When I was a very young lad in Oz, my mum made French toast in much the same way as the more delectable descriptions above but there was no such thing as maple syrup. Even now I suspect you can't get "real" maple syrup easily in Oz. Instead, we used golden syrup, known colloquially as "cockies' joy"; it is a lighter fraction of the sugar refining process than treacle, itself lighter than molasses, here in Oz anyway.

At the risk of thread drift, I tried to inculcate some appreciation of Oz delectables in some South Carolinians from Columbia by getting them to bake Anzac biscuits. There is a fair amount of debate about "the exact recipe" for Anzac biscuits but all the variants require golden syrup. When I visited SC I had to bring some from Oz, as you can't get the real thing in the US. I discovered an American website that described its recipe for Anzac biscuits as "authentic" but they used another sort of syrup entirely. "Fake!!" Down in the boutique shops near USC you could get Oz wines and even vegemite but not golden syrup.

So I now send some over there every so often, as I know there's no acceptable substitute; it seems like you folks have the same attitude about French toast requiring "real" maple syrup.

Cheers, Rowan