I begin with a disclaimer that this post is written with a total lack of cultural sensitivity for my new Australian friends. I apologize in advance for my American post, but I will say this is the only time I plan on being so brashly patriotic on this blog. Other times it is just an accident… This is not an accident 😉

One of the more surprising realizations we have had over the past three months is that people in Australia are largely unaware of the soul serving joy of s’mores. For the uninitiated / Australian readers of this blog, a s’more is a campfire-roasted marshmallow with a piece of chocolate sandwiched between graham crackers.

I was confused when I learned this was not a given for camping in Australia. I naively assumed that this must mean that there were no marshmallows in Australia… That’s how merged these things are in my mind…. If you were going to have marshmallows, of course you would have s’mores! In my mind, there is no other purpose for marshmallows except maybe Rice Krispy treats, but I digress….

We searched the baking aisles at grocery store after grocery store to try to procure marshmallows, but we never found them. I knew at this point that roasting marshmallows was in fact a camping tradition in Australia, but the white puffs remained elusive. Finally, on one frustrated journey I wandered the candy (confection) aisle and voila marshmallows!

After the initial shock wore off, I grabbed several bags, baffled by yet another odd occurrence. All the packets were half pink and half white. I searched in Cairns for an alternative, but alas, I left with the combo bag shaking my head – a pink marshmallow?!

The block of chocolate was an easy win. None of the bars were as thin as a Hershey bar, but that is certainly not worthy of complaint. Bring on that fine Aussie chocolate!

Our next challenge was the Graham Cracker. Graham Crackers are not available in Australia. Luckily, there are enough ex-pats who have worried about this issue that there were several articles online suggesting an acceptable alternative. After reading the descriptions of the various options we went with Arnott’s Nice biscuits.

We secured our supplies making Finny particularly ecstatic. He claims s’mores as his favorite food upon occasion. We had to wait a few days to make our first one as we were stuck for a couple of nights without a campfire.

When the night arrived the boys eagerly gathered sticks and got to work. The conversation focused on the relative “s’more master” levels in the family. Jay is a padawan (a young Jedi) while Lake clocks in as a s’more master and Finny reigns supreme as an ultimate s’more master.

The results were delicious!

We did a quick survey. The primary drawbacks were the size of the marshmallows – probably equivalent to the size that marshmallows were in the US 30 years ago before everything got super-sized. But be that as it may, they do seem small… And there is certainly no Marshmallow stacker type option which has recently come on the scene in the US. Australian s’mores got bonus points for the Nice biscuits – we think they may outperform graham crackers.

In the final tally, there were two votes for equal to s’mores at home and two votes for better in Australia!

Now back to the campfire…