We also bopped around Melbourne. So much to report.
Beer Run. There was one very important stop that was a must do— a special trip to a beer store. While the local craft beer here in New Zealand is very good, the imported beer selection is not great. I was missing my Japanese and Spanish beers—Hitachino Nest and Alhambra. I vowed that if they had the beer in Australia, I would bring some home. Before we left, I asked Google for an answer, and I found a store that sold both. We taxied out to the Richmond neighborhood, and there was our heaven. We skipped through the store like two deprived kids oohing and aahing at all the beer from around the world. We put together 16 bottles and lugged it home. We were carrying so much beer, our luggage was overweight. Oh well, it was worth it. Second greatest beer run ever.
Dinner. We ate omakase (a tasting menu) at Minamishima, a highly rated Japanese restaurant, where we enjoyed some rare and unusual sakes to accompany an interesting mix of small plates featuring tuna, eel, wagyu beef, golden eye snapper and flounder fin to name a few. We love gorging on Japanese food and sake. This was one of the better Japanese restaurants we have visited.
Market. We wandered around Queen Victoria Market, a monster food and retail market in downtown Melbourne.
Made up of several buildings, with merchants offering everything from cheese to fruits to meats and sweets, t-shirts to cheap sunglasses to sheepskin everything, it would have been easy to spend the entire day wandering around. Unfortunately, we were traveling and had no way to keep food cold. Worse, New Zealand is strict about what comes in, so we could not pick up food to bring back home. That was very disappointing because, guess what? I love food. It was like food heaven, but no, the customs Gods would not allow it.
The Triennial and Avocados. We also happened to be there for the National Gallery of Victoria’s Triennial, a multi-discipline exhibition of artists, projects, performance art, painting sculpture and so much more from all over the world. We spent some time there. (The granddaddy of this kind of art extravaganza is the Venice Biennale.).
Here are some random photos of installations:
One exhibit, a documentary film, The Avocado Legacy, really has me concerned avocado farming in Mexico. The societal obsession with avocados (think avocado toast) has resulted in the industry exploding in Mexico. While avocados are extremely popular and big business, avocado farming is intensely bad for the environment. So much money can be made that forests are illegally logged by criminal cartels to clear the way for planting avocado trees. This logging decimates the monarch habitat by cutting down their trees and filling acre upon acre of land with a monoculture. You’ve seen pictures of the thousands of monarchs roosting in the trees at a preserve where they stay for the winter. That habitat is being destroyed in the name of avocados.
The local women, who live with the forest and feel they have a connection to it and to the butterflies, were angry that the illegal logging was taking place and they banded together to take on the cartels. While the women eventually prevailed by blocking roads and threatening the workers, an environmental advocate for the monarch habitat was murdered because he was so outspoken about the clearing of the native forest for avocados.
I had no idea of the impact of avocados on the environment and all I can say is, don’t eat avocados grown in Mexico.
Finis
A Yank Among the Kiwis 