10 July 2024
While the blog posts may have slowed up a bit of late (busy sightseeing, driving and relaxing), the sausage roll consumption certainly hasn’t. While there was a food poisoning scare with the last sausage roll sampling as you may remember, I can assure you I’ve been back on the horse since — especially with Nicole’s continued enthusiastic support.
And no, I haven’t gone above my trip starting weight (yet).
We’ve been seeing a lot of the very beautiful Pilbara of late, which will hopefully be the subject of a blog post all its own at some stage soon. However, this post is all about the sausage rolls folks, Pilbara style.
Tom Price (Brumby’s)
While in Tom Price we booked a tour of the Rio Tinto Mine for our final day. We had to be in town (a short drive) by 8:45am, so we decided to have a bakery breakfast and coffee beforehand. The only option was Brumby’s, so in we went. Good news: they had sausage rolls! Bad news: they didn’t sell coffee. So, while Nicole ordered the baked goods, I went next door to buy coffee (once again, the only real option).
The place was quite odd, in that never before have I seen a shop that sells phone cases, antennas, AV equipment (mostly second hand by the looks) and SIM cards, doubling as a coffee shop. And, unfortunately, the coffee suggested their main line of business was the non-coffee stuff.
Rendezvousing back with Nicole, it was breakfast time. And then, just as we were about to start eating, I got an email to say our mine tour had been cancelled due to wet haul roads on the mine site — only 30 minutes before the tour! Disappointing to say the least, especially considering it hadn’t rained for the past 3 days.
Anyway, the sausage roll was solid, without being amazing.
- Good texture
- Good temperature
- OK taste
- Nice place to sit outside
- Extra points for context i.e. it was freezing cold, and a hot sausage roll always tastes better under those conditions
- Rating — 8.0 out of 10.
Karratha (Pilbara Bakehouse)
While Nicole and I stayed in Dampier, we did make a few trips into Karratha (around a 20-minute drive) for supplies etc. Nicole had thoroughly researched the sausage roll situation and found the Pilbara Bakehouse to be the best option to try. As it turns out, Nicole’s research was very well rewarded.
We were welcomed by a very pleasant bakery, with good parking, a very pleasant area to sit outside, and excellent, friendly service. An excellent start.
In terms of the rest …
- Very good value for money
- Excellent presentation (looked very tasty)
- Nice and fresh
- Very good texture — not too mushy, not too chewy
- Wonderful flavour, with a very slight curry taste
- You could taste the grease (very good)
- Some onion pieces which added, not subtracted, from the culinary experience
- Rating — 8.8 out of 10.
We have a new leader folks!
Onslow (Onslow General Store)
Onslow is a very quiet, sleepy town, but very nice. On one of our two days there we went for a morning walk to the General Store to get a few grocery items, which the Information Centre had said they’d have. We had looked up the opening hours on the web and found they opened at 8:00am. When we arrived at around 9:15am, it looked very closed, and the door was locked.
So, we went for a short walk (everything is a short walk in Onslow) and bought a coffee. From there Nicole called the General Store to ask if they were open. “Yes, we are. We’ve been open since 8:00am.” Hmmm, something isn’t right.
So, a bit after 10:00am, we went back. They were open now, but when we walked in it was just a gift shop with some papers and magazines etc. No groceries. Nicole asked where the food was and why they hadn’t been open earlier. “That’s the other general store”, was the response from the elderly owner. “They have the Bottlemart sign up out the front that confuses everybody. I don’t know why they keep doing that.”
So, Onslow, a very small town, has two General Stores. One sells gifts, papers and Lotto entries (I’m not really sure why that qualifies it as a General Store). The other, a whole block away, is a proper IGA-type grocery store that also sells alcohol (guess which one is busier). We had found what we were looking for.
How does this relate to Sausage Roll Scorecard you are probably wondering by now? Well, we saw a nice baked goods hot box at the front with pies etc. And we saw someone lined up to pay for their fresh sausage roll. But there were none left in the hot box. Massive sad face.
Then, divine intervention. I was about to ask a fellow pushing a big trolley if they were making any more sausage rolls. As I started asking, he pointed down to the trolley. “Is this what you’re looking for?” And there it was, a trolley full of at least 50 beautiful, freshly baked sausage rolls! Hallelujah.
So, what was it like?
- Great value (only $7.80 for two)
- Very fresh (straight off the trolley!)
- A very good option on an extremely windy, and somewhat cold, day
- Good texture and taste
- Nice pastry
- Quite hot though
- Extra 0.3 points for the divine intervention
- Rating — 8.4 out of 10.
Nanutarra (Nanutarra Roadhouse)
Nanutarra Roadhouse is roughly halfway between Karratha and Exmouth. Stopping in Onslow meant we needed extra fuel to make Exmouth, so into Nanutarra Roadhouse we went. I fuelled up while Nicole went in to pay. We had agreed we weren’t going to buy any food or drinks, to save some money.
Then, Nicole arrived back at the motorhome with a surprise! And guess what it was? Two mini sausage rolls, which actually weren’t that mini. See what I mean about Nicole’s encouragement? But I’m not complaining.
So how did this surprise sausage roll score?
- Extra points for the surprise value
- Good pastry
- Heavy filling, but not too heavy
- Good grease content
- A very nice roadhouse (there have been some shockers), with nice tables to sit at
- Good value for money
- Rating — 8.6 out of 10.
So, while it went very close to pipping Karratha, no cigar this time.
So, as you can see from the highlighted entries in the updated scorecard below, the Pilbara punched well above its weight in terms of sausage roll experiences. God bless the Pilbara!
Current scorecard
- Karratha (8.8/10)
- Derby (8.6/10)*
- Nanutarra (8.6/10)*
- Roma (8.5/10)
- Onslow (8.4/10)
- Darwin — Standard (8.3/10)
- Tom Price (8.0/10)
- Darwin — Chilli Beef (7.4/10)
- Humpty Doo (7.3/10)*
- Pine Creek (7.3/10)*
- Katherine (7.2/10)
- Cloncurry (7.0/10)
- Winton (6.5/10)
- Wyndham (6.4/10)
- Broome (2.5/10)
*Note that where scores are tied, the sausage roll tasted first is placed highest in the list.
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