Unique Australian inventions

There are some things that can only be found in Australia, such as:

Hungry Jacks

It might look like Burger King, and it might certainly taste like Burger King, but the main burger rival to Maccas in Oz is Hungry Jacks. Up until a couple of years ago, though, there were both Burger Kings and Hungry Jacks in Australia, which, despite looking exactly the same, had different names for the burgers.

This led to many puzzled looks from just about everyone, until they suddenly all changed to Hungry Jacks’ again.

The story behind it all is quite simple – the initial Hungry Jacks in Perth was a franchise of Burger King, and that franchisee set up outlets all over the country. He then started allowing third party franchisees at exactly the same time that the Burger King corporation allowed more franchises, all of which fell under the name of the parent company. So, essentially, all were Burger Kings, but the Hungry Jacks had a middleman.

Eventually, the head honchos realised that this was a ridiculous state of affairs, and shunned the international brand in favour of the one that had 30 years of history in Australia.

Anzac Biscuits

There are those who believe that ANZAC Day (April 25th, every year) was celebrated in honour of those simple but very more-ish biscuits that are so prevalent in Australia. Anzac biccies are actually named after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, which fought valiantly in World War I to very little acclaim from the top brass. It was during the war that these simple snacks, made primarily from flour and oats, were born. Whether they came from the men in the trenches or the women on the home front is open to debate, but one thing’s for sure, eat one and you’ll munch your way through the whole packet.

Vegemite

Whilst it was previously thought impossible to create something more disgusting than Marmite, the Australians have truly outdone themselves with Vegemite. Whilst you can find the proper stuff in specialist import shops, Vegemite is the stock standard. And you never know, you might train yourself to like it eventually, honest.

Drive In Bottle Shops

There are many Australian icons which are worthy of extreme praise in international circles, but surely none are so brilliant and ingenious as the drive-in bottle shop. For a start, bottle shop is clearly a better name than an off-licence (and in a country where they call football ‘soccer’ amongst various other crimes, that is quite hard to admit). Secondly, there is a fine attitude to binge drinking – the more you buy, the cheaper it gets, almost to the extent where a slab of 24 beers can cost exactly the same as two six packs.

But the drive-in aspect is the absolute clincher. Are you drunk? Have you run out of beer? Well, why not hop in your car, and drive to a place where you can buy loads more?

Cask wine

Whilst the rest of the world drinks wine in glasses, poured from bottles, in Australia, the cask is king.

Inside the magic box is something that looks like wine and, if you’re really drunk and make it cold enough, sometimes tastes like wine.

Within the box of delights, you can find something even classier – the backpacker’s silver pillow. You know that you have officially stooped as low as you possibly can do when you are either glugging out of the bag, dentist’s chair style, or you are squeezing its contents into a spare McDonalds cup which is the only vessel remaining once someone else has bagsied the vase.

ThongsJust about everyone in Australia wears thongs, and whilst anywhere else you’d imagine that to mean that there is a lot of cheese-grater bum cracks on show, over here ‘thong’ is the word for flip flop.

And they are completely ubiquitous. It’s not just on the beach that you’ll see them – people will wear them on their way to work before changing into proper shoes.

They do, however, take a bit of getting used to. Walking with them requires you to grip with your toes, and running is just plain farcical. You will also end up with huge, scarring blisters on your feet where the rubber digs in, but it’s all worth it to get the air circulating around them. Trainers can get stinky over here within approximately two days of being bought…

Tim Tams

Back home, we don’t really get excited about Penguins. They’re alright as a token cheap chocolate bar in a school kid’s packed lunch, but it’s nothing to rave on incessantly over.

For some reason, the Aussie version – the Tim Tam – is a million times better than a penguin. They look exactly the same, and probably taste nigh on identical, but you can happily wolf down 10 Tim Tams straight from the packet and still want more. The double chocolate and caramel versions, in particular, are fantastic.

Print Article

Email Article

View All Articles

How to subscribe to feeds