Who's For a Kebab!

Kebabs! an institution of the drunk Britain, many evenings I've had wandering down Cowley Road, Lothian Road, Commercial Street(replace Kebab with baked tattie!), when the notion hits that what I really, really, really need is a piece of unnamed meat wacked in a flat bread and then stuffed with raw salad vegetables and then smothered in fire starting chilli sauce.
Well fast forward till now, here I am in Australia and I've made 2 shocking discoveries:

1) Kebabs aren't in fact a British delicacy, but actually originate from the Middle East

and

2) Australians appear to be as much in love with them as we are back home but, wait for it, eat them sober!


I do remember speaking to a few of our Australian chums back home, and they were always quick to mention(when the subject turned to Kebabs) that their Kebabs were so much better than those in Britain. Well it's taken a trip to Byron Bay, half way up the east coast of Australia, to find out that they were telling the truth.
There I was, tent all erected in the hippy commune, wearing my new cargo style shorts(the women in the shop said they'd make me look cool!) hand in hand with Jules walking down to the beach. When Jules pulls up, "fancy a Kebab",
"What"
"A kebab! There different here, and I'm hungry"
"hmmm, alright then"

So off we trot into the kebab shop, to my horror I wasn't confronted by the comforting figure of a hairy Turkish gentleman with a big belly, larger moustache and a variety of stains on his white apron. No, quite the opposite I was confronted by an attractive enough young lady, wearing a polo shirt, which happened to be very clean.
That wasn't the only difference, lookin up at the menu, my choice wasn't Doner(small, medium or large) and Chicken Doner(Thurs only), but seafood assortment, lamb, beef, chicken, kangaroo, emu, snake, crocodile, widgittygrub, koala, cookaburra, cockatoo, the choice was endless(well big) and most importantly every meat had a name.
Jules opted for the vegetarian, which in Britain would have meant a slightly larger scoop of the lettuce, tomato, onion combo but in OZ actually meant a choice of a mighty selection of healthy looking salads and vegetables. I opted for the chicken, which wasn't shaved from a large cone shaped object, but actually contained chicken breast, and impressively it was Monday.
So, we both had our bases, and now just to choose the sauce, chilli or garlic mayonnaise or if your wacky, a combination of the two. Well, the young lady asks
"what sauce would you like?, we have sweet chilli, hot chilli, satay, barbecue, honey mustard, citric fusion, tomato salsa, tiryaki, garlic mayonnaise with a hint of tyme, a lovely white wine vinegar dressing, and my personal favourite, a rich seafood sauce caught fresh this morning!"
"hot chilli" I say, well, there's only so much variety a guy can handle.
Then she does something completely unexpected, something which I'm sure she's spent the best part of a year at evening class to prefect. I can only liken this to the ability to draw shamrocks in the top of Guinness. She takes the meat filled bread and folds it into the perfect wrap, no hesitation, no fumbling, quick as you like, one second a sprawling mass, the next a perfectly formed ready to eat masterpiece of middle east Australian culinary fusion. Rolls it in a piece of paper, hands me a napkin and says "enjoy the rest of your day"
Well, hold on a minute, now I like to think of myself as a bit of a connoisseur of Kebabs, I've travelled the length and breadth of our own country and I've been in hundreds if not thousands of kebab shops, hell! I've even been to Turkey, and never have I seen such a sight. Kebabs aren't meant to be neat, your meant to wake up the next morning and either have
a) the most stained shirt you've ever seen
or, and probably worse
b) used the kebab as a pillow

But here in the land down under, the kebab has evolved into a respectable lunch time snack, neat, clean and tasty. I am however sure of one thing though, if your sitting on a beach in the 40 degree heat of midday in Byron Bay, hot chilli sauce is not such a good idea!