Eating Out

One drawback of self-catering is you have to prepare all your own meals. It is economical in terms of your budget and time however, it is lots of work for the cooks of the family and many hours spent in supermarkets. Every week we decided to treat ourselves and the best way we found was to visit the local hotel (pub). Local hotels tend to be hives of activity to which most of the locals gravitate. Here you can eat, drink, watch TV, play the pokeys or one arm bandits (slot machines), play pool, even play darts and you get to observe the locals in their element. At the Mudgee pub we cooked our own steaks and were invited to taste some wines. At a pub in Sydney we had steak, mashed potatoes with gravy and a beer for $8. If hotels don’t turn your crank there are hundreds of restaurants of all types in Australia, many specializing in Asian cuisine. At the Beach Shack in Port Douglas we ate great seafood with our feet in the sand. The restaurant is open to the skies with a sand floor and dwarfed by towering gum trees.