The Super Saturday Sausage Sizzle...

1470 sausage sizzles across the land today…

…’without sausages there can be no democracy…’

That’s it! Across the land, except in the Western States, the sausage sizzles are over, the last snag has been cooked, and all that remains is the counting…

‘How did it go?’ I asked a friend working at a local Polling Station for today’s Australian General Election.

‘We sold hundreds of sausages, our best one yet.’…
‘No. Not the sausages! The day?’
‘Oh that was good, without a hitch….’

Lucky them. This is not exactly how my daughter would describe it where we went.. I tried to take a photo to show you, and had the Polling Station Official tap me on the shoulder…

‘Excuse me, I’ll have to ask you to put your camera away, no photos are allowed, in case you inadvertently take an image of someones ballot form’

Daughter Number two disowned me there and then.

‘Are you two together?’ The next official asked

‘Yes,’ ‘No’ we responded in unison.

Oh, Rats! And I’d thought it would be such a lovely family bonding moment shared together. Our first time voting at an Australian Election since we’d become Aussie Citizens and she’d come of age…. Together we could have enjoyed a celebratory sausage, this moment so much more than the voting in of our next Australian Government…

Photo courtesy of AEC website

We’re in separate cardboard booths at different ends of the room. I managed with the House of Representatives ballot paper for our local candidate. It was fairly straight forward. I need to give all eight candidates a number between 1- 8, otherwise none of it counts. Tick

Now, the Senate ballot paper is a whole different matter. I’m handed a white sheet the length of an unfurled toilet roll. I kid you not if I stretched my arms wide open holding one end in each, the paper would not be taut. I have two choices. I can choose one party above the line, or vote below the line for specific candidates. However this comes with an inherent risk, if I read all this and attempt a below the line vote, all the sausages could be gone…

Looking over my shoulder, daughter Number Two, with a partially completed Commerce degree, has completed her form having done her voting homework prior to arriving, and is smugly heading for the door.

All of a fluster, I sense I’m losing the moment amidst a sea of names…. The door opens and in walks our local Member of Parliament along with quite a gaggle of paparazzi, all clicking away with the most enormous cameras…

‘Double standards’ I mutter…as I smile posing next to him for a photo

Hours later I emerge blinking in the bright sunlight… daughter Number Two has already legged it.

‘Excuse me, where’s the sausage sizzle?’

‘Oh sorry, we don’t have one, we have a cake stall and we have lots of sushi’.

I love that Australia is soooo multi-cultural but to quote Kevin Rudd (soon to be the Ex Prime Minister of Australia) give me ‘a fair shake of the sauce bottle’ I need a snag (sausage) after all that effort!!!

The great Aussie sausage sizzle is a great Australian event. Every weekend sports clubs use the opportunity to raise some funds by barbecuing sausages on portable gas BBQ’s. The sausage is usually offered in white bread (brown, if your lucky) and in a roll, if they’re trying to be posh. Often it is accompanied by chopped onions and there is a choice of tomato sauce or sometimes brown sauce.

But today we choose the wrong polling station. We later find out here is a whole website dedicated to showing the facilities at your local polling place – sausage sizzle, cake stall and/or arts and crafts stall.

I buy up big at the cake stall, and head home.

Daughter Number One arrives home from her job working at the canteen our soccer club with a huge plate of cooked sausages. The crazy poodle goes ballistic and given the number of sausages we’ve got, he scores a small treat…