More Vegan grub!

Newtown may be the most populated with vegan offerings but there are plenty options elsewhere in Sydney. As I mentioned in the previous post, Sydney chain IKU whole foods have various locations in the CBD, Glebe, Rozelle, Bondi. I have often visited the one in the Westfield (Pitt St) food court in the CBD when working in the area as its nutritious and reasonably priced. The salad dressing is so good that they even sell bottles of it to take home! In the CBD there is Mother Chu on Pitt St which is a home style Chinese restaurant with a huge menu to select from. Bodhi is a more upper class Asian dining option in Cook and Philip Park with a Chinese/yum cha menu. I loved their tom yum soup but was unimpressed with their duck pancakes. On Oxford St  I would tend to opt for the great North Indian Diner which has a good selection of vegan curries at a price you just can’t beat. It has a small sit in area or take-away. Sambreo a Mexican chain store also on Oxford St advertises that they do vegan versions but this did not include vegan cheese or sour cream(when I went to the Townsville one anyway), however California Burrito on Crown St does have the option of vegan cheese and sour cream yay, it makes it so much better! Near to this burrito shop, on Cleveland St the Maya  Vegetarian Indian Restaurant is well worth a visit. The jackfruit curry I had was amazing and they have a couple of dairy free Indian sweets too, bonus, I bloody love Indian sweets! Nourishing Quarter also on Cleveland St, is very popular so you will always have to book. It has the cutest vintage décor and some really healthy, but comforting dishes. Sydney vegetarian institution Govinda’s is a great way to spend an evening. Eat a huge buffet then veg out with your food baby in their lie down cinema up the stairs.
Now it’s a bit of trek out of the city(about 50mins by train) but the suburb of Cabramatta which has a large Vietnamese community has lots of vegan restaurants and shops with a huge range of vegan products. I swear I was so excited the first time I went there, seeing the huge freezers of every type of mock meat product you can imagine and also lots of fabric shops with ridiculously cheap fabric- I was in heaven!. The area around John St at the Belvedere Arcade has heaps of vegan eateries such as Green Palace Thai, Duy Linh and Loving Hut plus the best shop called Just Green Health Food Store. I swear the amount of stuff in this place in unreal: vegan eggs, bacon, chicken drumsticks, calamari, cheesecakes, chocolate, dried goods, cheeses, pies, you name it they’ve got it! I will definitely be back in Cabramatta again before I leave Sydney.

Cabramatta

Oh yeah!

yes for real!- very good ontop of fried rice/

Obviously there are more places that I have not name checked or that I even know about, we are just so lucky here in Sydney to have so much to choose from. I think the next place on my list to visit is a reasonably new vegan Indian on Broadway called Vrnda’s.

Vegan munchies in Sydney part 1

Living in Sydney as a vegan has been nothing short of awesome. It seems everywhere is so much more knowledgeable, its not just limited to the fully vegan establishments. For example coffee (something that the Aussies take almost as seriously as their sport), in the UK, if you want a coffee with soy milk you’d either have to go to a vegan café or a huge chain such as Starbucks, but here all vendors be it a small hole in the wall at the station or a quirky hidden oasis, all carry soy and damn do they make good coffee. I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied when I go back to the UK. And most restaurants seem to do at least something vegetarian that isn’t just a cheese loaded pasta. I think the Asian influence in Australia helps a lot. If you are stuck you can always find something like sushi or pho on nearly every corner.
The suburb where I live is Newtown and its famed for its quirky residents and vegan food. I love living here, if I had more money I’d probably eat out every night. You can get cheap Chinese and Thai food at Green Gourmet and Blossom Lotus on King St, both do hot plate buffets that you can take away as well as order from the menu. Vegans’ Choice supermarket next to Green Gourmet stocks lots of faux meat products in their freezers as well as cheeses, cakes and homemade tofu ice cream. There is Vina a vegetarian Vietnamese too. Your best choice for vegan pizza is at Basil Pizza, try the animal lovers its amazing! They also do a great brekky on the weekends. You can also get vegan pizza at Mad which is situated in Civic video, its not as good as Basil but you can get good offers when you rent a movie too. For weekend brunch APT in Berkelouw books on O' Connell St, is fantastic. They have different specials every week as well as staples such as pancakes and full breakfasts. Sadhana Kitchen does stunning raw foods, I love to go there for a coffee and one of their many raw cakes which are always very decadent. On Enmore Road close by, there is Spoons vegetarian butcher, they do hot snacks like ‘popcorn’ tofu bites to take away and you can buy packs of sausages, burgers and schnitzels to stock up your fridge. I am especially fond of the schnitzels. You can get vegan options in may other places too, like the Indian restaurants, they advertise their dairy-free options on the menu, you can veganise a couple of burgers in the chain store Burgerlicious, and Gelato Blue ice-cream parlour has a whole section of sorbets, but be sure to try the chocolate- it’s the best chocolate ice cream/sorbet I have ever had.
Bondi is remarkably vegan friendly. My favourite Funky Pies (not biased or anything!!) is situated a couple of streets back from the beach but well worth going to. A large range of fully vegan pies, (available with mash, peas and gravy if you wish) coffee, cakes, ice-cream and a small selection of grocery items such as vegan cheese and bacon, make this a winner. Close to Funky Pies there's also Sababba, which does the most amazing falafel pockets, and IKU Whole food where you will find lots of healthy options such as salads, macro burgers, millet balls and stews. IKU is a chain of stores, they also have locations in the city, Glebe, Rozelle and Neutral Bay. Close to the beach, ice cream giants Gelatissimo, do a large range of dairy free sorbets. Miss Chu, a popular Vietnamese tuck shop chain, has a spot on Campbell’s’ parade, they have a few vegan options such as dumplings. Laurie’s Vegetarian on Bondi road, is bit of a walk from the beach but they do lots of lovely fresh salads and burgers. I believe there is a new place near Laurie’s, called Bondi Organic café which stocks a lot of IKU whole foods items but I have not been in yet.

Phew! thats a lot of places and I haven't even started on the city centre yet! Sydney vegans sure are lucky. Sorry for the lack of photos but I don't tend to photograph my food, I just get stuck in!

Some Funky Pies to wet your appetite.

Sydney beaches put bluntly

In summer Bondi is a backpacker Mecca with its endless fast food joints and ice cream parlours, hoards of tanked-up womanisers and giggling college girls, so therefor, as far from alternative as Justin Bieber. It's also packed in summer and has no real charm. But bitching aside, Bondi does have its good points. The water: clean and crystal clear, great for a dip when it starts to seriously heat up. I was there the other week when it was 42c and that deep, refreshing water was a godsend. There is a large amount of vegan fare on offer here compared to any of the other beaches which is awesome. True to reports, Bondi is full of surfers! and I found it nice on a winter evening, to just sit on the beach brown-bagging it, whilst scoffing a  hot pie(from Funky Pies obviously) and watch them do their thing. 

If you are into skateboarding there is skatepark and bowl at the beach and I've watched a couple of competitions go on there which is fun, I'm looking forward to catching the Vans Bowl-a-rama from February 19-24th 1013.

 If you are in Bondi over winter check out the ice rink on the beach. Pretty busy, but surreal to experience none the less! 

Other city beaches I am fond of are, Bronte because its far less crowded and has heaps of bbqs and you can easily have a sly drink without being caught. Clovelly and La Perouse for snorkelling cos I'm a bit of a dork when it comes to that stuff and I love it. Shark bay is lovely because it is next to parkland and its nice and deep, then further along that stretch, Camp Cove is super cute and from there you can start a great walk around the Watsons bay headland, where you get a great view of the harbour and in the right season you can spot whales off the coast.  Cronulla seemed to have a bit more of a grungy sea-side town vibe, I guess because its further from the city but unfortuately I was not there long enough to check out the nightlife. I just bought a tub of vegan ice-cream from the Go-Vita and munched it on the beach.

There's tons more beaches around Sydney but not much of interest to report apart from sand and water. Please do let me know if there is something of interest I'm missing out on.

The Iconic sights of Sydney

So I'm quite aware that everyone knows the iconic sights of Sydney and you've probably read countless blog posts on the subject. There's nothing alternative about them but as you are gonna want to see them anyway it is worth mentioning a couple of things. I saw the bridge climb over the harbour bridge as being one of the most rewarding things to do when seeing the complusory sights. The guides are fantastic and the history of the bridge is really interesting, plus the view from the top is amazing. It is however fairly expernsive at around $180 pp but includes the photo print outs and disc of which you can send out to your family and make them all really jealous. Far from alterative, the Sydney Opera house does have more to it than the name suggests, it also hosts dance, indie rock and comedy shows. The botanic gardens are a nice place to chill, but they have lost their appeal to me, now that all the fruit bats have moved on, and he new Gallery of Modern Art is an interesting place to soak up some air-con, plus they have a great gallery shop with lots of quirky gifts. As I mentioned in a post earlier, I loved Luna Park, which is just a short ferry ride accross the harbour. Its a great place to be silly and ride old school fairground attractions, plus it looks awesome lit up at night. I believe they do 2 for 1 tickets after 6pm so it'd be good to go get some beers and hot chips in the evening. The Big Top also hosts some big name bands, last year it had Bad Religion and NFG to name a couple, and The Decendents and the Bouncing Souls are playing there in February. The annual Vivid Sydney light festival which happens around Circular quay was a definate highlight, especially the projections onto the Opera House roof.

 There is a free bus from the quay which runs down George St (555) that will take you nearer Darling Harbour and Chinatown. The harbout itself is fairly unimpressive unless you want to go to the aquarium and drink overpriced beers, but the area does host a few intersting festivals especially on holidays such as Australia day and Chinese New Year. We went to the Hoopla festival involving lots of circus and street performance acts and most of it was free which was a bonus. Chinatown is great for inexpensive food and there you will also find the Paddys Market which is full of cheap tat, but fun to browse and maybe pick up a souvenir snowglobe with a roo in it for your gran.

The beaches of Sydney are the main obvious highlight, but as there are 104 of them I feel it probably warrants a separate post!

Pimping out your wagon

This was Willie's first trip to the Blue Mountains

A station wagon easily converts into a sleeping capsule simply by putting down the back seats and rolling out a thin mattress or airbed. There’s heaps of space, my boyfriend is over 6ft and he was fine. You probably want to acquire sleeping bags and a blanket too if you are here in winter, as the temperature does get quite low at night. Other essential camping goods are a pump(if you have an air bed) a gas stove, foldable chairs, a coolbox, large water container, lamp, torch, plates, large pan, cups, chopping board, cutlery and utensils-don’t forget the tin opener and corkscrew! You can pick up a lot of this stuff from charity shops such as Vinnies and the Salvos for dirt cheap, however if you don’t want second hand goods the cheapest place to go is KMART. This place is fantastic for all your camping equipment and the quality has not been bad at all, all of our stuff is still going strong, apart from one of our foldable chairs, but hey it was $4 so I’m not complaining.
All the campervans have curtains over the windows which is pretty essential unless you want woken at the crack of dawn!  So I decided to add a bit of glamour to our Willie Wagon by putting up some red velvet curtains. I was lucky as I worked in a place with sewing machines and fabric readily available, so all I had to do was screw some eye hooks into the plastic interior then hang the curtains on some elastic, allowing them to be gathered when not in use. Since most people travelling are not gonna have access to sewing machines, a good idea would be to stick up those reflecting sun shields , which you can pick up really cheap in stores like Smart Dollar. Though, if you buy from a backpacker the vehicle will probably come with curtains, it may even come with all the camping stuff.
Lastly because we’re all rock n roll n that, we treated Willie Wagon to a dangling shrunken head and a dancing hula girl on the dashboard :)

Buying a car

Travelling around Oz is obviously far more rewarding if you have your own transport. I t enables you to be so much more flexible with your destinations and see far more interesting places than you would if you were confined to busing it on the Greyhound ( believe me, I did that in 2007).  There are so many options when it comes to choosing a vehicle. There are campervans galore from companies such as Wicked, Jucy, Spaceships, Hippie Camper , and for those with money you can get the 4wd monster off road range rovers and then lastly the humble station wagon. We chose to buy a station wagon purely because we intended to spend a lot of time in the city and felt it would be easier for day to day runs to work and parking. They are also the cheapest option and parts are readily available especially if you go for a Holden or a Toyota.
Firstly we looked at Travellers Auto Barn as they do have a warranty(though limited), however we had a limited budget and most of their wagons were around the $3000 dollar mark. Gasp! Surely not! -for a car 15 years old, this seems ridiculous coming from the UK where old cars cost only a few hundred pounds. Yes cars here are unfortunately that expensive, but do not let that put you off , it is worth it in the long run. We then headed to the car market at Kings Cross, a car park where backpackers set up to flog their cars before heading home. I have very little car knowledge and had only recently passed my test so I was just not keen to buy from someone whom also had little car knowledge and could possibly sell you a big piece of crap if it meant money for their flight home. If you know your stuff though, this may be the ideal place to grab a bargain. The other option is good old Gumtree. We happened across a wagon being sold for a bargain price by a Sydney native who was moving over seas. After meeting at his house, having a good test drive and looking at its pink slip certificate (bit like M.O.T cert.) we decided to hand over the $1800. This was an especially good price as it still had 10 months registration on it which can easily be transferred over into your name.

The selling basically involves you and the sellers signing a document of sale which you then take to the RTA to get the car registered in your name. If buying a car with no rego (note this is the Aussie term for registration in case you hadn’t guessed!) you will need to get a pink slip done at a garage for around $35,(this is a safely check) and also buy a green slip(compulsory 3rd party insurance) before you go to the RTA to pay for the rego. Getting some further car insurance is also a good idea.

 I really hope this helps some people out, because we found it a really daunting experience since we had never been car owners in the UK.

Getting here and starting out

We flew with Cathay Pacific (very recommended airline) via Hong Kong where we stayed for two days to break up the journey. Very worthwhile splitting the trip by stopping in Asia if you can afford it, as it helps reduce the jet lag and its a fantastic place to visit. I've been to most of the big stops such as Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Hong Kong and they are all awesome (the first two are considerably cheaper though). We had pre-booked a private room in a hostel in Sydney for a full week so we could get settled in and have a secure base from which we could work from etc. The hostel was Billabong Gardens in Newtown, mainly chosen for location as Newtown has a huge subculture community and some great bars and lots of vegan food. Guess its worth noting that this is our second trip to Australia (first back in 2007) and so we purposefully chose to stay out of the backpacker realm of Kings Cross and Bondi Beach since we'd 'been there, done that'. 

As we had been to Sydney before we didn't need to rush off and pack in all the tourist sights. Our main plan was to find work as soon as possible. We had applied online for our Tax File Number before we arrived and had it sent out to the hostel. We also made sure we had our CVs printed out and bought an Australian sim card for our phones straight away. A great deal for smart phones is to get the Woolworths Optus pre pay sim which gets you a lot of credit and also 5gb of internet data for $29($27 with a Woolies card). We had already contacted a few places for work before coming, which we were interested in working for, but if you are not particular in what you want to do, the best place to look are on Gumtree and seek.com.au as there are hundreds of jobs posted on there everyweek. Hostels will also have a noticeboard for work opportunities and of course just walking into a place and enquiring- if you've got balls.

My partner Micheal was very fortunate in landing a job within the first week of arriving, at Funky Pies, a wonderful all vegan pie shop/cafe in Bondi. Perfect for him since he is a vegan chef!

Since he landed the job first we decided to centre our search for accommodation within reasonable distance of Bondi beach. Again we used the convenience of Gumtree which is great for searching for rooms and apartments for lease. However we did find it a bit tricky being in a couple, most flatshares only wanted a single in the room and obviously some people were a bit put off by our appearance and lifestyle. Luckily in the second week we came accross a large share house not far from Bondi Junction which was owned by the family next door and rented out to backpackers, usually for a 3 month lease. The room was large with two beds put together and best of all it was ensuite with a huge bath and huge built-in wardrobes. We paid a bond(deposit) of 4 weeks rent and got a signed receipt for this- don't ever give over a bond without paperwork!

I work in theatre arts, and having worked in the props department of Scottish Opera for 4 years in Scotland, I was delighted to be offered work at the Opera Australia props department. Really an absolute dream come true, and on the day before my birthday too!! Needless to say I had a great celebration on my birthday. For this we decided to do the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb- not cheap by any means but totally worth it.

Looking totally hot in those jumpsuits!

 We headed to the kitsch Luna Park after the bridge climb, Sydneys' iconic historical amusemnt park. I totally loved the vintage posters and ricketty rides and it makes for some great photographs. 

I can't remember what we did for dining out that night, but I'm pretty sure it will have involved some vegan food in Newtown and lots and lots of Coopers Pale Ale! I will do separate posts on Sydney vegan eats and good bars.

An Introduction...

My name is Shelley and my partner is Micheal. Its been ten months since we first arrived here in Australia and I've finally decided to do a blog documenting our experiences though out this time- better late than never. One main reason I've decided to do this blog, is to reveal all the great alternative and subculture events and sights that Australia has to offer, for those out there that want a bit more than sun, sea and Irish pubs on their backpacking adventure. I had to do a lot of research on the internet to find out about places and events that would cater to my tastes and I thought it would be useful to have them all put in one place in case there is anyone with a similar outlook on life, also thinking of making the journey 'down under'.