Day 245: Swagman Stew ♥
"Once a jolly swagman, sat beside a billabong ..." So sang my mother, as a lullaby, to my sister and me; so sang my London-born, WWI veteran grandfather to my mother and her sister when they were girls. But the lilting Waltzing Matilda is perhaps all that many Americans, myself included, know about the hours-, kilometers- and hemisphere-away Aussies of Australia. (Top-of-mind check. Fosters beer. Great wine. Vegemite. Mutton. Humour and vocabulary. Kangaroos and koalas. That movie guy with the cowboy hat, what was his name? And yeah, Muriel, the one in the wedding movie. Russell Crowe!!! A remarkable 60-something white-haired Aussie named Martha who trekked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes carrying a red umbrella and wearing a long-sleeved, high-collared white -- WHITE! -- linen shirt somehow kept immaculately fresh during five days of hard hiking and third-world camping. The Sydney Opera House. The Outback. A Town Like Alice. The Shackleton Antarctica que