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MEDIA JOBS :: AUSTRALIA

I CAN'T REMEMBER WHEN I FIRST DECIDED THAT I WANTED TO BE A JOURNALIST. I have a fleeting memory as a little kid in the 1970s dreaming of being a newsreader -- perhaps it was a hallucination. I was inside our little 1970s b/w TV wearing glasses and nerdy tweed, reading from the news desk. In the 1980s I forgot the TV dream and instead fantasised about being a science fiction writer, or even an actual alien (this happened one golden year out in the scrublands around Trundle, cruising the dirt lanes of the NSW Central West with my mates Nathan Taylor and Julian Charles hounded by bullies like Shane Howarth and Wayne Tauntaun and looking at stars and theorising about the Small Magellantic Cloud, from which we supposedly originated.) War of the World UFO's spotted in a video store in Parkes, Battlestar Galactica the original series, and Yamato space battleships on ABC TV. As a kid I never thought about what I wanted to be, I was too busy enjoying who I was. Or in the case of the alien from the SMC, who I wasn't. Once I hit high school I was forced to make a choice. And since I liked writing, describing things, imagining the future, and being on the cutting edge of technology and science, I was kind of herded/directed into the vocation of journalism. Not that journalism was the perfect fit for my ambitions and personality, far from it. It's just that there wasn't a huge need in late 1980s global capitalism for future speculators and people who once thought they were born in another galaxy. Had I known the reality of 1990s Australian print journalism, I would have fled from it in terror, to quote Emperor Ming from Flash Gordon. Stuck in Smiths Hill High School in Wollongong for 1989/90, spending all my time studying for a HSC TER of 94.1. Or maybe 94.6, I can't remember clearly. Anyway, it was more than enough to get me enrolled into the print/broadcast/public relations media course at Charles Sturt University (Mitchell), on the other side of the mountains at Bathurst. Supposed to be the best Communications course in New South Wales, and it attracted a lot of city types to the fringe of the Australian outback. If you ever want to see a cultural clash of middle class and working Australia, visit one of Bathurst's pubs on a Thursday night. Shaven-headed lesbians downing schooners of Tooheys New right alongside flannelete wearing locals. Fights were not uncommon and my old flatmate Sorne was punched in the face once late night, coming home from the Railway Hotel, just because he was gay. He was very gay. Andrew Kotakto, making it big in Hollywood the last time I heard. I fell in love with a girl I didn't even know (Cath James). Kotakto observed her and concluded she was an airhead (he was probably right -- he is kinda famous now and she is a nobody, as far as I can ascertain.) Matt Watson was one of the first stars of our class, becoming a news reporter for Channel 9. A real Cronulla man and a gentle giant if there ever was one. Kotatko's once girlfriend Jenny Pyle ended up joining Cumberland and we spent a beautiful year together at the Bankstown Express, drinking at the Soldiers Club where former Prime Minister Paul Keating used to make his speeches, and drinking up all the Arabic/Vietnamese influences. If there are ever any suicide bombers in Australia they will probably grow up in Bankstown. Stuart Ridley, who had ...

September is Moon Cake time in China and Vietnam and I was introduced to the festivities by the seductive Donna when I worked at The Menai/Revesby Express . For a Bankstown Torch -- A local institution Murdoch was never able to crush.
Central Coast Sun (according to my Mum there was a rumour going around the Central Coast that it was out of business, but the website seems current.
The newspaper market in Sydney is extremely limited. There is only one daily tabloid (The Daily Telegraph, and one daily broadsheet (The Sydney Morning Herald .

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Phone: 02/9727 5116.
This is considered one of the Super V vegetarian restaurants, at least by a reviewer on Veggie Friendly. Kate Pounder celebrated her 35th birthday here in August 2006, and describes An Lac as a "simple family restaurant of the wholly authentic Vietnamese kind. The first thing to notice is that each table is set with condiments and cutlery, kitchen-style. While most of the clients are local Vietnamese folk, the menu makes concessions to the occasional Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership names for the dishes and short descriptions of each of the ingredients. Jasmine tea is provided as a courtesy to guests in thermoses which sit on each table." I have noticed that jasmine tea on tables in restaurants in my previous four trips to Viet Nam and to be honest I don't touch it anymore -- it doesn't agree with me. I can handle the superstrong Vietnamese coffee, but the jasmine tea makes me feel kind of sucked-up and empty. Go figure. Pounder goes on to write: "We chose the stuffed tofu with chinese white cabbage in a brown savoury sauce, the imitation roast chicken with dried lily flower black fungus and our favourite for the afternoon, vermicelli with chopped-up spring rolls, cucumber, bean sprouts, mint and a traditional sweet vinegarette.

Bau Truong Restaurant: 10/70 John St, Cabramatta 02 97274492 Restaurant Cabramatta - Tags: Vietnamese.

Cafe Cay Du: Shp 4-5 294 John St, Cabramatta 02 97232696 Restaurants Cabramatta - Tags: Vietnamese Cafe.

Camira Chinese & Thai Food Restaurant 1/ 50 Park Rd, Cabramatta 02 97281052 Restaurant Cabramatta - Tags: Chinese Thai Dai Lam Son Seafood Restaurant 1/111 John St, Cabramatta 02 97550091 Restaurants Cabramatta - Tags: Vietnamese Digger's Bar & Grill Tan Viet: .
Why is it that all the best Australian food bloggers are actually Malaysian women? Food blogging must be a serious pasttime in Malaysia because that is where I picked it up -- during a brief visit to Kuala Lumpur in 2005 en route to Mumbai, India. Malaysia was where my food blogging was born. Musings describes herself as a "happy and fun loving woman who has lived in Sydney for the past 16 years." That's four times longer the period that I lived there, so I am sure she knows the place much better than me. On one of her visits to Cabramatta (which she claims means "Tasty Freshwater Grub Point" in the local Gandangara language) Musings brunched at a new restaurant called Tam Viet. She described it: "The crispy skin chicken must be their specialty as every table ordered one either with egg noodles with soup or dried. Must say the soup was delicious and the crispy chicken lived up to its name! It was crispy and succulent. We also ordered a broken rice special with the works i.e. with pork chop, shredded skin, fried egg and a pork loaf. It was yum! The hot milk coffee topped it all of. This restaurant was really busy with a high turnover. There were a lot of locals gobbling down their food and speaking in their native tongues. If one were to close one's eyes, you'd be forgiven to think that you are somewhere in Vietnam or Lao or Khmer..."

First, those stats about Bankstown. Bankstown is located in south-western Sydney abotu 30 minutes by train from the city center. According to census results, only about half the population speak English at home. About 16 per cent of the people speak Arabic and about 7 per cent speak Vietnamese, hence my references before to Bansktown being an English/Arabic/Vietnamese blend. Other immigrants come from China, Yugoslavia, India, Greece, you name it.

It is this multicultural blend that makes Bankstown interesting, predominantly in the food department. The sights here are not so interesting but it is cool enough just to wander the Bankstown Mall area, checking out the little restaurants and the ducks' heads in the butchers, and the Asian supermarkets. I often used to pick up strange items and imports from Vietnam which I wasn't able to do anything with once I got them home, such as fish balls and rolls of edible banana leaves and so on. They were lesbian fantasies, I believe, and she was talking about going to a lesbian bar one day. Of course, being the wuss that I was back then, I failed to take the opportunity she was obviously offering me, so nothing happened between her and me. It was cool to go shopping with her though. We found one particular Chinese item called Moon Cake or something like that -- inside the cake there was supposed to a complete duck's head, wih! (I'm serious -- that's what she said!) Anyway, I never tried Moon Cake while I was in Bankstown, but I would be interested to have a go at it if I found it again, somewhere in the world...

Aboriginal Australia