My Queen

The 12 Days in Victoria

On the twelve days in Victoria, I got to see 

Twelve thousand bush flies a-nnoying

Eleven cows a-grazing

Ten sheep baa-baa-ing

Nine bloody galahs a-screaming

Eight koalas a-hiding

Seven parrots kweek-kweeking

Six kookaburras a-laughing

Five blue fairy-wrens (Five blue fairy-wrens)

Four wallabies

Three alpacas

Two kangaroos

And a fine tasting Rare Hare at the winery 

What’s your guilty pleasure?

Getting lost in cute animal reels? Spooning Nutella straight out of the jar? That song by Celine Dion that makes you sing at the top of your lungs?

Ok, all these are my guilty pleasures, but I am sure we all have something that we enjoy despite feeling and knowing that it is not generally held in high regard.

My greatest guilty pleasure is reality shows. Surviving. Cooking. Baking. Brunching. You name it – I have watched them all! And the guiltiest of all guilty pleasures: reality dating shows – reality romance without much reality to them. Indian Matchmaking, The Ultimatum, Love is Blind. I love them all and binge-watch them whenever I can. But I have to admit –  it affects my life! My language. For a while, I kept calling all my girlfriends “baby girls” because that’s what they say in Love is Blind all the time. I also learned important things from that show – for example, guess what, that love is NOT blind! Shocker! Should have asked the Face Reader from Indian Matchmaking. Now that’s real science if you ask me! Also, my dream job!

This year’s summer addiction was The Circle – Singles. Two seasons of the cringy popularity contest waged online through selfies, two-sentence bios, group chats and private DMs by competitors isolated in their own apartment units were not enough. The third season was meant exclusively for singles – or those pretending to be.

Take Marvin, for example. Marvin really wants to win the 100.000 Dollars but is afraid that he might get distracted by one of the female singles on the show. Or two. Or all of them. Marvin quickly falls in love with the blue-haired Raven because he feels “they have a real connection” and calls her “my queen.” Which, I learned, is the ultimate compliment for a woman these days and equivalent to telling someone you love her. Until Tamira joins the show. Marvin also calls her his queen. Needless to say, neither queen is too happy when they find out. They want the questionable title to themselves. 

But who says you can’t have two queens  – or more? Works in chess, works in tarot –  sure works when travelling Australia. 

In the last twelve days, we visited both Sydney and Melbourne, New South Wales and Victoria State. We often got asked which one we liked better. And I decided that instead of constantly comparing the two, making lists of pros and cons, I will just love them both and call them both my queen! Just like Marvin did – but without the repercussions!

We loved the beautiful beaches of Sydney. Loved the Iceberg rock pool at Bondi, the crystal clear waters of the ocean, the winding coastal walk to Tamarama Beach. Loved the surf and the sun, but not the sharks. Loved Bondi Beach in the rain when it’s deserted, and the seagulls were the only ones with whom you have to share this endless iconic beach. Loved fine-dining with a view and the art at the new wing of the Art Gallery of NSW. We loved the hazy Blue Mountains and grassy Southern Tablelands. My queen. 

And then there is Victoria – the other queen. The real Queen. The state was named after Queen Victoria of England in 1851 when Victoria separated from New South Wales to form a separate colony – founded on questionable treaties that took away the land from the Aboriginal people in exchange for food and trinkets. 

Victoria State has matured over two hundred years. The second-smallest state in Australia, Melbourne is close-to- second to Sydney, with almost 5 million people living in the city. Victoria is the most densely populated state, with 6.6 million people in the entire state. Also, a culturally diverse state, with 35% of all inhabitants being immigrants.

Both cities, Sydney and Melbourne, offer a unique Australian flavour, and the states they are located in are beautiful. And they definitely both deserve to be called Queen!

We enjoyed the sensational fine food and wine, the cafés, restaurants and bars of Melbourne. We were impressed by the seemingly never-ending nightlife in the city, especially when sharing one tram with all of Melbourne’s partygoers. We immersed ourselves in the Australian Opens with everything the event had to offer – the sport, the merchandise, and even the sausage, which, by the way, is called sausage on bread in Victoria and not sausage sandwich like in NSW. 

Yes, just when I thought I had some Aussie terms down, this state springs a new set of words on me. A bubbler is a drinking fountain (makes sense to me), swimmers are bathers (as in swimsuit), an ice block is an icy pole (aka a popsicle), and the nose bleed section we were sitting in at the tennis match suddenly turned into a blood nose section. I give up!

Victoria, my Queen  – that was the excitement of Melbourne, the beauty and the delicious wines of the Mornington Peninsula (which, I have to admit, reminded me a lot of Niagara-on-the-Lake, just with kangaroos!). Victoria is Philip Island with its rugged coast, lighthouses, and tiny penguins (though, sadly, the only penguin I saw was a dead one at the beach serving as lunch to a seagull). Victoria is the grassland of the Gippsland Region. Sitting on my deck of our Airbnb White House, overlooking the Australian Savannah, the wind playing with the field, the giant gum trees swaying along, I felt like Meryl Streep saying, “I once had a farm in Australia.” Maybe my sister had been right, and what we had seen on our train ride had been giraffes and not kangaroos.

Things I saw on our trip through Victoria: wallabies hopping through the bush, koalas hiding in the trees, a dead fox and a dead penguin, sheep and alpaca and lots and lots of cows. Dairy cows first arrived in Australia in 1788, when the First Fleet landed in New South Wales. Two bulls and seven cows made the long trip from England and escaped into the nearby bushland shortly after arriving. The nine animals survived, however; after six years, they’d become a herd of 61. 

Today, the region has a bit of a poop problem, as too many cattle produce too much manure! Which, in return, is the perfect breeding ground for the bush fly – which we saw, or better felt, thousands of! Bush flies are worse than snakes and spiders, and sharks combined! They go for your skin to get to your sweat and tears! 

As the local beetles are used to the dry poo of the marsupials, such as the wallabies, kangaroos, and koalas, they are useless in the battle against cow poo! Bring in the ex-pat dung beetle! Imported from abroad, these little fellas are supposed to help with the 500,000 tonnes of cow manure dropped on Australian pastures daily. Now, these brave beetles definitely deserve a title as well. Dukes of Dung? Or Prince of Poo? I digress.

Our journey culminated in a few days spent in Wilson’s Promontory. Wilson’s Promontory, also known as Yiruk and Wamoon in the Gunai and Boonwurrung languages, respectively, is a peninsula that forms the southernmost part of the Australian mainland, located in the state of Victoria. The promontory was first occupied by indigenous Koori people at least 6,500 years prior to European arrival. Its inhabitants subsisted on a seafood diet – no dung problem there. 

The Promontory, or the Prom as locals call it, is sandy beaches and rugged cliffs, bushland and mudflats. The white sands of Squeaky Beach that squeaks when you walk on it. The Prom is cockatoos and galahs, blue wrens and lorikeets. It is also campgrounds and snack bars, hamburgers and potato chips. It is the Australian flag hanging off a tent to celebrate Australia Day. 

As a visitor to this country, it is difficult to decide how to commemorate this national holiday best. Difficult to understand how you can have fireworks and parades to remember the invasion of a country and its people. 

While it seems wrong to bring up my queen in connection with this difficult day, I am going to use these words to express my adoration for the beauty of this country. Sydney, Melbourne, NSW, Victoria, Australia – my queen! 

As for Marvin from the TV show, having more than one queen didn’t work so well. The two queens got together and used their power to block Marvin. He got kicked off the show. Poor Marvin.

Hopefully, the same thing won’t happen to me, having all these queens.

Cheers!