We’re heading to Mildura in Victoria’s northwest. By lunchtime we leave the Sunraysia Highway at Ouyen, because we want to try the Mallee Bakery’s famous award winning vanilla slices. The pies are excellent but the “snot blocks” are pillows of ecstasy and gooilly delicious but bloody difficult to eat whilst driving. Brian has large globs of soft white icing dripping from his fingers and a mouth filled with crunchy pastry as he asks me to mop up the custard that has landed in big dollops in his lap. All too soon I realise that I’m tickling his unmentionables while wiping the wet custard from his shorts! At 90 kilometres an hour we can be thankful that the traffic is light today.

I do hope his shorts dry before we get to the caravan park.

A translation for non Australian readers. Australian bakeries compete fiercely for the title of Great Australian Vanilla Slice in a competition which began when the Victorian State Premier at the time declared that Ouyen produced the best vanilla slice.

When a country town wins the award ‘grey nomads’ flock in their thousands for a cuppa and a taste test.

And the ‘moniker’ ‘snot block’ well that is the name that all Aussie kids give this, their favourite messiest pastry.