Bunnings is a hardware chain store, similar to Home Depot in the US. Every weekend, Bunnings stores have a little stall near the entrance where people sell "Bunnings Snags". The stalls are made available to various community groups, such as schools, Surf Life Savers, Boy Scouts, and so on. Volunteers staff the stall for the weekend to raise money for their group.
This morning, it was the Australian Woodturners Association turn to raise money.
The Bunnings Snag (sausage) is something of an Australian cultural icon. It is famous for being really basic, pretty much the cheapest sausage one can possibly make. They are typically an emulsified sausage, often made with beef, but can also be pork or chicken sausage. It really depends on whatever cheapest sausage the community group volunteers could get their hands on.
The distinguishing features are that the fat content has to be high, preferably above 30% (fat is cheaper than meat), and that the sausage contains a massive amount of filler. Rice flour, rusk, and other cereal grains are popular. The sausages are never smoked or blanched, and are never put into proper real casings. Instead, cheap and nasty collagen casings are mandatory, because they tend to split on the hot plate and allow much of the fat to render out, so the cooked sausage is quite dry and crumbly. The beef flavour is there, but rather subdued, presumably because whatever meat is in these sausages are all the trimmings and off-cuts that truly cannot be used for anything else (other than maybe dog food).
The most authentic examples do not taste much like meat of any kind at all. Instead, they have sort of a vague meaty and salty flavour that really doesn't taste like anything. Or tastes like cereal that has been waved past a meat works a few times.
This morning's example was of disappointingly high quality and came close to violating the expected maximum quality standard for a Bunnings sausage
People do not seek out a Bunnings sausage for its taste. (No-one in their right mind would do that.) But people buy them—despite their taste—out of a sense of civic duty. After all, they are sold to support a good cause, and not buying a Bunnings sausage during the Sunday trip to the local hardware store would be downright un-Australian.
The Bunnnings sausage is an icon that belongs Down Under the same way that Lamingtons and Vegemite do. And it has firmly established Australia as the world record holder for the worst sausage ever.
As usual, we Aussies are punching above our weight