FOR some, politics can be as dull as a sausage with no bread.
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But that’s the good thing about election day, you won’t find any sausages without the bread.
In fact we might be able to go as far as saying it wouldn’t be Australian to vote without the smell of a sausage sizzle close by.
And while today wasn’t the best weather for voting, there was one thing worth getting out of bed for… a sausage, or two... of five.
In our case it was five.
We began the election day sausage voting back in 2013 when our reporter at the time, Jordan Oliver, tackled five random polling booths in the Ballarat electorate, sampling the best sausages the city had on offer.
As the years have gone by, the competition over which polling booth has the best sausage has been taken to a new level.
You’ll find cakes, and coffee and if you’re lucky an egg and bacon roll – don’t get me wrong these are quite enticing and really have gone above and beyond the traditional sizzle, but while these are all great, it’s really the sausages we wanted to put to the test.
We selected five polling booths at random and decided to see what they had on offer.
All five had something very different to bring to the table, whether it a serving of onion at no extra cost, or a friendly offer to add the sauce without you needing to lift a finger.
Some schools offered sliced onion, while others offered diced – varying between $2-2.50, a cheap lunch if you ask me.
The men and woman behind the barbeques said it was a mix of friendly service and the perfect fat content that made a sausage taste so good.
Here’s how the five schools fared:
Ballarat North Primary School: 5/5 – The winner of the day in our mind, the biggest sausage with the most onion (which was sliced, not diced)
Black Hill Primary School: 4/5 – There was plenty of onion on this sausage, and the sausage was extra juicy and contained no burnt parts.
Ballarat Grammar: 3.5/5 – A great tasting sausage, but again they used diced onion over sliced. I also had no idea what to do with the napkin.
Urquhart Park Primary School: 3.5/5 – We tried BBQ sauce with this sausage and while not as good as tomato, it was still super tasty. This was where we found the smallest sausage of the day.
St Alipius Primary School: 3.5/5 – I’m not a fan of diced onion, and while it still tasted great, it isn’t as good as sliced onion in my mind. We were delighted with the amount of sauce we were given with this sausage, and we didn’t need to lift a finger.
At Urquhart Park Primary School our photographer gave the thumbs up to the egg and bacon roll on offer – even though the egg did end up down the front of her.
So there is light at the end of the election day tunnel in Ballarat, that light contains plenty of sausage sizzles.
Where was your favourite sausage?
The Courier will provide live coverage and video updates on the election tonight from 6pm.