The Quorn Agricultural and Horticultural Show, dates back to 1880. Since 1989 Val Roeby has taken out the cookery section aggregate many times at the show with her scones, chocolate cakes, cockles and slices. In 2008 Val and one of her creations, Moderator’s Slice, “the recipe came from a friend”, featured in The Blue Ribbon Cookbook, Recipes, stories and tips from prizewinning country show cooks, by Liz Harfull. Val attributes her cooking skills to her country upbringing and maintains, “I’m just an ordinary cook … most girls around my age could cook”.

Val is a Quorn identity, a born and bred local, the daughter of a British World War One veteran, Fred Rigden and his wife Nona. Fred worked for the South Australian Railways and the family lived at ‘Possum town’ but left in the 1930s, having worked at Hammond, Tailem Bend, Caltowie and Solomontown (Port Pirie). When her father left the railways, the family shifted into a farm house on the Hawker road, and Val’s earliest memories are walking to school with the Aboriginal kids from Colebrook Home, catching up with the Pearce and Donnellan kids along the way, and wagging school with her brothers.

Val was one of eight children – Bill, Doris (Dot. Who married a NSW ‘’Curdipedirka’ wartime interstate railwayman), Blue, Francie, Melva, Val, Fred jnr and Ron – and was born at Quorn just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Val describes Fred snr as being an odd-job man and their next home was at Fitzgerald’s old farm on the Wilmington road, and later on a bit further out at Bury’s farm.

“We’d walk the three and a half miles to school and back”, and Val reckons that it was at this time that she learned to recite her ‘times-tables’, and also remembers practicing spelling in her head. She recalls that her father taught her how to count using stones. It wasn’t all walking though as Val remembers that “Arch Rodgers from Itali Itali would pick us up in his motor car sometimes, and ‘Aunty Edna’ Rodgers still reminds me that she knew me as a little girl”.

Like quite a few families in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Rigden’s never had a motor car – only horse and jinker and Val can still picture the horses and carts at the back of the Criterion and Austral hotels when families from out of town went into Quorn to do their shopping. Meal times were important in the Rigden house and dad always said Grace, “there was a big Salvation Army presence at Quorn when Val was growing up, particularly the ‘Home League’.

Val wanted to be a nurse when she left school “but dad said ‘my baby daughter is not going to wipe any dirty bums’, so that was it, I didn’t become a nurse.” In her late teens Val went on a holiday to Sydney to visit her sister, and returned to Quorn four years later.
She worked at a Woolworths store for a short time and later or a Jewish family, in a shoe shop working her way up to being a buyer. Val reckons she had no idea about city life and thinking that it might be a bit like Quorn, “ I took all my tennis things with me, thinking I could join a local club”. Sport was, and still is a big part of country life and Val says she had a go at most sports at Quorn, except swimming, “as we didn’t have a swimming pool.”

Boarding with her sister and family in Sydney, Val took her country values with her and missed the friendship of a country town. The attitude of Sydney-siders to food and shopping was just one thing that intrigued Val. “My sister Dot would go to the butcher shop and ask for one piece of steak, not one or three pounds of steak, but one piece and divide it up, and she had three kids then too.” This may have been due to post wartime rationing, but Val couldn’t get over it and told her “for goodness sake buy half a sheep or something”, to which Dot replied, “you’re not in Quorn now!” Val recalls that it was not only meat that was purchased in small amounts. “One of my girl friend’s walked into the local delicatessen one day and asked for one egg, not one dozen eggs, but one egg, and she’d go in and buy a carrot or two”. I laughed and asked “what’s wrong with you people over here?” to which her friend also replied, “you’re not in Quorn now!”

Val became well known to the European deli owner and on her way to work in the mornings he’d often throw her an apple or an orange for lunch, which horrified her friend. “I told her I’d pay him in on the way home, which I did”. The Sydney shopping habits mystified Val so much she commented, “I don’t think I could ever get used to living in the city” and was told “that’s what we do over here”. Val remembers telling her sister Dot, “no wonder these people in Sydney have got such flash homes, they don’t spend their money on food.” Despite the differences in lifestyle Val admits she got used to it. “I had my 21st birthday in Sydney and my boss and his family took me out to a cabaret club, my first, and I had a lot of fun, drank Barossa Pearl or some sparkling wine and had a puff on Mr Mellor’s cigar.” Val also recalls seeing a young Cole Joy perform on stage too, “the whole thing was a good experience and had it not been for dad and mum, mum’s eyesight was gone, I might still be there”. So Val returned to Quorn to look after her mum and remembers, “ it was so lovely to go into a shop and buy a dozen eggs and a bunch of carrots!”

Back at Quorn Val believes she fitted back into the community through playing basketball and there was plenty of local entertainment, including dances at Quorn, Willochra, Hammond and Bruce. Val married her late husband Alan Roeby, a Victorian who came over to work for the railways and later for ETSA at Playford Power Station at Port Augusta. They had two boys and their home was one of open doors to family and friends.

This hospitality may come from Val’s upbringing too. “Those days living out on the farm, you just helped mum. Our mum was a real‘mum’ very homely and comforting and if I could have picked a mum and dad I wouldn’t picked a better couple even though dad and I argued a lot.” Mum was a great cook, although she couldn’t read a recipe, because of her eyes, and never had a set of scales; everything was weighed in the hand, and I think we just learnt from mum, and recipe books of course. All our family even the boys were great cooks … and my two sons can cook. Dad was also a shearers cook in the local area too”. Val doesn’t know where her father picked up his cooking skills, and in hindsight some of the shearers he cooked for in the 1940s and ‘1950s don’t know either! Val recalls that “he never ever cooked us a meal, I can’t remember him cooking us a meal, and I asked some of the boys “What does dad cook for you?” They told her. “He’s a jolly good cook, don’t worry about it, no he’s OK”. Val still doesn’t know what he cooked for them, as she believes he destroyed his private recipe book in latter years, “I wouldn’t have a clue, just ‘shearers cooking’ I suppose!

As far as Val’s association with the local show goes, whilst the show is entrenched on the local calendar, during the 1960s some of the pavilion entries were in decline. Val first entered flowers, and recalls that one year she was looking at some of the knitting entries and commented that “my knitting is better than that … I’ve always been a knitter, but I don’t do so much now because kids don’t like knitted jumpers”. Anyway someone heard me and told me “Don’t talk about it, do it, so I did”.

Val went on to be a steward in the cookery section and after learning that “if you stand there and listen to the judges you can a lot about presentation; I liked cooking and decided to enter some dishes.”

Val is well known for her scones, but in the 1970s couldn’t seem to be able to make them in a gas oven, “In the old wood stove I could make anything, but they replaced it with a gas cooker and the girl who lived next door gave me a foolproof recipe that her mother gave her, but I also found out it’s in the CWA cookbook.”

Val makes scones for the Council boys “spoil them rotten, only because Mark Finlay loves scones, and Dr Tony [Liam-Lloyd] loves scones too and in the past when the power goes off here I used to make hot scones and a thermoses of hot water for the older residents of Deakin Court.”

Val really got into scones in a big way “when the new lady, Nadine at the Austral [Hotel] was involved with the Flinders Ranges Bush Festival here at Quorn in April 2009 and she wanted someone to show people how to make scones. On Saturday I had 12 people, two ovens going and on the Sunday, just as many and everyone was happy, learned how to make scones and took them home.

from interviews by John Mannion

Edna Rodgers is a Quorn district identity and has a long-term connection to the area through her maternal grandparents, the Trestrail’s who had a farm on the Willochra Plain in the late 19^th century. ‘Aunty Edna’ as she is known locally, was born at Quorn “back sometime in the 1920s” the youngest of six children to Thomas and Henrietta Carman.  Thomas was a blacksmith and also had a motor garage in the town, but was unfortunately drowned in a flash flood in a creek near Gordon when Edna was only nine months old. So Edna grew up in the city in the suburb what was then known as Millswood Estate, but was no stranger to the Quorn area through school holiday visits to the Rodgers farm, where her mother lived as a girl, on the flat near Itali Itali on the left of the Quorn-Wilmington road. Arch Rodgers was a Carman family friend and used to stay with the family during his annual visits to the city for the country cricket carnival, and Edna eventually married Arch in 1951 and went north to live on the farm.

After her schooling in Adelaide Edna went on to study at business college and later worked as an office girl in the city office of the smallgoods manufacturer Foggit Jones, which made fritz and ham at their factory in the Adelaide Hills. Edna also worked for Commonwealth Govt. and along with quite a few young women during the Second World War (1939-45) and worked at the Adelaide GPO as a telegram typist, due to a shortage of men until the war was over. “It was during this time that Edna became friends with the mother of Quorn’s current resident GP, Dr Tony Lian-Lloyd, “Dr Tony’s mother was a Morse code operator.” Edna also worked in Sydney for five months before returning to Adelaide, where she was married and “had to give up work”. Edna was an independent young woman and had a little Ford Prefect car in which she and Arch drove up to the farm. Edna recalls “it was a stinking hot time of year and our home was a weatherboard house with a slate flag floor and little or no conveniences,  “no electric light or power on the place; there was a kerosene fridge, which I managed to blacken the walls with until I got used to it, and Arch’s mother lived with us for about 12 months.”  Edna recalls Arch telling her “you’ll never go hungry living on a farm” and they didn’t either. They had chooks, “I learned to kill and pluck a chook but I wasn’t terribly keen about it; didn’t mind the plucking, but the cleaning … didn’t go much on that”. Arch would kill his own sheep and used to like brains and lambs fry for breakfast, and Edna learned how to bone a shoulder of mutton, mince it up and make patties. Edna reckons that there wasn’t much that Arch wouldn’t eat, “but he couldn’t stand rabbits, couldn’t stand them as he reckoned he’d seen and killed enough rabbits without having to eat them”.  She also learned to milk a cow, but admits “I was pretty slow” and if there was a surplus of milk it was separated and the cream taken to the Kingswood railway siding a couple of miles away and sent to the Orroroo butter factory. Edna also recalls that Arch would take meat and milk to the German migrant railway workers who were living in tents at the Kingswood siding around the time she came to live on the farm. In 1963 they shifted into a new home on the farm, “it was built by two brothers from Wilmington and Arch helped.” Looking back Edna has no regrets about life on the farm and “when Arch needed a bit of help I’d just give him a hand, you had to on the farm … it [Itali Itali] was not a bad spot in good years … we had good neighbours, the Kelly’s and Hilder’s and it was only four miles from Bruce … Ian rode his bike to the Bruce school, which was conducted in the old railway station … until the Quorn school bus came along … we never went out much, I never learned to dance, my mother wouldn’t let me, you don’t know what goes on at dances’ she said, but my brothers did, but they were men”.

Edna and Arch only had one son Ian, who still runs the mixed farming property, with his son Paul, ‘”I have three grandchildren, two girls and boy”. In the early years Edna had lots of visits from city nieces and nephews, and even now they remind her, “I often think of you Aunty Edna, you’d be cooking there for hours and in a short time it was all gone.” Looking back Edna maintains “I’m still only a very ordinary cook … I have a couple of recipes I use … back then we had a wood stove with great long trays and it was no effort to fill a couple of trays.”

Edna’s life had a setback when Arch died, “it’s over 40 years ago now … Ian was away at college.”  But Edna stayed on the farm, “ the neighbours, Peter Moloney, and Ron and Daph Hilder were good to me after Arch died, and their son Roger, or ‘Broom’ was a great help when Ian was away at National Service.” Ian Rodgers convinced his mother that she would be better off living in the town, and Edna finally relented, “but I hated it when I shifted into town – about 30 years ago now – I didn’t want to live in North Quorn, I didn’t want to live in Quorn at all, but I’m very happy here now, I have great neighbours and I got into lawn bowls in a big way”. Edna hasn’t played bowls for about three years now, “when you get older you’ve got to be a bit sensible”, but still patronises them, taking ‘a plate’ [with afternoon tea on] and is the Club Patron.

Edna still does quite a bit of cooking, “I often send some out to Ian at the farm, as his wife Pam works for TAFE at Port Augusta, and it’s something for me to do.” Smiling, Edna reckons all boys are spoilt by their mothers, “and when Paul comes in I notice that the biscuit tin always goes down.”

Edna feels she inherited her love for cooking from her mother, “my mother was a good cook, Friday was her cooking day and us kids would get home from school and we’d clean up. One of my favourites as a girl was Delicious Pudding, one of my mother’s recipes, I still make it today, but call it Lemon Pudding, I take Lemon Pudding to bowls, and the plate always comes home empty, so that seems quite popular.”

Edna also makes scones that people talk about, “they’re just ordinary scones and once cooked I keep them in the freezer and when I get visitors I cut them, the scones, in half and put them back in the oven, reheat them, most people like them, they’re cheesy, as ordinary scones dry out.”

Despite her reputation as a ‘good old country cook’ Edna still feels that “I’m still only a very ordinary cook”.  However I did manage to sample, and get her to share, a couple of her favourite recipes, including the Lemon Pudding with me, and here they are unabridged, and straight out of Edna’s personal files.

And one from a family friend, Barbara Smith (nee Voigt) who now lives near Belton north of Orroroo.

In 2010 it is still common for your local butcher to make their own sausages, but back in the early 1950s when a young Bill Altmann was apprenticed to Quorn butcher Colin Pearce, they manufactured a variety of smallgoods including fritz, saveloys and sausages, using the intestines of butchered animals as natural casings or ‘skins’.

Years ago it was customary, and in some places, still is, for the local butcher to give children a piece of fritz, sheathed in its distinctive orange skin, while their parents, usually their mothers, decided what to buy. Butchers were quite generous in their hand-outs too as back then fritz was considered to be a cheap meat product.

Bill Altmann retired as Quorn’s long-term resident butcher in 1998, but no doubt will be remembered by old ‘Quornie’s’ as the local butcher for years to come. Bill’s grandfather Gustav Altmann and his wife Marie (nee Noll from Wilmington) were among the early white settlers in the Quorn district in the 1880s and lived about four kilometres west of Quorn near the Port Augusta road. Whilst the Altmann’s were farmers they were also vegetable growers, with water for their garden coming from an earth dam near the farmhouse. When Bill’s father Adolph (Gustav August Adolph) and his wife Catherine (nee Reardon) took over the farm they carried on the vegetable growing, mainly cabbages, cauliflowers and tomatoes, and this, along with milking cows (they made butter and some cream was sent by train to the Farmer’s Union Butter Factory at Orroroo) was their main source of income. Bill recalls that the vegetables were sold to the public from the back of a horse-drawn cart behind the Austral Hotel every Friday. Bill was one of nine children and after his father died in the mid 1940s the family shifted into town and lived at ‘Possum Town’ in Shepstone Street.

Bill started butchering when he was 14 years old – he left school on his fourteenth birthday – “I couldn’t leave school quick enough” – in 1951, when he was apprenticed to Quorn butcher and race horse trainer Colin Pearce for five years. “It was a job, and at the time it was offered to me, mum was battling to make ends meet, so I helped her out by paying board; I was too young to join the railways.” Bill got on with Colin fairly well and had worked with him before leaving school, delivering meat orders around the town. “I was confronted with a great basket of meat wrapped up in newspaper to deliver to the two or three or four boarding houses at North Quorn before school – on the handle bars of push-bike. Later as a young apprentice Bill helped Alwyn Chapman run Pearce’s butcher shop in two buildings across the street from the present-day newsagency. Whilst the shop had a refrigerated cool room, and a meat saw (band saws had just become available), there was no counter fridge, and it still had sawdust on the floor. Slaughtering was done in the old slaughterhouse near the Quorn cemetery.

Rather than being behind the counter at the shop, Bill preferred to be out in the slaughter house at least one or two days/week. Back then sheep were slaughtered by cutting the throat and breaking the neck, cattle were shot in a confined yard, bled and butchered; pigs were shot, bled, put in a tub of hot water and the hair scraped off.  From the 1990s animals were required to be humanely stunned with a ‘bolt’ before being slaughtered. Livestock were either purchased by auction at a local market or privately from local farmers and run in a paddock on the slaughterhouse property. After Pearce’s butcher shop closed he worked across the road, where Quorn’s only butcher shop is still situated today, for Alec Finlay for another five years before eventually taking over the business with his wife Kath in 1961.

Back to the fritz, – also known as ‘bung fritz’ – that manufactured meat about three inches in diameter, enclosed in its familiar orange skin. Know as ‘devon’ or luncheon meat in the eastern Australian states and ‘polony’ in Western Australia, fritz was what you put in your sandwiches, usually two slices of white bread spread with butter, along with plenty of tomato sauce. It can also be fried slowly. As for the name? “Fritz”, it is believed, was the popular knick-name for Johann Eisenberg, who emigrated to Lobethal, in the Adelaide Hills, in 1883 and set up a stall in Adelaide’s East end Market, specialising in German meats, and Fritz’s German sausage became known far and wide as ‘fritz’.

Bill recalls that Pearce’s fritz was composed of several types of “good quality meat, a bit of fat, basic spices, and a binder, or binding agent”.  This all went into what was called a ‘silent cutter’ (a device with revolving blades) which chopped the minced meat up into a fine consistency and blended it to a smooth paste. The ingredients were then put into the casing, a bullock or sheep ‘bung’ or intestine of the animal, which was attached to the sausage maker. A ‘bung’ was between a foot and 18 inches long and gets its name from an outlet and anatomically, its proximity to the animal’s ‘bunghole’, hence the name ‘bung fritz’.

Once filled, the end of the casing was tied off using butchers string to prevent the contents breaking out and was looped around the other end to take the pressure off the first tie and allow the ‘bungs’ to be suspended in the water to cook and later hung to cool by a loop at top. That’s why fritz is always bent.

The bungs were then cooked in simmering boiling water, outside in a wood-fired copper, and Bill recalls that this was about a half-day job, “not too quick otherwise you’d burst the skins, natural skins”. The yellowy brown dye (food colouring) went into water when nearly cooked about 5 or ten minutes before the fritz was cooked.

As a young lad Bill was taught how to clean the ‘bungs’ for the fritz, and small intestines, or ‘runners’ for sausages. Sheep runners and bungs were cleaned in a saline solution to draw out impurities and the associated smell.   Sausages or ‘snags’ and saveloys or ‘savs’ were prepared and cooked in a similar manner to fritz, and tied off in threes or sixes – the joins are where skins are looped to prevent coming undone. Sausages had no dye whilst ‘savs’ had a red dye added. Today all commercial casings are synthetic.

Bill also ‘pickled’ or corned meat back then too, beef, mutton and pork, “we never dry-salted any meat though, I’m not that old! As far as pickling went, we used to pump it [the brine solution into the meat] all those days, using a hand pump fitted with needle.  We had a wooden half-cask [oak] of saline or brine solution that used to soak through the meat and after about five days it would go red and that’s corned meat!”

Ernie Ash has worked in shearing sheds since he was fourteen years old. During that time he reckons he has eaten lots of shearers tucker and while “some of it was bloody disgusting, overall I couldn’t really complain …”

Up until only a few years ago, Ernie was a shearer, “well I shore for quite a few years yeah … worked for a couple of contractors but usually two or three of us would pair off and go out shearing … it’s been three years since I’ve shorn a sheep due to ill health.”

Whilst sheep shearing is an iconic ‘Australian’ occupation’, very little is heard of the shearer’s cooks. These men and women refuel the stomachs of shearers, shed hands; – in the case of young boys, like all young boys, they are always hungry – and wool classers, often five times a day and fill them up with gallons of strong hot tea. Often the only mention of the cook often referred to, as the ‘babbling brook’ or ‘bait layer’ is “who called the cook a bastard?” To which the classic response is “who said the bastard could cook!” The truth is that being a shearer’s cook is hard work – when they aren’t asleep they’re working and when they aren’t working they’re sleeping.

Ernie and his three siblings Joan, John and Brian grew up out on the Willochra Plain north of Quorn and notorious for its droughts and dust storms, where their parents had a sheep grazing property, “Dad had 4,000 acres, but worked in the railways as well, so we would help our grandfather Bill French run the place”.

While Ernie is a Quorn bloke, whether he is locally bred he doesn’t know, because he was born at Wauchope, near Port Macquarie, NSW [pronounced ‘War hope’] in 1933. During the 1930s Depression the Ash family left Willochra for a while and headed east in search of work. They didn’t stay that long, “less than 12 months” Ernie reckons. The return trip to Quorn and Willochra took six months, Ernie was six months old and they travelled in a spring dray, a buggy and five horses. The journey featured in the Quorn Mercury, and Ernie recalls being told “along the way dad got ptomaine poisoning from eating sardines which had been left in the sun”.

Ernie went to school at Willochra and as was the norm at the time, left when he was fourteen.  Ever since then he has been mixed up with sheep and shearing sheds. “After I started working in the sheds an Elders [stock agent] bloke wanted me to become a wool classer, but I didn’t want to go to Adelaide”. So apart from helping run the Willochra place Ernie stuck with being a rouseabout. “I helped milk cows on the grandfather’s place after he died, just after the war until the 1950s … the cream went to the butter factory by train, Hall’s at Peterborough or Farmer’s Union at Orroroo, usually Orroroo”. “I always wanted to be a grazier… the home place wasn’t big enough to support one [family] let alone three, but we eventually got our own property out on the plain in the mid ‘60s and only sold it a few years back and more or less retired.”

Ernie reckons he more or less taught himself to shear, “I just watched the shearers and got to taking the belly off, and doing the long blow when one of them wanted a spell, then I’d get up earlier and do a couple before the first run, and at smoko and dinner time”.

Back to shearers cooking, “I can’t remember the name of a cook we had at Bill Hannan’s near Saltia once, Harry Whitehead might remember, anyway he was off a ship, an old seaman, and he made one of the best pressed meats I’ve ever tasted, I got no idea what was in it … he had a tin press thing, don’t know what was in it, but it was bloody beautiful.”

Then Ernie remembers shearing out at one place where an old bloke was cooking, “well he tried; but he was no cake cook, he made some little cakes one day and they come up to the shed and we tossed ‘em over into the catchin’ pen … the boss looked over the rails and this wether haf one of the cakes in its mouth, I’ll never forget that as long as I live.”

He also remembers going out to Pernatty [station], “I was only a boy at the time and the cook sent me out to cut some firewood, Myall wood it was, and it was hard work. He said ‘have a rest lad, come and have a cuppa tea. What did you think of the meat at dinner time?’ I said yeah, it was alright, and he told me it was emu; the boys had gone out and shot a heap of emus, and he told ‘em to go back and get a young one. He was a good cook and reckoned you could eat everything in Australia bar crow.”

Ernie’s shearing mentors included “Alf Hancock, Georgie Pradel, John and Brian Reschke from Para [chilna] way, they were around back then too, their father had a place down here, and Ted and Ken French, who were only a bit older than me, and Harry Groth he was around, old Harry.”  Back then unionism was a big thing in the shearing industry and shearers had to have an AWU ‘ticket’. This covered the grower as well, as if sheep were shorn by ‘scabs’ the wool was blackballed and Ernie recalls, “the wool from one station around here couldn’t be handled for about 12 months. Shearers couldn’t use their own handpieces then either. “You had to supply your own tools, but the owners, or growers supplied the handpieces, and some of them were old rubbish … if you got a crook one you had to have a tin of water alongside you to cool it off … you’d get a bit of a telling off from the boss, but if he couldn’t supply decent gear … I started with narrow gear, a Cooper first off, then a Lister, Cooper made the EB, they had two or three others too, which weren’t very popular, too big and heavy and the Lister Ace was big thing too, but they did make a smaller model and then came the Golden Lister.” Ernie’s highest tally on ‘narrow gear’ was 186, “four times I had 200 in my sights, but either the engine broke down or we ran out of sheep.” Years ago, when there were plenty of shearers around, many northern blokes, including Ernie used to head down to the South East during the early summer. “I remember once we had a big night out … and next day we had to front up to these big Border Leicester’s [sheep] … I got about 80 that day.” He did not shear very much with wide gear but believes it made shearing a lot easier, once the shearers got used to it.

Back in the early 1970s the iconic Australian film Sunday too Far Away, based on the 1956 shearers strike, was filmed in and around Quorn, and Ernie, along with quite a few other locals was an extra. The phrase Sunday Too Far Away comes from what Ernie’s wife Elaine explains “is the shearers lament; Friday night he was too tired, Saturday night too drunk and Sunday night too far away” adding, “but Ern wasn’t too bad though”.

Ernie can’t remember a lot about the 1956 strike, but “I was shearing at Argadells where Maurice Mannion worked at the time, I filled in for another bloke … we weren’t game to shear during the strike … you really got in the gun if you got caught … and the white sheep could be seen for miles. Unionism is not so strong these days, and not too many cocky-shed shearers have got ‘ticket’s these days”.

As portrayed in Sunday too Far Away the cook sometimes got on the vanilla essence, which was very high in alcoholic content and often had adverse effects. “Have you ever tried it?” Ernie asks, “It’s as bitter as hell”.

He recalls Colin French from Pernatty “telling me about one cook who got to the essence and how he was walking around in broad daylight striking matches to see where was going … that cook was taken into Quorn and put on the train!” Now Ernie has never cooked for shearers but recalls cooking for the mustering team at Pernatty station for over a week and never got abused. With a ready supply of sheep meat on hand, shearers cooking was mostly mutton-based; “roasts, stews, and a few shepherd’s pies, and chops … didn’t see any beef, and we usually got sweets of some sorts” Ernie says. Chops were the mainstay, but he never went to a shed where chops were served up morning, noon and night, “you’d often get cereal and eggs for breakfast too, didn’t see too much bacon though.” In the contract sheds, apart from smoko’s, meals were a communal affair around one or two dining tables, and you served yourselves. Morning and afternoon smoko was brought to the shed and was usually sandwiches, sausage rolls, pies and pasties, cakes and biscuits and tea, and you still helped yourselves there too. I never liked a heavy meal at dinner time, it’s a bit hard bending over with a full belly, I’d sooner have a big meal at tea time, and for morning smoko I preferred something heavier than in the afternoon.

Ernie says that back then “most of the cooks were men, a lot of the cooks are women now, and they worked very long hours; they had to get up around four o’clock in the morning and light the fire, cut lunches for the musterers to take with them, cook breakfast, do all the dishes, make morning smoko and on and on it went and it was at least half past nine, ten o’clock before they got to bed; some cooks had an offsider.”

The image of shearers is often one of hard working and hard drinking men, but Ernie believes that is a bit overdone, “some used to have a bottle [beer] at dinner time … it had to be very hot for me to have one at dinner time unless a couple of us shared a bottle, but after work others would drink six or eight bottles … most would just sit around and talk.” Being a grazier and a shearer, which had its pros and cons, Ernie mostly preferred cocky sheds, “ but in the big sheds you shore your eight hours and you didn’t have to worry about doing anything else and that was that, and the sheep were often cleaner and less wrinkly than ‘inside’ sheep.”

When asked what he misses about shearing Ernie replied, “the company and the spirit of the teams, I missed that a lot when I gave it away, and even these days in the middle of the day when you’ve got no mates around … I couldn’t stand being in a shed today, what with these ghetto blaster radios.” The other thing that’s changed over the years is women in the industry, “once you’d never see a girl in a shed, but I’ve seen them shearing big wethers and getting over 200 a day, they’ve got a lot of ability and style.”

Now according to the cooks, shearers and shed hands are pretty well looked after. In the bigger sheds years ago the cook was paid by a subscription from the shearers and shed hands.  Nowadays the cook is paid by the property owner or contractor and in cocky sheds it is accepted that they [shearers etc,] are ‘found’, or supplied with smokos and dinner or lunch. Ernie said that this was “just part of the life, the locals fed us in return for doing our own grinding.” However this tradition too may become a thing of the past. Many women on the land now work off-farm and don’t have the time or inclination to cook at shearing time so shearers bring their own tucker. This arrangement is ‘not found’ and shearers are paid an allowance for meals. Consequently many shearers now turn up with shop-bought pies and pasties, cans or cartons of cool drink, packets of chips and health food snacks. Occasionally they will bring a sandwich, but Ernie reckons the majority are young single blokes and are not inclined to get up earlier and prepare their own meals.

Anyway he reckons the BYO, “is alright I suppose, and shearers are always in a hurry to eat anyway and get back [to the shed] and wash your tools, do something to your handpiece and have a lie down on the board to straighten your back out”.

Ernie, Elaine and their children, Graham, Neville, David and Rosalie lived in Quorn before moving out to their place at Willochra 11 miles north of Quorn in the 1980s until they sold out and moved back into town in 1996. During that time Elaine cooked for three shearers, three shedhands, Ernie, a couple of offsiders and a couple of musterers, “between a dozen and fifteen at times, I didn’t have to supply breakfast or tea and sometimes I had a girlfriend who’d come up at shearing time and help.”

Elaine was working at the time too and believes she couldn’t have coped without a freezer, “I’d make sandwiches and cakes and freeze them, freezers have made a big difference”. At first Elaine used to dish their meals up “but some complained that I was giving them too much, so I put the food into bowls and they could help themselves. On Mondays it was always roast, Tuesday it was a stew, then it was rissoles and gravy with vegies, or chicken meat or I used the leftover mutton in a potato or shepherd’s pie, whatever you like to call it with vegetables. For dessert it was light or heavy – tinned fruit and custard, or a bread and butter pudding or similar … I gave them gave them a different meal everyday. For morning smoko it was sandwiches with assorted fillings, pies, pasties or sausage rolls and cakes, buns or biscuits and for afternoon smoko something lighter, SAO biscuits and some sandwiches and another three kinds of cake or biscuits – they were well looked after!”

Incidentally, the going rate (as from 1 July 2010) for shearers cooks is $203.03 per day ($15.62 per person), whilst shearers are paid $253.42 per 100 sheep).

Elaine’s Shepherd’s Pie.

Take a leg of cold roast mutton and mince it up with an onion, put in a two-litre Pyrex dish. Cook and mash enough potatoes to cover the filling by about half an inch. N.B. – before draining the cooked potatoes, pour the water into the  dish until level with the minced meat, mixing in a packet of French onion soup. Cream the potatoes with butter and milk and spread over minced meat. Use a fork to form the potato into a number of ‘Devils Peaks’ and cook in oven at 180 degrees for 45-60 minutes. When the ‘peaks’ are golden brown it is usually done. For a complete meal in a pie add carrots and peas.

When Sue moved to Copley to be with Bob in 1983, she knew she would need something long term to keep her busy in this little town.  “Remembering Sir Mark Oliphant’s words at my graduation which was ‘don’t expect someone else to employ you; always consider self-employment’, I thought a bakery and health food shop would be profitable.”

The health food side of things never happened, as the partner involved quickly pulled out, but Bob and Sue got busy building the bakery anyway, once Bob’s contract building work had finished.  They found a full bakery plant for sale at Coober Pedy, which was far bigger than what Sue had envisaged, “but after a day and night’s discussion with the owners plus about six bottles of wine we bought the lot.”  Included was a gigantic prover and diesel -fired oven, the size of a small room, down to bread tins and rolling pins and most importantly, the recipe for white bread.  “Various baking demonstrators promised to come but didn’t so we ended up teaching ourselves bread, pie pastry and cake making, and an ex-alcoholic cook from a nearby mine taught us hand rolls and hot cross buns.”

“Bob was out the back doing the baking with Colin and Julie and I was front of the house taking people’s orders, welcoming people, making up their lunch.  Bob was a bit on the shy side so he was happy to be out the back and I found that a bit boring so I was happy to be out the front.”

Soon they were making the quandong pies for which the bakery became famous, but back then the pies were a seasonal commodity.  One day an elderly Adnyamathanha lady came into the bakery with a bag of quandongs that she’d picked, cut, de-stoned and dried, and asked Sue if she’d like to buy them.  After this most of the Nepabunna community began to supply quandongs or urti in Adnyamathanha, to the Tullochs.  Other quandongs came from the Riverland.

The word began to spread about this place with its unique menu – it was still the 80s after all.  Sue recalls, “a lot of the interest from the people that visited was in quandongs, especially Europeans and Victorians because neither of them knew much about them and it was seen as specifically a South Australian arid land kind of bush food, so the pies were very popular, anything quandong was really popular, quandong jam and scones, quandong smoothies and quandong pie and cream.”  They even had interest in from the United States and were asked to a supply a container load of quandong pies, about 10,000 pies but it would have taken them about a year to fill the order.

A snowy haired man came into the bakery one day with some quandong leather he’d made for them to try and he was Brian Powell, who had at that stage only bred one of the three star quandong trees he ended up with, Powell’s No. 1.  Over the years a strong friendship grew between the Powells and the Tullochs.  The Tullochs began to harvest the Powell’s’ orchard at Endilloe and later bought the rights to grown Powell’s No. 1.

In 1988 they bought a farm near Quorn with the plan to reproduce Powell’s No. 1 for their own orchard, but also to sell.   “We’d learnt to bake, why not grafting?”  A micro grafting expert named Peter Taverna taught them his techniques and away they went.  The reason they wanted to reproduce trees was to ensure the future of their value added products, which they began turning out in 1986.  “with the value adding part of the business we were starting at the bottom with propagating the trees because it’s no good getting a big demand for quandong products if you haven’t got the quandongs to supply it.  We could see in the future if demand got too big, there wouldn’t be enough quandongs, and you have to guarantee supply otherwise you haven’t got a business.”

The Tullochs’ quandong jam and dessert sauce was in demand; like the pies they were more tart than sweet, letting the unique flavour shine through.  “We used citric acid in our recipes because we didn’t want it to be like strawberry dessert sauce.”  The quandong meat sauce was invented a bit later at the farm.  “I used everything there, I just put the lot in; garlic, onions, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, butter, quandong dessert sauce and some port that was above the fireplace.”

In 1994 the Tullochs got managers for the bakery and moved to Quorn where they committed themselves to running the nursery;  “that was quite successful, we actually managed to successfully graft quandongs which is notoriously difficult – we got about 65% I think – so that was another arm to the business, as we’d sell the grafted quandongs to growers.”  They also started up Quorn’s Quandong Cafe, which Sue was running.   “All three businesses required specialist skills and time, so it was a lesson in too many balls in the air.”

Things went alright until 1996. “We had some problems with the bakery, we left it under management and things went pear-shaped, so we had to go back and resurrect it.  After we’d done that and built the Quandong Cafe there [Copley] we put it on the market.  During that time we couldn’t keep the nursery going because you’ve got to be there with plants.  If it gets a bit too hot you’ve got to open the doors of the nursery and quandongs are very, very fussy.”

The nursery was simply abandoned.   Bob returned to Copley to save the bakery and Sue ran the Quorn Quandong Cafe until Bob’s sister Ruth bought it in 1997.  Current owner, Karen Hutchesson, bought the Quandong Cafe from Ruth in May 2000.

Bob Lott bought the rights to reproduce Powell’s No. 1 in 1999 and began the orchard which Greg Bannon manages just outside Quorn on the Hawker Road.

The Tullochs remained in Copley until 2003 when a Sydney woman Fiona bought the bakery and cafe.  She had walked through the door late 2002 at the time of the solar eclipse in Lyndhurst.  A couple of years later Fiona sold to current owners Shirley and David Mills, who also own the Copley Caravan Park.

Bob and Sue moved to the farm at Quorn and built a commercial kitchen in the town where they continued to make their sauces and fillings for the pies, the only arm of the business left, until 2007. “I suppose we did that at least a couple of years and one day I went in there and thought ‘I can’t do this anymore’.   So on the spot we sold it all to Shirley at the bakery, gave her the recipes, gave her all our customers and all our stock, and then within the year we slowly sold her our stock of dried quandongs.  It was quite a lot.”  Shirley and David Mills continue to be true to Bob and Sue’s recipes.

Quandong Topping

This recipe of Bob and Sue’s is “irresistible served warm or cold over icecream.”

150g dried quandongs

500ml water

Juice of 1 ½ lemons

230g castor sugar

Soak the quandongs overnight in the water and lemon juice.  Bring to the boil, simmer gently for 15 minutes or until the fruit is just soft, then add the sugar and simmer 5 minutes more.  Pour over icecream or stand overnight and serve cold.

Since selling the farm in 2004, Bob and Sue have been focused on building a house which they had been planning for 26 years, slowly collecting materials over that time.  “Originally we were going to build at Copley but we changed our minds about that, then we were going to build at the farm and then realised it was going to be too expensive, and then we were actually sick of the maintenance of the orchard and the bore etc., so on a practical and financial basis we sold the farm just after we sold the bakery and so we bought this place which funnily enough was probably what we really wanted originally.

“Originally it was going to be a rammed earth house but it would have been too expensive to bring the machinery in and we would have had to knock down too many trees.  It was going to be a lot cheaper and greener to build a pole-framed house out of trees from Wirrabara Forest with cement footings so you can control the white ants; and we only knocked down one old native cherry tree.  It was built in a natural clearing.

The footings went in in 2006, and they have been working on the house for over three years, getting to lockup stage in 2009.  “We started off with a logging truck full of pine trees with the bark on.  Everyone else gets a house on a truck, boom, that’s it.  Not us.”

The following is Bob and Sue’s favourite house-building recipe “because you can live on it for weeks without costing hardly anything, and it’s easy to do when you don’t have much energy.”  Sue got it from an Italian friend.

Parsley Spaghetti

6 tablespoons olive oil

4 cloves garlic, crushed

2 onions, chopped

250g mushrooms (optional)

2 big handfuls parsley and some sage, roughly chopped

Spaghetti for 2-4

Salt and cracked black pepper

Sliced capsicum

Put on some water to boil with some oil and salt and cook the spaghetti.  Meanwhile cook onions and garlic in oil, add parsley, sage and mushrooms, cook until soft.  Mix in spaghetti, serve and top with parmesan cheese, sprinkle with salt and cracked black pepper to taste.

Garnish with some chopped parsley and red capsicum and accompany with a glass of red.

Jannene and Graham Cannard of Pichi Richi Camel Tours have given tourists the taste of bush tucker since 2006, but there’s one thing you won’t find on the menu:  Camel.

The Pichi Richi camel story began in 2000, when Jannene was living in the Adelaide Hills and working as a nurse.  “A friend rang me up one day and said she was going to visit her camels.  I always used to call her my freaky friend who lives with camels;  she had a shed that she lived in on her property and she lived with them in her shed – I still wouldn’t go that far.  Anyway they’d gotten too big for her shed so she’d moved them back up to the place that she’d bought them from, which was Graham’s family’s property near Silverton NSW, and she went up once a month to visit them.”  The friend invited Jannene to join her on this particular weekend, on a camping trip to see the camels, and as Jannene had the weekend off she agreed.  It so happened that Graham also happened to be home that weekend, and not somewhere on the racing circuit; “it wasn’t planned, it was just meant to be I think,” she says.  “And we went out on a moonlight camel ride and that was it, I was hooked;  on camels and Graham.”

“We sort of to and fro’ed a little bit, and then he rang me up one day from Broken Hill and said that he was coming down to visit, ‘to court’ was actually what he said, and he was bringing me a gift;  and I thought ‘you beauty’;  could be art, could be jewelry, could be something really nice.  And he arrived two weeks later, which in Graham world is normal time, with a baby bull camel that I kind of looked at and went ‘what on earth am I going to do with that?’ and he promptly declared that it was the beginning of our camel farm and proposed.

It took a few years to get going of course, and the pair lived in the Adelaide Hills while looking for a suitable property and training up a new set of camels, as Graham only had racing camels.  They found a place outside Quorn and moved there January 2003, along with baby Cody, the first of their three sons.  In 2004 they had their first customers arrive for camel rides.

The baby bull camel Graham gave to Jannene is still with them;  he is known as Grumpy, “after Graham, not because of his temperament.”

“One of our biggest marketing hurdles is getting people past the mindset that camels are nasty, dirty, bitey, horrible, spitty animals.  They’re big animals and they make lots of noises, and so I think that people think that they’re scary.  They’re not, and they don’t spit.  So I’ve always intended to make the camels look friendly and happy and gentle, with lots of pictures of kids with camels, so people can see that they’re really not that scary.  And we really want them to love the camels that they ride.”

In 2006 the first Camel to Candlelight Dinner went out, with tourists given the opportunity to combine a camel ride with a three-course bush food meal, and it was also Jannene’s opportunity to combine two of her loves.  “I love bush food, I cook it for my family, I cook it for anyone who walks in the door; we have it on a regular basis as part of our normal diet.”  Most of their customers are from overseas, and they are so interested in the day-to-day life of the Cannard family, that the idea of the bush food menu just sort of grew.

Jannene developed many of the recipes herself as the few bush food cookbooks around tended to use ingredients from the tropics, so she has had to adapt regular recipes, for example Beef Wellington, which she has put kangaroo into.  Bart Brooks is chef on these tours, so some of the recipes are his.  Some of the foods found on their menu is yabby, from their dams; bush tomato, wattleseed, macadamia, quandong , lemon myrtle and wild lime.

Wild Pepper Kangaroo Shasliks

Crush a handful of wild pepper berries in mortar & pestle to release flavour.  Cut approx 500g kangaroo fillet into 3cm cubes.  Mix pepper berries into kangaroo, cover & refrigerate overnight.  Soak wooden shaslik skewers overnight in water.  Thread pepper berry crusted kangaroo onto shaslik skewers, alternating with vegetables of choice, cut to similar size as kangaroo.  Onion & red capsicum work well, so do mushroom and zucchini wedges.  Kangaroo has a strong flavor so choose vegetables that will compliment the flavour.  Brush a grill or bbq with olive oil.  Cook shasliks until medium-rare.  Do not overcook as kangaroo will become tough & dry.

Wild Lime & Muntries Brulee

1 can sweetened condensed milk

260g lemon tang fruche

50g cream cheese

4 tblspn wild lime

3 tspn agar

¼ cup boiling water

Muntrie conserve or jam (can be substituted with fresh stewed muntries)

Blend cream cheese, condensed milk and fruche together.  Beat well.  Gradually add lime juice, one spoon at a time.  Prepare agar by sprinkling over the boiling water.  Stir until completely dissolved.  Add prepared agar to brulee mixture and fold in well.  Pour mixture into brulee molds, drop teaspoons of muntrie conserve into mixture, ensuring that mixture covers conserve.  Refrigerate until set.

To serve: sprinkle with generous amount white sugar.  Heat brulee iron and apply to sugar, heating thoroughly and turning sugar to crisp toffee.

There’s no camel though.  “We eat camel but not our own.  Camel’s a really nice meat, I don’t have any qualms about eating camels, I thinks it’s a massive resource in Australia that is sadly going to waste, and I think that there should be a huge market for it because it’s a beautiful meat, really low in fat.  But we don’t serve it because people tend to not want to eat the animal they’ve just ridden in on and hopefully fallen in love with.”

Jannene and Graham’s camel Feral, who appears to be in charge of the marketing side of Pichi Richi Camel Tours also, it seems, likes to cook!”

Feral’s Camel Stew

Ingredients:

3 medium sized camels

1 ton salt

1 ton pepper

500 bushels potatoes

200 bushels carrots

3501 sprigs parsley

2 small rabbits

Method:

Cut camels into bite sized pieces.  This should take about 1 month.  Cut vegetables into cubes (another month).  Place meat in pan & cover with 3842 litres of brown gravy.  Simmer 4 weeks.  Shovel in salt & pepper to taste.  When meat is tender, add vegetables.  Simmer slowly 4 weeks.  Garnish with parsley.  Will serve 3900 people. If more are expected, add rabbits.

Note: 1 bushel equals approx 20kg.  If you have trouble sourcing camels Feral has a few “friends” she will gladly send to you.

]]> http://projectroom.com/flindersflavours/?feed=rss2&p=332 0 http://projectroom.com/flindersflavours/?p=330 http://projectroom.com/flindersflavours/?p=330#comments Wed, 11 Aug 2010 02:56:01 +0000 John Mannion http://projectroom.com/flindersflavours/?p=330 Written by Helena Hucks

Czech Christmas Traditions live on in the southern Flinders …

I came to Australia from Czechoslovakia by QANTAS aircraft, forty years ago in July 1969, at the age of15, with my mum Blazena, dad Vasek and brother Vasek jnr. (Wes in English). We arrived to Sydney, and from there we went to Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, near Albury in NSW, where we stayed for three weeks. We then travelled by train to Adelaide, via Melbourne, to the Glenelg Migrant Hostel, where we lived for seven months, before we moved to a flat in Galway Avenue in Marleston.

We didn’t have too many moves, as my parents believed in a stable home environment. From Marleston the family moved to Blackwood, where we lived for two years. Those two years were very profound in our lives; it was almost like we had reached a milestone, as we began assimilating into the Australian society. My parent’s dream was to own their home and their dream came true, when they moved to their Hope Valley home in February 1974, and to this day my mum still lives there. This was one of the many reasons why my parents decided to leave their native country.

I always felt that the decisions they made for leaving their homeland always heavily weighted on their shoulders. I don’t think it would have been easy for them to leave their families, friends, and status in the Czech society, personal artifacts/belongings and heritage behind. The motivation behind the reason for migrating to Australia seems simple to many people, it had to be politically motivated, and to some degree it was, but not entirely. I think that the main aspiration for leaving the homeland was to give us (myself and my brother) “a better start in all aspects of our lives”, which included freedom and recognition of human rights in our personal and political arena.

Our Hope Valley home provided me with a lot of happy memories, and one of them was Christmas. I love Christmas, but most of all I like to reminiscence about Czech Christmas. What is it so special about Czech Christmas? I think it’s those child memories I have and cherish to this day. How can you have Christmas without snow and a real Christmas tree? There was always snow at Christmas time. The streets, houses with balconies, trees and gardens covered with the magical white carpet, the snow. The tapering spike of ice hanging from eaves forming a beautiful row of icicles, like an organ in the church waiting for someone to touch it and play a beautiful tune. Two days before Christmas the tradition would start. Grandfather and I, we would head to the market to buy the real pine Christmas tree and carp for the traditional Christmas dinner. The tree got hung on the balcony and decorated on Christmas Eve (in the morning) with chocolate figurines, glass balls, candles and sparkles, which would get lighted up in the evening. The carp swam happily in the tin bathtub on the balcony, oblivious to his destiny. We had to watch the water that it didn’t freeze, otherwise the carp couldn’t breathe. Christmas Eve used to be a day of strict fasting. Parents promised their children that they would see a golden piglet if they keep the fast. Another very popular myth was that if you kept the scales from the carp, you would come into money. Dinner was always plentiful, of many different courses. The old traditional meals included Cerna Kuba (Black Jack or barley and mushroom casserole), pea or lentil soup, fruit, nuts, apples and roasted flat bread. In 19th century carp found its way onto the Czech Christmas menu, as it was thought to be a suitable meal after fasting. These days the Christmas Eve dinner menu is traditional Christmas Fish Soup, Breaded Carp with Potato Salad or Cerna Kuba, for desserts – Vanocka (Christmas Bread) and a mixture of Christmas cookies. This traditional menu got passed down for generations and is still used to this day. 

Three weeks before Christmas my grandmother would start making Christmas cookies. I was always very keen to help, as I was the cook’s official taster. She allowed me to lick the bowl or stick my finger in the mixture. I never ever complained, as I enjoyed the time with her, I didn’t have to share her with anybody, just me and her, baking and cooking, laughing and story telling. My grandmother’s favorite Christmas cookie recipe was “Vanilkove Rohlicky” (Vanilla Rolls).

‘Vanilkove Rohlicky’ (Vanilla Rolls) recipe:

350 g plain flour

150 g icing sugar

100 g grounded almonds or walnuts

250 g unsalted butter

1 egg

Icing and vanilla sugar for rolling

Chocolate optional

Mix all ingredients together into a dough, leave it in the cool place for 2 hours to rest, before rolling the dough into small strips in 2 cm in diameter, cutting them into small pieces, forming them into small vanilla rolls and placing them onto a grease oven tray. Bake them in the oven (180C) for about 15 minutes or until golden in colour. While still hot roll them in the icing and vanilla sugar, place them on the tray. When cold, place them in the container and store them in the fridge until use. You may dip the end of the vanilla roll in the hot chocolate.

‘Linecke Kolacky’ (Christmas Biscuits)

250 g plain flour

120 g icing sugar

130 g unsalted butter or margarine

1 egg

1 teaspoon of grated lemon peel

1 spoonful of vanilla sugar

Raspberry jam

Mix all ingredients together into a dough, cut the dough into 4 pieces, roll out each piece (not too thick or too thin). Use a cookie cutter – a shape of heart or star, cut the dough into desirable shapes – a half of the shapes – cut out a circle of 1cm in diameter in the middle of the each shape and leave the other half uncut. Place them onto the greased oven tray and bake them in the oven (180C) for 15 minutes or until golden. When cool, join the biscuits (of the same shape) with raspberry jam, placing the biscuit with a cut centre on the top. Put them in the container and store them in the fridge until use.

I had never heard of, or had any knowledge about The Flinders Ranges until I moved to Peterborough from Adelaide after I got married in 1976. I have lived and worked around this area and district ever since. I always was told how beautiful the Flinders Ranges were, but I never had the opportunity to experience their beauty until my daughter was eight years old. We decided to go and experience the rugged beauty, which I heard so much about. I admired them from the distance – the shapes, colour and vegetation on my travels to Port Augusta and Yunta, but I never visited. We stayed in Wilpena Pound and enjoyed the experience of climbing the St. Mary’s Peak, discovering various locations used for filming ‘The Robbery Under Arms’, the Wilpena Pound itself and surrounding areas, visiting the Aboriginal carvings and paintings and the early settlers history, which has remained intact and for us to admire and protect.

 Many of my Adelaide friends ask me why, for the past 34 years, I still enjoy living around this area, especially at Pekina, where I have lived on the farm with my partner John for past 15 years. My answer to this question is: “I love the place, its simplicity and the peaceful and relaxing environment without any pressure and expectations; its people, their character, resilience, determination and willingness to ‘have a go’ at things, optimistic about the outcome; the friendliness and the inclusion of being ‘one of them’, generally regardless of background and ethnicity. I feel I came around a full circle, in which I could preserve my ethnicity and likeness for life, which was passed on from my ancestors.

Joan Schell (nee Snoad) grew up in a ‘railway family’ at Peterborough, on the ‘Quorn Line’ during the 1930s’ Depression years. Joan recalls that, “mum had to feed six kids – I was one of six kids – and I think she had a couple of boarders too, and we didn’t have much money back then … I don’t know how she did it.”

One of Joan’s culinary memories is, “every Sunday we’d have a roast, every Sunday, a leg of lamb or leg of mutton, it was very special to have a roast, go to church, come home and have the roast.”

Rabbits too were a big part of the diet in the Snoad home, “someone would sell them door to door for 2/6 (25 cents) each; now they’re $15 each [laughs], I saw them in the supermarket the other day!”

We used to keep chooks, kill a chook and have a chook, it was very special to have a chook, not like today, they have them every day now, and turkeys, we bought them from Ray Betty out at Parnaroo; weighed up to 25 lb.”

Joan recalls two delicacies that her mother made, the quince pie, which was passed down by her grandmother.

“We had quince pie and mum used to grate the quinces, make the pastry and cover them with currants, put sugar on top of them and put pastry on top.  It was very nice too; I think it lasted us a week., Stewed quinces are beautiful too.

Joan feels that the quince, which looks something like a cross between an apple and a pear and is actually related to both with its strong perfume, is an underappreciated fruit and makes lovely jams and puddings.  It is generally not often eaten out of hand as it can be hard and sour unless fully ripened on the tree.  “We didn’t have a quince tree, but there was one next door. People don’t seem to have quinces now, and if they do, they’re a luxury.”

The once humble quince

Joan reckons that like many young wives, she didn’t know much about cooking. “It was all done on the wood stove, no gas those days, but I got by with some  cooperation from my husband, Ray.  I’d  stoke the fire up, but had to learn how to use the stove – too much wood and you’d burn everything.

Like most country women, Joan contributed to her children’s education by helping raise funds for the local school. “After the war years we’d make pies and pasties for St Joseph’s Catholic School, and deliver them to ‘loco’ [railway sheds] on the bike at 12 o’clock and sell ‘em to the blokes for lunch for 2/6 each.  It was hard yakka in those days.  We’d borrow and trade food coupons for sugar, butter and meat.  It was more inconvenient than hard work because we didn’t know any different.”

GRANDMA’S QUINCE PIE

Grate 4 to 6 quinces (depends on the size).

Put into a deep plate or a pudding dish piled high because it will go down. Sprinkle with sugar. Dot with butter. Cover with currants. Then put a pastry top.

Cook for 30 minutes in moderate oven.

Serve with custard or cream.

Joan recalls that at one time she was known as the ‘macaroon lady’, thanks to another of her mother’s recipes, Macaroon Slice.  As supporters of the Mothers and Babies [MBHA – Mothers and Babies Health Association] some of us ‘railway women’, used to cater for weddings, and we used to make all the pies and pasties, turkeys pies and pasties etc. “I was the macaroon lady and Myrtle Ayliffe was the apple pie lady.  I used to make macaroon tarts and slices, and I still make them, ‘macaroons’.  We didn’t charge much, lots of weddings and lots of work.”

MACAROON SLICE

Base – ¼ lb butter, 6 oz sugar, 1 egg, salt, vanilla, 2 cups S.R. flour.

Roll out or press into lamington tin.

Spread with raspberry or apricot jam.

Topping: 2 to 3 eggs.

Beat well, add 1 cup sugar.

1 or 2 cups of coconut.

Add vanilla, mix well and spread on top of jam.

Cook in moderate oven.

When cool, cut into slices.

Joan Schell and Myrtle Ayliffe – the macaroon and apple pie ladies – at Peterborough in November 2009.

Monty Scobie was the fifth of seven children and first earned a wage by skipping school and riding at the tail of mobs of cattle, helping push lame bullocks along as they were driven down the track.  He began his cattle droving career, which took him to many parts of northern South Australia up through the Northern Territory over to the Ord River in Western Australia and across to Queensland, as a 15 year-old lad, breaking in his own horses and filling in time between cattle runs with fencing work.  Monty gave away droving in the1950s when he was 30 years old, and took on truck driving for a living, spending several years with the legendary Tom Kruse, delivering mail and freight up and down the Birdsville Track  He was followed by Vivian Oldfield, who only did one run, and who was in turn replaced by Max Bowden. Monty can still recall when “old Frank Booth” had the Marree to Birdsville mail run, using a coach and horses.

In 1953 Monty and Max Bowden carted some of the crew and supplies for the making of the film, ‘Back of Beyond’ in their Blitz ex-army trucks.  He also carted talc from the Mount Fitton area in the northern Flinders Ranges to Lyndhurst Siding, and cattle, including one consignment for the Kidman group, and general freight for Kidmans for many years.  Before retiring to Quorn in c2005, Monty lived at Clare and made an annual pilgrimage to the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame at Longreach for many years, passing through his old stamping ground at Lyndhurst, Mungerannie and Windorah, and stopping on the way to stay with old friends.  At Longreach, he caught up with old mates from all parts of Australia, yarning and reminiscing around the campfire.  Since having his driver’s licence “taken away” however, he can longer attend, but reckons there aren’t many drovers left anyway.

Monte Scobie, Quorn Hospital, November 2009. (Photo John Mannion)

Monty recalls that on a droving trip there were usually five men, “sometimes might be four, might be one short, or if it was a big mob might be one extra. Horse tailer and a cook and three men with the cattle.”

As a young bloke Monty took whatever job was offering in the camp, either working with the horses and cattle and sometimes he was the cook,  “there was more cooking to be done than anything else, all the buggers et, even if they didn’t work!”

In the stock camp food was fairly basic, “mainly meat, spuds and onions and things like that … there was stores along the road.  Yeah there was one at Mulka, one at Mungerannie and one at Mira Mitta, about two weeks apart they was, the stores”, Monty said.  As for meat [beef], “the owner of the cattle would give you one [beast] for every week you were on the road”.

Slaughtering was done on the job by the blokes, or ringers.  Monty had a sawn-off .22 rifle, cut off with a hacksaw.  “I used to get a killer with that.  Away we’d go, on this old horse, put the barrel to the back of the bullock’s head, pull the trigger and down he’d go and we’d cut his throat and butcher him.”  Very little of the ‘killer’ was wasted and the hide was spread out on the ground, salted, folded up and sent down to Juttner’s [tannery] at Tanunda.  “They’d tan it and keep half and send the other half back to us to use for harness leather”, Monty said.

Droving was done any time during the year and apart from fresh meat for a day or so after killing, “the fresh meat would keep for ten days in the winter time; it’d go off in the summer”, most of it was dry-salted.

Monty said that “you’d buy it [salt] along the track, off the stores; a lot of ‘em would buy the coarse salt and get the black fellers to grind it up with them stones, you know, they used the stones to grind it up.” The salt was simply rub into the cuts of meat which were spread out on bushes at night, put into jute bags or sacks in the daytime, and stored in the coolest place to be found during the day so it wouldn’t get hot again and spread out on bushes in the evening to let it cool down.  This cycle was repeated daily until all the meat had been consumed.

The salt meat was simply boiled up in an old kerosene tin bucket and served with whatever vegetables were on hand, usually spuds and onions.

Monty recalls, “if you were lucky we used to get some emu eggs. Yeah … I think one emu egg is about equal to eight fowl eggs; they’re big eggs, those emus”.

Poultry was occasionally on the menu at times too. “Yeah there was a lot of bush turkeys around is a good year, hard to get a shot though; you had to shoot them through the head otherwise you make a hell of a mess of them if you shoot ‘em through the body

And galah? “Bloody hard they are, they reckon you put a stone in with the galah and when you could put the fork into the stone the bird was done.”

Ducks? “Yeah, but they were a bit hard to get, you’d only get one shot and they’d be gone. We didn’t carry a shotgun”.

Occassionally Monty cooked rabbit too, “Oh a lot of ways to cook ‘em but the best way is in the ashes. Get ‘em, burn the fur off and cook ‘em in the ashes. They pulled some rabbits out of that country around Innamincka, sent ‘em to Smorgons in Melbourne. Trappers used to have chillers about every ten or 20 miles and when they were full they’d take ‘em into two big ones at Lyndhurst. This bloke McKenzie would pick ‘em up and cart them by truck, an old Commer knocker. He’d stack ‘em frozen on the tray of his truck up to the side boards, fill ‘er up with bunnies and cover ‘em with mattresses and a tarp and tie them down; they’d only lose three degrees between Lyndhurst Siding and Melbourne.

Kangaroo? “No I don’t like ‘em, they’re dry meat, we’d eat one sometimes if we had nothing else.” And emu? “No never had that, don’t like it, too greasy.”

Sweets, including pudding, were a delicacy in the camp too, but only now and again, and the variety depended on whatever was in the tucker bag, “you get to a place, you come to a store, and you’d get two weeks rations and then you’d get to the next store and stock up again and whatever was lacking we’d just go without.”

Rice puddings were popular and Monty reckons that he could knock up a cake of sorts, “with raisins and currants and that sort of thing, but yeah, mostly rice puddings. You’d buy rice in big bags, oh and you had your own bags too, your own ration bag, a little bit of this and a bit of that, whatever you wanted.”

Despite the association of the name ‘brownie’ with the US, brownies seem to have been in the Australian bush for generations.

Monty said he could make a brownie, “much the same as the damper mix;your flour and sugar and then the cream of tartar and soda … later they brought in self-raising flour and you didn’t have to worry about the cream of tartar and soda and stuff, it was a lot better, that self-raining flour.”

The coming of self-raising flour to the outback was a big thing and came in 25 lb bags, whereas plain flour was in 50 lb bags.

Now in Monty’s time as a drover, the only form of transporting men and goods was by packhorse.  “Oh we had packhorses with a bag each side, about 50-odd pounds each side and put your swag on top with the horse loaded, you had enough then, you had two packs like that. We had a packhorse to carry the shoeing gear too, a few spare shoes.”

One packhorse would carry all the shoeing gear and there’d be another couple of horses’d have two sets of water canteens, five or six gallons; they’d be about six gallons I suppose; put 10 or 12 gallons to each horse, one on each side of the horse, and another one or two with all the stores.  Can’t beat the old packhorse,” Monty reminisces, but they did play up at times, “Some of ‘em didn’t like it if the pack-saddle slipped and got under their guts.”

The water canteens were designed to go on a pack-saddle, and Monty described them as being, “a bit flatter on one side, the side that went in towards the horse and the other was round like that.  The heaviest loads of water that the horses carried was two canteens each, that’d be 12 gallons [120 lb].

These welded and galvanised – inside and out – steel water canteens were designed not to leak under the toughest conditions. A packhorse carried two – one on each side of the packsaddle.

The canteens which carried water solely for drinking and cooking were usually replenished from artesian bores along the road and at odd times from stock water dams. Monty remembers dry times on the road. “Coming down the Birdsville Track you could have a day without water, next day no water, about two days, cattle and horses would go without water … some of the men had water bags made out of leather for themselves, joined ‘em at the seams, the rivets had to be close together though, and others had canvas neck bags, which were hung around the saddle horse’s neck, they had a water bag each.”

The men usually drank from the traditional tin quart pot billycan and mug, and as cook, Monty said at the end of the day when they got to the camp, he stipulated that the men used only one billycan, otherwise they’d waste it

The large mild steel billycans came in various sizes and were often flat sided to fit a pack saddle too. These were usually custom handmade on the station, and fitted inside each other.

Camp cooking was nearly always done in a camp oven, and Monty preferred the Bedourie oven. “Yeah, Bedourie’s are the best, these cast iron one’s might make a good job, but they’d break, smash, yeah.”

The Bedourie oven is an Australian adaptation of the camp oven. It is believed that drovers working on Bedourie Station, in western Queensland, found that the cast iron camp ovens they use for cooking would often fall from their packhorses and break when they hit the ground. The idea for the Bedourie oven was born from the frustration of the drovers missing out on a cooked camp meal so one made from mild steel was made. Being made from spun or pressed steel would mean it could be handled a lot rougher and if dropped would not break. The Bedourie also has another advantage over the cast iron camp oven, in that the lid fits down over the oven so there is no chance of dust and ashes getting into the oven when buried in the ashes. It serves the same purpose for cooking including bread, cakes or similar foods. To keep the heat in you had to half bury the Bedourie in hot ashes with some coals added to the lid and it would cook just as well as the cast iron camp

Bedourie oven.

Generally ‘the Bedouries’ were carried on the top of the packsaddle on top of the swag, tied on through their two ‘dees’.

Although Monty does not claim to be a good cook, “no, I wasn’t a good cook no, but I’ve cooked for a few blokes and they’re all still alive! But nobody likes cooking in the camp … the first job they’ll offer you is a job cooking, because nobody liked it and another thing, wood was hard to get to, you got a bit of wood you know to boil the billy in the morning, well some bugger’d come off watch [night] and if he was cold he’d burn all that bloody light wood and when you came to boil the billy there’d be nothing left, you’re just left with a few coals.

Damper was often the staple food in the camp and Monty reckons you soon learned to knock up a damper, “Well you had to be a cook of some sort because you couldn’t buy any bread!” The damper was usually topped of with Golden Syrup and enjoyed with a cup of tea, or even coffee essence. “Oh yeah (Monty laughs), that was a good ‘un that Golden Syrup, and honey. We used to buy that in cases, four gallons; eight gallons in a case – two four-gallon tins in a case. And then you’d put it in these smaller tins before you started out on a trip, and make sure the lid was on or it’d come out and get all over the girth and surcingle and everywhere.”

Cockies joy – “a good ‘un”

Butter was a bit of a rarity.“Oh yeah in the wintertime it was alright, you could buy it in cans up there, tinned butter you know, they’d sell that, they wouldn’t worry about the other wrapped in paper; too sour, and in the summertime you wouldn’t buy it at all.” Milk too came in tins, handy tins too. Oh yeah, you’d get the powdered milk, yeah mobs of that. I carried a bit of condensed milk, but it was not as good as powdered milk, it could leak too and go everywhere, generally we never carried a lot of tinned tucker.

Monty reckons that whilst wood was not all that plentiful during some trips, “you used whatever you could get, mulga was good and coolibah they was alright, and along the Birdsville Track box and coolibah was around, the buggers used to waste it though; they’d have a big heap of wood there see, and they’d be going, they’d finish that camp, and they’d burn it; wouldn’t think about the next trip. (Often camp sites were used over and over again for years).

These days Monty Scobie has only one camp site, the Quorn Hospital, and he is happy to have a yarn about his younger days when his kingdom was a saddle.

Monty Scobie at the Devils Marbles, N.T. c1940s during a trip with ‘Slippery Jack’ Graham. (Photo from Monty Scobie’s collection).

Plain Suet Pudding – quarter pound [roughly 550 g] of flour, half teaspoonful baking powder pinch salt, quarter pound [550 g] suet, 3 oz [85 g] sugar, one gill [quarter of a pint or roughly 150 ml] milk. Mix rather dry and boil for just an hour and a quarter.  Serve with golden syrup or treacle.

In the stock camps Monty Scobie would usually multiply the ingredients by four or five times.

[Suet is the fat that protects an animal’s kidneys. It is hard and granular, unlike other fat. Beef suet is traditionally used to make dumplings, suet pastry and puddings. If you get suet from a butcher’s, it comes in a piece, as pictured above, and you need to grate it or chop it finely.]

   The South Australian Railway network connected the Flinders Ranges with other town and regions of the State and far beyond.  Railway workers and their families often transferred between divisions and many railway men looked upon ‘the Railways’ as a large extended family.  The former railway town of Peterborough had a very close connection with Quorn by way of the former narrow gauge Terowie to Pichi Richi Railway, which was a vital line of communication for the State and the nation until the 1980s.  Train crews shared a common station, but a separate barracks or rest house at Quorn, where the South Australian Railways (SAR) territory finished and the Commonwealth Railways (CR) took over, on the north-south Central Australian Railway, or ‘Ghan’ and east-west Transcontinental or ‘East-West’.

Sustenance for a steam locomotive train crew and guard be they SAR or CR, came in a humble and often battered tin ‘tucker box’.

Tucker boxes were sturdy rectangular galvanized tin boxes, with a lid and a leather strap for carrying over the shoulder and usually made by local plumbers or sheet metal workers.  They were also carried to and from work on the handlebars of bicycles and came in two sizes depending on length of ‘the job’. 

The size of a tucker box out ‘on the job’ was determined by the rostered shift – a ‘local shift’ or shunting work only required a small tucker box for one day, whereas a two to four-day ‘box job’ required a larger tucker box, which included a change of clothing.

The inside of the box had a small-inbuilt tray at the top right hand side for essential cutlery storage.

ESSENTIAL CUTLERY STORAGE:

Spoon, knife, fork, tin opener, tea holder, tube of coffee/milk essence.

OTHER ESSENTIAL ITEMS:

Tin pannikin, tin plate, soap container, tea towel, bath towel and face washer, shaving cream, brush and razor, pencil, notebook, box of matches, salt and pepper shakers, water container, tea packed in a container, sugar.

MEALS:

The first meal out on ‘the road’ was usually prepared at home, boarding house or hostel, for heating up during the shift on account of no onboard refrigeration, and was warmed up in a steamer with lid.

Other meals consisted of cold roast meat, homemade pies, pasties, sausage rolls, corned meat, potatoes, onions, sandwiches, bread, rolls, tinned food and homemade fruit cake or biscuits.  In the early days, particularly on ‘the north line’, the guard sometimes shot rabbits and/or kangaroos, often when the Ghan was held up by floodwaters and passengers were short of food.

When train crews retired from ‘foot-plate work’ they often passed on their ‘tucker boxes’ to young colleagues who were starting their careers as a locomotive driver, fireman or guard.

Ray Schell (centre) on the job at Peterborough in the 1950s

Ray Schell at Eurelia 2001.