Blueberries Blog

Culinary adventures with Carmel

Apple or Peach Slice

Ingredients:
125 grams of butter
1 pkt Buttercake cake mix
1 cup SR Flour
2 Beaten Eggs
1 Tin Apples, Peaches, or Apricots  (if you like more fruit use 1 1/2  tins)
Sugar to sprinkle
Cinnamon
Nutmeg

Add 125grams Melted Butter to
1 pkt buttercake cake mix
1 cup Self  Raising Flour
2 beaten Eggs

Spread approx. 2/3rds mixture into a greased and floured lamington tin then spread 1 Tin Apples / Peaches or Apricots which ever you like, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon or nutmeg.
Roughly spread remaining 1/3 of mixture over fruit. Sometimes I just use teaspoon size of mixture and flatten with my fingers and just put on top it certainly makes it easy to put on the fruit.
Sprinkle a liitle sugar on top.
Bake in a moderate oven approx. 30mins

Serve with icecream/ cream while hot or you can have it cold sprinkled with icing sugar.

This is a very quick hot dessert or slice if you have it cold.

Enjoy!

A road trip of Australia’s fiberglass monuments

The Big Miner

Queensland’s immense coastline provides about 99% of the state’s tourism and in fact, very reason for existence. However, there are the occasional inland settlements that have been savvy enough to construct Big Things, giving tourists a reason to leave the narrow coastal strip and turn westwards in search of fiberglass titillation.

The tiny town of Rubyvale, population 550, is one such settlement. As its nearest neighbours are towns with the names of Emerald and Sapphire respectively, you don’t have to be a genius to figure out that this is the middle of Queensland’s gemstone mining area, and a popular spot for amateur fossicking. And Rubyvale’s Big Miner pays silent homage to this central part of the area’s identity.

This isn’t the first Big Miner we’ve encountered in our travels so far. In fact, the mining industry has provided Australia with many mining-related Big Things, including several Big Miners, the Big Miner’s Lamp and even Bathurst’s Big Gold Panner, which although technically not related to mining as such, uses many of the same tools and is all about acquiring precious stuff that comes from the ground.

Rubyvale’s Big Miner kneels outside the Bobby Dazzler Mine, a shiny gemstone held aloft in his left hand and his pick ax clutched firmly in his right. He was constructed back in 1983 by the mine’s owners, the Saunders family, in a bid to increase local tourism. As his scale is only twice life-size, some Big Things aficionados find him a tad disappointing.

The very name of the Bobby Dazzler Mine ensured that this Big Thing’s nickname of ‘Bobby’ came readymade. The term bobby dazzler actually means either a well-dressed person, or anything that’s brightly coloured and flashy. It was also the title of a Crawford Productions sitcom starring a young John Farnham. This televisual turkey aired for one season only back in the late ‘70s and was quickly forgotten, something that Mr Farnham himself is probably now extremely relieved about.

Similarly, time hasn’t been kind to this fiberglass Bobby either, as he’s showing definite signs of wear and tear. Big scabs of paint have been flaking off over the years, helped along by the occasional topplings and similar rough treatment by local larrikins. More disturbingly, however, is the recent disappearance of his proudly-displayed gemstone. Not content with merely taking the fiberglass sapphire, the thieves lopped off the hand that was holding it as well. It’s only a matter of time before somebody covers Bobby’s newly-acquired stump with a good lashing of red paint. There really is no limit to the public humiliations that Big Things – and in particular, Queensland Big Things – are forced to endure.

With Anne Sommerlad

EQ7 does it all!

Quilts, blocks and now photos. It includes all the design features of EQ5 and EQ6, plus new design tools which are great for beginners. If you would like to learn more about EQ7, Anne is just the person to get you started.

Date: Sunday 25 March, 10:00am - 3:30pm

Cost: $45.00

Click here to register.

A road trip of Australia’s fibreglass monuments

The Big Cane Toad

Okay, let’s call a toad a toad and say it upfront – this is one scary looking Big Thing.

Welcome to Sarina, a little town situated about half an hour south of Mackay and 300kms north of Rockhampton. Apart from its breathtakingly ugly resident Big Thing, there’s not much else to say about Sarina, except that it claims to be where the very first jar of Vegemite was produced back in 1922. As no amount of research can actually verify this, the claim has the unmistakable whiff of a town seeking relevance, no matter how obscure.

Fortunately, no-one can deny Sarina’s claim to the Big Cane Toad, which squats proudly in the middle of the main street where it routinely terrifies small children. Its little bronze plaque states that the “previously wayward and sometimes neglected cane toad has seen glory, shame, neglect, resurrection and finally recognition as a tourist attraction”. That may be true, but it still looks like an alien mutant.

The Big Cane Toad was first built in 1983 as a papier-mache float in the Apex Sugar Festival Parade. No doubt its creators would’ve made it look a little less spooky if they’d known it was going to end up being a long-term public monument. After several years of haggling, Council acquired the structure, coated it in fibreglass and officially installed it in 1986.

Initially the Big Cane Toad wasn’t properly secured to the ground, which meant it was subjected to all kinds of indignities on a regular basis. It was constantly disappearing and then reappearing the following day either upside down or in strange and inaccessible locations. Once it was festooned with condoms and on another occasion had a bra strapped to it. The final straw came when a naked, drunk local straddled it and rode it like a horse. Yee hah! Eventually Council got the hint and cemented the long-suffering Big Thing to the ground, much to the disappointment of the local bogan population.

In 1998, a local town-wide competition to name the Big Cane Toad was won by a group of high school students who suggested the name of ‘Buffy’. This might seem no more than a populist reference to that TV character of vampire-slaying fame, but in fact it’s derived from the cane toad’s scientific name – Bufo marinus, proving, if nothing else, how easy it can be to underestimate the intellect of modern day schoolkids.

The acquisition of a real name seemed to finally change the fortunes of the Big Cane Toad, as its personal popularity and local standing has been on an upward trajectory ever since. It may be ugly. It may still look like a prop from a cheesy 1950s horror flick. But the residents of Sarina have become very fond of Buffy, warts and all, and accord him an almost royal status. It just goes to show that every toad has a prince lurking inside it, and that you don’t necessarily need a princess’s kiss to set it free.

with Jenny Rofe

“Two Dozen Roses” is a hand quilting and embroidered cushion workshop. You will learn all aspects of hand quilting, including how to mark and assemble your work. The quilted wreath is then embellished with 24 bullion roses.

Saturday, 17 March, 10am - 3:30pm

Click here to register now

A road trip of Australia’s fiberglass monuments

The Big Mango

Here’s a juicy question. When is a mango upside-down – hanging from a tree (stem up) or packed in a crate, ready for sale (stem down)?

Residents of the Queensland town of Bowen have been pondering this conundrum for a decade, ever since their long-awaited and costly Big Mango was installed apparently upside-down. This particular Big Thing already had a pretty demanding job description: reviving the local tourist industry and saving the town from obscurity. So when its triumphant unveiling revealed a Big Mango standing on its stem and its smooth fibreglass bum pointing proudly skyward, it’s no surprise there were lots of tears before bedtime.

Bowen is about halfway between Townsville and Mackay, or approximately 1,130kms north of Brisbane. Apart from being synonymous with mango growing in Australia, its only other claim to fame is that much of Baz Luhrmann’s overblown cheese-fest Australia was filmed there, which some people would argue is more of a claim to embarrassment than anything else. The town’s charming, 1940s look and feel made it an ideal choice to play the role of WWII Darwin. Of course, the Big Mango didn’t get a look in, as Big Things hadn’t been invented back then.

Regardless of this missed opportunity for a cameo appearance, the Big Mango is an impressive structure. Standing 12m high and painted fresh, tropical shades of red, orange, yellow and green, it lives outside the local Tourist Information Centre and is an instant hit with the hordes of mango-loving tourists it manages to lure off the highway. This is just as well really, as its construction was a long drawn-out affair, riddled with problems and involving three different builders. After the first one left the job unfinished, his replacement went into liquidation and pieces of the mango were locked away by the liquidators, effectively holding them hostage until some bills were paid. It was the third builder who finally finished the job, but went 200% over budget in the process. When the Big Mango was finally unveiled in May 2002 it had cost the town close to $100,000.

Modeled on the popular Kensington Pride mango, the most abundant variety in the region, something about this Big Thing’s ripe shininess makes it look particularly luscious, as if you could sink your teeth into it and get real mango juice running down your chin. Fortunately the Tourist Information Centre sells a range of delectable mango products like mango sorbet and dried mango pieces, so tourists are spared from experiencing the crunchy taste of sunbaked fiberglass.

Like a lot of other Big Things in north Queensland, the Big Mango took a pounding from Cyclone Yasi in February 2011, but remained courageously standing. In a way, this is a bit of a shame. The whole controversial upside-down debate could have finally be laid to rest if the Big mango itself was laid to rest – on its side. Why hasn’t anyone thought of that?