Once I got home, we unloaded the car and since it is New Years Eve and I am standing, I have to make oliebollen. Especially since this would be my 4th continent on which I bake them. After the Americas during my exchange year in the USA and my internship on Curaçao, Africa during my project in Rwanda, Europe in the Netherlands, Czech, Estonia and Italy, now I would add Australia to my oliebollen list.
I made the dough in a large pot and put it away to let it rise. After an hour I found it did not rise as much as normally, but we have to work with it. Mo recalled you have to add more yeast then normally, I guess I will experiment with that next year.
I put the first blobs of dough in the hot oil and all worked as normal and five minutes later we could taste first oliebollen. The outside was a bit more crunchy than the normal ones, but the structure and the taste was very close. Due to the smaller batch and the lack of rising I was done baking after 27 oliebollen, about 1/4 of my normal amount.
We shared some with Nico from Columbia who is staying in another room and we discussed the best places to watch the fireworks without it being to crowded. We decided to go to the Vaucluse land tongue for the 21:00 fireworks and then see what we would do for the midnight fireworks.
It was surprisingly quiet on the road and apart from some roads to popular viewing locations the trip was pretty smooth. We drove up to Watson bay and found a parking spot pretty easy. After a nice walk by the ocean coast with some amazing big trees, we got to the beach on the bay side. On one side they where playing loud music, so we moved in the other direction and found a bench with a good view, so we settled there.
The fireworks where very nice, but it was a bit in the distance. So we decided we would move closer to the city for the main course.
Once at the car, we had an unpleasant surprise. The car would not start. I had left the lights on. After 10 years in Estonia I am completely used to the Nordic wiring where the power to the lights is cut when you turn off the car. Even though where where parked on a hill, this would not help the car with automatic transmission and the jump starter was still at home.
I saw some people getting in their car and asked them if they had jumper cable, which they didn’t but they did suggest to walk down the road and as the police who where there.
On my way there I was greeted by a guy with a fishing rod. On my random question if he had jumper cables he replied: “It must be your lucky day, happy New Year”. But it turned out he did not want to give up his parking spot. But then he surprised me by pulling an entire battery out of his trunk as well. He emptied his trolley bag and but the battery in there for easy transport up the hill.
Once connected the car started instantly and by that time the guy had followed me, so I didn’t even have to walk it back.
We offered him some oliebollen and then went our way.
On the way back we found a nice a quiet part with view to the city, which looked promising. We decided to go home and pick up the jump started just in case. After a little rest we where debating if we would drive to the park or drive to the area we had stayed the first few nights, but opted for the park as that would be less crowdy.
We arrived about 23:55, found another bench and waited for the show to start. It was very nice with flares shooting from the high buildings. A wonderful start of a new year which has lots of adventures in store for us,
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