had purchased the right to those 1450 calories with every drop of sweat. But, no. If today McDonald's, then tomorrow, pizza. And the day after that, Red Rooster.

It's tempting. That sweet, sweet chocolate shake.

But I said no. Mrs Speech, too. I also don't like the idea of burning off all that energy, only to be in so far in surplus again. Kind of makes the whole Catholic School Hill ordeal a little less worthwhile.

So it's an each day sort of thing. We walk five days a week, and each day brings us home and on to a collision course with the Kilojoule Kingdom. So each day we gotta remind ourselves what we're doing this for and not to undermine it because those golden fries......yum.

So I write poor haikus and laugh at myself a little bit. And tomorrow, maybe it'll get a little bit easier.

Yesterday we went for another walk. Two hours or so. Very, very long walk.

We walked down to the first park near us, Boorabbin Picnic Ground (some pics of the park here) then on to the bikeway, passing through Broadwater Park, then Cresthaven Park. At Cresthaven (as we call it), there were three teens playing basketball. Just sort of chucking the ball close to the basket. Mostly not close to the basket.

We then stuck to the road which cleaves the bikeway/bushland from the residences (near where I lived as a teen) and down to the end of the bikeway area on to Wecker Road.

Wecker Road is an incredibly busy but not interesting road, serving only as a conduit between the Creek Road/Cavendish Road intersection and the suburb of Mansfield and COC (Christian Outreach Centre, a local private school). On one side of it sits decrepit housing which never gets renovated, as though their owners fear any beautification would be swallowed up by the otherwise industrial, utilitarian tone set by the low-rise light-industrial estates which are tucked back on the other side.

From there we turned up on to a street on whose corner sits a massive box of a building which is devoted to selling alcohol in huge quantities and at low prices. Opposite a carpark a pub is always advertising the latest fight.

We wound through the suburb of Mansfield, up and down the many tortuous hills - and there are many, seeking solace in the nearest bench whenever we climbed another leviathan.

We dragged ourselves home, arriving after dusk had disappeared and night had enveloped our weary bodies. I dislike arriving home after dark; I don't know why. I think I just like the idea of leaving during the light and returning during twilight, with the night stretched out before us to relax.

So today Mrs Speech and I went for another of our walks - we were out about two hours. The rain threatened (but that's all it does - we have had .2mm rain in two months) but didn't break on us, which was nice. In fact, the monstrous thick cumulonimbus clouds thinned above our house by the time we returned, and I ended up with a sunburned face.

We actually had a little nature hike thing going on, walking the length of the section of the bikeway that runs through our area, through the bushland which swallows it up. We came across a scrub turkey, scratching at a dirt hill as though foraging for food (maybe it has young somewhere near? It is spring here after all). Could be the same one we saw the other day. One day we'll catch it. Din-dins!

Also, about thirty minutes into our walk, Mrs Speech clutched my hand in a grip of cold icy fear, and I stopped in my tracks, and looked at a massive lizard which lay on the stump of an overturned tree. They're incredibly skittish and this one moved as we passed. I managed to tip toe close and get some pictures though. Then he skittered away. He was just getting some sun I guess.


Today we began gearing up for Mrs Speech's new Etsy shop - Pink Scissor Designs - which she will use to sell her crafty creations. We've not put much up yet - just her Jesse Tree Ornaments, but more is to come. I personally am excited by Christmas already and the Jesse Tree Ornaments are putting me even more in that frame of mind. We took some photos today of what she has done, and broke out our smaller Christmas tree to hang them on.

We've put our Christmas tree up in September.

We got an interesting call today. There's a phenomenon lately here in Australia, maybe in some other western countries, where the Indians call you, and telling you they're calling from "Windows Technical Department". The line's always really shabby, it's like they're on a walkie talkie from Big W. I've never been too far with them but I read a couple years ago that their thing is to get you to look at a certain folder in Windows on your computer. Then, they tut-tut while they tell you that they can see you have lots of malware installed on your computer, and to clean it, please go to xyz website where of course, you can download a program to get rid of all your nasty malware.

What you download puts malware on your computer.

Usually I laugh uproariously at them until they hang up but this time I had a little fun. I asked the woman on the phone if she could hang on. She said yes and I dumped the phone in the next room and made a point to forget about it.

Five minutes later I put the phone to my ear and she was still there. Some twenty minutes later Mrs Speech hung the phone up. Mrs Speech didn't seem all that happy with me, but I say anyone who cold-calls you, attempts to defraud you out of your computer security and gives you a virus, while treating you like an idiot who just fell out of that tree over there, the really big one...gets what they ask for.

That was our day!

What's your shops?

Here in suburban Australia everyone has their shops. Not the big behemoth malls, which dot the landscape like chateaus in medieval France - quick, take refuge, the English longbowmen doth approach! - but, the little ones which cater to the five minute needs of us suburbanites.

When my (Mr Speech) family first moved to Brisbane, our shops were on the street where we lived. More precisely, they were directly opposite our house. It was not far to walk to get a meat pie and a magazine.

They did not occupy prime position on a main road of any sort. They were awkwardly placed, on a small strip which looks over backyards to the back and faces jaded 1970's Queensland facades. It was as though the land once housed people but was suddenly re-zoned when someone decided goodness, we don't have a fish 'n chip shop within five minutes' walk!

At the time, the bakery, newsagent and trading card shop were all very popular. The trading card shop was not popular for too long; when the market went south so did its revenue I suppose and the pony-tailed young man who stood aloof behind the counter disappeared.

For much of my adult life I have lived five minutes from that place, in a different suburb, and with its own shops.

Our shops are called Wishart Shopping Village. It's not so much a village as a small retail junket astride one of the busiest roads in southern Brisbane. It's kind of a large-ish truck stop, with all the conveniences one would expect for truckies hurtling between the airport/port of Brisbane and the southern suburbs.

Every suburban shops has one of several things: a newsagent, a fish 'n chip shop, a doctor's practice. Some have video stores. Ours used to until the complex owners in a fit of lunacy typical of small-time local moneygrubbing, forced them out.

There's usually a pharmacy as well, and maybe a dentist. There's always a convenience store, a mini-mini supermarket where you can spend five dollars on milk, if you really have to.

Our shops have a bit more because they sit on the truck route: we have two doctors, a chiropractor, a florist, a real estate agent and a pathologist. We have a Red Rooster, which makes average fast food. We have a McDonald's next to Wishart Shopping Village, which makes average fast food.


There's a pizza place with a bit of a story. It used to be really lovely; run by a qualified chef, with indoor/outdoor seating, red tablecloths and al fresco gas heating which belied the fact that it's basically next to a highway.

The atmosphere suffered a little but not more than the fact that people stopped going to their local pizza place and buying twenty dollar pizzas. You can get three from the larger chains for that price, and soon it was not unusual on friday nights to look over and see an unbroken chain of empty tables. I think the high rent did them in just like the video shop, in the end.

One day there was an official notice on the door from complex management saying they were in breach of their lease terms, next to a letter thanking loyal customers. The place sat empty and after a few months it was taken over by the yokels, who tried to sell the same twenty dollar pizzas, only with a big garish vegas-style neon light out front which murders any chance of atmosphere. Just like the highway has always tried to do.

The McDonalds is a major addition that was just completed a few months ago. It used to be a shabby little petrol station constructed from off-white bricks. The off-white was not a good choice for a place basically exposed to a lot of oils and fumes and stuff. It took on the oeuvre of a joint to avoid unless you needed pastries at midnight and iced coffee, which I sometimes did.

They blew it up (not literally) and replaced it with a combined McDonald's/petrol station which has schmance value up to here. It's very classy. High ceilings at the bowsers so you don't die from, you know, breathing while you're filling your car up. And the McDonald's has class. I'm afraid to walk in there - they'll find out I don't drive a BMW.

The doctors' practices are a boon to our suburb (you can visit them for an ECG after you've been to McDonald's) as is the dentist, and I'm sure the chiropractor to people whose bones are inside out or whatever. The florist has been a boon for Valentine's Day.

I don't know exactly why any of this matters. I don't know why there is a lady we know by name at the convenience store, or why when I leave my doctor's office I walk around the back way to the front of the shops, or why the Indian woman who runs the fish 'n chip shop once asked me if I was divorced, because my wife was in America, and she hadn't seen her with me for a while.

I'm not sure it does really matter.

But I know this: suburban fragmentation has led us to become a bunch of individuals who never speak. Mrs Speech and I live in a fairly tightly-packed unit complex where no-one talks to each other and I'm pretty sure the same dynamic pervades our culture generally. No-one knows each other. Whenever they talk about 'community' I wonder what galaxy they are living in; the fifties are long gone and we're social mercenaries when we leave work.

But the local shops is where we come together. It's where we say hi once in a while, or excuse me if we need to get past someone in the convenience store. It's where we have a friendly chat with someone not of our family, just because for the time it takes to swipe our credit card, that person is in our life. It's nice. It's rare. It's valuable and possibly crucial.

And when the entire world figures out that absolutely everything can be done online, it will be extinct. But for now, we have our shops.


The author of this post would like to thank Mrs Speech for her superb photographic abilities.