The Collection

THE CURIOUS HISTORY OF TEA AND COFFEE

Warren Fahey recites ‘Billy of Tea’

The Billy of Tea

You may talk of your whisky or talk of your beer,
I’ve something far better awaiting me here;
It stands on the fire beneath the gum tree,
And you cannot much lick it—a billy of tea.
So fill up your tumbler as high as you can,
You’ll never persuade me it’s not the best plan,
To let all the beer and the spirits go free
And stick to my darling old billy of tea.
(anonymous old bush song)

Warren Fahey sings ‘Old Black Billy’

Bush workers survived on tea, tea, tea and more tea.

Australians delight in abbreviating many words but ‘cuppa’ must be up the top somewhere, being in circulation for well over a century to describe a cup of tea or coffee. We have always consumed a lot of hot drinks, particularly tea, and this inevitably led to a flow of folklore surrounding the brews, including song, yarn, word usage, custom and that great ongoing debate whether the milk should be added before or after the tea. By the second half of the nineteenth century, we were probably the most voracious tea drinkers in the world. It was not uncommon for bush workers to drink three or four mugs at each meal break, which added up to a staggering 50 or 60 litres a week. This amazing consumption of tea reflected the never-ending thirst of workers in the dry bush and the reality that water was not always immediately drinkable, the tea disguising the often murky and tainted water. It was also readily available, relatively inexpensive, light and, most importantly, washed down hard damper and salt beef.

In colonial days the station or camp cook had to rise at around 5 am to ensure plenty of strong, hot tea was ready to get the men off on the right foot. More tea was demanded mid-morning, at lunch, in the mid-afternoon and, of course, when they knocked off at day’s end. They affectionately referred to it as their ‘darling’ or ‘sweetie’. An old bush saying offered, ‘a hot drink is as good as an overcoat’.

A ‘drover’s breakfast’ was said to be ‘often no more than a fart, a mug of tea and a good look around’.

Traditionally the bushman made tea by boiling clean (with any luck) water in a billycan and throwing in a generous handful of tea-leaves when the water came to the boil. The next step was to make the tea leaves sink to the bottom and several methods were employed. Some added a couple of gum leaves, claiming that they made the tea leaves sink, others insisted that the leaves would always sink when the sides of the billycan were given several short, sharp taps with a stick.

Some bushies stirred the tea with a twig while others recommended swinging the billycan around with a circular motion so that the law of gravity would force the leaves to the bottom. As most billy tea drinkers know – whatever you do some of the bitter leaves still end up in your mouth. When tea was really rough it was known as ‘post and rail’ – so called because of the large leaves that remained floating in the mug, resembling the distinctive outback post and rail wooden fencing.

It was around the campfire, sipping tea, that the old bushmen viewed as their common ground; where the boss and his men could discuss the changing world and their respective place in it. Tea was the great mediator.

There were legendary tea drinkers too, like the great cattleman, Charles Kidman, who drank billy tea all his life and, reputedly, refused to ever use a teapot, claiming it spoiled the brew.

Billy tea was celebrated in song and verse and, most notably, in the 1950s New Theatre’s theatrical production of Reedy River which used Edward Harrington’s haunting ‘Old Black Billy’ as one of its most popular songs.

 My old black billy, my old black billy,
Whether the wind be warm or chilly,
I always find, when the shadows fall,
That my old black billy’s the best mate of all.
(Chorus of Old Black Billy)

There was a belief that the blacker the billy the better the brew. It was also believed that a dirty, black billy would boil faster than a new one, and many the bushman made a sporting bet in a billy boiling race.

It was the Dutch, in 1610, who introduced tea to Europe and also the name by which it has been known ever since. It became immediately popular—if not expensive—and shipments from China, India and Korea enticed the European tastebuds and changed society forever. Around the time the First Fleet was preparing to set sail to Australia the average Englishman was consuming two and a half pounds of tea per capita and tea imports for 1770 totaled £9 million. William Gladstone summed up the national craving for tea:

‘If you are cold, tea will warm you. If you are heated, it will cool you down. If you are depressed it will cheer you. If you are excited, it will calm you.’

Tea Clippers transported tonnes of tea to Australia
It was the Victorians who really fashioned our tea drinking and the custom of afternoon tea became the main testing ground for fashionable ladies. If your manners passed the afternoon tea test you might be considered acceptable for other functions. Lord help the wench who tried to sip her tea out of a saucer! Afternoon tea ranged from two to over one hundred people and leading hotels started to introduce daily afternoon tea with light entertainment, a pianist or guest vocalist. At home tea was often followed by card games. Before World War I afternoon tea was combined with the latest craze for dancing and this continued until the 1920s when some bright spark introduced cocktails and the tea trolley rattled away.

Devonshire tea became the Australian version of England’s ‘cream tea’ and usually comprised of scones, cream and strawberry jam. Devonshire teas were mostly served in roadway cafés in the country and at the swanky city hotels where they were seen as representative of English culture. Not surprisingly they were also referred to as High Tea. The English, always up for a good cultural bun fight, say that Devon has no right to claim this market, as it is a custom common to all England; just as the following rhymes belong to us all:

Polly put the kettle on
Polly put the kettle on
Polly put the kettle on
And we’ll all have tea

Sukey take it off again
Sukey take it off again
Sukey take it off again
They’ve all gone away

Blow the fire and make the toast
Put the muffins on to roast
Blow the fire and make the toast
We’ll all have tea
(Traditional children’s song popular in Australia)

Tea was also intertwined with the mythology of the bushman and especially the traveling swaggies. One of the most popular tea brands was Billy Tea with their advertising depicting a swag-carrying kangaroo. It is probably no surprise that Inglis & Co., tea importers and marketers of the Billy Tea brand, purchased the musical rights to Banjo Paterson’s relatively new song, ‘Waltzing Matilda’, in 1903, as part of their promotional campaign. It was the manager’s wife, Marie Cowan, who set the poem to its now popular music.

It was believed that tea could hold body and soul together in the hard times. Steele Rudd’s On Our Selection, published in 1899, summed it up neatly: ‘We couldn’t very well go without tea, so Dad showed Mother how to make a new kind. He roasted a slice of bread on the fire till it was like a black coal. Then he poured the boiling water over it and let it draw well. Dad said it had a capital flavour—he liked it.’

There is some uncertainty to the origin of the word billy. Prior to the availability of light tin the quartpot was the most common cooking vessel. Some say the word biily derived from the French bouille soup that was available in tins and were often re-used as cooking utensil. More likely the word came from the Aboriginal word Billa, a creek or waterland, as in billabong.

The old-timers had all sorts of names for their billies, most affectionate, however one, the Whitely King, was despised and named for the renegade protagonist in the Great Shearing Strike of the 1890s. This billy was made from a disused IXL jam tin with a handle fashioned from fencing-wire.

In the city, workers in factories also broke regularly to take tea from massive urns of boiling water in what became recognised as a ‘smoko’, because of the popularity of cigarettes. The tea lady was a familiar fixture at most factories and offices up until the 1980s. They were employed to ensure the staff always had enough milk, tea, coffee and biscuits, and hot water in the urns. Most factories and offices had a designated morning and afternoon tea break as the tea lady pushed her trolley through the various departments. Biscuits, if not provided by the employer, were on an honour basis of around twenty cents a day. The tea lady was replaced by automatic ‘time saving’ café bars that disbursed hot water to go with tasteless tea bags, insipid coffee, packaged sugar, and wooden paddle pop sticks to stir the concoction. The old tea ladies would have been embarrassed to serve such muck.

In the twentieth century the invention and availability of labour-saving machines like the modern stove, washing machine, dishwasher, iron etc resulted in a reduction of household work and allowed time for a cuppa with the neighbours and friends.

In the first half of the century women took great pride in baking scones, cakes and biscuits to serve with their tea and coffee. To be found with an empty biscuit tin was a matter of shame.

Old bushies used to refer to coffee as ‘slosh’ and were fond of adding chicory essence to their brew. Although the coffee tree is native to Ethiopia and the Sudan it has been widely cultivated for centuries and was primarily imported to the colonies to be sold in cafes and restaurants.

The creation of the drink itself is surrounded in legend. Some have it discovered by a goatherd who noticed his flock becoming agitated whenever they ate the red berries that contained the coffee seeds. Another has a hermit Dervish priest or mullah used the brew to stay awake so he could pray. By the end of the nineteenth century, coffee drinking had become an international fashion including Australia. Cappuccino, so called because of its pale brown colour reminiscent of the robes of the Capuchin monks, is one of the most popular coffee styles in Australia.

Over the past fifty years coffee has become very popular, possibly due to the large post-World War II European immigration programs or the determined television advertising by corporate brands like Nescafe and Maxwell House. We can also claim some excellent coffee retailers and some wholesalers even operate ‘coffee schools’ to train baristas.

The last few years have also seen coffee retail chains like Starbucks enter the market offering a startling range of hot drinks in a ‘club’ atmosphere where patrons are invited to plug in their laptops and even download their favourite music onto their ipods. Determined coffee drinkers tend to get a little nervous with some of the Starbucks offerings like Gingerbread Latte, Toffee Nut Latte, Peppermint Mocha and, for the Yuletide, Eggnog Latte. As a ‘reality check’ note that freshly ground coffee is still a small percentage compared to the sale of instant coffee.

Both tea and coffee attract superstitions and folk sayings. Many of these sayings are passed down through families and most are extremely old. One of the most resilient traditions is that of reading tea leaves and telling fortunes. Tasseography, as it is known, has been practiced here for well over 150 years.

Some Australian sayings and superstitions:

• A watched kettle never boils.

• Let a kettle boil away and you will boil away your friends
• To stir a teapot is to stir up trouble.
• If you add boiling water before the tea you can have trouble.
• Strong tea means strong friendships.
• Strong tea means strong friendships.
• If two women handle the teapot at the same time, one will give birth to ginger twins.
• Love is crossed when milk before tea.
• To pour tea back in the pot is trouble.
• Always burn tea leaves for luck.
• If a single tea leaf floats to the top of the cup expect a friend or a parcel
• Burn coffee and you’ll have bad luck.
• Never stir other people’s coffee as you will surely stir up trouble.

Billy Tea

Bush workers drank endless mugs of hot, strong tea, usually black China tea. Oldtimers often had a brown ring around their mouth where the tea had stained skin and beard. The stain was known as ‘Jack the painter’. A thirsty bush worker in the 1870s drank around 60 litres of tea a week!

Billy tea, that particular bush favourite, was always a subject for discussion, even argument. Some declared it must be made in an old billy filled to the brim (a practical truth otherwise, the billy metal eventually melts), a couple of gum leaves add flavour (doubtful, but who’s to argue?), and the billy is swung around in a circular motion to force the leaves to the bottom, others swear you need to tap the billy ten times for them to settle…and served sweet and black.

The Story of Jack the Painter.

Colonials believed the only dinkum mug of tea was the really strong stuff that had the bite of full flavour. They used to call it ‘Jack the Painter’ because of the tell-tail tannin stain that it left around your mouth. The average bush worker in the 1870s and 80s consumed around 60 litres of the stuff every week and, according to some accounts, was strong enough for a teaspoon to stand up in. They drank what they called ‘China tea’, usually with lots of sugar and hardly ever milk.

In 1973 I recorded an itinerant bush worker who was known in the Lachlan Valley district as’ Old Cole’ (I never did discover his real name or see any signs of a younger version) and he gushed freely about the importance of tea in a bushman’s life. “Forget the booze, forget the beauty of the bush, forget the peacefulness, forget the occasional lure of city life – the real joy of the bush is that first mug of tea in the morning and the last at night … and all those little beauties in between.”

I have travelled the bush for over fifty years and reckon I have consumed something like 40,000 cups of tea. Some tasted like stewed dishwater and some like Earl Grey’s finest but one of the best was that cuppa with ‘Old Cole’ on the banks of the Lachlan river.

According to him, “To make billy tea you need to have a good billy and that means one that has been used for a few years and is as battered and friendly as an old mate. The blacker the better – and even better if you boil her up over a campfire. Set the billy over the fire using a forky stick and wait until she gets boiling and singing. Throw in a good handful of tea leaves and take her off the flames and allow the tea to relax and settle for a good five minutes. Tea doesn’t like to be rushed. Give it a bit of a stir with a twig and then bash the sides so the leaves sink to the bottom. Pull up a stump and sip away as you take in the smell and flavour.”

Experienced bushmen could always pick a ‘new chum’ by the way they made a campfire and how they made their tea. Old hands always filled their billy to the very top knowing that a billy filled halfway would result in the rim being burnt off. If you have to have a half full billy then it should never be placed against the fire, but stood or hung over it. Once boiled they would lift it from the fire carrying it safely with two sticks held crosswise through the handle so that the ends grip the billy like a pair of tongs. It sounds easy but it required a certain amount of skill.

Most tea was drunk out of rough, large tin mugs that were tough on the lips and demanded careful sipping. A hunk of damper with thick, sweet treacle, colloquially known as ‘cocky’s joy’, was a favourite accompaniment. With a bit of luck they might have had some brownies, small dough cakes sweetened with a bit of sugar and currants. There were standing jokes that if the currants had run out, the crafty station cook probably used dead flies as they looked pretty much the same and had the required crunch.

Australians have been said to be the greatest gamblers on the planet so maybe there’s some truth in stories about bullockies and other itinerants placing bets on whose billy would reach the boil first. The crafty ones, always eager to stick it up a ‘new chum’, knew that an old black billy will always boil faster than a new one. They also knew their billies well and were fairly accurate in guessing the time it took to boil merrily. They also believed different types of water would boil differently. River water boiled faster than tank water, stagnant water quicker than running water, and cold water that has already boiled will boil faster than any water.

It seems that every man and woman in yesterday’s Australia had a ‘secret’ way of making tea. Some swore that the tea should go in boiling water and others argued it should be added off the boil; some added a couple of gum leaves for a definite bush flavour whilst others viewed this as sacrilege. Some liked sugar or treacle and others not. The real debate came with methods of keeping the tea leaves out of your mouth. ‘Old Cole’ swore by the tapping method to send the leaves to the bottom of the billy and others declared that the only solution was the swing the billy in a great circle so the laws of gravity forced the pesky leaves to the bottom. Truth is that none of these work completely and the only sure method is to sip carefully whilst blowing the errant leaves to the other side of the mug.

There was another type of tea – station tea – which was really a strong brew prepared by the station cook in six or eight-gallon iron boilers. The cook rose an hour before the shearers or drovers and gawd forbid if he hadn’t the tea brewed (which usually meant stewed) and on the boil. The men would forgive most culinary catastrophes but not badly made tea. It was commonly held that a station cook didn’t need to be a great cook, just a good fighter! A good cook was one who could make a damper with his right hand, carve a roast leg of lamb with is left hand, and do the washing up with his feet. They always had nicknames like ‘Bait Layer’, The Poisoner’, ‘Gut Buster Jimmy’, ‘Greasy Sol (they said he never washed and was so greasy you couldn’t look at him – your eyeballs would just slide off him.. he was that greasy!). I heard a story about a cook at Gooriannawa station who’d only been there a short time when the missus of the house came ranting into the cookhouse screaming about the soap being left in the wash bowl and “it was a disgraceful waste of soap as it just dissolved…” The cook, no doubt used to such tantrums, snapped back at her, “Look missus, It definitely wasn’t me. I’ve only been here two weeks and I haven’t washed me hands since I arrived!”

The campfire is an integral part of the Australian story and has been captured in early drawings, paintings, story, verse and song. It was seen as a neutral territory where the workers and the boss could meet with relative equality. Conversation, inevitably over a mug of tea, allowed for some discussion, within boundaries, on working conditions, food standards and politics of the day. It also allowed workers to let off a bit of steam between each other if there had been problems. Anything was better than a donnybrook fist-cuff fight. The campfire was the stage setting for Australia’s traditional culture of mateship and a fair go. All were welcome – young, old, black, white or brindle. Old hands sat with ‘green new chums’ and there were always a pack of dogs edging in to get their rightful share of warmth and, hopefully, scraps of tucker. This was the iconic campfire with the boiling billy that also inspired our great writers like ‘Banjo’ Paterson, John Shaw-Nielsen and Henry Lawson. It still inspires today’s breed of bush poets who like to remind us of our glorious pioneering past.

The campfire was typically a place of entertainment where old yarns were spun, songs remembered and recitations offered. Some participants read aloud newly-penned poems published in The Bulletin, (often referred to as the ‘Bushman’s Bible’), or The Lone Hand Magazine, and others penned and recited or sang their own original verse, often including references to their fellow workers and shearing sheds or droving tracks they had shared. Bullockies and teamsters often met on the road and joined a communal campfire where the sound of the concertina or mouth organ invited them to gather.

One of the most enduring bush songs was simply called ‘The Billy of Tea’ and was first published in the Native Companion Songster in 1889.

You may talk of your whisky or talk of your beer,

i’ve something far better awaiting me here;

it stands on the fire beneath a gum-tree,

and you cannot lick it – a billy of tea.

So fill up your glasses as high as you can,

you’ll never persuade me it’s not the best plan,

to let all the beer and the spirits go free

and stick to my darling old billy of tea.

Tea also gets a guernsey in Australia’s unofficial national anthem, ‘Waltzing Matilda’, where ‘Banjo’ Paterson opens his now well-travelled poem with its hero seated at a campfire ‘and he sang as he looked at his old billy boiling.’ It was also tea that brought the song to widespread popularity in 1902 when the words and music were included in every packet of James Inglis ‘Billy Tea’.

Then there’s Steel Rudd’s classic On Our Selection story about the pioneering Rudd family. Titled ‘When the Wolf Was at the Door’ the story tells of how hard times had hit the family and they had exhausted their supplies of sugar, meat and, worst of all, tea. Dad Rudd, ever the inventive pioneer optimist, came up with a solution.’We couldn’t very well go without tea, so Dad showed Mother how to make a new kind. He roasted a slice of bread on the fire till it was like a black coal, then poured the boiling water over it and let it draw well. Dad said it had a capital flavour – he liked it!’

Tea was included in the inventory of the First Fleet however stocks soon ran out and erratic supply from England made it a luxury.The settlers looked at the Aboriginal diet but there were no hot drinks. They next sampled teas made with native berries and leaves but these were usually bitter and didn’t appeal. When supplies eventually arrived there was jubilation because the settlers saw tea-drinking as their mainline link with British tradition and a way of expressing their assumed civilised heritage.

It was the discovery of gold in 1851 that really opened up Australia when over a million people arrived in the space of two decades. Tent cities were replaced with more permanent buildings including tea and coffee houses. The Chinese diggers, inheritors of a long tradition of tea drinking, brought their own supplies but the exotic flavours were not always to the liking of the European fossickers who had a general disdain for all things Oriental.

As tea supply evened out it became the staple in every bushman’s swag. It sat alongside the flour, sugar, salt, matches and tobacco and it was a very poor man indeed who couldn’t claim to have the ‘makings’. During the lean and mean years of the 1890’s, a time when many swaggies travelled the roads, a handout of the essential rations, including tea, was always welcome if not half expected. Many the ‘road’s scholar’ quelled the pangs of hunger with a meal of damper and tea.

By the time of Federation in 1901 the face of Australia had changed dramatically and in the space of ten years, between 1895 and 1905, the bulk of the population had relocated from the bush to the cities. Our sheep and cattle industries were being over-shadowed by manufacturing, mining and commerce. The tea trolley became the new campfire as morning and afternoon tea became an accepted part of our daily social and working life.

Tea drinking is still a part of the ‘Australian way of life’ and you can even buy, heaven forbid!, ‘Billy Tea tea-bags’ We have also become a nation of coffee drinkers, especially since the 1940s when so many migrants arrived from coffee-drinking countries like Italy, Greece, Spain, and Hungary. Somehow I don’t think ‘Old Cole’ would approve of tea bags or espresso coffee.

CLASSIC BUSH VERSE – FREEDOM ON THE WALLABY

THE BILLY OF TEA

ANON.

The campfire was the universal leveller of bush life for it was around its warmth that the boss and the men were equal. The mug of tea, often referred to as ‘jack the painter’ because of the stain the strong brew left around the mouth, was seen as the ‘peace pipe’. There was contentment and joy in sipping the sweet China tea as you shared a yarn, a song and, of course, a poem. From The Native Companion Songster.

You can talk of your whiskey and talk of your beer,
But there’s something much nicer that’s waiting us here.
It sits by the fire beneath the gum-tree.
There’s nothing guite like it – a billy of tea.

So fill up your tumblers as high as you can,
And don’t you dare tell me it’s not the best plan.
You can let all your beer and your spirits go free –
I’ll stick to me darling old billy of tea.

Well I rise in the morning before it gets light,
And I go to the nosebag to see it’s alright,
That the ants on the sugar no mortgage have got,
And straight away sling my old black billy-pot,

And while it is boiling the horses I seek,
And follow them down as far as the creek.
I take off their hobbles and let them run free,
Then haste to tuck into my billy of tea.

And at night when I camp, if the day has been warm,
I give to my horses their tucker of corn.
From the two in the pole to the one in the lead,
A billy for each holds a comfortable feed.

Then the fire I make and the water I get,
And corned beef and damper in order I set,
But I don’t touch the grub, though so hungry I be –
I wait till it’s ready – my billy of tea!

Bush Cooks

‘The Babbling Brook’, ‘Old Poisoner’, ‘Busted Oven’, ‘Dirty Dick’, ’Tumbling Tommy’, and ’The Murderer’ were just some of the ‘polite’ names bestowed on outback cooks.

Nineteenth-century bush workers ate to fill their stomachs in the shearing shed, outback station or cattle camp. Food fashion came later, and most colonials simply wanted fuel to sustain hard yakka.

Being a bush cook was a tough life made tougher by the continuing whinging of the men, many of whom saw ‘baiting’ the cookie as an amusement.

There used to be a saying that old-time bush cooks didn’t have to know much about cooking – it was more important to know how to fight. A popular taunt ran ‘Who called the cook a bastard?’ to which the inevitable response was ‘Who called the bastard a cook!”

Rising an hour before the men, the cook and his offsider, typically called the ‘slushie’, had to gather and chop firewood, boil water, bake bread and prepare breakfast. The men expected five meals a day. Breakfast, lunch and supper were big, heavy meals, and morning and afternoon breaks saw stewed tea, damper.

The custom in the days of blade shearing was for the cook to be ‘elected’ by secret ballot. Sometimes there were only one or two candidates, and, at other times, up to half a dozen men applied. Experienced cooks with recommendations from shearers were preferred. With his fee and tips, a good cook could make more money than the shed hands and shearers. In the big sheds, the roustabouts often had their own cook. In the station house, the kitchen was usually managed by a woman, sometimes a married couple.

Cooks had to make do with what rations they had or could scrounge. Sheep, cattle and rabbits provided the main protein. Vegetables and fruit were a rarity and many the man, struck by Barcoo Rot, a sort of scurvy from lack of vegetables, declared the only cure to be ‘beer and vegetables’.

There was a belief that fruit and vegetables were healthier when cooked. Most fruit was in cans and served with heavy custard.

‘Tinned dog,’ the name given to any form of tinned salted meat, was a staple when drovers moved across the country. ‘Tinned dog,’ damper and tea stuck to a man’s guts. The damper was often served with treacle, known as ‘Cocky’s Joy’ (or ‘Kidman’s Joy’ in the western states).

For most of the second half of the 19th century, Australia was one of the world’s leading meat producers – and consumers. We ate mutton and beef for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A meal without meat was unthinkable.

By the late 1890s, our meat consumption was staggering. The average diet in Australia included one-third of a kilo of meat every day – we were the greatest meat-eaters in the world – four times more than the French, Italian and Germans.

Mutton was the most widely consumed and favoured meat and in the shearing areas, it was virtually part of the wages.

Many cooks were known for their speciality – be it a stew, bake or pie.

In 1859, a Victorian squatter, Thomas Austin, imported 24 rabbits – and, as they say, the rest is history.

Rabbit was added to the diet of the itinerant working brigade and by the 1870s they were eaten fried, baked in pies and stewed.

He was cranky, he was lazy, he was greasy, he was sly. But he had a single virtue – the best rabbit pie!

The evening meal in the shearing shed and around the drover’s camp was inevitably stew. In one of the sheds, the shearers reckoned the cook had never cleaned the stew pot – he just kept adding to it every day. One wag, sick of the same stew every day, dropped a couple of Reckitt’s blue bags, which were added to the laundry washing tubs, but the cook, wise to such tricks, announced, “A change tonight, lads, ‘blue stew!”

If the meat didn’t clog up the system, the damper did. In truth, many cooks were experts with bread and pastry. One shearer told of a cook whose pastry was so light they had to shut the hut windows – otherwise, the pastries floated away.

Monotony of diet was expected.

Damper was the great stomach filler, and it came in all shapes and sizes. Damper was the staple bread, and fancy pastries included brownies, johnnycakes and puffterloonies, to name a handful. Brownies usually had a bit of sugar and, when available, currants. The standing joke was that when currants were unavailable, dead flies would do – they looked the same and had the same crunch!

Bush workers drank endless mugs of hot, strong tea, usually black China tea. Oldtimers often had a brown ring around their mouth where the tea had stained skin and beard. The stain was known as ‘Jack the painter’. A thirsty bush worker in the 1870s drank around 60 litres of tea a week!

Billy tea, that particular bush favourite, was always a subject for discussion, even argument. Some declared it must be made in an old billy filled to the brim (a practical truth otherwise the billy metal eventually melts), a couple of gum leaves add flavour (doubtful, but who’s to argue?), and the billy is swung around in a circular motion to force the leaves to the bottom, others swear you need to tap the billy ten times for them to settle…and served sweet and black.

The drover’s cook had to be particularly skilled. Unlike the station cook with mess-huts, stoves, slaughterhouse, pantry and clean water, he had to contend with wet weather, short rations and weeks on the road. He had to look after his own horses and drive his cook’s plant from camp to camp. Many were poor specimens of the cooking class and generally bad-tempered with primitive notions of cookery.

Cooks were always on the move, unloading and pitching tents, often in the rain, making a fire with wet wood, and cooking dinner for half a dozen men. He had to bake bread for the next day, turning out before daybreak to cook breakfast, pack up and head for the next camp. Unlike the station cook, who could be sacked, the drovers were usually stuck with their cook.

It wasn’t unusual for ‘new chum’ immigrants to take jobs as cooks. Germans, English, Scottish and Chinese were preferred over Irish – who were viewed as argumentative and too good with their fists.

Some cooks were known for reading, reciting, singing, playing the concertina and yarning with the men. The cook’s mess was often the same hut where the shearer’s slept. Sweat and stew smells were as one.

There were few secrets, and some cooks wisely preferred to keep their mouths shut. One cook was famously named for the refrigerator ‘The Silent Knight’- he rarely spoke. Another was known as ‘Sweeney Todd’ because, for a few extra bob, they would give the men haircuts on Sundays.

There were many characters in the cooking brigade. ‘Slippery Sol’ was so-called because the shearers swore they had never seen him take a bath – he was so greasy, if you looked at him, your eyeballs would slip right off him. One cook was accused of leaving the bar of soap in the basin water, until he protested, “Listen, cobbers, I’ve only been here a week and I swear I haven’t washed my hands yet!”

Shearers’ cooks of today have modern equipment. They have many conveniences denied to the cooks of the colonial era, and they have the run of the grocery store, and in most cases, the food dished up equals that found in any first-class restaurant.

POLLY WOLLY- POLLY WAFFLE “mmm, crunch, aah!”

In November 2009 the multi-national Nestle announced that it was discontinuing the Polly Waffle. All hell broke out across Australia as we witnessed the demise of yet another uniquely Australian product. Contributors to internet forums referred to the loss of another Australian ‘icon’.

Launched 62 year’s ago by the Hoadley confectionary company of Melbourne, a pioneer sweet company established at the turn of the nineteenth century, the Polly Waffle was a crispy wafer cylinder filled with marshmallow and dipped in chocolate.

Hoadley’s made their name as jam manufacturers and in 1913 and, after selling their jam business to Henry Jones & Co, entered the chocolate business and making their name as manufacturers of medium quality sweets in wrappers.

Prior to wrapped sweets Australian lollies, and they were primarily what we know as ‘boiled lollies’, were sold out of jars. The first wrapped chocolates, Milk Kisses, were released in 1903 (Melbourne) with the legend: ‘Know them by their printed wrapper’.

The confectionary business is obviously a dog-eat-dog business and Hoadley eventuallygot gobbled up by the British Rowntree Company who, in turn, were gobbled up by Nestle.

The Australian ‘sweet tooth’ was born early and we know from ship’s records that the First Fleet in 1788 carried a load of sugar cane. Settlers attempted to grow it in and around Sydney but the climate was unsuitable. Eventually sugarcane fields were moved further north to follow the sun and, by the end of the nineteenth century Australia’s sugar-refining industries had reached a significant level allowing export trade.

For most part of the nineteenth century sweets meant lollies, which meant boiled lollies. Grocery shops and indeed lolly shops sold various types of boiled lollies out of large glass jars. We have some early photographs of such shops and the variety of boiled lollies is staggering. The favourite appears to be of the ‘gobstopper’ variety – extremely large balls, multi-coloured and possibly multi-flavoured. These later became known as ‘Rainbow Balls’ because of their changing colour as one sucked the layers away. The other two favourite boiled sweets were the Humbug – a black and white striped lolly made of strong-tasting aniseed, and the more traditional European butterscotch and its toffee varieties. Licorice was also popular and there’s even a story of the Frank Gardiner bushranger gang bailing up a hotel and upon finding licorice, distributed it freely to one and all.

The other major sweets in Australia were homemade: biscuits and cakes, stick-jaw toffees, toffee apples, and other such confectionaries.

It appears the word ‘lolly’, an obvious derivative of the English ‘lollipop’, was exclusively used in Australia to represent any type of store-bought sweet. This colloquial use remains today however the dreaded ‘candy’ has made its way into our language because of continued advertising and the insistence of movie theatre chains to referring to their ‘candy bar’ outlets. These candy bars are usually full of generic sweets and a long way from the old sherbet fizzers, musk sticks and bars available in the 1950s.
I refuse to give in to such Amercianisation and still go to the ‘pictures’ (or flicks) and refuse to eat ‘candy’.

The first appearance of the word ‘lolly’ in Australia is most likely its appearance in a children’s book written by a South Australian author who noted: “Fanny ran away to the nearest lolly shop”. The word also appears in a report of the massive children’s party given to celebrate the arrival of Prince Alfred in Melbourne in 1868 – where 15,000 lollybags were distributed.

Bushmen had sweet tooth’s too. In the bush the average worker drank copious mugs of tea, usually black China tea, with several teaspoons of sugar. Their other sweet was the dependable treacle, sometimes later known as Golden Syrup that was applied to any form of damper. Bushmen universally referred to this sweet syrup as either ‘cocky’s joy’ or ‘bullocky’s joy’.

Factory manufacture of the early nineteenth century changed the sweet market and more and more brands entered the lucrative market. Sweet-making targeted various sections of the market on an economic basis. Boiled lollies were still available for the poor (along with broken biscuits which could be purchased at a generous discount), individually packaged sweets for mid-income, and chocolate boxes for the rich. We still see chocolate marketing on a social basis with several local and international brands vying for the same high-end market: Haigs of South Australia, Lindt and Guylian being examples.

American soldiers visiting during WW2 introduced bubblegum to Australia and by the 1950s it had emerged as one of our most popular sweets along with Wrigley’s PK chewing gum. Our favourite bubblegum was ‘Maple Leaf’ which came in a flat package the size of a playing card and, in fact, had a swap card of a famous sportsman or film star. We blew gi-normous bubbles that would often splat across our faces. We were continually warned not to eat the gum, but we did.

Sweets come and go and sometimes even come back. They are prone to fashion trends. In the tragic tale of the Polly Waffle Nestle simply issued a statement saying we weren’t eating enough to warrant manufacture. Other sweets have suffered the same fate: in the early part of the twentieth century we had ‘Braddies’ (named after Don Bradman and carrying the legend: ‘The best bat of Australia’), ‘Euclips (6 for a penny – and made from Eucalyptus oil), ‘1oo’s & 1000’s’ which you bought in a packet ‘Bonzer on bread and butter’, Bears (they carried a message: They won’t eat you – You eat them!) and then there was the Kosciusko Kakes, as white and powdery as snow.

Later, around the nineteen fifties, we saw the Australian company MacRobertson release a long line of sweets until they too were gobbled up by Cadburys. Some of the most famous packaged sweets were the Choo Choo Bar, White Knight, Hopalong Cassidy Bar, Violet Crumble, Cherry Ripe, Wagon Wheels, Mars Bar, Rolos, Kit Kat and MacRobertson’s hugely successful Columbines.  Some of these sweets remain available but one by one they will no doubt disappear.

Fantales, Wrigley’s Gum, Minties, Jaffas and Fruit Tingles probably hold a special place in Australian hearts along with the Polly Waffle. Folklore often played a role in marketing these sweets. I recall one particular myth about Wrigley’s PK that said there was a particular sequence of numbers printed on every packet, no doubt batch numbers, but if you got a straight series you were entitled to a year’s supply of free gum. Jaffa stories were quite different and just as many Jaffas rolled down the aisle as popped into mouths.. Fantales and Minties wrappers were usually rolled up tight and flicked to someone’s unsuspecting head when the lights went down.

During the 1970s the advertising slogan for Polly Waffle was “mmm, crunch, aah!” and a recording of this stimulating and mind-numbing jingle is held in the national Film and Sound Archive on a FACTs (Federation of Australian Commercial Television) sample reel.

There was also a rumour that ‘sometime’ in the seventies, maybe eighties, a Polly Waffle Ice Cream was manufactured however I have no recollection of this product.

Another rather reference to the cylindrical chocolate bar appears as a colloquial euphemism – “who left the polly waffle floating in the toilet?”

And, as a final piece of Australian idiosyncratic history, I would remind readers that in Aussie Rules a player who isn’t definite about his approach to the ball can be accused of ‘pollywaffling’.

Farewell Polly Waffle.

A CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK: POTATO LORE

Chipping potatoes (digging them up) was considered one of the hardest jobs in the bush. The bloke in this song knew all about it.

You’ll probably find this news surprising: 2008 was the Official Year of the Potato. We’ve now had ‘official years’ for refugees, women, micro-credit, freshwater, physics, ecotourism, language and a year to celebrate the struggle against slavery and its abolition. Okay, I hear you ask, why the potato? Is the noble spud up there with the abolishment of slavery and the importance of physics? UNESCO doles these things out as a way of highlighting vital changes and challenges facing the world and the apparently the potato is right up there on the list. Considering rice had its year in 2004 one can only assume that broccoli, carrots and peas will eventually see their day, or year. Well, maybe not broccoli.

Australians should rejoice that the spotlight was turned on the spud as the mighty tuber is very much a part of our lives as we boil, bake, mash and fry it onto our table. I should point out that although Europeans have been consuming potatoes for approximately 400 years it was quite a battle to get spuds accepted. Being members of the Lily of the Valley family, apparently the tuber equivalent of the Gotti family, they were considered a no go zone and, to make matters worse, they are not mentioned in the bible as edible so were considered the ‘devil’s food’.

The potato has been around for a long, long time, being consumed in the Andes for about 8000 years before the Spaniards took it back to Europe in the 16th century, presumably to make those delicious Spanish omelettes. It is now the world’s fourth most important food crop and consumption is growing. UNESCO believed the IYP raised awareness of the importance of the potato in addressing issues of global concern including hunger, poverty and threats to the environment. That’s a lot of responsibility for a simple Sebago or Kifler to live up to!

Although the Irish are credited with being the world’s leading potato lovers, the Germans were there first. In 1581, Guttenberg’s Press offered a cookbook containing the first annotated potato recipes. Mind you, I remember my first visit to Ireland and seeing pub menus offering meat with three types of potato: chips, mashed and baked – all on the one plate.

Like most food the spud has attracted its fair share of folklore. Pregnant women were advised not to eat potato because it would result in their newborn having a small head. Irish Australians were known to rub raw potato on their sore feet and joints believing the potassium would ease their pain. One old wives tale advised carrying around a blackened spud to cure rheumatism.

Australians have always eaten potatoes and 10 bushels of potato seeds were included in the First Fleet inventory. Our ties with Ireland reinforced our love of the spud and in the early days of the colony it was not uncommon to hear someone described as a ‘not the cleanest potato’ – implying they had a convict past. Potatoes were also used to make spirits in the alcohol-fuelled colony.

The potato industry is now quite sophisticated but in years gone by digging (or ‘chipping’) potatoes was considered backbreaking work and shunned by the army of itinerant workers. I heard of one cockey down Bungaree way who was having trouble getting chippers so he advertised for ‘general farm labourers’ and this bloke arrived, asked what the work was and when he discovered it was potato chipping he reputedly said to the cockey, “Mate, this work’s not for me. I’d suggest you get onto the bloke who planted them – he might have a clue where they are!”

For over 150 years there were only a handful of varieties in our markets – the ‘snow flake’, Prince Regent and New Zealand pink-eye being the most popular – and a seasonal release of small ‘new potatoes’. The standing joke was that we had two types of potato – washed and unwashed. Old newspapers point to the potatoes being boiled with their skins on and the skins discarded at the table. They certainly were staple stomach fillers during the lean times, especially the Great Depression, when even the skins were used to make soup.

George Caley, writing in The Sydney Truth, 1916, wrote that “meanness is an unpardonable sin in the bush”. Yet there are some men whose meanness is almost miraculous in its methods. I heard a station-owner described as so mean as to compel his cook to “catch flies in the sugar basin, and shake the sugar out of their feet.” I heard a particularly mean man described as one who would “steal potatoes from a blind pig.” Of another it was said, “he would kiss a child – and steal its potato.”

The old station cooks of the shearing sheds and droving camps certainly used bags of potatoes and they were a familiar taste in stews but one rarely sees them mentioned in the inventory of travelling workers. Maybe they were too starchy alongside the ever-present damper, or too heavy and bulky to cart around in swag or kit. I did see one old bush recipe for Porkatoo Sandwich that involved a boiled potato squashed between two cooked pig’s ears. Potatoes were often wrapped in wet newspaper and cooked in campfires and were referred to as ‘roasted’ potatoes. Bush cooks who had only one billy, which was usually reserved for tea making, favoured this method. Apparently there was also a ‘Hot Potato Club’ that operated in the early part of the twentieth century for those who travelled regularly on the Manly to Circular Quay harbour steamer. Members brought a potato to place in the steamers furnace and consumed it on arrival.

Whilst potatoes were eaten boiled and baked for over 150 years, chips were not popularised as a fast food until the 1950s, partly due to the persistence of the Tasmanian Potato Marketing Board and their stands at various agricultural shows where they sold bags of hot Tasmanian Brownell chips. The availability of reliable and cheap cooking oil would have also contributed to their commercial success. As a young kid visiting the Sydney Royal Easter Show I found the smell intoxicating and a bag was one of those show must have experiences. By the way – we never called them fries, or French fries, they were always potato chips. An old possum-stirring mate of mine, Clem Parkinson, used to say:

I humbly dips me lid,
I dips it dinki di,
To the man who orders chips,
When the menu says French fries.

At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries fish and chips were available at what were considered workingmen’s cafes that, believe it or not, were oyster bars. Most seafood, including oysters, was inexpensive and plentiful. These establishments sold oyster stews, chowder, freshly shucked oysters and other crustations plus fried fish and chips. Salt and vinegar was the preferred accompaniment. Paddington, a typical inner city working-class suburb had no less than four oyster bars along its Oxford Street. King street in the CBD also had three oyster bars.

The deep fried chip came into its own with the Greek takeover of our cafes and tearooms. Fat hand-cut chips sat alongside the great Australian hamburger and, if you were feeling ravenous, you would add a couple of potato scallops, giant slices of potato coated in batter.
By this time the oyster bars had closed shop and given way to fish and chip shops – where the chips were still hand cut and packaged up in greaseproof paper and newspaper. This combo retained the heat and we would tear off the top, pour in some tomato sauce, and dip in with joy. Before the Catholic Church abandoned meatless Fridays (known as ‘fish Fridays’) the end of the week saw long queues at most fish shops. Sadly hand-cut chips have all but disappeared to be replaced by tasteless, nutritiously dodgy, commercially manufactured fries, mostly frozen and insipid. The world’s largest seller of chips, McDonalds, denies that its Golden Arches logo is comprised of two bent chips. It probably comes as no surprise that along with the countries of Ireland, Italy and Switzerland, the two giant international suppliers of frozen potatoes, McCain’s and Simplot, sponsored the International Year of the Potato.

Smith’s Potato Chips (‘The original and the best!’) were first made in a small factory in the Sydney suburb of Surry Hills in 1931. Frank Smith and George Esnar had 20 gas-fired cooking pots where they produced three-penny packets of their hand packed chips that included a small sachet of salt. The first chip was invented in 1853 by an American chef, George Crum, in a response to a complaint that his French fries were too thick. For those interested in the social history of the potato crisp should check out ‘chip collector’ Myrtle Young being interviewed by Johnny Carson on YouTube. Hilarious! There’s also a starch-filled online Potato Museum (potatomuseum.com) where one can explore potato history.

Potatoes come in all shapes and sizes and hardly any main meat or fish dish is served without them. Pink Eye, Purple, Congo, Desiree, Craig, Bintje, Pontiac, Dargo, Toolang Delight, Manhattan and Winlock are just some of the varieties available. Tasmanians were the first to grow commercial potatoes in Australia in the 1840s but the Big Potato is situated in the NSW coastal town of Robertson. The big brown spud unfortunately looks more like the Big Turd but the township’s heart is in the right place. One of the most famous Australians was ‘Norm the couch potato’ who starred in health-promoting advertisements a few years back. Norm appeared to be a close relative of that other famous spud, Mr Potato Head. Probably a chip off the old block.

Home Cooking in the Fahey household.

Warren Fahey sings ‘Paper Bag Cooking’ with Marcus Holden: Piano, Bass, Clarinet, Viola, Trumpet. Clare O’Meara: Violin. Garry Steel: Accordion.

Paper Bag Cooking.

A comic song that has tickled my sense of humour for many years. Bon vivant and writer Leo Schofield first brought it to my attention when he asked whether I knew the rest of the words. The song proved to be very elusive and even indefinable Google searches still produce ‘no result’. I did manage to record bits and pieces of the song until, in 2004, I found the complete words published in an Australian songster circa 1910. It is a parody of the Beggar’s Opera.

My mother was one of those infuriating souls who had an answer for nearly everything. “What’s for dinner?” had standard responses, “Possum guts and billygoat’s tails.” Or “A duck under the table.” Dessert was always “A Piece Pie – a piece of this and a piece of that.” Asking about meal times was equally useless,  “When are we going to eat?” I’d question despite knowing the answer of either “Half past a freckle.” or “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

I learnt about folklore at the kitchen table in Pasadena Street, Ramsgate, although I didn’t know what the word meant at that stage of my life. The kitchen was always the family meeting place and, growing up before television, it was the centre of the house. We shelled peas together – nine peas in a pod meant good luck – tailed beans, peeled spuds and vigorously beat eggs.

Our kitchen was fairly typical of the nineteen fifties – laminex benches, linoleum floor, electric stove and a not-so-Silent Knight refrigerator than rumbled and sighed through life. In the late fifties, Mom threw out the heavy cast iron cookware and bought a range of lightweight aluminium saucepans despite rumours that the aluminium would seep out and gradually kill us all. I was more scared of tripe and lamb’s fry. We also had some special cooking appliances including a jaffle iron, a toasting contraption which was totally useless unless you had an open fire, an egg poaching thing and a fondue set which, I recall, we only ever used once with my mother dubbing it ‘totally useless’. The one new invention that ruled supreme was the Sunbeam Frypan and mum worked it overtime claiming it the best thing since sliced bread, although we rarely ever had sliced bread in the cupboard as she preferred high-top Vienna loaves and, whenever we could get into town, a dark rye with caraway seeds.

I wish I could take you through a tour of our refrigerator. My mother, a terrific cook, kept it so chocker I suspect that’s why it had breathing problems. There seemed to be an unwritten routine in her food production that guaranteed its replenishment. Saturday was baking day when she made two cakes, biscuits and two puddings, usually lemon rice and milk custard with nutmeg. I was the willing slave responsible for whipping the mixes and, of course, tasting the gooey, sweet batter before it was poured into the trays. I was also the washer-upper and putter away. I quite liked doing both jobs and can only imagine it was my escape from mowing and trimming the lawn, which I despised.

Mum was a clipper of recipes, mainly from the Women’s Weekly and Woman’s Day. She would sit at the table at night saying, “Hmm, this looks good, or “You’ll like this one.” There were not many cookbooks available in those days and the ones that didn’t really suit the Australian table. Cookery editors Jean Hatfield and her younger sister, Margaret Fulton, changed all that and so did the meals on our table. Stews turned into casseroles, vegetables stopped being boiled to death and new dishes like beef stroganoff and lasagne started to appear regularly. Some dishes came to my mother from her family, especially from her father, Sid Phillips, who was a deft hand in the kitchen, especially on the weekly fish fry-up. Mom’s favourite dish was a hefty black walnut flavoured beef stew and I can still imagine the aroma of its slow cooking.

Dad never cooked but he nearly always did the washing up after the evening meal. We would share stories, sing and recite poetry as pots, pans, plates and cutlery went flying back to their allocated homes. After cleaning up it was time to listen to the wireless and challenge our wits against the first contestant on Bob Dyer’s Pick –A-Box or laugh at the silliness of Life With Dexter as the show’s star, Willie Fennell, rolled out corny jokes. My favourite of all was a comedian named Ward Leopold who had a razor sharp wit and a sense of the ridiculousness in his ‘Here’s Hooey’ monologues.

When television finally arrived in the Fahey household we strictly rationed our viewing like war coupons. We were allowed to have dinner in front of the television on one-week night and there we sat with our food arranged on individual trays. We still talked all the way through the programs. Sunday night was always a casual meal in our house and usually scrambled eggs on toast or a baked bean jaffle. In winter the toast was cooked on the grill attached to the Cosy kerosene heater that blazed in the corner of the lounge room. Sunday evenings were taken up with Disneyland and the weekly dramatic play. If we were lucky a bar of Small’s dark family chocolate and a bag of peanuts in their shell would miraculously appear.

Takeaways were unheard of in those days unless you counted fish and chips. The one exception was, of course, Chinese food. Our local Chinese was a ten-minute drive to Rockdale where we had to line up holding our own saucepans and pyrex dishes to receive the brightly coloured, usually over-salted and over-sweet dishes. Takeaway containers were unknown and Tupperware hadn’t arrived in Ramsgate. When Tuppaware finally landed, sold through home Tupperware parties, our cupboards became full of the strangest containers in all shapes and sizes. There was a Tuppaware for anything edible and even one for my school lunch. Somehow the lids always went west, never to be seen again.

The arrival of television struck a deep blow to radio and the weekly women’s magazines. Mum became a fan of the Galloping Gourmet, Graham Kerr. Little was she to imagine I would eventually become one of his producers as I supervised his live-on-air commercials for the new, improved Sunbeam Frypans – remember Graham cooking a lump of Marfac gooey oil in the frypan?

No recipe was too difficult for my mother. She also approached the oven and stove top with the same carefree approach as Graham Kerr, without the glass of wine. As a kid our weekly regime, and it was fairly held to, ran like this> Monday – a bubble and squeak type of meatloaf made from the leftovers from the weekend roast, Tuesday – sausages, mash and green vegetables (usually fresh peas), Wednesday – casserole of either lamb chops, rabbit or veal, Thursday – grilled steak or lamb chops, Friday – fish and chips, either home-cooked or bought, Saturday – macaroni or, since this was baking day, a pie. Sunday was baked dinner which in those days meant the midday meal. The evening was scrambled eggs. As Margaret Fulton and Graham Kerr wheeled their magic the dishes on the table changed in name and flavour. Garlic and herbs penetrated more exotic cuts of meat, new vegetables were introduced including broccoli and eggplant, heavy pastry crusts gave way to quiche and paper-thin filo pastries. Pasta and lentils appeared regularly and, generally, we ate more flavoursome food and healthier too.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

Food Folklore in Australia: Restaurants

Eating out is a relatively new experience that started in earnest in the early 20th century and then continued to pick up speed. Prior to that eating establishments were more of a necessity than a destination for specific dining. Nowadays we accept eating out, in all its many expressions, as a normal part of our life. We have created folklore surrounding our restaurant experience including superstitions, custom, ritual etc.

As part of the Folklore of Sydney project, I decided to put a call out for folklore related to the commercial kitchen.

Here is the press release adapted and published on Australian Gourmet Pages and other food sites:

FOLKLORIST, WARREN FAHEY, COLLECTING RESTAURANT KITCHEN PRANKSWarren Fahey is a man of words, a collector of anecdotes, a collator of folklore and a good bloke to boot. Heís currently obsessed with kitchen pranks and needs your input.It seems commercial kitchens all over the world are a breeding ground for traditional pranks played on apprentices and new wait staff.Have you heard about the new chum sent out for a ‘left-handed spatula’ or a bucket of ‘steam’? How about the kitchen hand asked to order some frozen duck legs – right legs only (they’re are better for confit)? Another was sent to a neighbouring restaurant to ask for a loan of their ‘bacon stretcher’.Commercial kitchens are run like military bases and, maybe not surprisingly, there is a testing period for new workers, especially apprentices. Kitchens are stressful and, in some ways, dangerous places to work. Boiling water, high-temperature oils, meat hooks, unbelievably sharp knives, freezers etc all need to be reckoned with and one of the ways chefs ëtrainí their new arrivals is to test their endurance. Some are done for the sheer fun (fun for one can be a pain for another) and others are done because the chef needs to test how alert the new student is, and especially how they will cope in a crisis situation.Warren Fahey would appreciate any contributions to his collection, and knowing some of my subscribers Iíd be surprised if there wasn’t a bucket load of them! (issued 9 September 2005)

Email Responses

Email response:

I’m sure you’ve heard about a soufflÈ pump … my ex-boyfriend was sent to borrow one from a neighbouring restaurant when he was an apprentice. Good luck with the project.

Kind regards, Libby Travers
Account Manager
Best Restaurants of Australia
libby@bestrestaurants.com.au

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Email Response:

Warren, In response to your call for ‘kitchen pranks’:

In my younger days I worked in the kitchen at a cafe in Glebe. We used to make all our own dessserts, which the waiters would slice and plate themselves from a refrigerated display cabinet near the kitchen. We had a young vegetarian hippish girl, Rachael, who used to cut herself small slithers of cake during service, which annoyed the hell out of me. One day, I retrieved a 20 litre plastic bucket of beef stock that had been prepared the day before from the coolroom. As you know, stock is left in the coolroom overnight so the fat rises to the top, and can be scooped off when it has set. This time, when I started taking out the fat, it came out as one whole disc – about 4cm high. I looked at it, and with malice in my heart, decided to get my revenge on Rachael. I placed the disc of beef fat on a cake plate, decorated it with fresh fruit, then finished it with a jelly glaze. The new ‘dessert’ was placed in the display cabinet just before the beginning of Rachael’s shift. Sure enough, just after she started, she spied the new dessert. Asking what it was, she was informed it was a new cheesecake that the head chef had just made. Sure enough, about 15 minutes later, she took the bait. Cutting herself the usual small sliver, she took a bite of the new cake. It did not seem to quite register at first, as if her brain would not accept what her taste buds were telling it. After a few more chews, and a forced swallow, it all came together for Rachael. With a mouthful of sweet beef stock coating her mouth, she was informed of the recipe of the new dessert. Suffice to say, Rachael never took a sliver of dessert again.

Nick Caraturo
(Nick now works at Sydneyís Buon Ricordo)

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Email Response:

from P N ñ name withheld.

ACP Magazines Aust Gourmet Traveller. A friend of mine worked at Kable’s back in the day. They hosted all the big Jewish functions there. The people holding the functions would bring in all their own food and kitchen staff, and to ensure everything was really kosher, they’d get some rabbis in to bless the place and scorch all the stainless steel benches with blowtorches. Naturally, my friend and his apprentice mates spent a good hour slicing up a whole belly’s worth of bacon and gaffer-taping it to the underneath of said benches before the blowtorching rabbis did their work.

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Email Response:

August 2005 from Mal in Perth

The assistant chef had a habit of big-noting himself whenever there was a kitchen delivery ñ he always wore the top chefís hat when supervising supplies. One day the kitchen staff decided to stop him and put some turds in the hat. It certainly stopped him and he never said a word about it to anyone. When the day arrived when he was leaving the restaurant the crew asked him: ìDid you ever find out who put the turds in your hat?î. Apparently he looked at them and said, ìNo, never did find out, but I certainly know who ended up eating them!î