I was going to bring along my tip-sensitive digital thermometer and help-out at a sausage sizzle for the kids today before tomorrow’s national holiday, but days of rain have thwarted any plans for the barbie.

Australia Day is the official national day of Australia, commemorating the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove on Jan. 26, 1788, and the proclamation at that time of British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of New Holland. The Brits viewed the settlement as necessary because of the loss of the 13 colonies in North America. The locals didn’t think it was that necessary.

The Aussies have fabulous parks everywhere, especially in Brisbane because so much of the city is in a flood plain. And there are free electric and wood-burning grills at almost every park.

So someone thought to test the cleanliness of the BBQs.

Of eight public barbecues across Melbourne surveyed by an accredited food safety specialist, all cooking surfaces were deemed safe at the time, but not so for benchtops around communal barbies.

Port Phillip Council acting mayor Frank O'Connor, whose municipality takes in St Kilda, said barbecues were cleaned twice a day between November and March with operation checked weekly. Contractors also regularly checked their heat output.

Gippsland Sprout Co has, according to Food Standards Australia New Zealand, recalled Gippsland Sprout Co Mung Beans and Flowerdale Farm Mung Sprouts due to microbial contamination (E.coli). These products have been available for sale from Melbourne Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Market (Footscray), small grocery stores (including Inverloch Foodworks ) and green grocers in Victoria.

No details on how this E. coli was detected, what kind of E. coli, or if anyone is sick.

Australia still has an egg problem.

So much so we made up a table of raw-egg related outbreaks in Australia (thanks Gonzalo and Sol) available at http://bites.ksu.edu/raw-egg-related-outbreaks-australia.

A month after 22 were sickened at a popular Canberra café from raw egg in mayonnaise, it now appears some sort of raw egg thingy is responsible for up to 19 illnesses and possibly one death linked to a Ballarat pizza joint.

Melbourne’s The Age reports tonight that eggs are the suspected source of a salmonella outbreak at Rizzo's Pizza in Ballarat, which was closed for one week.

A department spokesman today confirmed there were 14 confirmed cases of salmonella poisoning linked to the restaurant, and another five suspected cases.

The man who died tested positive to salmonella and had eaten at the pizzeria, but the precise cause of his death was yet to be determined by the man's doctor, the spokesman said.

The state Department of Health, local council types and the restaurant have been less than forthcoming with information.

The department spokesman said eggs were the likely cause of the outbreak, although it was unclear whether the outbreak was related to their storage or food handling.

The restaurant declined to comment.

An update: The Herald-Sun added some more details.

The salmonella outbreak has been traced to undercooked pizzas containing egg.

One man who claims he ate the pizzas, Matthew Campbell (right, photo from Herald-Sun), allegedly lost 8kg from severe food poisoning and is calling for the shop to be closed down permanently.

"I was sick for two weeks. That's how I spent my Christmas break, on the toilet. It felt like I'd swallowed a ball of thumbtacks.”

Another Ballarat resident claims she was faced with a $500 vet bill after her cat's organs began to fail after it was fed a bit of pizza.

Customers were still unwittingly buying pizzas from the shop tonight, unaware health officials ordered it be shut down for a week on December 30 after it began investigating a salmonella cluster in the regional city.

The Ballarat City Council is now responsible for pursuing any penalties against the pizzeria and has refused to rule out the possibility of charges of breaching the Food Safety Act.

The killer mushroom story from Canberra, Australia is taking on new levels of weirdness.

Today, the ACT's chief health officer confirmed the bistro where a deadly mushroom dish was cooked on New Year's Eve would remain closed and would need to be inspected before it was allowed to reopen.

The Chinese restaurant, located in the Harmonie German Club in Narranbundah, had been due to reopen after the Christmas break on Wednesday night, just hours before management learnt of the tragic mistake, in which two people died and two others were taken to hospital after eating the dish laced with death cap mushrooms.

Canberra health authorities last night confirmed the meal was prepared in a restaurant kitchen.

Acting ACT Chief Health Officer Dr Andrew Pengilly said that, while the bistro had closed voluntarily, ACT Health had asked for it to remain shut until an inspection could be carried out.

Last night, a sign on the door of the restaurant, which is run by an independent operator within the club, said the chef "made a deadly mistake."

The sign said that it was informing the community with the "greatest regret" that chef Liu Jun and kitchen hand Tsou Hsiang "made a deadly mistake and ate some mushroom (death caps) that they mistook for Chinese straw mushrooms".
It was unclear who had posted the note, but Harmonie German Club secretary Susan Davidson confirmed it had not come from the club nor the independent operator of the restaurant.

Mr Liu, 38, who made the meal at the bistro, and Ms Tsou, 52, died from liver failure in Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital while waiting for transplants.
Mystery surrounds another man, 51, who remains in the hospital in a stable condition with death cap poisoning.

ACT Health initially said this man was part of the same group, but ACT police said this was not the case.

Friends of the chef, who had spent several years working in Australia, said he was obsessed with fresh food. He was also working to send money home to his Chinese wife and two children, a seven-year-old boy and a girl, 11.

"The mushrooms were brought into the club for a private meal, cooked after bistro hours, by the chef for him and his co-workers. It was not a meal on the bistro menu and was not a meal that was offered to, or available to, the public," it added.