Early afternoon around town

LOL I didn't check my settings before using the handy FastStone photo resizer to resize and put a lil template on my photos, hence you will see Sample at the bottom corner instead of Rustic Fillings. That'll teach me! :)


We slept in 'till 11 am yesterday and headed for town as we had to run a few errands such as geting another fish to keep Comet company. As you can see even around noon the street is pretty deserted. This is due to the shops shutting at around this time. On a Sunday, its even worse ! You could roll a bowling ball down the street and not hit anybody.This is the main shopping street in Cowra. It is taken from a point halfway down the street, pointing to the east (top) side of the street.

This is a basic milk bar/ cafe place. It offers roast chicken, salads, and other short order stuff such as dagwood dogs, battered fish, burgers etc. It is very common in suburban Australia and definitely present in country towns.
It is also called a milk bar because most of them make old fashioned milk shakes (the kind you get in the tall metal shaker container - bit of ice cream, mostly milk and with your choice of flavouring). This is the biggest one in town- The Golden Key Cafe(the only one offering roast chicken and salads) and a town this size (10,000)has four of these. Just as a side note, this business has changed hands twice in four years and has been refurbished once to add a juice/smoothie bar. (Yes you get all the goss at the dental surgery)

Not having had breakfast, I felt like something naughty so I ordered a burger with the LOT (AUD $5.50). In Australia, this means cheese,pineapple, bacon, egg, pattie, lettuce, beetroot and tomato. What makes the Australian burger unique is the presence of beetroot. I noticed that egg also doesn't feature much in other countries. Take a look at mine.
As you can see the pattie is mostly obscured by the bacon, egg and pineapple. Eggs are fried flat here too, as opposed to in rings. The short order cooks here wield a spatula similar to a paint scraper as their weapon of choice. They flatten the ball of meat as soon as it hits the hot plate. The flavours meld well together, adopting the charred juices of the hundreds of burgers fried on the same hot plate before. Patties in aussie burgers (standard ones with no extras) are pretty flat and thin, hence in fast food tests done recently, it was found to have the lowest amount of fat compared to burgers bought at all the usual chains. As burgers go, this was a pretty good one! Nice bit of bacon, not fried to a crisp, just the way I like it!
Richard had his with cheese and pineapple (AUD $4.50) and he found that it hit the spot too!
Here is a photo of the outside of the Townhouse Hotel Motel from the review before. It is a variation of the typical pub hotel found here, most of them being part of a block. More pics to follow in later posts of country fare and aussie lifestyle :)