Beer and drunken monkeys might be Germany’s thing, but for Aussies on the road, you can’t go past a Tim Tam.

It was late 2005, I was far from home, and for almost a year I hadn’t eaten a Tim Tam. Things were getting desperate.

(Tim Tams, for those of you not in the know, are Australian chocolate bars with a sort of wafer filling that are the bane of dieting girls everywhere.)

I was living in Konstanz, in the south of Germany, with three friends from downunder. One night, we were paid an unexpected visit by a good friend and fellow southern-hemispherian, Kiwi Jimmy. He’d just returned from a visit home and he’d brought us a gift.

Well, our greedy eyes lit up all at once as we hungrily eyed the parcel he clutched to his chest. He yanked the precious cargo from its bag and -

- ‘TIM TAMS!’ we all screeched in unison, falling over ourselves to paw at the priceless gift and empty the thing in one fell swoop. Kiwi Jimmy was thrown back against the door in the mad chaos of the moment, and sustained a minor flesh wound to the back of his carefully cultivated Hasselhof ‘do.

But the most violent and dangerous part of the evening came when, having rationed out two Tim-Tams each and devoured them like a pack of ravenous dogs, we all at once spied the near-empty packet half hidden by a shoe, torn and dishevelled from over-handling, and realised with an untimely mixture of greed and trepidation that but a sole finger of chocolate goodness remained.

Kiwi Jimmy shifted nervously from his precarious position near the edge of the bed: ‘Uh…according to my calculations, there’s only one Tim-Tam left, and we’re five people…should we get a knife?’

But his faltering proposition had already been drowned out by the riotous scramble of four half-crazed Aussie girls for the last taste of home…