Sausage Sizzling, Compulsory Voting & "Ice" Skating

This past Saturday was our first "lazy" Saturday at home in several weeks and we were looking forward to doing nothing specific. For Australian citizens 18 years and older it was election day. Coming from the U.S. it was strange for elections to be on a Saturday, but then I learned that voting here is compulsory. If you don't vote you'll be hit with a $20 fine. As someone else explained it to me in Australian terms - that's about five takeaway coffees, so why would you even consider not voting?!

While I don't want to get into the whole conversation as to whether compulsory or non-compulsory voting is better, I did find what I consider better about the Australian voting tradition: the sausage sizzle. Evidently some time ago a brilliant entrepreneurial mind clearly was looking for ways to capitalize on the lines of people waiting to vote and decided it was a great opportunity to host a sausage sizzle and raise some money. Since most polling places are either schools or other non-profit locations like churches it was possible to find sausage sizzles all over this city raising money for various organizations. And no need to look too hard, there is actually a Sausage Sizzle and Cake Stall Map online. You heard me right. And get this, if you haven't gotten enough voting in on the day, then you can continue the fun and vote for your favorite location!

The "official" map - I'm still wondering how many people made it to the sausage sizzle in Sri Lanka...

Vote for your favorite!

So even if we couldn't vote, we went out in support of a local sausage sizzle at Emma's most likely future primary school. As soon as we got out of the car we got hit with last minute political paraphernalia - a bit more aggressive and certainly closer to the polling location than is allowed back in the U.S. We must have looked like the people that really didn't care as we wove our way through them just to locate the good smelling food!

Approaching the polling location.

Lines for voting and sausage sizzling!

Amply full of sausages and cakes we sought out a free ice skating location we heard about in the area to burn off a few calories. Seeing how it is winter here, quite a few locations have popped up. However, keeping in mind that the weather is still relatively mild many of the skate locations are not actually ice, but instead a synthetic ice surface made of interlocking panels. Emma has been asking to go ice skating, so we thought the small synthetic ice rink at a local mall might be a good one to try first and see if she likes it before we try one of the larger outdoor spots (there is one in Hyde Park that is real ice we would like to try, or perhaps we will test out the outdoor rink on Bondi Beach!).

Dad just wore booties on his shoes and Emma hung on dearly!

Steve took Emma out on the even smaller than expected rink. I am honestly not sure if she cared much about actually skating or just wanted to act goofy and fall down and get covered in the fake snow, in other words getting sprayed with soapy bubbles. Either way, she had a great time.

Waiting to get "snowed" on!

Emma didn't seem to mind falling down, perhaps she even preferred it!

One of the great parts about living in another country is taking part in the unique traditions that you would likely never encounter as a tourist. In Switzerland one of my favorites was Sechselauten (aka - burning a giant wood snowman until it's head explodes). I think we checked an Australian one off the list this weekend with the sausage sizzle. However, we missed out on playing two-up this year on Anzac Day, perhaps we'll have to put that one on the list for next year!

Happy ice skater!