Eating and drinking in Manly

I am now sharing with you some of my favourite places, which means there is a risk you will encounter me. By all means, stop and say g'day (if you are Australian) but Anglophone foreigners be warned: you can never get it right.

This table at the New Brighton hotel is often occupied by a man with a white beard. He has an honest face, and explains to foreigners that he is the local council's wave supervisor. Australian waves have a nasty habit of running the other way, if they are not closely watched. The result is that unwary tourists may be washed out to sea. This man is what we call an illywhacker.

There is a name for the special terms Australians use: they are called Australianisms, and I will come back to them later. The thing you will notice about Australian eateries is that they usually show a foreign influence, and decent Australians have no problems with that.

Pubs for the most part have standard wines, beers and spirits, and they may serve pub food that may veer away from fish and chips. A month or three back, I was at a particular point in shaping a book, so I took the ms on my tablet to the New Brighton, and asked for a meat pie and a San Giovese (Chianti) red wine. They could do the wine, but I had to go to a Vietnamese shop, where they made traditional Australian meat pies.

Yeah, Australia is like that, unless you're part of the sieg heil mob. We tend to get along.

Posted partly complete, to allow links to be forged 4/2/2025

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