Two At Sea

(Posted November 26, 2022)

I’ve posted about the joy of eating Australian prawns, but that’s only part of the story. Aside from being served on their own, they often play a starring role in something larger: the cold seafood platter.

Generally cold seafood platters are sold at fish markets or takeaways. Restaurants may have seafood platters, too, but those are generally made up of hot seafood like battered fish and chips, calamari rings, crumbed scallops, cooked oysters, etc., and are found all over Australia.

Cold seafood platters, on the other hand, are a specialty of Queensland. Not surprisingly, the main ingredient is prawns. But added in are another Queensland specialty known as Moreton Bay Bugs. These are a type of slipper lobster, smaller than regular lobster with a flat head and no claws. They are chiefly caught in Moreton Bay near Brisbane but in fact are found in the waters off northern Australia and up into parts of southeast Asia.

As with prawns, they are often cooked and then served chilled. The tail is the best part, cut in half and added to the platter. And like prawns, they are wonderful dunked into seafood sauce.

Prawns and bugs make up a basic platter, but those platters can get more elaborate with the addition of oysters on the half shell, fat red spanner crab, a variety of sauces, and if really extra, a rock lobster. A fully loaded cold seafood platter is a work of art and something to behold! Below, some prawn and bug seafood combos . . .

Our first experience with a cold seafood platter was in 2014 when we arrived at the Bundaberg Marina in Queensland. At that time, as a welcome and introduction to the area, the marina was gifting each new arriving boat with a voucher for a cold seafood platter from Ocean Pacific Seafoods, a seafood market located right at the marina. In this case, it was an elaborate platter, beautifully arranged with prawns, Moreton Bay bugs, and Spanner Crab.

Three yachts arrived from New Caledonia at the same time and after checking in, we all went to order our seafood platters. That evening we brought our feasts to an outdoor table so we could enjoy them together. What a treat that was!

I will mention that one reason these platters are so popular here, aside from this being where platter-type seafood is harvested, is Queensland is in the tropics and tends to have very warm weather. Thus a cool refreshing seafood platter really hits the spot.

Not knowing much about Queensland back when we landed in Bundaberg, we assumed the platters were a specialty of that particular city; so we didn’t seek them out as we made our way south. What a shame, but at least we know better this time around and have enjoyed several of these platters, usually bought in a seafood market and brought back to our boat to have with cold beer and a binge-worthy TV show. We are really going to miss these platters when we leave Australia! –Cyndi

Posted November 22, 2022

Maine has its lobster, Alaska has its crab, Louisiana has crawfish, New Zealand has green-lipped mussels, but for Australia, it’s all about the prawns. Especially here in Queensland where they’re both farmed and caught in the wild.

Australian prawns should be more well known in North America, but they missed their chance at fame when, during Paul Hogan’s famous ad promoting Australian tourism, he offered to “slip another shrimp on the barbie for ya.” Unfortunately the tourism board felt Americans wouldn’t know what a prawn was; so they changed the word to shrimp. (It apparently never occurred to them that no American would ever be satisfied with a single barbecued shrimp as a meal.)

Although they look similar, prawns are not the same as shrimp. Shrimp are more segmented and curved, while prawns have larger, straighter bodies. Shrimp spend their lives swimming in salt water, while prawns crawl along the bottom in fresh or brackish water. Because of this, shrimp are saltier, while prawns have a naturally sweeter taste.

Unless being used as an ingredient in a seafood dish, prawns are generally cooked in the shell, then chilled and served cold. They are eaten by twisting off the head, peeling the shell off the body, squeezing off the tail, and depending on the preferences of the eater, can be deveined after shelling (which is easy to do). They can then be enjoyed just as they are, or with a little squeeze of lemon. Most commonly they are dipped in seafood sauce (a thousand island-like mixture) that tastes wonderful on this sort of shellfish.

Prawns can basically be divided into five main types (although there are sub-types, too). There are light-tasting banana prawns, flavorful endeavour prawns, versatile king prawns, little sweet school prawns from south Australia, and last but not least, tiger prawns with their distinctive red stripes.

Tiger Prawns are generally the favored prawn of restaurants, hotels, and seafood markets. It seems the reason for this is they’re the best-looking prawns and make the nicest presentation. They can also grow to be the largest of prawns which also looks pretty impressive.

Meanwhile, many prawn enthusiasts claim the endeavour is best. We haven’t tried all the types of prawns but of those we have tried, tiger prawns were our favorite. That is until we went to an eatery in Cairns which served both tiger prawns and smaller light-colored prawns. In this case, those light prawns came out the winner. We asked what they were but couldn’t understand the answer the waitress gave us (as she was speaking Australian!).

Not long after that, we went to a restaurant north of Cairns and ordered the prawn cocktail which had huge tiger prawns. They were incredible and are, in fact, the closest thing we’ve had to American lobster in texture and flavor since we’ve been in this part of the world.

Australian prawns are shipped and sold around the world, but like other seafood, are at their best when had near their source. They’re often sold in kilo bags (a little over 2lb) at seafood markets for about 35 – 40 Australian dollars, which is about $25 US. Adding in a jar of seafood sauce, we’d have a yummy meal for two for a reasonable price!

Below are a few photos of our prawn experiences, including prawns as they are sold in seafood markets and restaurant prawns.

Sadly our time in Australia will soon come to an end, and I’m startled to realize our chance to compare prawns is dwindling! Hopefully our next stop, Cooktown, will have a good selection of them and we can do some prawn comparison tasting, but if all we find are tiger prawns, we’ll still be very happy campers! –Cyndi

November 20, 2022

We have been so busy being tourists that we haven’t had time to post much. Sorry. One of the things we were busy with was a day-trip on a big dive boat out to the Great Barrier Reef where we made three dives.

Diving the Great Barrier Reef has been a dream of mine since I learned to dive at thirteen years old. Check! The dives were nice but we might be a bit spoiled by some of the diving we’ve done in the past. It sure felt great to get some compressed-air therapy.

Today we’re leaving the Port Douglas marina to head further north. We’ll make a stop at Cooktown on our way north to wait out some forecast bad weather.

-Rich

Posted November 13, 2022

(As I did for New Zealand, I’d like to do some posts about wonderful things unique to Australia that we’ve discovered during our three trips there. This will be the first of regularly-appearing Discovery posts.)

I try to make a point of knowing special foods to try from various cultures/countries, but there’s always more to learn. For instance, I’d already been to Australia four times, yet never (that I can remember) tried the fish called Barramundi. I knew it was popular here, but with so many tempting items on any given menu, it was never my top choice.

During our time in New Zealand, I’d come across a book called 1000 Foods to Eat Before You Die. This book has inspired me to try many new things and has never led me astray. Recently, I was reading about Australian foods I’d previously overlooked, and barramundi was at the top of the list.

I read that barramundi is a large fish that tends to dwell in the brackish waters of estuaries. They eat crustaceans and small fish which adds a wonderful flavor to their buttery texture. This sounded pretty good to me; so I suggested to Rich that we order the crispy-skinned barramundi and chips as our first meal in Gladstone, splitting it along with a seafood pasta.

Rich started with the fish and was quite impressed. Since he’s had so much fresh fish in his life, it takes a lot to impress him. Naturally, I was intrigued. When I tried it, the flavor was fabulous, the crispy skin tasty along with the fish fillet. I’d describe the fish itself as dense and meaty, yet tender and succulent at the same time. Mostly, it made me want to put my paw on it and growl.

So the question: Was it this good because we’d just finished a passage, or was this fish simply really good? Having had barramundi several times since, we can say it’s really just that good! Below, a few photos of our barramundi meals (click any photo to enlarge).

Interestingly, my book suggested not ordering barramundi breaded and fried (saying the flavor is too subtle for that), but at one restaurant Rich ordered beer-battered barramundi fish and chips. I will mention here that up until this point, our peak fish-and-chips experience had been a “catch of the day” at Phil’s Place Restaurant (alas now departed) in Tauranga, New Zealand. The fish and chips there were always good, but this particular day the filets seemed extra thick, tender and full of flavor (I don’t remember what kind of fish it was).

Today this barramundi lived up to that experience. In fact it really brought up that “put a paw on it and growl” feeling again. We split it with a wonderful homemade ravioli, but if I could go back and do it again we would both have gotten the fish. Sadly the restaurant was closed the following day, our final day in town; so I’m not sure we’ll have barramundi again prepared as fish and chips. But we will definitely enjoy lots more barramundi as we travel north through Australia! –Cyndi

August 11 -30, 2022

(Posted November 5)

Some of us cruisers are slow to get going again after completing a passage to a new place, while others seem to hit the ground running, not missing a beat before heading off to explore the new country. Rich and I are definitely in the slow-to-move category as, when arriving in unfamiliar territory, we go through a process of re-entry.

Basically for us, making a passage is a bit like The Wizard of Oz, specifically Dorothy’s house getting picked up by the tornado and landing in a different world, filmed in living color, to convey how things vividly come to life when everything around us is strange and new.

The air feels different, and the culture, pace, and natural features are unfamiliar. With so much new information to process, especially after being in a small space for days or weeks, we find we need a re- adjustment period, time to settle and blend in with the life energy of our new home.

Initially, we need to recover physically. Passages can take a toll, especially when they’ve been uncomfortable. We arrive short on sleep and energy, often landsick for a day or so, our brains foggy (what we refer to as “passage brain”). Sometimes we’re overwhelmed and intimidated—me because there’s so much to figure out and Rich because something always needs fixing or maintaining (which means troubleshooting, procuring materials/parts, and doing repairs). And of course being low on energy makes everything seem more difficult. In all, we generally need to take time to get back on our feet.

Aside from physically recovering from a passage, there is a longer period of Assessment. As Legacy’s tour and travel director, I need to wrap my head around a place before I can hash out some plans. Generally I do research before we arrive, but there’s nothing like being in a place to gain an understanding of weather patterns, distances, places to see on land as well as by sea, provisioning options, etc.

Of course, one of the ways we learn is by talking to the locals and other cruisers, but as I remind Rich, take some things with a grain of salt as we always encounter misinformation—it never fails! I generally recognize it as such because it usually comes in the form of some sweeping generalization as to why we can’t do something we plan to do. Thankfully the internet can be a great help here; such as looking at historical weather information (very helpful recently, in fact).

And so we research, we listen, we watch, and we double-check. Cruising an area often turns out to be a skill that must be learned, as there are things not covered in guidebooks. Of course sometimes it’s hard, watching other yachties come and go, to not feel pressured to get moving. But actually taking off can be unnerving, too. In a way it’s like timing a jump onto a moving platform. And then no matter how much we’ve learned, there are some things we simply have to learn by doing.

As for our first day in a new place, we like to kick things off with a festive meal at a restaurant. In this case, after getting some recommendations from the marina office, we decided on the Gladstone Yacht Club, about a 15-minute walk from the marina. This gave us a chance to walk through the beautiful park, then over a bridge into the outskirts of town where the yacht club sat overlooking a waterway. Yep, nice drinks, great food, and a water view were just the ticket. Below, a few photos from our walk and the yacht club (click on any photo to enlarge) . . .

–Cyndi