Duck’s Nuts on Eat: Feeding the Tassie Devil in Me

It was left out of the map of Australia during the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and is the butt of many jokes by Aussies living on the mainland.

But the island of Tasmania, Australia's most southern state, is full of beautiful delights -- and importantly to the Asian expat, home to probably the best seafood in the country.

Yes, Australia isn't quite know for its cuisine (and neither is New Zealand, for that matter), but there's no doubt that in Tassie and NZ, there's plenty of great, fresh and cheap seafood to be had.



Really yummy fish and chips in Launceston, Tasmania's second-largest city, located in its north-east

I went to Tassie a few weeks ago to visit a good friend. It was a rushed trip, just four days, and we were more focused on hiking and exploring the countryside and the bush rather than on food. But when I reached there and saw all the wineries, and cheese factories, and chocolate factories, and fresh fish, oysters, and everything else, I couldn’t help but go "AAAWWwwwww.”

So why is Tasmania so good for seafood? It's simple, really. It's a wee island (though I'm sure heaps bigger than Singapore) surrounded by clear waters full of all sorts of fish and other slimy stuff.



Salmon, trout, tuna, crab, oysters, abalone -- you name it, they've got it.



A prawn-peeling competition at a big seafood restaurant by Hobart's main wharf. We stumbled across the comp when we popped in to eat some fish and chips. The winner peeled 14 prawns in one minute.

To be honest, I sometimes find it hard to find good seafood in Sydney that's not ridiculously expensive. I'm a big fish fan, but I often have to resign myself to some Tassie salmon once in a while and a tad of herring. In Tassie though, perhaps because the cost of living is a lot lower, fish is heaps cheaper and waaaaaay fresher. There's fish and chips everywhere, unlike Sydney (where it's here and there and usually just frozen stuff in pubs), and it's under $20. Now, I'm on a pretty tight budget because my pay's rather low. My usual eating budget is preferably less than $5 a meal, though I could stretch it to $10 if I'm desperate for food. But under $20 is not too bad for some of the best fish I've ever eaten.

So back to Tassie again, and besides its tasty seafood, it has some lovely wines and cheese and chocolate factories. The eastern and south-western areas of Australia have some good wineries -- think the Barossa Valley in South Australia, the Hunter Valley in NSW, Margaret River in Western Australia and the Yarra Valley in Victoria. But so has Tassie. We managed to try out some wines, though unfortunately, I didn't take photos of those bottles, so you'll have to make do with this photo we took at Bicheno on Tassie's east coast. Kinda cool name for a wine eh? It's from South Australia, my favourite place for wine, and a good one too.



Sumptuous wine, not so sure about the name

What I think was unexpected for me was how English and Irish (if I'm not wrong, most of the convicts were from Ireland) the architecture was. Most of the villages or small towns were like villages and small towns in the UK. So of course, we found plenty of English-style food and snacks, like scones, pancakes, and lots of cream.



Fresh, warm pancakes at Tasmazia, a large maze near the spectacular Cradle Mountain in the north-west

We dropped by Tasmazia, which purports to be the world's largest maze. It's in the shadow of Cradle Mountain (super wow), and also home to the Village of Lower Crackpot (no kidding!). We tucked into some fantastic pancakes and toasties -- a fitting end I think to a short but fun trip that turned out to be more about food than we expected.



Ah, toasties

(Some pictures taken from the Internet)