Paddock to Plate: Illustrated Thematic History of Food and Wine in Orange and Region
Jennifer Forest Table of Contents
Introduction 1
1 Environment 11
2 Wiradjuri 23
3 Farming 34
4 Gold 48
5 Fruit 53
6 Produce 70
7 Wine 77
8 Technology 89
9 Manufacturing 99
10 Distribution 114
11 Retail 122
12 Migration 139
13 At Home 146
14 Community 170
15 Celebration 179
Bibliography 191
Introduction
Presented here is the story of food and wine in Orange and district over time. It is stage one of the development for the Paddock to Plate exhibition to open at Orange Regional Museum in April 2008. It is primarily written for the development team in the next stage who will go on to prepare the exhibition. The guiding question, therefore, is: what will they need out of this document?
So this document tells the historical story of food and wine structured by 15 key themes, and addresses the myriad of components in creating an exhibition through the identification of key story elements, and potential people profiles, objects, films and photographs that could be used in the exhibition.
The visitor Writing this report, I have also kept in mind that the very end user of all this information will be the museum visitor. All exhibition development starts and ends with the visitor. It is their experience and their need, which structure the actual end outcome: the exhibition. So in writing this document, as that stage one, I have always held in mind who the visitor is and what we know about their needs, and how they use exhibition spaces.
For the purposes of this exhibition the two groups of visitors I have identified are:
1. Out-of-town cultural tourism / experiential visitors, and 2. Local district residents.
Given that the exhibition is to open to coincide with the major festival F.O.O.D. Week in April 2018, and given the topic, it will most likely attract out-of-town visitors specifically coming to the region for food and wine experiences. This is predominantly the Sydney market where Orange already has a significant destination presence. There has also been some more moderate reach into other possible visitor sources like Canberra over recent years.
This source of visitors can further be broken down into target segments and while this is not the purpose of this document it would be fairly safe to assume that they will be in order of likely size: older empty nester couples, young pre-children couples, friendship groups and families with children.
Local district residents also form the other likely visitor market, who come for their own community based experiences and often for cultural tourism, education or nostalgia purposes. They will also play a crucial role in promoting the exhibition to visiting friends and family.
The search for meaning The search for the meaning of the story drives my research and content creation. The importance of meaning differentiates a well-told professional story from the mediocre. It is what justifies the existence of this story, at this time and place, and with this commitment of resources.
INTRODUCTION 1 So this then raises questions such as:
Why did this story happen here? Why does food and wine matter to the people of this region? What makes this story important, different or necessary to be told today?
I hope this report answers those questions. At the beginning of each chapter therefore I have identified why this particular theme is of relevance to the bigger story being told in Paddock to Plate.
The multiple ways of perceiving food It’s possible to look at the story of food and wine from various angles. There is the ‘origins’ angle. Where does food come from? Our modern food system has encouraged us, the food consumer and eater to remove ourselves from the reality of food production.
But it takes a lot of time and effort to make food, and people in the past well and truly knew that. My research for this report really heightened my awareness of the long, long hours it takes to grow food, and the amount of time and energy need to turn it into edible meals. Only 100 years ago, many people were still actively involved in the daily hard work of producing food. Today we aren’t. Today many have forgotten what it takes. Many have never known what to forget.
So it is possible to look at food from that angle. What does it take to get this apple in my fruit bowl? Or to serve me this roast beef with its slices of meat sitting next to pumpkin, peas and potatoes. This is the approach I have taken in the report. I have started with the environment, as all food production starts with it, and then moved on to following the process of getting that apple or that roast beef to the table. I have then looked at how we use that food once we have it in our bags and our cupboards: at home, in the community and through celebration.
There are many other ways of seeing food. It would be possible to look at it through the prism of nutrition, or cultural inheritance or food memory or indeed, even the meals so start with breakfast and so on. Most peoples’ experience of food start in the home, and their understanding of food at its very core can still be informed by family practice many decades later. What is selected to be eaten, what is brought, cooked, the respect or disdain in which food was treated, the cultural or religious traditions which informed its preparation are all part of flipping the way we look at food and start from the other end of the food chain, the plate in front of you.
INTRODUCTION 2
Orange and district Orange and region are defined as the council areas of Orange City Council, Carbonne Council and Blayney Council. The key settlements within these collective boundaries are Orange, Molong, Eugowra, Canowindra, Blayney, Carcoar and Millthorpe.
Region topographic map, eSpade, NSW Department of Environment and Heritage
The district though is more than just a map. What stood out in my research and meeting people in the district is the distinctive nature of Orange and region. Australia is a big country and many regional areas have struggled since the 1960s to find a place for its people, its businesses and way of life. But Orange has found its place, and its almost like Orange always had a place, which has not been lost. Reading about the Wiradjuri experiences of using the land here, you can feel their closeness and intimate knowledge of every part of the environment. Reading newspaper articles on TROVE I would come across a reference to a group of locals petitioning their local member for the railway or another group of local businesses would have a display of grapes in Sydney CBD in 1926. Visiting with the local historical societies and museums, I came away encouraged by the commitment and seriousness with which they have over many years applied to their voluntary work.
I also spoke with Rhonda Taylor (Sear) of Brand Orange in early July 2017 to find out the factors she would identify in Orange’s successful holding of place, but not just holding, its success in also creating a distinct, viable identity. Rhonda identified firstly that Orange has always had something to offer its residents and visitors. Good agricultural land and climate has let it first become a small- holder agricultural hub with the emphasis on farm and orchard produce. In more recent decades,
INTRODUCTION 3 this has then been leveraged into making Orange a food and wine tourism destination. Building on what is already here, Rhonda then identified that the region has had strong leadership from the community and business sector, who are also very good at coordinating state and local government involvement. And in my research of the two centuries of history of the region, I can see this at work. George Hawke, so well-known in the district, has a vision for a commercial orchard. A few decades later, Molong orchardists planted extensive vineyards. Today, Paula Charnock and her family on Thornbrook Orchard don’t stick with past models but change and go local and go people focused.
The last factor Rhonda identified was that the community has a strong tradition of voluntary involvement. Without the volunteers many of the events and festivals, which make Orange and district couldn’t go ahead. I noticed this too in the depth of commitment from the local historical societies and museums, and their willingness to help out be that from searching out or sharing decades of personal research with me. Which all just goes to draw me back to my original point, that a map shows you the physical district but it's the people who make sure it has a sense of place and future.
My thanks go to all those people who did give me their time and share with me their resources, years of research and hunt out more. In particular, Elisabeth Edwards and Phil Stephenson in Orange, Michael Le Couteur for Molong, Elaine Cheney in Eugowra and Jan Harrison in Canowindra.
The deliverables The deliverables for this project are:
1. Illustrated Thematic History of the heritage, geography and culture of food and wine in Orange and the region structured with short chapters, characterised by extended captions. This document.
2. Themes for satellite exhibitions See labeled spreadsheet.
3. Food map of places and sites. Please see the folder marked food map.
3. List of potential exhibition materials: key objects, film footage, oral histories and images for use in the exhibition. Please see the folder marked exhibition materials. There is a spreadsheet which catalogues each category.
4. Resource file including copies of source material. See folder marked resource file. In here you will find multiple folders based on categories e.g. newspapers or government documents and a list of local people interviewed or consulted.
4. Picture file of images. Please see images folder under the exhibition materials folder. The images folder is a large file as there are a substantial number of images. I have only selected one or two key images per chapter but the images file has many more.
5. List of sources, libraries, archives and people consulted in the research. Please see the spreadsheet in the folder ‘local people’ for a list of all individuals consulted. See the tab on the exhibition materials for a list of archives, libraries etc.
INTRODUCTION 4 Paddock to Plate Themes ThematicTheme s ummaryframework
Environment
Growing it Harvesting Manufacturing & Storing
Distribution Retail
At Home Community Celebration
Jennifer Forest 6/6/17 1
INTRODUCTION 5 Thematic fundamentals
1. The story about food and wine starts with the environment: land, water and climate. The development of regional economies with distinctive food and wine characteristics rely on the environmental features of that landscape.
2. The history of food and wine in Orange and region is about running a viable agricultural based business: • On the farm, orchard and vineyard, • At the harvesting, storage, manufacturing and distribution level, and • In retail, hotels, cafes and restaurants.
Change over time in practices, trends and access to food types influenced by technology, migration and transport changes impact both the regional economy, and business types and activity.
3. The history of food and wine is also about the family and domestic household meeting their food needs, and the influence of, and adoption of new food traditions, practices and food types over time. Community ownership and celebration of food and wine are also part of this family and community history of the region.
NSW Historical Themes (Australian Themes in Italics)
Environment Environment: natural and cultural landscapes including features occurring naturally in the physical environment which have shaped or influenced human life and culture, and the interactions between humans, human societies and the shaping of their physical surroundings.
Peopling Australia Aboriginal cultures: Activities associated with maintaining, developing, experiencing and remembering Aboriginal cultural identities and practises, past and present; with demonstrating distinctive ways of life.
Migration and ethnic influences: Resettlement of peoples into New South Wales, shared common cultural traditions and peoples of shared descent, and the exchanges of tradition between peoples.
Developing regional and local economies Agriculture: Activities and processes associated with cultivation and rearing of plant and animal species, usually for commercial purposes.
Commerce: Activities and processes associated with buying, selling and exchanging goods and services.
Industry: Activities associated with the manufacture, production and distribution of goods.
Technology: Activities and processes associated with the knowledge or use of mechanical arts and applied sciences. INTRODUCTION 6
Transport: Activities associated with the moving of people and goods from one place to another, and systems for the provision of such movements.
Developing Australia’s cultural life
Domestic life: Activities associated with creating, maintaining, living in and working around houses and institutions.
Social institutions: Activities and organisational arrangements for the provision of social activities.
INTRODUCTION 7 Themes in detail
1. ENVIRONMENT • Climate • Soil/geology • Terrain/topography • Mount Canobolas • Water • Natural disasters • Climate change
2. WIRADJURI • Water, environment, seasons • Food of the land • Continuity of practice
3. FARMING • The Australian Dream • Small farms • Large farms • Diet on the farms and colonial food
4. GOLD • Types of food eaten • Multiculturalism in food arrived 1850 not 1950 • Chinese cafes
5. FRUIT • Apples • Pears • Cherries • Berries • Pests
6. PRODUCE • Peas and potatoes • Chinese market gardens • Niche products
INTRODUCTION 8
7. WINE • Early 19th century table and wine grapes Molong as case study • 20th century developments • Growth of the boutique wine industry post 1980
8. TECHNOLOGY & INFRASTRUCTURE • Village technology • Industrial Revolution • Refrigeration • Technology on the farm and orchard
9. MANUFACTURING • Flour mills • Breweries and cordial factories • Diverse manufacturing • Slaughter houses, abattoirs and freezing works
10. DISTRIBUTION • Early travel • Arrival and impact of the railway • Road transport • Export
11. RETAIL • Hotels • General stores • Corner stores • Bakers and butchers and green grocers • Eating out: cafes, oyster bars and restaurants
12. MIGRATION • How did migration impact food tastes and availability? • In the garden at home • Cafes and stores • Fairbridge
13. AT HOME • Domestic food over time 19th century • Domestic food over time 20th century • What we ate • How we cooked it: domestic technology • How we brought it and grew it and foraged for it • Meals eaten from breakfast to the Sunday roast • Recipes for signature cookbooks
14. COMMUNITY • CWA • Dig for Victory • Community gardens • Hospitals • Food equity and waste • Local personalities • Government support & education INTRODUCTION 9
15. CELEBRATION • Weddings • Christmas • Afternoon tea • Picnics • Ploughing matches and agricultural shows • Harvest festivals • Cherry Blossom Festival • Apple Country Fair • F.O.O.D Week
INTRODUCTION 10 1. Biophysical Environment
The story of food starts with the environment. Different combinations of soil nutrients, water, elevation and climate can support different produce and crops. In Orange and surrounding district, these characteristics have created an environment suitable particularly to fruit and wine grapes, but also vegetables, meat sheep and cattle and wheat crops.
Orange and area is dominated by land above 700 metres and Mt Canobolas with its legacy of rich basalt soils suitable for cold climate agriculture. Settlement is comparatively dense compared with other parts of the region. Declining altitude into Molong and Canowindra creates a different climate more suitable for larger scale cropping and livestock, such as wheat, lucerne and livestock. 1
Land and water Mt Canobolas defines the land of Orange and region. At 1395 metres it is the largest mountain west of the Blue Mountains. The adjacent mountains of Young Man Canobolas and Mt Towac are both over 1300 metres.
Mt Canobolas is an extinct volcano. Three eruptions 11 to 13 million years ago spread lava over the district’s existing rock base of limestone, shale, slate and greywacke, a form of sandstone. The volcanic eruptions spread a basalt layer from Borenore to Millthorpe, which cooled and became basalt rock. Millions of years of weathering have worn down that basalt rock into deep nutrient rich soils ideal for orchards and viticulture.
Weathering also produced a steep mountain range above 1300 metres surrounded by land which falls away to 863 metres at Orange, 720 metres at Carcoar and then 565 metres at Molong.2 This higher elevation produces a cool climate suitable for viticulture and fruits, and at lower elevations more suitable for crops like lucerne and livestock.
Basalt rock on Mt Canobolas left by the volcanic eruption. Weathered basalt produces the nutrient rich soils of the district. Photograph: Jennifer Forest
ENVIRONMENT 11
Orange and surrounding region are in the Macquarie-Bogan water catchment, with no major rivers close by. The Macquarie River runs north and north-east of the region into Bathurst with Bell River to the north and west of the city. The Lachlan River runs north through Cowra and Forbes. The eastern side down from Mt Canobolas towards Orange and Millthorpe is characterised by many streams and creeks with permanent water supply, due to the cold fronts that sweep this part of the region bringing consistent rainfall over the year with strong winter rains, and occasional snow. 3 Streams flow down from Mt Canobolas including Towac Creek, Boree Creek, Soldiers Creek and Margaret Creek. Other creeks include Summer Hill Creek which flows north to the Macquarie River and Ploughman’s Creek which joins Bell River. Due to its altitude, the region has comparatively low evaporation rates which allow the land to retain more moisture.4
The first European settlement of Orange was on Blackman’s Swamp Creek with its rich black loam soils suitable for market gardens, orchards and vegetables. Today, town water supply comes from three reservoirs Suma Park, Spring Creek and Gosling Creek. Agricultural production relies on the consistent rainfall, and predominantly dams, bores, wells on farms, orchards and vineyards.
Specific information, such as the native vegetation found in the area, is available on the two bioregions for this area from the NSW Department of Environment and Heritage. This information is included in the resource file. The South Western Slopes Bioregion is to the west of Orange and includes Canowindra. The South Eastern Highlands Bioregion includes Orange.
ENVIRONMENT 12 Soil The volcanic eruptions left a range of soils, which are ideal for viticulture and other crops like pome fruits, berries and vegetables. Shales and basalt rock dominate along the eastern part of the region around Orange and into Millthorpe, with limestone outcrops more common from Canowindra to Molong on the western side.5
The four main soil types in the region
Ferrosol soils are red brown in colour. They are usually found in areas with rainfall between 700 mm to 1450 mm.
These soils are good agricultural land because they have: • High nutrient levels, • Solid structure, so less likely to suffer erosion, and • Clay-loam textures, so they hold water well.
Combined with the cooler climate, this soil is suitable for orchards and vineyards.6
Dermosol soils are often found on basalt left by lava flows and in areas with rainfall between 450 mm to 1350 mm. They can range from yellow/grey to dark brown. They are sometimes called chocolate soils because of this dark brown colour.
These soils are good agricultural land because they have: • Moderate to high nutrient levels, • Good soil structure, and • Clay-loam textures, so they hold water well.
In the Orange region they are found at 700 to 900 metres. They are a good soil for viticulture, potatoes and peas as they encourage good steady growth but at lower elevations and rainfall than the Ferrosol soils.7
ENVIRONMENT 13 Chromosol soils are made from pre-volcanic sediments like shale, limestone and slate. They are usually found in areas with rainfall of 250 mm to 900 mm. These soils are often pale grey brown at the surface, becoming orange brown further down.
They contain less nutrients and don’t hold water so well due to their sandy clay loam texture. Chromosol soils also suffer from structural decline and acidification. With the right support, these soils are suitable for vineyards, grazing and crops.8
Calcarosol soils are often found on limestone at the elevation of 600 to 700 metres in lower rainfall areas of 250 mm to 500 mm. The soil is quite pale, a very light grey to a brown colour.
These are soils have less useful for agriculture as they often have high salinity levels, are lower in nutrients and don’t hold water as well.
Calcarosol soils are suitable for viticulture and horticulture with irrigation and are also often used to grow cereals like wheat.9
ENVIRONMENT 14 Soil maps are available from eSpade the NSW Department of Environment and Heritage. These maps can be tailored by region and a number of different data sets. I have included two samples here to show what they can do and how they may be used in an exhibition.
Soil mapping of the region, eSpade, NSW Department of Environment and Heritage
Land use mapping of the area, eSpade, NSW Department of Environment and Heritage
ENVIRONMENT 15 Climate The high altitude of Mt Canobolas provides the surrounding area with high rainfall and low temperatures. This means cold winters with heavy frosts and milder summers, making the area suitable for cool climate agriculture and viticulture.
Orange summers are comparatively cooler compared to surrounding districts, on average five degrees cooler than Mudgee or Cowra. January has a maximum mean temperature of 28ºC and in July 10.6ºC. Orange, though, still experiences heatwaves into the high 30s and reaching 40s, such as in February 2017.10 In winter the mean minimum temperatures can be consistently cold, for example 0.5º C in July. Autumn generally cools down quickly and spring warms up quickly in the lead into summer.
Chart 1: Orange (Airport) temperatures, Bureau of Meteorology11
Orange and district also has moderately high levels of humidity in summer at 60 - 70%. The region has an average of seven hours sunshine, with this increasing to nine hours a day during the summer months.
ENVIRONMENT 16
Rainfall Orange receives 898 mm of rain annually, spread fairly evenly throughout the year. Reliable and evenly spread rainfall also make this region ideal for agriculture and viticulture.
Chart 2: Orange (Airport gauge) monthly rainfall, Bureau of Meteorology12
Rain in the surrounding areas of the district is influenced by elevation. Mt Canobolas receives an additional 200 mm of rain annually compared to the city of Orange. As the elevation falls away so too does the amount of rain.
ENVIRONMENT 17
Chart 3: Comparative data, annual rainfall, Bureau of Meteorology13
Frost Frost presents a hazard to the agricultural industry of the region. While cold climate crops need the chilling hours and low temperatures, late frosts can damage pome fruits and berries. The incidence of early and late frosts can also reduce the potential for summer crops. Late April usually sees the first frost, though mid-March has also seen frost. The last frost continues into late October with 30 November recorded as the latest frost.14
Floods and hail The main flood threats to the city of Orange and region come from heavy, flash rain floods and hail incidents. Flash flooding incidents tend to be of short duration but can have quite severe impact. Flash flooding can damage transport routes.
Flash flooding and hail can cause significant damage to orchards, crops and vineyards. Plants can be completely stripped of leaves, flowers and fruit. Trunks of plants and fruit can also be bruised and punctured. Young plants can also be scarred by hail. A heavy hail storm in 1986 is attributed by some local orchardists to the further decline in the number of orchards in the area.15
The other flood threat is from water storage areas like the Suma Park Dam, which provides the city’s water supply, or other surrounding creeks like Blackman’s Swamp Creek, which may break their walls or banks. In the case of the dam, this is highly unlikely but monitored by City of Orange engineers. The Blackman’s Swamp Creek and the East Orange Channel also have been known to sporadically break their banks for short durations.
ENVIRONMENT 18
Bushfires Bushfire threats to the region come predominantly from: • Lightning strikes, • Grassfires - spontaneous or as a result of runaway campfires, cigarettes or machinery being operated during high fire risk conditions in hot and dry weather, and • Arson.
Areas like the pine plantations in Mt Canobolas, native forests and natural grasslands are most at risk of bushfires, which then may go on to threaten farms, orchards and vineyards.
The impact of bushfires from surrounding areas, principally the Blue Mountains which frequently burn, is also in the smoke which can taint wine grapes at different times of the year. 16
Drought There are no major rivers close to Orange. In average rainfall periods in a region with low evaporation rates and good soil, which retains water, this lack of major rivers has little impact on the water supply for agriculture or the city inhabitants.
However in drought periods like the sustained drought from 2001 to 2010 and shorter periods of reduced rainfall in 2013, the lack of major rivers and other water sources can increase reliance on irrigation and carted water, both of which must be purchased.17 Droughts are also noted throughout the two centuries of European settlement in the area. George Hawke reports on a drought in the 1840s when trying to establish his commercial orchard and other drought periods include the prolonged droughts through the 1890s to 1900s and the 1960s.
Drought also directly impacts the soil conditions. Dry soil conditions foster weed growth and reduces the fodder available for livestock. Dry soil conditions also increase the likelihood of erosion. The dry soil conditions and reliance on purchased water can have both a dramatic and long-term impact on the level of crop output, the ability to support livestock and financial viability of farms and orchards.
Climate change Climate change into the next 100 years is likely to increase the incidence of extreme weather events, including drought in south-east Australia, reduce the overall rainfall and raise average temperatures. The winter and spring rainfalls from the Southern Ocean have shifted south which will mean reduced rainfall for this part of Australia. It will also increase the frequency and intensity of hotter days.
An overall increase in daily winter and summer temperatures will have an impact on the typical cool climate crops grown in the region. The Apple and Pear Industry Association note that winter temperatures for Orange have risen by 0.6º C since 1950.18 This trend will have a direct impact on the number of chilling hours in winter which the cool climate fruits require to produce good quality fruit crops.
Wine grapes are also particularly sensitive to the temperature and rainfall, resulting in different types of wine and flavour variations within types. Orange and region have high altitude and ENVIRONMENT 19 generally high rainfall which may protect the existing viticulture industry to some degree. Climate change will have a particular impact on viticulture through the extreme weather events and an overall increase in temperature impacting picking times. Rhonda Doyle from Bloodwood Wines noted in conversation that over 30 years of being in the wine industry in Orange they are now picking up to a month earlier than in the early 1980s.20
The Australian Government Department of Environment predicts that climate change will have significant impacts on the agricultural output for all of New South Wales. For example they estimate an 11% reduction in wheat and sheep meat output by 2050.
The sum total of these factors, less rain, very hot days more often, extreme weather events and higher average temperatures, will impact the viability of farms, orchards and vineyards.21
ENVIRONMENT 20 END NOTES
1 Central West Development Group The Best Place in the World, Central West Development Group, Orange, 1994 pp36-37
2 Orange Region Vignernons Association, Orange Region Terroir, Orange, 2010, p3
Google Topographic Maps https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Mount+Canobolas,+Canobolas+NSW+2800/data=!4m2!3 m1!1s0x6b1031094a284479:0xa8aed4be3804b16d!5m1!1e4?sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBnuni7NLTAh WCoJQKHbukBbQQ8gEIIDAA, viewed 3 May 2017
3 Central West Development Group The Best Place in the World, Central West Development Group, Orange, 1994 pp36
4 Green D., Petrovic J., Moss P., Burrell M. Water resources and management overview: Macquarie-Bogan catchment, NSW Office of Water, Sydney, 2011, http://www.water.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/548125/catchment_overview_macquarie. pdf, viewed 4 May 2017
Elisabeth Edwards, Fruitful Landscapes, Orange, 2006, p6.
5 Central West Development Group The Best Place in the World, Central West Development Group, Orange, 1994 p38
6 Australian Soil Club, http://www.soil.org.au/soil-types.htm, viewed 3 May 2017
Orange Region Vignernons Association, Orange Region Terroir, Orange, 2010, p12
7 Australian Soil Club, http://www.soil.org.au/soil-types.htm, viewed 3 May 2017
The Soils of Australia 1301.0 ABS Feature Article (1966) http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Previousproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article801966, 1966, viewed 4 May 2017
Orange Region Vignernons Association, Orange Region Terroir, Orange, 2010, p12
8Australian Soil Club, http://www.soil.org.au/soil-types.htm, viewed 3 May 2017
Soil Science Australia, http://soilscienceaustralia.com.au/state-soils, viewed 3 May 2017
?Orange Region Vignernons Association, Orange Region Terroir, Orange, 2010, p12.
9 Australian Soil Club, http://www.soil.org.au/soil-types.htm, Websites accessed 3 May 2017
?Orange Region Vignernons Association, Orange Region Terroir, Orange, 2010, p12.
10 www.centralwesterndaily.com.au/story/4462082/our-hottest-day-in-history-orange-scorches-into- the-roaring-40s/ viewed 4 May 2017
11 Orange Airport, Climate Statistics for Australian Locations, Bureau of Meteorology http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_063303.shtml, viewed 4 May 2017
ENVIRONMENT 21
12 Orange Airport, Climate Statistics for Australian Locations, Bureau of Meteorology http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_063303.shtml, viewed 4 May 2017
13 Orange Airport, Canobolas State Forest, Molong, Carcoar, Millthorpe, Blayney, Canowindra, Eugowra (Parkes) Climate Statistics for Australian Locations, Bureau of Meteorology http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_063303.shtml, viewed 4 May 2017
14 Central West Development Group The Best Place in the World, Central West Development Group, Orange, 1994 p38
15 Orange Apples Our Story, http://www.orangeapples.com.au/ourstory/ourhistory, viewed 26 June 2017
16 http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2013-10-21/nrn-nsw-fires/5034790 and Orange City Council, Bushfire Prone Land Map http://www.orange.nsw.gov.au/site/index.cfm?display=147145#
17 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-13/urgent-assistance-needed-for-nsw-farmers-as-drought- worsens/5089138, viewed 4 May 2017
18 Apple and Pear Australia Ltd Submission to the Climate Change and Australian Agricultural Inquiry 2008 http://apal.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/APAL-climate-change-submission- March-08.pdf, viewed 30 May 2017
20 Rhonda Doyle, pers comm 5 July 2017
21 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-11/wine-producers-face-climate-change-challenge-in- orange/7830280 and http://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/climate-science/impacts/nsw and Will Steffen, Thirsty Country Climate Change and Drought in Australia, Climate Council, Sydney 2015, pp 3-7 and 15
ENVIRONMENT 22 2. Wiradjuri
Australian indigenous practice and culture is based on careful management of each resource to ensure environmental balance and the ongoing ability of each resource to supply food into the future.
Indigenous culture and practice is an interconnected web of people with environment. Water, land, seasons and people are linked and do not operate separately from the other. Human impact, as one part of the interconnected web, was managed through cultural and religious beliefs and daily practice to ensure careful custodianship of the land and ongoing food supply. As a result, Australia was abundant in food and its people did not need to cultivate, harvest or store extensively in the western tradition.1
Two Aborigines spearing eels c.1820s, Joseph Lycett, National Library of Australia. Unknown New South Wales location. Lycett does show the park like, lightly wooded nature of the environment in his various paintings.
Not separate, but one part of the whole The Orange Aboriginal Heritage Report written by NTSCORP, led by Dr Michael Bennett, provides a beautiful and succinct description of the importance of the many different components of the environment, particularly site maintenance and care for animals and plants, to the Wiradjuri. The report’s description highlights the importance of spiritual and cultural practice in working within the whole environment. This is fundamentally a different way of living with the environment to the Eurocentric agricultural system transferred to this continent after 1788. Western perspectives,
WIRADJURI 23 particularly post industrial revolution, tend to identify and treat each part of the environment as separate from the other, as I have done in this report. However, the integrated way of living within the environment is fundamental to understanding Wiradjuri food experiences in this region, and it is critical to convey that sense of wholeness rather than separateness.
Quoted in full below is the relevant extract from the report:
‘Wiradjuri spiritual beliefs were organised around a network of sacred sites associated with mythical heroes known as jin. There were are least 18 Wiradjuri jin and probably many more. Each was associated with a particular plant or animal. Jin were inherited from a person’s mother’s mother along with responsibility for maintaining associated sites. Wiradjuri people were also divided into four sections. Specific jin were connected to each section and together they regulated the marriage system. Stories were told about the travels of the jin, the places where they stopped, the social rules they set down and the features of the landscape they made. Individuals learned their stories, songs and dances of their jin and were not allowed to eat or damage them. They became the embodiment of them.”2
Water The name Wiradjuri means ‘people of the three rivers’, which are the Kalari (Lachlan), Wambool (Macquarie) and Murrumbidjeri (Murrumbidgee) rivers. Some local creeks and sites retain Wiradjuri names, for example Mandagery means ‘a chain of waterholes in a creek’ and Belubula meaning ‘stony river’. Some water sites may also retain spiritual connections, being part of the storylines of the region and part of the origin story.
Water was available throughout the year, and as a result may have encouraged semi-permanent settlement. Waterways along the rivers, creeks, billabongs, swamps and lakes provided fish, yabbies, mussels, crayfish, tortoises and water birds. Plants growing around water were used for food, medicine, and fibres to make string and rope. Nets were strung across creeks or in shallow waters to catch fish. Nets were also used to trap birds. They were chased into the net by a group on one side of the creek and gathered up by those on the other.3
Water sources were managed to ensure ongoing supply of food. Wiradjuri lived in groups of 20 to 40 and had an area of land for which they were responsible, often camping for long periods of time on creeks like Summer Hill and Cadiangullong Creek. An active program of conservation took many forms. Breeding grounds around creeks, rivers and billabongs were set aside for birds. Hunting of birds was banned during breeding season. Fishing was restricted to one side of a river or creek each year to ensure that no place was hunted two years in a row.4
Gregory Ingram has provided a detailed resource on how Aboriginal people would use animals to find water, which is in the resource file accompanying this report. For example, native bees are never more than 3 or 4 kilometres from water. Ants can be tracked back to sources of water. Often if you see them marching in a line up a tree this is a sign of a hidden pocket of water in the tree. Many birds like finches and wild pigeons will eat grains during the day and head back to water at dusk. Please see the resource file if this is an area of interest for the exhibition for more details.
WIRADJURI 24 Aborigines using fire to hunt kangaroos, c. 1820s. Joseph Lycett. National Library of Australia. Fire was used to create grasslands to attract kangaroos. Lycett also shows fire being used to flush kangaroos out to make them easier to hunt.
Food of the land ANU historian Bill Gammage has described indigenous land management practice as creating ‘the biggest estate on earth’ to create a landscape that many British settlers likened to an English gentleman’s landed estate or park. By this they meant open expanses of land with large trees and significant amounts of grassland. Just as an English gentleman’s estate was carefully managed, so too was the Australian environment managed to create a grazing environment to attract and shelter indigenous animals.
“[It was a] … landscape that reflected a sophisticated, successful and sensitive farming regime integrated across the Australian landmass. Fire was not an indiscriminate tool of fuel reduction or grass promotion, but carefully employed to ensure certain plants and animals flourished, to facilitate access and rotation, and to ensure resources were abundant, convenient and predictable.”5
Explorer John Oxley made two visits to the central west NSW region in 1817 and 1818, including through the area that became the city of Orange. He followed first the Lachlan, then the Macquarie Rivers and noted the park-like nature of the environment, including the lightly wooded areas with many streams. Another early explorer in the area, Allan Cunningham, also noted land recently burnt and well stocked with kangaroos and emus. Both explorer’s reports are interpreted as evidence of fire stick farming by the Wiradjuri.6
WIRADJURI 25 The grasslands created by controlled fire also encouraged the growth of different grasses and plants. The seeds and roots of the native grasses were eaten, often ground into flour and pastes and cooked into cakes and damper. Bracken fern was a staple plant food found in the valleys around Mt Canobolas, as were kangaroos, wallaroo, snakes, lizards, birds and yabbies.7 (Please note bracken fern must be carefully prepared over several days. It cannot be eaten raw or in large quantities.) Golden wattle, kurrajong, native cherry, bush Banana and quandong were used for food, and silver banksia was used as drink. There were vegetable staples such as yam daisy bulbs, native leak (Bulbine Bubosa) and Warrigul greens. Estimates do vary, but it ranges from 50% to 80% of food eaten was plant based with women and young children responsible for collecting the seeds, roots, nuts and fruit. 18
Wiradjuri women used digging sticks to harvest roots and tubers and find yams around the base of trees and shrubs. Refer to the Henry Godfrey 1843 image of women in Victoria, previously used by the museum and found in the resource file. It shows the way women used similar tools and dilly bags, and wore possum skin cloaks for protection against the cold. Major Thomas Mitchell observed Wiradjuri people carrying digging sticks like small shovels; one end was used to dig roots and tubers and the other to break open large anthills for the larvae.9
Men and boys in this region hunted large game, birds, fish and smaller animals like emu, kangaroo, turtle, fish, possum, topnock pigeon and echidna.10 Fire would be used to herd large animals to areas where men were waiting. Nets were also used to capture animals herded into an area. In open country, the animals were tracked and speared while they were resting in the shade of a tree during the hot part of the day. Nocturnal animals like possum were hunted out from their daytime sleeping hollows. It would be tracked to its resting place and extracted with an incentive like honey. Sometimes they would climb the trees to extract the animals instead or once again use fire to smoke it out.
Nets were also used for catching water birds and fish. Fish were also speared or poisoned by adding certain plants to the water, which stun the fish and cause them to rise to the surface (this was a common practice in Canberra) where they could be speared or caught by hand. Boomerangs were used to take down large animals but also birds in flocks.
Eggs of birds and reptiles were also valued for both their protein and fat source. Careful management meant that only a few eggs would be taken at any one time to ensure the animals reproduced into the future. The Bogong Moth was a sought after seasonal source of protein, being common in the spring and summer months in south-eastern Australia.
Trees also provided flowers, seeds, fruit and nuts, which can be eaten raw or turned into pastes for damper or drinks. The acacia tree in its many variations is wide spread and Wiradjuri knew from which type of acacia trees you can eat the yellow flowers.11
Gregory Ingram has provided detailed information for plant types in the Wiradjuri and south-eastern parts of Australia. This information would be very useful for the exhibition, and perhaps a few plant species could be chosen to show how it was used. For example, acacia trees, the quandong and yam daisies. Please see the resource file for the extensive information he has provided. I have drawn upon that information to inform this section.
WIRADJURI 26
Seasons Wiradjuri groups moved around their land of responsibility following the seasonal availability of food. When the seasons changed, food supplies would run low and they would move on to another location. Some lakes and rivers which provided continuous access to plants, birds and animals became semi-permanent camps.
Across Australia, each Aboriginal nation also had variations in the seasons they recognised. The number recognised is often more than European calendars, identifying greater variation in the weather experienced. There is also some debate within Aboriginal nations of the exact seasons and given the large size of the Wiradjuri area throughout central-west New South Wales the requirement to define seasons with such certainty can be seen as a western construct. Seasons are defined with more nuance by the weather. It is generally agreed that there are six seasons for this region under study: hot, cold, wet, windy, warm and cooler.12 It is also worth noting that observation of seasons is significantly more closely attuned to changes in plants and weather than the western four seasons calendar permits.
“Unlike a western calendar, the Aboriginal calendar can vary from year to year depending on climatic circumstances - for example, a clear signal of change could be something as simple as a flowering plant, an insect call or the wind blowing from a different direction.”13
People, cooking and diet The concept of belonging to country is fundamental to understanding Aboriginal Australian relationships to food and resources. ‘Country’ means the place of origin of a person, and even if they no longer live on country they will know the specific clan and nation of the people they come from, and have a detailed knowledge of the cultural norms, values, stories and resources of that particular area. This includes knowledge of the food resources and how to prepare them. For Indigenous Australians food and cooking are part of country.14 Particular land features are also incorporated into country knowledge. For example, as a Wiradjuri ceremonial site Mt Canobolas was used for the sharing of tucker, corroborees, and ceremonies relating to men’s and women’s business.15
Wiradjuri developed a number of tools and techniques for catching and cooking animals, and gathering and cooking plants. Men carried three to four spears at a time, with reed spears for smaller animals and the bigger timber spears for larger animals. Women carried a digging stick to dig up roots and smaller protein like lizards, ants and grubs. They also carried coolamons for water and food and dilly bags, made from grass, reeds and animal fur, for food.16
Methods of cooking would vary depending on the animal or plant. Many indigenous plants require several days’ preparation and can be toxic or unpalatable if not prepared correctly. Small animals were often cooked whole on hot coals dug into the ground like fire pits or open fires. Sometimes rock holes would be used as pots to boil game or fish. Cooking kangaroo, a large animal, required several stages. It was first placed on the flames to singe off the fur. It would then be taken off the fire, the fur scraped off and gutted. The remaining meat would then be returned to the coals to cook through.17 Nuts and fruit would be prepared by soaking and sometimes turned into a paste to make bread. Johnny cakes (bread) were made out of kangaroo grass seeds and certain acacia seeds.18
WIRADJURI 27
Aborigines hunting in the rushes c. 1820s. Joseph Lycett. National Library of Australia. Like Lycett’s other works they show the park like nature of the environment. This work is also useful for showing the number of people at work hunting in the rushes and the small group to the right who have a small campfire.
The indigenous diet prior to contact, relying on the abundance on this continent, was high in protein and nutrients. After contact and white settlement, the diet changed as many Aboriginal workers were paid in flour, tea and sugar rations. The native crops and animals were also disrupted and in some locations eradicated by the arrival of heavy hooved sheep, horses and cattle. This disruption also caused a changed in diet as Aboriginal people were forced to rely on the unhealthy white flour based products of the British Isles. During the Bathurst Wars in the early 1820s, water holes and flour were laced with arsenic to kill the resistance fighters of the Wiradjuri.19
Continuity of practice One of the consequences of indigenous land management practices was that they had created land ideal for grazing animals. This grazing land was intended for kangaroos and other indigenous animals but it was also highly attractive to settler graziers for sheep.
“Why it was so useful for grazing animals, was that Aborigines had made it suitable for grazing animals.” Bill Gammage20
In the first half of the19th Century, European pastoralists valued this Wiradjuri knowledge of the land and where to find the best water and native grasses. Sheep and cattle were introduced, which were food staples for the settlers and over time would also become key protein sources for Wiradjuri. Settlers in these early contact years valued indigenous animals like kangaroos as food.
WIRADJURI 28
Aboriginal stockman breaking in a horse, April 1893. John Anthony Commins, location possibly Collarenebri north-west NSW, State Library of Victoria. This illustration is included as it shows the agency of the Aboriginal stockman as an active player in his own destiny, with skills valued on stations and farms. Note he is working while the others look on.
By the early 1820s, pastoralists were employing Aboriginal men and women as labourers, shepherds and drovers on stations and farms. Men were also employed to hunt for game, particularly kangaroos, and lost stock. Reports from the time note that women were shepherds of flocks of sheep and operated dairies on stations. There is also evidence that, in this early contact period, Aboriginal workers were valued as more reliable workers than assigned convicts who had a tendency to drink too much.21
With the gold rushes from 1851, many European workers left stations and farms. This further increased the value of Aboriginal workers to the pastoralists and farmers. The Victorian gold rush brought a population explosion to that colony and a demand for meat which pastoralists in the central-west of New South Wales were only too happy to meet. Aboriginal workers are recorded as drovers who took cattle herds south into Victoria during this time.22
Two changes took place in the later part of the 19th century, which radically changed this situation, reducing the respect for Aboriginal workers and changing the nature of Indigenous and settler relationships. The Aboriginal Protection Board was established in 1881 which brought a high degree of control over Wiradjuri lives. Reserves were established at Cowra in 1890 and Wellington
WIRADJURI 29 in 1895 where Wiradjuri were to adopt a homestead based agricultural lifestyle growing crops and vegetables. The repressive conditions on reserves varied on the nature of the (European) managers. It was also at this time that state sanctioned removal of children escalated, making reserves in particular even less desirable locations to live as children were often identified and removed from families living on these reserves.
Large pastoral stations were also being replaced by smaller farms as part of the colonial government policies to foster small-scale agriculture over large-scale pastoralism. The resulting 640 acre farms still employed Aboriginal workers but often in less numbers and not as residential workers. As a result of these changes, from the early 1900s Aboriginal families developed highly nomadic lifestyles when compared with European expectations. They moved throughout the district to visit family and seek work. This approach also had the added benefit of remaining out of the eye of the Aboriginal Protection Board and the possible removal of children.23
Families continued to work on farms and orchards including for the harvest through the region. Fruit picking on the orchards, including cherries, and berry picking of wild blackberries provided employment for Aboriginal families into the 20th century. With cherry picking season in August and September, families would move into The Springs, a camp 4 kilometres south of central Orange. Many families also stayed all year round.24
The annual report of the Aboriginal Protection Board for Orange in 1891 noted that there were 28 people in Orange and Molong combined and commented: “None are in need of aid from government; they are generally employed on stations and farms, a few also earn a living fencing.”25
The pattern of internal migration and separation from country, which started in the late 19th century, continued into the late 20th century. The Aboriginal Family Resettlement Scheme assisted relocation to regional cities. After the scheme finished in 1986, Orange remained a destination for Aboriginal families as they moved here to join other family members.
Despite assimilation policies, removal of children from their kinship and country, loss of language, internal migration and systematic discrimination over many decades, Aboriginal Australian practices including the knowledge of hunting, gathering and fishing survived. The traditional methods of passing local knowledge down from one generation to the next continued. The importance of country remains an active and alive part of contemporary experience, and many Aboriginal families relocated to Orange travel home to country for funerals and to hunt and gather.26
WIRADJURI 30
END NOTES
1 This concept is fully explored by Bill Gammage in The Biggest Estate on Earth, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, 2011. It is also discussed by other authors including Keith Farrer To Feed a Nation A History of Australian Food Science and Technology CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, 2005, chapter one.
2 Michael Bennett, Orange Aboriginal Heritage Report, NTSCORP for Orange City Council, 2012, p10
3 Michael Bennett, Orange Aboriginal Heritage Report, NTSCORP for Orange City Council, 2012, p11
4 NSW Department of Education Riverina Schools, Wiradjuri Culture, http://www.riverina- e.schools.nsw.edu.au/documents/40634443/40634886/wiradjuri_book_pdf.pdf, viewed 15 May 2017
5 James Boyce The Biggest Estate on Earth by Bill Gammage in The Monthly https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2011/december/1322699456/james-boyce/biggest-estate- earth-how-aborigines-made-australia-bill-g, viewed 5 June 2017
6 Michael Bennett, Orange Aboriginal Heritage Report, NTSCORP for Orange City Council, 2012, p11 & 19
7 Michael Bennett, Orange Aboriginal Heritage Report, NTSCORP for Orange City Council, 2012, p14
8 Wiradjuri Heritage Study, Wagga Wagga City Council, 2002
9 Information and photograph provided by Orange Regional Museum.
10 Gregory Ingram pers comm 3 July 2017, contact details on resource file
11 The references here refer to the entire food section on page four.
NSW Department of Education Riverina Schools Wiradjuri Culture, http://www.riverina- e.schools.nsw.edu.au/documents/40634443/40634886/wiradjuri_book_pdf.pdf, viewed 15 May 2017
Michael Bennett, Orange Aboriginal Heritage Report, NTSCORP for Orange City Council, 2012, p11
Keith Farrer To Feed a Nation A History of Australian Food Science and Technology CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, 2005, Chapter one is dedicated to the food before 1788 and is well worth reading in its entirety
WIRADJURI 31
NSW Department of Environment and Heritage The South Western Slopes Bioregion, http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/bioregions/NSWSouthWesternSlopesBioregion.htm, viewed 26 June 2017
Weston A Price Foundation Australian Aborigines Living off the Fat of the Land https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/traditional-diets/australian-aborigines-living-off-the-fat- of-the-land/, viewed 30 June 2017
12 Melanie Pearce, Possum skin cloaks and bush medicine explained in Aboriginal seasonal calendar app, ABC Online, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-12/aboriginal-seasonal-calendar- app-being-developed/7083696, viewed 5 June 2017
13 Steve Sunk and David Hancock Walkabout Chefs, SkyScans Australia, Darwin 2006, p21
14 Bronwyn Fredericks and Rodney Slater ‘We’ve always cooked kangaroo. We still cook kangaroo. Although sometimes we use cookbooks now’: Aboriginal Australians and cookbook’ in Donna Lee Brian and Adele Wessell (eds)Text Special Issue 24: Cookbooks, writing, reading and publishing culinary literature in Australasia, Central Queensland University, October 2013, http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue24/Fredericks&Stoter.pdf, viewed 5 June 2017
15 Orange Regional Museum, Mt Canobolas, http://www.orangemuseum.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2017/01/Mt-Canobolas_Complete.pdf, viewed 5 June 2017
16 Orange Regional Museum Wiradjuri Gardens prior exhibition material
17 Bronwyn Fredericks and Rodney Slater ‘We’ve always cooked kangaroo. We still cook kangaroo. Although sometimes we use cookbooks now’: Aboriginal Australians and cookbook’ in Donna Lee Brian and Adele Wessell (eds)Text Special Issue 24: Cookbooks, writing, reading and publishing culinary literature in Australasia, Central Queensland University, October 2013, http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue24/Fredericks&Stoter.pdf, viewed 5 June 2017
18 Gregory Ingram pers comm 3 July 2017
19 http://www.peterandren.com/pdf/other/The%20Wiradjuri%20in%20Bathurst.pdf and information provided by Orange Regional Museum. The Bathurst Wars are also documented in various places.
20 Bill Gammage discusses The Biggest Estate on Earth ANU TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sko-YDIULKY, viewed 5 June 2017
Gregory Ingram also provided information pers comm and for the resource file.
21 Michael Bennett, Orange Aboriginal Heritage Report, NTSCORP for Orange City Council, 2012, pp 38 - 39
Richard Waterhouse, The Vision Splendid A Social and Cultural History of Rural Australia, Curtin University Press, Freemantle, 2005, p54
WIRADJURI 32
22 Michael Bennett, Orange Aboriginal Heritage Report, NTSCORP for Orange City Council, 2012 p39
23 Michael Bennett, Orange Aboriginal Heritage Report, NTSCORP for Orange City Council, 2012, p76-77 and Stan Grant in Talking to my country also discusses this internal migration and the voluntary / forced nature of families constantly moving to seek work and avoid discrimination and the potential removal of children. It is an Aboriginal Diaspora on the scale of what western historians often discuss with the European diasporas and migration experiences that is only now starting to be discussed.
24 Michael Bennett, Orange Aboriginal Heritage Report, NTSCORP for Orange City Council, 2012 p69
25 Michael Bennett, Orange Aboriginal Heritage Report, NTSCORP for Orange City Council, 2012 p54, 61
26 Michael Bennett, Orange Aboriginal Heritage Report, NTSCORP for Orange City Council, 2012, p70
WIRADJURI 33 3. Farming
“In a way, being on the Carroll property, I was content. My main thing was driving tractors, machinery, that type of thing. I enjoyed the sheep work too. I enjoyed it all as far as that went.” John Hammond, Molong1
The Australian Dream What drove free settlers to Australia throughout the 19th century, and well into the 20th century, was the promise of land ownership. For centuries, those who had the power and the money in the United Kingdom were the landed gentry. But for many in the middle classes with some capital, land ownership of any substantial nature was beyond both their financial and social reach. This is why, throughout the 19th century, you see middle class small business families, the second sons of minor aristocracy and military officers arriving in New South Wales. Here they might be able to become landed gentry, own land and build a true family farm business that would live for generations.
The working class and freed convicts also held this dream of land ownership, but many were also very well aware that they lacked the capital to first purchase land and then improve it. Much has been written on the push factors of migration on the Irish and Cornish in the 19th century in particular, including the potato famine and decline in copper and tin mining. For these free working class settlers, the colonies offered the hope of regular paid work, and then over years of accumulating capital, perhaps the prospect of owning their own modest farm where they too could build up property to leave to the next generations. Many of the first settlers in the Orange district followed this pattern of migration and agricultural development. The early families of the Hicks, Hawkes, Toms and Glassons left the United Kingdom due to limited financial opportunities and were attracted by grants in this area with the right climate for agriculture.
This dream of land ownership and small-scale agricultural farming shaped colonial government policy throughout the 19th century. Given the poor soil of much of the colony’s land, pastoralists needed to run large numbers of cattle and sheep to first support their families, and then be profitable businesses. This conflicted though with the dream of family owned, smaller scale farms which grew mixed crops, including wheat or other cereal crops, vegetables, fruit, pigs and poultry. In the United Kingdom, agriculture was seen as leading to a settled and civilised society. This belief was transferred to the Australian colonies, with a decided preference for family-based agriculture over large pastoral estates.2
It was a lot harder in practice though to make that small scale farm dream a reality. This was a different type of environment, with a different type of climate and soil. The colonial government of New South Wales encouraged ‘closer settlement’ with smaller scale holdings of between 40 to 320 acres available for freehold sale through the 1861 Robertson Land Acts. Yet, an inquiry of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1865 found that farms this size didn’t survive and this needed to be lifted to 640 acres to make many farms viable. Even then many struggled to find the capital needed to build dams, fence properties and buy stock or plant crops. What would make agricultural farming viable in Orange and district, and also for many other parts of New South Wales, was access to markets through the arrival of the railway and advances in farming technology.3
FARMING 34
The small-scale family farm Most early family farms were either grants in the very early period, tenanted (leased) or purchased under the Robertson’s Land Act Scheme (£1 per acre with five shilling deposit, balance paid in three years, with an indefinite loan at the end of three years at 5%). Some of the larger landowners like William Charles Wentworth, in the area now known as Lucknow, tenanted parcels of land.
The first step for early settler families on taking up land was to become self-sufficient. Orange and the surrounding villages in the period fifty years prior to the arrival of the railway, the 1820s to 1870s, were a long way from Sydney. This was where food, as imports or domestic produce, was brought and sold. It took six weeks to get that food to this region. The service towns were also not yet of sufficient size to provide enough food for sale. To survive families usually brought their first year’s supply with them of dry goods, like flour, tea and sugar. They would live a meat free diet if they couldn’t afford salted pork and dried or canned meats. It was also common to eat kangaroos and wombats to supplement their stocks.
On arrival the family went to work quickly growing those crops which would support them: wheat, oats and barley as fodder for animals and flour for themselves, vegetables, fruit and small scale animals like goats and pigs. By necessity these first crops were for family use. But the size of the land, and how much capital they had to develop it, also drove what families did with it. Becoming established would take many consecutive years of successful crops, not destroyed by pests, flood or drought. Excess produce would be sold and it was common for families to aspire to own more goats, pigs or dairy cows than they needed so they could sell the eggs, milk and butter to others.
Off-farm income is not a recent idea. Throughout the 19th century and 20th century, it was common for families with little capital to work for other more substantial property owners or in the towns. Often it was the sons and fathers who left the farm for work in the 19th century with women running the home farm. It is perhaps a little acknowledged part of this rural history that women have been running farms for many years. Work off the farm was usually seasonal work such as shearing, fence building, chaff cutting, tree felling or fruit picking.
This pattern continued well into the 20th century, and still does today. Elaine Cheney of Eugowra tells a similar story of the variety of activities needed to make the farm viable. She was born in 1938 and grew up first on Hill View farm, Mackeys Creek, Eugowra before her father brought Spring View in 1942. On this 20 acre farm they grew vegetables and commercial lucerne. Her father also frequently went away rabbiting for several weeks at a time and had bee hives. When Elaine married in 1960, she and her husband brought Redbank where they raised fat lambs, Angus cattle and lucerne for 40 years. She remembers her parents’ farm as having a date palm, peach and lemon trees and they often ate meals of rabbit, baked, fried or stewed.4
FARMING 35
Ownership of goats was very common in the 19th century and early 20th century. Peggy Nash, Jan Harrison and Jill McDonald recall many families owning goats in Canowindra. They commented that goats were highly valued as they are small and easy for women and children to manage. Goats eat scraps and provide milk which can be turned into cheese. Children with goat outside hut, Hills End, 1872. Holtermann Collection. National Library of Australia.
Modest homestead, Manduarama region. Evan Lumme c. 1900-1915. National Library of Australia
FARMING 36 Keys to a successful farm
Access to Farming Capital markets knowledge
Technology The right land
Infrastructure Innovation Good years
FARMING 37
The large farming property For every large station with its thousands of sheep, there were hundreds of properties of all sizes which failed. Yet it was the dream of becoming land gentry with this substantial homestead, and a large property with thousands of sheep or cattle, that captured the collective imagination and our historical mythology. It is also a sad reality of history that it is the large properties often which have been the subject of study and provide the curator with the most information.
There were a number of large farming properties in Orange and district. Many of these do not exist today having become residential land or subsumed into other properties. The Australian Pastoral Directory List of Stock Owners 1903 and The Sands Directory 1901 identify a number of property owners by name and locality. Examples are included here for this early 20th century period but if this was a potential aspect of the exhibition, both these source would provide more names and localities. Property name is in italics and owner’s name given where available.
• W.Smith, Gamboola, Molong • A.T. Kerr, Wellwood, Orange • M. McCullouch, Buckinbah, Yeoval • Ferndale, Cargo Road, Orange • J. Carroll, Summer Hill, Orange • J. Lane, Rose Hill, Orange-Bathurst • Rosedale Estate, Boree, Orange • Robert Scott, Mt Esk, Molong • Woodlawn, Blayney-Carcoar • John Glasson, Bringelong, Blayney • Nora Glasson, Yarraman, Blayney • T.B. Glasson, Hazelwood, Blayney • E. Connelly, Waragel, Carcoar • James Brown, Brown’s Valley, Canowindra • W. Traves, Lockwood, Canowindra • Bangaroo, Canowindra • Willandra, Eugowra • Fairfield, Millthorpe
Gamboola, Molong and Coombing Park, Carcoar provide interesting information that could be used in the exhibition. Gamboola produced wool while Coombing Park historically produced cattle.
Gamboola Grazier John Smith settled on his land at Gamboola in 1847 with his family. By 1854 Gamboola was described as 15,828 acres with 5,320 sheep, 400 cattle and 43 horses. The description details the house with cellar, dairy, stores and two granaries. It also noted the four acres of garden with fruit trees and grape vines.
“A house containing ten rooms furnished in superior style, with verandah 70 feet by 8 feet, all of brick. Cellar 40 feet by 14 feet, cut out of solid rock; nursery, kitchen, laundry, dairy, stores and two granaries for grain and flour, all of brick; Superintendent’s Cottage;
FARMING 38 Servant’s Cottage; Stables, etc. Brick and Wood; Extensive shearing shed 80 feet by 44 feet. The above are all shingled. A garden of 4 acres trenched at considerable expense and stocked with fruit trees, grape vines, etc. Ornamental trees extensively planted. Substantial yards for drafting and classifying sheep and cattle with every other convenience for an extensive grazing establishment.” 5
Gamboola was a very large property and shepherds would sleep out with their designated flock of sheep surviving on plain diets delivered from the homestead.
“To make the full circuit, taking rations to all the shepherds, a three-horse dray, fully loaded, would set out from the homestead on a Monday morning and often would not return until the following Saturday week. Yet the ration supplied to each shepherd was extremely meagre and restricted.
The regular weekly ration to each of these solitary men was a follows: 3⁄4lb tea, commonly called ‘fencer’s tea’ because of its absence of leaf and preponderance of ‘posts and rails’; 11⁄2lb dark treacly sugar, salt; 10 lbs. of flour – no baking powder; 12lb of meat. This was all! No butter, eggs, jam or vegetables.
In hot weather, when meat could not be sent, a few ‘killers’ were branded and run with the shepherd’s mob; these were very old ewes, lean and tough; never by any chance did the shepherd taste a young fat wether.” 6
Coombing Park Coombing Park is included as an example as it was a well-known property of the district and it also provides an opening to tell the story of women on the land, an often overlooked part of history. Too many histories about regions, agriculture and indeed anything to do with business or farming leave women out of the story. This is despite the strong presence of women on both small-holdings, where they often ran the properties in the absence of men out rabbiting or doing casual work, and in their roles on larger properties as managers of large numbers of staff over vast distances. We start first though with its early founder before getting to the part about women as capable farm owners and managers.
Coombing’s founder, Thomas Icely, a Devonshire merchant, was granted land near Bathurst, which he stocked with merinos and cattle in 1822, while he lived in Sydney.
In 1829 he received his first land grant at Coombing. He built this into 10,000 hectares through further land grants and purchases. He moved there permanently in 1831 after returning from a visit to England to be married. By 1837 Icely had 62 convicts cultivating 120 hectares. In 1825 he had brought out from England a threshing machine and a horse powered flour mill, which is recorded as operating at Coombing in 1849. By 1846, almost 20 years after the family moved to the property, it had fruit trees, a vegetable garden and grew wheat. It stocked 25,000 sheep, 3,000 shorthorn cattle (valued as both dairy and meat cows) and 300 horses. Icely was noted as a fine breeder of cattle and horses, with his bulls sold into England and horses to the Indian Army.
The homestead itself had the kitchen at the back as was typical of that time, both for safety and so that visitors wouldn’t see it as they approached up the drive. In the 1830s the property had its own
FARMING 39 blacksmith, butcher and baker. Many different tradesmen and their families also lived on the property, including cooks, gardeners, bricklayers, coachmen, shepherds, grooms, house servants, overseers and carpenters. 7 In 1850 Augustus Mann joined the staff of Coombing Park as the overseer. He wrote home to his wife and children about the property providing us with an insight to the property and its workings.
“Mr Icely’s house is about 1/4 mile from our huts…[which are on] a beautiful creek of fresh water running about 100 yards from our door. The stables, wool shed, store rooms, coach house and office are in a court. The farm yard and farm buildings are at back of the huts… We have a large Bell…fixed in a Gum opposite the office. I ring it sunrise, at this time about 5 o’clock, then again at 8 o’clock for the men to go to breakfast and again at 9 am to work again, at 1pm for dinner and at 2 to continue to work. The men leave off at dusk.”8
Thomas Icely also found copper and gold on his property. From 1847 to 1851 he mined copper using a substantial shaft system. Following his death at Parramatta in 1874, his eldest son, Thomas Rothery Icely, continued mining activity and managing the property. Unfortunately his son borrowed heavily and was forced to sell Coombing Park to Cobb and Co. The property passed to Isabella Whitney, widow of Frank Whitney, partner in Cobb & Co. She built the current homestead on the property and successfully restored it to a profitable pastoral estate. Descendants of Isabella Whitney continue to operate Coombing Park.9
Isabella Whitney Managing Director and Cattle Expert Isabella Whitney nee Leeds (1845 – 1941)
Canadian born Frank Whitney was one of the original partners of Cobb & Co. When the company headquarters moved north to Bathurst, Whitney moved to Orange to operate the booking office and routes out of Orange. He meet Isabella Leeds at the hotel in Orange where he stabled his horses, she was the daughter of the female hotel proprietor. They married at Wellington in 1863 and lived in Orange.
Cobb & Co purchased properties to breed horses for their driving teams and soon moved into breeding sheep and cattle. By 1875 they owned a number of large stations in New South Wales and Queensland. Isabella and Frank Whitney lived on Cobb & Co’s large property Buckiinguy, near Bourke, raising ten children for over a decade. It was on this property that Isabella learnt about cattle, developing her knowledge for which she came to be highly respected.
The family were among the wealthiest of the colony, the annual income to Frank Whitney from Cobb & Co’s many interests across transport, mines and farming, was substantial by the standards of then and now. During the 1870s, Frank Whitney earned annually the equivalent of approximately $150,000 in dividends from Cobb & Co, and a further $450,000 from sheep, horse and cattle breeding.
The family returned to Orange for a few years before moving to Coombing Park in 1881. When Frank died in 1894, Bella had seven living children and the district was in a drought. She also had to fight for control of the estate. She negotiated with her husband’s business partner, James Rutherford, to sell their many properties and investments. This was a lengthy process, which also involved a court case between Whitney and Rutherford. Then in 1902 the NSW Parliament passed
FARMING 40 a private member’s bill The Whitney Estate Act to allow Isabella Whitney to take assets rather than cash (as stipulated in her husband’s will) as her inheritance. This act secured Coombing Park for Isabella Whitney and her four remaining daughters.
Isabella then ran the property for many years. She was a well-respected pastoralist and judge of cattle, exhibiting and judging cattle at the Sydney Show. The Whitney Pastoral Company was formed with Isabella as managing director and Mr Arthur Leeds Jnr her brother, and then his son, as general manager. 10 Sam Everingham’s book Wild Ride The Rise and Fall of Cobb & Co provides the most extensive information on Isabella Whitney, from which this profile drew extensively. The Whitney – King family, direct descendants of Isabella Whitney, run the property today.
Shorthorn cattle, Coombing Park, c. 1958, National Archives of Australia
FARMING 41
Coombing Park c. 1958 National Archives of Australia
FARMING 42
Diet on the farm We tend to think we know what they ate in the 19th century, particularly on farms: lots of mutton and damper, with a strong cup of billy tea. Authors like Jacqui Newling and Barbara Santich have shown though that there is more nuance to the story than just chops and tea, even though they do have their firm place in the story.
Dry goods like flour, tea, salt and sugar were purchased and stored on the property. These stores were brought up from Sydney initially but when service centres like Orange and Blayney grew to substantial sizes, it was a popular excursion to town to buy the supplies. The store house was one of the most important places on any farm, regardless of its size. A list of stores at Buckinbah, the property on which Banjo Patterson spent his first seven years, shows the diversity of foods kept in the store.
Buckinbah store list for food only, other items were also kept in the store house:
Currants Jams Raisins Vinegar Pickles Peppers Allspice Curry powder Ginger Mustard Sago Coffee Salad Oil Sardines Arrowroot Oatmeal Castor Oil English cheese Assorted lollies Canary seed Preserved ginger Bottled fruits Liverpool salt Sugar Lea and Perrin’s sauce11
The inclusion of two types of ginger and curry powder tell us that the 19th century farming family was perhaps more adventurous in their diet than we have given them credit for. Curried meat was commonly eaten and it appears frequently in cookbooks of the late 19th century to early 20th century.
FARMING 43 There was also a willingness in the 19th century to eat Australia’s native foods, particularly kangaroo and wallaby, but also other foods like eels, bush turkey, wonga pigeon and native flora like Warrigal greens. Recipes for kangaroo and wallaby in particular show the diversity of uses from curried kangaroo to stewed, soup and potted kangaroo, which was steamed with nutmeg. Eating native protein like wallaby was no doubt driven by necessity for many early farming families but there was also a willingness to eat native foods to engage with this new land.12
The kitchen garden and family orchard was also a priority for family farms on initial settlement. It was common to have a few apple, pear, lemon and peach trees, and a kitchen garden to grow the sought after English vegetables of spinach, cabbage, carrots, pumpkins, beans, peas, corn and potatoes.
Likewise, English sources of protein were highly sought after and the mutton firmly entered Australian diets of the 19th century. Boiled mutton was the most common way of cooking it in the 19th century, served with a rich sauce if possible and affordable. Mutton was also preserved by corning it, and it was very common to eat it as a curry or stewed. The chop, plain or crumbed, came into its own with the common way to welcome a visitor was to serve a chop and a cup of tea.13 So much so, that the chop picnic was what Australians did before the later arrival of the barbeque. The chop picnic was a low fuss open fire on which to cook a chop and boil a cup of tea, frequently used by the men at work on the farms and by families on weekend picnics.14
Rabbit was the other main source of protein for many on farms. By 1863, a mere four years after introduction, the rabbit was becoming a nuisance and in 1883 the New South Wales government introduced the Rabbit Nuisance Act in an attempt to prevent environmental and crop damage. Many farming families were only too happy to use this free protein destroying their crops. Rabbiting also provided many jobs for families, as rabbit was sent into the city as food and the fur used for hats. Rabbit was cooked in many ways including in curries, as pie and slow braised.15 More detail on the rabbit is provided in the At Home chapter.
It was also the aspiration of many farming families to have a well-stocked poultry house, for meat and eggs, with chickens, guinea fowl, ducks, turkeys and geese. A piggery also provided the much desired. Like goats, pigs eat the scraps and don’t require much room. Pig meat also preserves easily and a little bit can be stretched to flavour vegetables, soups and stews.16
FARMING 44
Farmers with corn crop, Mandurama district, Evan Lumme, National Library of Australia
Note the vegetables to the left and fruit trees to the right, in front of small hut. Ellis [?] Family, Hills End, 1872, Holtermann Collection, National Library of Australia.
FARMING 45 ENDNOTES
1 John Hammond, Molong interviewed Marg Carroll, Villages of the Heart project, 2013
2 Richard Waterhouse, A Vision Splendid A Social and Cultural History of Rural Australia, Freemantle, Curtin University Press, 2005, p 23
3 Ibid p29-31
4 The Rowan Tree Villages of the Heart Telling Rural Stories, Orange City Council, 2014, p72 -75
5 Ibid p148-149
6 Ibid p155
7 Sam Everingham, Wild Ride The Rise and Fall of Cobb & Co, Penguin, Camberwell, 2009, p147
8 Richard Waterhouse, A Vision Splendid A Social and Cultural History of Rural Australia, Freemantle, Curtin University Press, 2005, p 29-31
9 Peter Austin, Recorded for Prosperity, http://www.theland.com.au/story/3592476/recorded-for- posterity/, 12 May 2013, viewed 23 June 2017
Ian Jack, The Icely Family and Coombing Park, near Carcoar, http://www.rahs.org.au/wp- content/uploads/2015/05/07_Article-3_Icely-Family.pdf, viewed 23 June 2017
10 A Question of Accounts, The Sydney Morning Herald 8 Mar 1900, page 4 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/14298449?searchTerm=isabella%20whitney%20court%2 0james%20rutherford&searchLimits=#, viewed 23 June 2017
Mrs I Whitney, Death occurs at Carcoar, Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate, 28 August 1941, page 1, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news- article131296801.3.pdf?followup=cd0926782524441b6f29bb4a146432f8, viewed 23 June 2017
Frank Whitney Immigration Place Australia, https://immigrationplace.com.au/story/frank-whitney/, viewed 23 June 2017
Whitney Estate Act 1902, New South Wales Parliament, http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi- bin/download.cgi/au/legis/nsw/num_act/weao1902nw254, viewed 23 June 2017
Sam Everingham, Wild Ride The Rise and Fall of Cobb & Co, Penguin, Camberwell, 2009
11 Store list on display at Banjo Patterson Museum, Yeoval. Image on file
12 Jacqui Newling, Eat Your History Stories and Recipes from Australian Kitchens, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2015, p45, 56, 62
13 Ibid. p122
Barbara Santich, Bold Palates Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2012, p62
FARMING 46
14 Barbara Santich, Bold Palates Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2012, p116-122
15 Jacqui Newling, Eat Your History Stories and Recipes from Australian Kitchens, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2015, p133
16 Ibid, p126
FARMING 47 4. Gold
The importance of the gold rushes for the story of food is that multiculturalism started in the 1850s not 1950s. With the influx of migrants to the goldfields, they brought their food and recipes with them.
Impact of gold on the district In April 1851, William Tom, a son of the Cornish family settled at Byng, and James Lister found six ounces of gold at Lewis Ponds and Summer Hill creeks. Edward Hargreaves, who had previously shown them how to pan for gold, sent these new finds to the Colonial Secretary and named the area Ophir. By May, 300 diggers were in Ophir looking for gold. Gold was also later found at Lucknow, Hills End, Lambing Flat and Forbes in New South Wales, and Ballarat, Castlemaine, Maldon, Talbot and Bendigo in Victoria. The Australian gold rushes had started.
The gold rushes encouraged migration to the district, and helped to turn Orange into a regional service centre. In 1851 the population was 28 with seven houses in the square mile of Orange. Land sales were slow. After the gold discovery, in 1852 and 1853 all land lots for sale were quickly sold at twice the asking price.1 Ten years later it wasn’t the substantial size of some other gold era towns but had grown to a respectable 581 people, with 91 houses.2
Early settlers like the Daltons, Hicks and Hawkes benefited from the influx of hungry diggers, for example George Hawke established general stores at Byng and Ophir selling meat, vegetables and other supplies to the diggers. Farmers from the district also drove cattle to the Victorian goldfields. Jenny Maher, a Hicks family descendant, recalls that her ancestors took bullock wagons of food into the gold fields to sell produce, as far away as Forbes, from their property on Canobolas.3
GOLD 48
The beginning of multicultural food in Australia Early food in the goldfields camps was typically that which could be easily stored to survive the travel out to the fields, like flour, tea, salted meat and sugar. Given the distances from the major settlements and the rarity of storekeepers, at least in the early days, prices for food were high. Bacon and pork were much sought after but only affordable to gold diggers who were finding significant quantities of gold. Eggs, dairy and vegetables were similarly rare and expensive.
The food of the British Isles became firmly part of the gold fields diet then and left a legacy for today. For example, Cornish Pasties, which can still be found in many rural bakeries, were made by miners’ wives and several pasties would be tucked into coat pockets and taken to work that day. Cornish pasties in their traditional form is meat in one end and a fruit in the other. Other food inspired by their English, Irish, Cornish and Welsh origins were common too, such as Irish stew. In an Australian setting, they became mutton stew. Mutton stew and damper were ubiquitous and often served for all meals.4
Interior of a digger’s tent, which is perhaps more established than popular mythology suggests. Note the number of eating and cooking utensils and the shelving on the right to store the items. Henry Winkles c.1860 National Library of Australia.
GOLD 49 Mutton stew and damper is the traditionally accepted story of food on the goldfields, and while it holds true for the experience of many diggers there is another aspect that has only recently been acknowledged. It is well-known that the gold rushes brought many gold seekers from around the world. With these nationalities they also brought their food. We like to think that multiculturalism is a 20th century phenomena but the gold fields of Australia was where it was born. We know that many nationalities came including the following:
Cornish Welsh Irish Scottish English Canadians Americans Italians Chinese French German Polish Hungarians Scandinavians Greeks South Africans
With the arrival of so many other cultures, many from the British food tradition were exposed to food from other cultures than just India. There was already a strong awareness of foods from India due to the number of men and families who had lived in India as part of military service or with the East Indian Company. Now the foods of other cultures were available to them as well, particularly Chinese food.5
In the Chinese camps on the diggings ‘Chinese cafes’ were set up to make food for fellow countrymen. Barry McGowan notes that most of the Chinese diggers in New South Wales came from the Guangdong Province in Southern China.6 The food traditions brought with them are therefore most likely the Cantonese cuisine from this region, such as soups, noodles, the use of egg, fresh vegetables, fish, poultry, pork and dishes not as strongly spicy as the provinces of west China. From the Chinese camps, these ‘Chinese cafes’ soon sold hot food, which one imagines to be Cantonese, to other diggers.
From these early ‘Chinese cafes’ in the camps on the goldfields would grow a tradition of Chinese restaurants. Initially known as ‘cook shops’ they were often part of other Chinese businesses like grocery stores. Dr Barbara Nichols in her research on Chinese restaurants found that in the 19th century they cooked mainly for Chinese customers. It was not until the early 20th century that other Australians started to visit Chinese restaurants, and not until the 1970s that a visit to a Chinese restaurant would become mainstreamed into Australian culture. Chinese cooks also became a part of rural life, with many working on stations.7
GOLD 50
Australia’s first documented Chinese owned restaurant is John Alloo’s restaurant on the Ballarat goldfields. Artist S.T. Gill sketched the building, showing both Chinese and English text. John Alloo didn't sell Chinese food but traditional English foods like plum pudding. S.T. Gill, State Library of Victoria.
Sketches in our Chinese quarter, fan tan playing and a Chinese restaurant. May 1880, most likely to be Melbourne. Alfred May and Alfred Martin Ebsworth, State Library of Victoria. GOLD 51
ENDNOTES
1 Heritage Study by Hughes Trueman Ludlow for Orange City Council, 1986, p 28
2 http://www.orangemuseum.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/The-Discovery-of- Gold_Complete.pdf
Heritage Study by Hughes Trueman Ludlow for Orange City Council, 1986, p 28
3 Jenny Mahr, pers comm 27 June 2017
4 Frances Jones, Life on the Goldfields Department of Primary Industries, February 2007
5 Both Jacqui Newling and Barbara Santich discuss the impact of British service and employment in India in opening up British cuisine to Indian foods, particularly curries.
6 Barry McGowan and Genevieve Mott, Chinese Thematic History of Orange, Blayney and Cabonne Shires, 2016 p 21
7 Dr Barbara Nichol, https://www.nla.gov.au/audio/sweet-and-sour-history, and Chinese restaurants in Australia documented for prosperity by historians, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02- 21/humble-chinese-diner-mapped-by-food-historians/7187218, viewed 27 June 2017
GOLD 52 5. Fruit and Orchards
“Peaches and apricots. We had a wonderful orchard out at Tekoona so that we were brought up bottling peaches and apricots.” Dorothy Balcomb, Canowindra1
Harris Park Orange store wall mural, 2017
Why these fruits in this region? The environment of Orange and region allowed viable cold climate agricultural enterprises to become well established by the early 20th century. It was also common for many family households to keep their own fruit trees. Apple and other stone and pome fruit trees need a cold climate with the corresponding chilling hours during winter to produce fruit. They also require a moderate summer with consistent rainfall to maintain moisture levels so the plant can produce at an optimal level. The climate of the Orange region provides the cold winters, the consistent rainfall and the moderate summer temperatures. The volcanic legacy of Mt Canobolas, with the rich basalt soils, also provides the nutrient soil types that cold climate fruit require.
FRUIT 53
Apples Apples have traditionally been the main fruit crop of the region. George Hawke is attributed as the first commercial orchardist with early plantings in 1841/42. Others followed and by 1886 some of the apples and pears exhibited by Australia at the London Colonial Exhibition came from Orange and region. By 1899 the railway was shipping out 76,000 cases of fruit a year. By 1926-27 this had risen to 170,525 cases of fruit.2
The boom years of the apple and pear industry were the first 50 years of the 20th century when Orange was the largest pome fruit producer in New South Wales. In 1945 there were 380 orchards with over 4000 acres of apples planted.3
The early 1980s saw the apple industry under stress due to drought and a hail storm in January 1986 which severely damaged the trees and set back their production capacity by several years. The following years saw a reduction in the number of small orchardists and a consolidation of properties resulting in fewer, but larger, orchards. Competition for export markets also made orchards less viable during these years.
Since 2008 the apple industry nationally has experienced a steady increase in demand for fresh apples. This may be due to population growth and the growing interest in locally sourced and fresh produce. Local apple cider production has introduced a new angle to the apple market for the region. Today the combined areas of Orange and Batlow produce 16% of the national apple and pear crop, valued at over $95 million for apples and $300,000 for pears in 2014-15.4
Orange site inspection by senators as a possible national capital, 1902. One of the promoted benefits of Orange was the agricultural produce, including fruit of the region. E.T. Luke, National Library of Australia.
FRUIT 54 Apples require a cold climate to fruit and an open, sunny and well drained position with consistent watering. They are sensitive to spring frost and wind can damage fruit, reduce evaporation rates and cause pollination issues. Fruit bats and summer hail can also significantly damage the apple crop. Codling moth and other pests present historical and continual challenges, with a range of pest control solutions developed over time.
Apple harvest season in Orange runs from January to May. In the early days of apple production without cold storage facilities, the selling season was fairly short. Orchardists planted varieties of apples which were available for harvest in consecutive order to extend the harvest and sale period.
John Milne, a local orchardist of the family-owned Endsleigh Orchard on Lone Pine Avenue, recalls that in the 1930s and 1940s some apple types were kept in winter by burying them in underground pits and sealing up the pits. Only Granny Smiths, Democrats and other hard apple types could be kept this way. They were then dug up and progressively sold.
“Dad sold most of the fruit from the shed at 148 Lone Pine Ave to people who came and brought it. This saved a lot of labour as it didn’t have to be packed to send to markets. We still sent cherries and plums to the markets, but most of the [other] fruit was sold on the place.”5
The introduction of cold storage facilities, mainly from the 1950s onwards, allowed apples to be stored for extended periods of up to eight months.6 The region currently grows the following varieties: Pink Lady, Royal Gala, Fuji, Red Delicious, Granny Smith, Braeburn and Sundowner.
Apples 1921-1924 State Library of New South Wales
FRUIT 55
George Hawke’s Difficult Start to the Fruit Industry A Cornish bridegroom was the first European settler to see the fruit bearing potential of the Orange region.
George Hawke was the son of farmers in Cornwell who went on to build the fruit industry and a family dynasty in Orange. Apprenticed as a wool stapler (buys, grades and sells wool), George spent four years in business before deciding to migrate to New South Wales at the age of 26.
He arrived in Sydney in 1828 straight into a drought and economic recession. He worked very briefly on the farm of an acquaintance before he stayed at the Cornish settlement, later known as Byng, 25 kilometres south-east of Orange. Here he stayed with William Tom and William Lane, fellow Cornishmen with whom he would develop life long connections. He worked for William Tom first for one year as a teacher to his children, then for two years to William Lane’s family. During this time he brought his property Pendarves from John Gleeson where he started to farm sheep and wheat with one convict servant. He also planted a vegetable garden and orchard for his own use.
“Thus I laboured on for several years patiently and industriously plodding on…till I found myself getting into comfortable circumstance, so that I had a fair prospect of supporting a wife comfortably.”7
In August 1836 George sailed for England via New Zealand on the ship James Laing. He was traveling to Cornwell to marry his cousin Jane. He also planned to buy fruit trees suitable for a commercial fruit orchard, which he thought would make a profit as few others had planted on any scale for sale.
He didn’t get far, the ship was damaged north of Auckland and he was stranded lamenting the lack of ships passing New Zealand. Eventually he got another passage on the Pyramus in February 1837. Five months later he sailed into Plymouth.
He married Jane on the 3rd March 1838 and they left for Sydney on the 29th March. With him he had his brother Samuel and his family, starting a period of chain migration where Hawke family members came to the region. George also had his fruit trees packaged into boxes for the four month voyage back to New South Wales.
Unfortunately the trees didn’t enjoy the sea voyage. Many died on the way. Those that were left then had to make a six-week journey by cart up to Byng. George Hawke had also arrived home to another drought.
“On sighting the Australian shore I perceived that grass fires were burning…this proved to be the greatest drought that was ever known in this country. Long before its termination every valley was fuming with the stench of dead cattle.”8
His remaining trees did not survive and his dreams of a commercial orchard were postponed. Three years later, George tried again. He brought 20 apple trees and a number of cherry, plum and peach trees from Tasmania. He sent for more fruit trees from England. He also planted a number FRUIT 56 of nut trees and olives, as well as oak, ash, elms and poplars on his property. In his first year, the apple trees produced two apples, as they do. Then over time he produced more and more fruit for sale, reporting quite happily that his profits were now over £600 a year.9
George Hawke continued to keep an eye out for profit making opportunities and he would later establish two grocery stores, one at Byng and one at Ophir to sell meat, vegetables and fruit to the gold diggers in the early 1850s. He also reported that he did well by the stores. When meat was in demand on the Victorian Goldfields, his nephew Frederick drove Hawke’s cattle to Victoria.10
In 1862 George Hawke wrote to relatives in Cornwell and while his words speak of proud endeavour they also speak of family.
“I am above 60 years of age and my hair is as white as the almond blossom…I am a magistrate of the territory. I am now officially addressed as George Hawke Esq[uire] J.P. I have always thought God gave me my wife, which is all a Christian would wish for…”11
George Hawke died at the age of 80 in 1882. Friends and relatives of the Hawke family had already migrated and would continue to migrate to the region. By 1908, many of the major orchardists were relatives or friends from Cornwall like Sam Hawke on his orchard at Mt Pleasant with 50 acres or Tom Hawke at Mainville and Coloreath with 42 acres. Other major orchardists were J.S Hicks of Roseteague with 75 acres under fruit and another Tom Hawke at Glenna with 20 acres.12
Panoramic view from Mt Pleasant showing Sam Hawke’s orchard c. 1920s, E.B. Studios, State Library of New South Wales.
FRUIT 57 Spraying the orchard. This photo is significant as it shows the mixed planting nature of many orchards, Note the pumpkins growing under the trees. Orange and District Historical Society.
Pears The region of Orange is best known in the pear industry for the Packham Pear, alternatively known as Packham’s Triumph, first grown by Charles Packham. Australian born Charles Packham selected 240 acres known as Quickbourne outside Molong in 1858, gradually over time adding more acres to his holding. For many years he grazed sheep, worked with his father in a transport business from Forbes to Sydney, and also worked as a shepherd for neighbours.
Charles also kept bees and began a life long interest in crossbreeding fruit, particularly pears. He first won a prize for his pears at the Sydney Agricultural Show in 1880. Commercial success came with a cross breed of the Uvedale St Germain pear with a Williams Pear in 1896. The Department of Agriculture’s pear expert, W. J. Allen, tested and named the fruit Packham’s Triumph, stating it to be the finest he had tasted, with a beautiful sugary flavour and a slight tartness. It was light green in colour and well shaped with a short neck. It stored well after picking in March, making it a winter sale crop also suitable for export. By 1909, when he died, Packham had 20,000 seedlings on his property Garra south-west of Molong for sale to other orchardists and sent to government experimental farms around the country. 13
Today, Packham’s Triumph is one of the main varieties grown in Australia and is a main export variety. The pear is valued for its taste and storage capabilities. Harvest of the pear is from late February to March with the fruit available in store from April to November. Packham pears are a slow-ripening variety and store well for up to nine months. It is no longer grown in the region on the same commercial scale of its origin years in the late 19th century.14
FRUIT 58 Stone Fruits Stone fruits grown in the region include peaches, nectarines and cherries. Like apples and pears, stone fruits require a cold winter to produce fruit. They like an open site which receives sunshine all day, yet protected from frosts. They need well-drained, compost rich soil. The consistent rainfall pattern of the region suit cherries, which need to be consistently watered so as not to dry out. Stone fruits are susceptible to fungal diseases and pests, particularly fruit fly but also brown rot, leaf curl, scale, mite, aphids and mealybug. Like all fruit trees, birds, fruit bats and possums can devastate a crop if not netted.
Orange was known for many years for the cherry crop. Cherry varieties in the Orange region include Merchant, Van, Kordia, Lapins, Stella, Simone, Sweetheart, Ranier and Bing. By 1908, cherries were sold to Queensland and New Zealand. The Orange Producer’s Rural Co-operative Society had the largest cherry brinery in the country.15 Today cherries are considered a boutique agricultural crop with 34 producers from the Central West region (data includes Orange, Mudgee and Wellington) producing 1029 tonnes annually. Cherries are mostly sold for domestic consumption during the cherry season which runs from late October to mid-January. 16
Other Fruits
“Cherries, grapes, apples, peaches, plums and nectarines. All English nuts, e.g. walnuts, chestnuts, hazelnuts and almonds. In short anything that grows in England grows in the Canobolas area with perfect results.”17
Berries have been grown in small numbers on mixed farm and orchard properties, berries are usually one of the many fruit crops grown for domestic consumption or commercial sale. Towac Valley Orchard were the first commercial growers of strawberries in NSW with their first crop in 1952.18
Elizabeth Edwards in Fruitful Landscapes records the history of the blackberry, an introduced species which grew abundantly and became a weed in the region. She records how families used to pick the wild blackberries for their own consumption or to sell to agents who sold the berries onto factories in Sydney for jam. With blackberry eradication programs, this source of casual income was lost.19
Table grapes were also grown in the region, including on properties around Molong. Most of these were for domestic consumption as fresh grapes and some were dried as sultanas and raisins. The history of grapes for both viticulture and fruit consumption will be examined in the chapter on wine history.
FRUIT 59 Young boy sitting among buckets of cherries at a cherry orchard in Orange, 1929, Herbert H Fishwick, National Library of Australia
FRUIT 60
Codling moth illustration and fruit fly illustration, E.H. Zeck, NSW Agricultural Scientific Collections Trust
An Orchard’s Pests The orchardists faced many challenges in creating a sustainable business out of the apple, pear and stone fruit trees. As mentioned, spring frosts can damage fruit as can summer hail and intra- seasonal winds. Attack from birds and fruit bats are also crop threats. Government subsidised netting programs are successfully managing summer hail and attack by birds and fruit bats.20
While there are quite a number of pests and diseases which damage apple, pear and stone fruit trees, the codling moth and fruit fly have presented the biggest challenge for many years. The codling moth burrows in through the fruit and lays eggs on the fruit or leaves. The larvae then emerge to eat the fruit and continue the cycle by laying more larvae. The fruit fly, principally the Queensland fruit fly in Eastern Australia, also has a similar life cycle and impact on the fruit. Both are a consistent and persistent threat to the apple or pear tree.21
The grandson of John Hicks who planted the first orchard at Roseteague remembered the arrival of the codling moth in the district in 1892. Historic methods of managing codling moth involved bandaging trees to prevent the moth from laying larvae directly on the trunk and removing infected fruit to be buried. Chemical treatment was first used in the late 19th century with the application of lead arsenate. Lead arsenate was applied to the fruit leaving a white paste, which caused consumer complaints. Orchardists then polished apples to remove the paste, and even after lead
FRUIT 61 arsenate was no longer used from the mid-20th century, a polished shiny apple was seen as a sign of a good consumer friendly fruit.22
City fruit barrowman polished fruit c. 1920s. Sam Hood State Library of New South Wales.
In 1909 the NSW Department of Agriculture wrote extensively on the pests affecting orchardists, particularly the codling moth and fruit fly.
“Growers of pears, apples and quinces will find the strictest attention is necessary to the bandaging of trees, as also to the picking up and from the trees of all infested fruit, if they hope to market anything like a decent percentage of clean fruit. The bandages must be examined at intervals of seven days, and all grubs which are found hidden underneath destroyed and the fruit picked up every few days and either boiled or burnt so that the grubs can not possibly escape alive.”23
From the 1950s DDT was very briefly used as a broad spectrum spray on orchards. The codling moth soon developed resistance to DDT forcing orchardists to use organophosphate insecticides, also a broad spray spectrum. Resistance from the pests was soon identified in orchards, so much so that by the 1980s many orchardists were resorting to more traditional methods such as regular orchard inspections. Research also identified pheromone disruption of mating as an effective treatment.24
FRUIT 62
Air blast orchard sprayer 1969, Golden Memories Millthorpe Museum. The fully enclosed vehicle protected the driver from chemical sprays and the all round window glass allowed the driver to check the sprayer was working correctly without leaving the vehicle.
The Orange Agricultural Institute has a collection of pest and insects as pinned items in drawers as well as drawings and paintings of insects and pests. They also have a local fauna collection. Dr Jordan Bailey and Dr Peter Gillespie are able to provide for the exhibition pinned drawers of fruit fly, codling moth or other pests of interest, as well as accompanying original or digital illustrations.
FRUIT 63 A Diverse Family Farm Orchards in the region have always been a mixture of produce lines and an entwining of the domestic needs with the commercial arms of the family enterprise. They are family businesses in the true meaning of the word, where the whole family lives on the farm and orchard, with some members working on the property and others assisting around their school days or other off-farm work. Two examples are given below of the way families ran their orchards in the past, growing many different crops and fruit, as well as keeping animals for sale and family use.
Roseteague Roseteague was planted by John Hicks in 1858. He had previously worked for George Hawke at Byng before buying his property at Canobolas. His first planting was 2 ½ acres of fruit trees including apple, pear, peaches, plums and cherries, with a small amount of grapes and hops. His son, Joseph Hicks, took over the property in1875 and grew the acres under fruit trees to 72 acres in 1900 with 50 varieties of apples. In 1903, they grew the following apple types: Scarlet Permain, Red Permain, Five Crown, Luxemburg, Granny Smith, Box Apple, Trevitt’s seedling, Winter Majontin and Northern Spy.
The orchard also had 14 acres of plums including these varieties: Orleans, Greengage, Cole’s late red, Pond’s seedling, Black Diamond, Yellow Egg Plum and Southbourough. Twelve acres of pears included over 1000 trees with these types: William’s Bon, Winter Nelis, Beurre Bosc, White Bergamot and Brown Bergamot. But the variety of fruit didn’t stop there. There was also one acre of vines, 100 peach trees, 200 apricot trees, 1000 raspberry bushes and 200 gooseberry bushes. The farm side of the family business had 30 acres of wheat, 20 acres of oats, 10 acres of potatoes (red skins and brownells), two acres of pumpkins and ½ acre of tomatoes.
A newspaper report of 1903 also described the Roseteague homestead as “…roomy and comfortable”, with a kitchen garden of onions, cabbage, peas, carrots, potatoes and a flower garden including roses and chrysanthemums. Stock on the farm and orchard included working horses, cows, meat sheep, pigs and poultry.25
Endsleigh This mixed use farming and orcharding in the family business is also evident in the recollections of John Milne. His family owned Endsleigh on Lone Pine Avenue from 1913 to 1962. Endsleigh’s orchard was surrounded by other small commercial family run orchards and mixed farms. The eastern and western areas of Lone Pine Ave were orchards, as was the land into Dairy Road and Malabar Road with families who had fruit, dairy and pigs. His recollections give us an insight into the operation of local orchards as family businesses in the mid-20th century.
His family produced a range of apples, plums, pears and cherries including varieties not so well- known today.
• Apples: Queen’sa, Bullies, Five Crown, Snowy, Carpenter, Granny Smiths, Delicious, Rome beauties, McIntosh, King David’s, Democrates, Cleopreatias, Lalas, Jonathons, Buncomes and Luxenburg.
FRUIT 64 • Plums: Pond seedlings, Grand Dukes, Golden Drops, Wilsons, Green Gauge, Cherry Plums, Presidents, Black Diamonds, October Purples, Angelinas, Giant Prunes and Narabeens.
• Pears: Williams, Packham Triumphs, Bueosc Boses, Winter Neils, Josephines and Howells.
• Cherries: Early Lyons, Early Rivers, Napoleons, St Margarets, Republicans, Black Knights, Bleeding Hearts and Bigeroos.
The family also had walnut, chestnut, almond trees, grew quinces, nectarines, grapes, figs, apricots and peaches.
John remembers watering the orchard with a horse drawn spray pump using water from the dams on the property, and when the dams ran dry, from wells in the orchard and town water supply, when it was later connected.
A note on resources: Please see the resource file for a list of orchardists developed by Phil Stephenson of the Orange and District Historical Society. Over a number of years, Phil has been tracking down the orchardists of the district. He has identified over 900 orchardists and listed where possible their personal name, orchard name, locality and dates of occupation on that orchard. Phil has also provided his timeline of orcharding in the district, with references to other state or national events of relevance. This timeline has been developed over many years and is meticulous in its research.
The Orange and District Historical Society has also provided a number of relevant photos, which are in the resource file, including the photo of Roseteague, the Hicks family orchard in the 1850s and Charles Packham with two Packham’s Pear fruit trees.
Arthur and Janet Treweek run Thornbrook Orchard. In June 2017 they kindly gave me a tour of their orchard which has been run by the family for 60 years. Arthur’s father first arrived on his bicycle in the district during the Depression years of the 1930s, looking for work. He like the area and stayed working as a manager for the Bennett’s orchard for many years. In 1950 he purchased the land on which Thornbrook Orchard now stands. Over the next 16 years he continued to work for the Bennetts and slowly built up his own orchard, working at night and on weekends. In 1966, he and his family were able to move to Thornbrook Orchard permanently.
The family are passionate fruit growers and have six decades of living and working on this particular piece of land. They also chart the changing nature of fruit orcharding over the time too. Ten years ago they stopped shipping their fruit to the Sydney markets as it was becoming too expensive. They now sell at local farmers’ markets and through a seasonal pick your own scheme which is very popular with Sydney residents.
They have a shed full of equipment and boxes which track the change in technology over time. They also have a number of pieces of machinery, some historical. Their family orchard is an interesting example of change over time. They are an interesting story of change over time, in both how they operate their property and the wealth of machinery and tools on their property. Their
FRUIT 65 daughter Paula Charnock came to one of the consultation sessions and her contact details are listed in the resource file.
The National Film and Sound Archives have a small selection of film directly related to Orange, and orchards in Orange in particular. Please see the more detailed document ‘Archival Film at the NFSA.’ The best film on orchards is a late 1960s film on Alan Blake’s orchard. It shows the orchard, trees, men picking apples with the canvas bags and loading them into the wooden boxes, tractor pulling the boxes, the grader inside and a woman selecting the rejects out and then the grader sorts them automatically by size. The film then shows apples being individually wrapped in waxed paper, then loaded into Blake’s cold store and ends showing apples stall in the city selling apples. (ID number: 86164).
There are also a few other options which would need a little bit of editing, which is all entirely possible, please see the detailed notes on the document ‘Archival Film at the NFSA’. Contact Sean Bridgeman to discuss.
FRUIT 66
ENDNOTES
1 Dorothy Balcomb Interviewed By Marg Carroll, Villages of the Heart project, 26 November 2013
2 Orange and District Illustrated Historical, Statistical and Descriptive 1928, reproduced by Orange City Council 1989, p155
3 Orange Apples Our History, http://www.orangeapples.com.au/ourstory/ourhistory, viewed 30 May 2017
4 Apple and Pear Australia Ltd, NSW Apple and Pear Production Statistics, http://apal.org.au/apple-pear-production-nsw/, viewed 30 May 2017. Australian Bureau of Statistics and Industry data collection operate on a state basis. At this stage the available data does not separate out Batlow from Orange. I have sought further clarification from the Department of Primary Industries, New South Wales for Orange specific information. The contact officer has not seen Orange data separated out from Batlow but will investigate.
Orange Apples Our History, http://www.orangeapples.com.au/ourstory/ourhistory, viewed 30 May 2017
Apple and Pear Australia Ltd, Apple and Pear Production in Australia (Statistical analysis of recent trends in apple and pear production), http://apal.org.au/apple-pear-production-australia/, viewed 30 May 2017
5 John Milne History of Orange compiled by John Milne of Lone Pine Avenue Orange, unpublished memoir, 1994 p18
6 Department of Primary Industries, Apple varieties, http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/agriculture/horticulture/pomes/apples/varieties, viewed 30 May 2017
7 Eric Ramsden George Hawke of Pendarves, Royal Australian Historical Society, http://www.rahs.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/06_Article-1_George-Hawke-of- Pendarves.pdf, viewed 25 May 2017, p172
8 Ibid p174
9 Ibid p174
10Kate Gahan and Jo Kijas, Byng & Beyond A Thematic History of Cornish Migration to Orange and District, 2012, p56
11Eric Ramsden George Hawke of Pendarves, Royal Australian Historical Society, http://www.rahs.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/06_Article-1_George-Hawke-of- Pendarves.pdf, viewed 25 May 2017, p180
12Eric Ramsden George Hawke of Pendarves, Royal Australian Historical Society, http://www.rahs.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/06_Article-1_George-Hawke-of- Pendarves.pdf, viewed 25 May 2017, p180
Kate Gahan and Jo Kijas, Byng & Beyond A Thematic History of Cornish Migration to Orange and District, 2012, p31-32
FRUIT 67
13 Finn, Rosslyn, Packham Charles Henry, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/packham-charels- henry13142/text23787, published in hardcopy 2005
14Apple and Pear Australia Ltd, Apple and Pear Varieties, http://apal.org.au/industry-info/apple- and-pear-varieties/ and Melanie Pierce, A village claims its history on ABC Online 22 March 2015, http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2015/04/22/4221306.htm viewed 29 May 2017
Orange Regional Museum exhibition panels Packham Pear, Central West NSW Museums 15 Hughes, Trueman and Ludlow, Orange City Council Heritage Study, Orange City Council, 1986 p43
16 Paul James, Australian Cherry Production Guide, Cherry Growers Australia Inc, Lenswood, 2011, p16
18 Orange Apples, Bob Grant Local Heroes, http://www.orangeapples.com.au/ourheroes/bobgrant, viewed 30 May 2017
19 Elizabeth Edwards Fruitful Landscapes, Orange City Council, Orange, 2006, p20
20Melissa Hamling, Orchard netting saves apple crops from hail and fruit foxes, ABC Online 6 March 2015, http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2015-03-06/orchard-netting/6285292, viewed 30 May 2017
21 Department of Agriculture Victoria, Codling Moth, http://agriculture.vic.gov.au/agriculture/pests- diseases-and-weeds/pest-insects-and-mites/codling-moth, viewed 30 May 2017
22 Department of Primary Industries and Regions South Australia, Apple and Pear Pests and Diseases, http://www.pir.sa.gov.au/aghistory/horticulture/apples/apple_and_pear_pests_and_diseases, viewed 30 May 2017
S. J. Hicks Early History of Orcharding in the Orange District Society hears Mr S J Hicks, 21 September 1955, unspecified newspaper article provided by descendant Jenny Maher, see resource file.
23 Minister for Agriculture, The Hon. John Perry MP, The Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales, Sydney, Government Printer, 1910, p82
24 Department of Primary Industries and Regions South Australia, Apple and Pear Pests and Diseases, http://www.pir.sa.gov.au/aghistory/horticulture/apples/apple_and_pear_pests_and_diseases, viewed 30 May 2017
Apple and Pear Australia Ltd Codling Moth http://apal.org.au/codling-moth-control/, viewed 30 May 2017
Department of Primary Industries New South Wales, EH Zeck Collection http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/about-us/services/collections/scientific-illustrations/zeck/codling-moth, viewed 30 May 2017
FRUIT 68
25 Roseteague The Property of Mr Joseph Hicks Western Advocate 10 December 1903, provided by Jenny Mahr descendant, see resource file
FRUIT 69 6. Produce
“Life on the farm was fairly hard during the war due to the rationing of most essential products, including food items, clothing, rubber tyres for vehicles and bicycles, fuel etc. Dad planted acres of peas and potatoes and oats, which were all harvested by hand, except for the oats, which were cut and made into sheaves by the reaper and binder, pulled by three draught horses.” John Wiggins of Huntley1
The evolution of produce farming in the region reflects the change of agricultural practices over time. Throughout the 19th century, vegetables like potatoes, cabbages and peas were grown by families on moderate sized properties. Family farms were also usually highly mixed properties, meaning they often had other produce like honey, herbs, quinces or nuts which they harvested for their own use and for sale. They sold their produce into the villages and towns, with some families also establishing their own green grocer stores or selling to neighbours. The Chinese families of the district were major producers of the vegetables eaten in town. With the arrival of the railway, produce was more easily sold into Sydney and other cities. In the 20th century, the district saw these smaller family farms face competition from other states and overseas, for example potato growers in Victoria and South Australia. Mechanisation of the farm from the 1940s onwards, the attraction of city life, and low returns, saw many farms unable to support adult children as workers on the farm. The number of farms declined. The late 20th century and into the new millennium has seen a resurgence of both producer and consumer interest in niche produce like olives.
Peas and Potatoes Peas and potatoes were grown extensively on the rich basalt soils around Millthorpe including into Spring Hill. They are well suited to the climate and terrain. They require nutrient rich soil and wet damp conditions, which the district provides. Fresh peas were much sought after in the city and the arrival of the railway in 1877 into Millthorpe spurred on local farmers to supply peas. Fresh peas could be picked and delivered to city homes the next day during the November to April season.
Pea pods were originally picked off the vines by a team of 'pea pickers'. This changed in 1944 when Gordon Edgell Pty Ltd established a Pea Viner just out of Millthorpe on the Bathurst Road. The peas were “cut” on the vine in the paddock, raked into windrows, loaded onto a truck using a pea vine loader and then transported to the Viner. Edgell’s became large processors of canned peas, which were in demand during the Second World War, as canned peas could be easily stored and shipped to the troops.
“And of course Spring Hill also had the peas and the potatoes and some of the migrants there who couldn’t get other jobs they used to go... I remember Worboyses. My mother used to go and pick peas there with the others and... to earn some money.” Alexandra Stefanie Rezko 2
Tastes changed with canned and fresh peas slowly being replaced by frozen peas. Peas have not been produced on a commercial scale in the district since the 1970’s.3
PRODUCE 70
“l look back and think how hard my parents worked. My father purchased this property when I was a few months old and he moved out here and it was virgin country. He had to clear it, fence it, put sheds and a house on it and then work it. He worked very hard farming. He grew wheat and oats for hay and grain, and grew potatoes and peas. And it was all done with horse-work which consisted of an eight-horse team.” Bill Nicholls4
Potato picking in Maitland NSW. This photograph is the clearest one showing rows of potatoes and the simple way a family harvested potatoes with the sacks and a reused can. 1925-1957. Sam Hood State Library of New South Wales.
PRODUCE 71
Potato grading at Millthorpe. Orange and District Historical Society.
Chinese Market Gardens Chinese migrants arrived in Australia first as indentured labour usually to pastoral stations, and then to seek their fortune on Australia’s goldfields in the 1850s. Many migrants returned home, viewing the Australian experience as a temporary episode to seek wealth. For those Chinese migrants who remained in Australia many turned to market gardening. In his extensive study of the Chinese in this region, Dr Barry McGowan commented that market gardening could be a highly profitable enterprise. A market garden had low start-up costs as land could be leased and in partnership with other Chinese men, and vegetables, chickens and pigs were raised for sale.5
Chinese market gardens were usually situated on flat land surrounding rivers and creeks. This land is often rich in nutrients and has close access to water, for the hand watering of the vegetables. The historical trail left by Chinese market gardens is often seen in the newspaper reports of floods and storms, which destroyed these gardens on the flats of flooded rivers. There is also documented history of water manipulation to irrigate the surrounding market gardens. McGowan reports on the application of licence in 1911 in Molong for Hong Shue to build a race for irrigation. He also notes that the Chinese market gardens were well-regarded for their neat and orderly layouts and meticulous maintenance, including fertilisation by night soil (human waste) and horse manure. The vegetables grown included pumpkin, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, lettuce, cauliflower, celery, turnips, cabbage, peas, beans, radishes and watercress.6
PRODUCE 72
Chinese garden in Victoria 1874, J.C. Armytage 1874, National Library of Australia. While this image does show Victoria rather than Orange or NSW, it is an excellent representation of the various characteristics noted by Dr Barry McGowan in his report. Note the flat land, the small huts and the orderly nature of the produce.
McGowan includes detailed listings of locations of Chinese market gardens including:
• Frost Street and Woodward Street, Orange owned by Willie Lee who employed several Chinese men as workers. Willie Lee sold his vegetables door-to-door in West Orange.
• Moulder Street, whole block on the southern side from Anson Street to Sale Street.
• Cheeseman’s Creek (west of Orange). Willie Hang Sing had a market garden at Cowra, then Cheeseman’s Creek and later behind his fruit and vegetable shop in Orange. (early 1900s) Jimmy Lum is also recorded as being a market gardener on Cheeseman’s Creek in the 1920s.
• Breen Street. Lue Hang Sing had a market garden on Breen Street from 1956/58 onwards where he also worked with two or three other men. Later moved to Woodward Street.
PRODUCE 73 • Frost Street. Frank Hang Sin possibly had a market garden on Frost Street from the 1940s onwards.
• Chinamen’s Bend, near Lucknow next to the cemetery from the 1890s onwards.
• Craigieburn, south of Orange. Market garden was located on Spring Creek on this property
Chinese gardener with cabbage, 1880-1940 (property at Bourke), State Library of NSW
Niche Produce From the earliest days of white settlement, families have grown small quantities of niche produce like hazelnuts and chestnuts, honey, figs and olives. By the mid-19th century walnuts, chestnuts, hazelnuts and almonds were grown for domestic use and the surplus sold or bartered. Figs were usually eaten fresh, and today are grown commercially at Rosnay Farm, Canowindra. Olives may have been processed to eat whole or as oil. The Macarthurs at Elizabeth Farm Parramatta were producing olive oil in 1825 from their own trees, and the late 19th century saw large scale planting of olive trees across Australia. Today olive oil is produced commercially by Aiblene Grove, Borenore and since 1998 by Staniero Olive Grove, outside Canowindra. Today Jean and Basil Baldwin on commercial grow hazelnuts on two properties near Orange. The first 500 trees were planted two decades ago. 7
Pollination of fruit trees is mandatory and there have not been enough native bees to provide adequate pollination, so many orchards also keep their own bee hives. Many orchardists have over the years become skilled apiarists as a result. The honeybee used for pollination and honey production in the European tradition is not native to Australia and was introduced in 1822. On a visit to Thornbrook Orchard at Nashdale in June 2017, I noticed hives located strategically around the orchard.
PRODUCE 74 It was also common for families on farms to keep chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys. Surplus chicken eggs were sold into the towns. Brian Griffiths from Carcoar remembers packaging up eggs to go on the train to family members in town.
Above and Below: Egg box Golden Memories Millthorpe Museum
PRODUCE 75 ENDNOTES
1 John Wiggins Huntley interviewed by Alex Rezko for the Villages of the Heart project 2013
2 Alexander Rezko interviewed by Julie Skyes in The Rowan Tree, Villages of the Heart Telling Rural Stories, Orange City Council, Orange, 2014, p89
3 Information on peas provided by Orange Regional Museum exhibition panel Pea Growing in the Millthorpe District
4 Bill Nicholls of Huntley, Spring Hill interviewed by Alex Rezko for Villages of the Heart Project 2013
5 Dr Barry McGowan and Genevieve Mott Thematic Study of the Chinese People of Orange, Blayney and Cabonne Shires, 2016, p52
6 Ibid p 53-54, 56, 60
7 A Brief History of Olives in Australia, http://www.oliveaustralia.com.au/Australian__History/australian_history.html, viewed 22 June 2017 Michael Cavangh, Hazelnuts are gold for one couple, 11 May 2017 http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2017-04-19/hazelnut-harvest-baldwin/8455052, viewed 22 June 2017
PRODUCE 76 7. Wine
“Grape vines grow all about the place – at the side of the house, at the back, and there are fine rows in front, shut out from the road by a dense hawthorn hedge –a beautiful sight from the sitting room.” Sydney Mail and NSW Advertiser 7 December 1878
19th Century Grapes During the 19th century and well into the 20th, table and wine grapes were one of the fruit crops planted by orchardists in the region, particularly around Molong. The earliest record of grapes growing in the district is usually attributed to the late 19th century, 1865 to 1878. It is wine grapes, not table grapes that get the first mention here for this date.
The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser for 7 December 1878 records a visit to the properties of Mr Caspar Schmich and Mr Bohringer. Both were situated at Borenore on the Forbes Road. The reporter gives us an insight in the orchards and vineyards on both properties. Of most note, is the fact that the report is very clear that both Mr Schmich and Mr Bohringer are devoted to producing wine from the grapes they grow.
Mr Bohringer settled on his land in 1865. On 100 acres, with two acres devoted to the vineyard and 1 1/2 acres to his orchard, Mr Bohringer grew Hermitage, Burgundy, Verdeilho and Muscatel grapes used for making wine. He also grew wheat, producing 700 bushels of wheat in 1877. Mr Bohringer also won a prize for his Reisling wine in 1877.
Mr Schmich has a similar property devoted to wine making and fruit growing. The reporter noted that Mr Schmich’s “..wine has all the quality of superior manufacture, but like the other, wants keeping another year; that is it cannot be matured until it is two years old.” Interesting the reporter also makes a comment which resonates through the years. “If people who live in towns only knew half the trouble and expense there are in connection with an orchard they would not begrudge the price which the gardener asks for his fruit.”1
In 1891 the Molong Express and Western District Advertiser reported on the statistics of the Agricultural Gazette produced by the colony’s Department of Agriculture. The statistics are quoted in full here as they provide a good snapshot of exactly what crops are grown. Of note too, is there are almost as many table grapes being grown as wine grapes, there are slightly more acres devoted to wine grapes in 1891. It is recorded that 1,300 gallons of wine was produced and 16 tons of table grapes.
Acreage under cultivation in Molong 1891 For grain Wheat – 18,879 Maize – 3,650 Oats - 253 Barley – 84 Rye – 11
WINE 77 For hay Wheat – 3,125 Barley – 20 Oats – 1,621 Lucerne and sown grasses – 210
For green food Maize – 111 acres Barley – 5 acres Rye – 24 Lucerne and sown grasses – 761 Sorghum – 10
Root crops Potatoes – 307 Turnips – 1
Grape vines For wine - 13 For table use - 12 Not bearing - 10
Other fruit orchards Productive – 53 Not bearing – 50
Miscellaneous Market gardens – 50 Peas and beans – 7 Pumpkins and melons – 52 Unspecified – 332
In other parts of the district, around Orange and Mt Canobolas early settlers of Cornish and German families also planted table grapes. Black muscats were a popular table grape, grown by the following families: West, Stanford, Hicks, Carthew, Dale, Offner, Gersbach, Schmich and Bohringer. Grapes were also grown on 10 acres in 1885 at Dalton’s Duntryleague homestead in Orange. The French gatekeeper produced good quality wines there. Land sold adjacent to Duntryleague from the Campdale estate in 1909 was advertised as being good for homes, orchards, vineyards, market gardens and dairying.3 By 1925 in the Mt Canobolas, Nashdale and Borenore areas 440 acres of table grapes were planted.4
20th Century Developments Moving into the early 20th century, we learn of other growers in the area who have grape vines in their orchards and farms. In 1913 the Molong Argus and Western District Advertiser described the property of Mr Stanley Rowe at Bryan’s Flat on the Molong to Parkes Road. This is his second property, as he had a similar successful orchard and vineyard at Orange. He was attracted to Molong’s climate for a second property. In 1913 Mr Rowe imported from an unspecified location in WINE 78 Australia 1000 grape vines which he planted at Bryan’s Flat, Molong. It is unclear if these were table or wine grapes. He also established a nursery on the farm with up to 2000 cuttings being cultivated for planting in 1914. It is reported that he planned to grow peach, cherries and other stone fruit with the view to providing the Sydney market.5
A decade later, the Molong Argus and Western District Advertiser noted the pioneers of grape growing in the district as Mr G Schmich, presumably a descendant of Caspar Schmich who planted in 1865 and Mr Stanley Rowe mentioned above. Mr S Packham, Mr Forrester, Mr King, Mr E. Bennett, Mr H. Burgess and Mr W. Parker are also listed as growing table grapes commercially on a large scale. The varieties of table grapes are Flame Tokay, Lady’s Finger, Grose Coleman, Sweet Water, Red and Black Muscat, Fox Goyre, Sultana, Golden Queen and Gordo Blonca.6 For Orange district, 425 acres under grape vines in 1926-27.7
Descriptions of properties in this 1920s decade show us the combined nature of many orchards and vineyards. On Mr Bennett’s orchard and vineyard Roseglen, he had apples, pears, peaches, plums, figs, nectarines, apricots, almonds, persimmons, cherries, oranges, lemons and English meddlers. His daughters grew strawberries, two types: the Illawarra and the Crewswell. The farm also grew loganberries and kept bees amongst his 400 vines of Doradilla, Grose Coleman and Gordo Blanco grape types. By 1921, Mr Bennett had been on his property for 44 years with his family of seven. He started with 44 acres and acquired adjoining farms and leased some Crown lands to make it 1000 acres. It was only in 1917, that Mr Bennett went into viticulture.8
Interestingly the district’s growers were active in promoting their product to the Sydney market right from the early days of the 20th century. For example 20 types of grapes were sent for a display at Searl’s Florist on George Street in the city in 1924. In 1926 another display was in the Marcus Clarke building at Railway Square underneath Central Station.9
Promotional poster 1930 National Library of Australia WINE 79
By the mid-20th century the outlook for the grape industry in the district was mixed with suggestions that production was not what it used to be. Newspaper reports and oral history interviews suggest a few reasons for the decline. The NSW Agriculture Department is reported in 1963 as saying that the substantial table grape industry of the past declined when “vineyards were grubbed out when there was a decline in the popularity of the table grape.” Other suggestions have been competition from the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area around Leeton and Griffith, which was developed from 1912 onwards. With a warmer climate, grapes ripen earlier in this area and get to market before the grapes from Orange and district.10
In the 1950s and 1960s there were also attempts to revive wine growing in the district. Specialists from the Department of Agriculture were looking for new areas to encourage wine grape growing. They travelled New South Wales and considered Orange as too cold and the Forbes – Parkes area as too hot. So a test planting was initiated at Molong in 1953 on the property of Mr John Pryde. Here it was intended that an acre of Black Shiraz and ½ acre of Cabinet Sauvignon be planted. In 1963 the department reported back that they considered the area had “very good prospects” for a wine and table grape industry. They did warn though that getting started in a wine grape business meant a significant upfront investment, which may have prohibited local growers from entering the industry at this time.11
During the 1950s the D’Aquino family in Orange started making their own liqueurs and wines. Many of the grapes came from Mudgee and Griffith. The D’Aquinos are generally credited with introducing wine drinking to the region. (Further information on the D’Aquino family is included in the Migration chapter.) Other local migrant families also made wine for their own consumption. Cecilia Dvivko from Slovenia remembers her father making wine, and it is his wine press that Phil Stephenson now has.
“Cecilia’s father, Mr Jug, wasted no time in setting up a wine cellar under his garage. Mr Jug also had an illegal still and used to make slivovicz and other spirits. Cecilia and her mother used to live in fear of the police finding out.”12
WINE 80
Trellis of Table Grapes, Ebenezer and David Syme, 25 April 1866, State Library of Victoria
The Vintage in Australia, Ebenezer and David Syme, 25 April 1866, State Library of Victoria
WINE 81
Picking grapes 1921-1924, unknown location. State Library of New South Wales, PXB 310/120- 180
Wine making - inspecting grapes c. 1930 Sam Hood State Library of New South Wales
WINE 82
Wine Making late 19th century, Ebenezer and David Syme, 10 June 1878, State Library of Victoria This winery was at Bendigo in the late 19th century, and while of a different location, does show the work involved. Each drawing is beautifully executed and shows the process in three stages.
WINE 83
The Emergence of Boutique Wineries
“The modern Orange region wine industry was pioneered with early plantings in 1980-1 by the Fardells at Nashdale (Nashdale Vineyard) and the Bourkes at Millthorpe (Sons & Brothers). These vineyards were followed in 1983-5 by the Doyles (Bloodwood), Swanson (Cargo Road Wines) and Crawford (Forest Edge) families.”13
Today Orange has over 3700 acres as vineyards, with 80 vineyards and 40 labels. It is recognised as one of Australia’s premier wine grape districts, quite possibly Australia’s highest wine growing region.14 Table grapes are no longer grown on a commercial scale. It is wine grapes, which have helped place the district on the tourist and food map of the state, and country. Elevation has played an important role in growing this industry. The region can grow a range of wines particular to different elevations. Today the region producers the following types of wines: Arneis, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Pinot Gris, Viognier, Gewurztraminer, Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz, Pinot Noir, Tempranillo, Grenache, Rose Wines and Sparkling Wines.15
The Wine Australia report on the Orange region for 2016 notes that 60% of the area is planted with red wine grapes and 40% white. A total of 7.31 tons was crushed in 2015. The top five varieties produced were Shiraz, Chardonnay, Cabarnet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blance and Merlot. The main export destination for Orange’s wines was China taking 28% of exports. The other top destinations for export were United Kingdom, Finland, New Zealand and Norway.16
The growth in the wine industry in Orange and region is a reflection of the changing tastes of Australians. For many decades, beer and spirits dominated the alcohol market. Wine was expensive and considered as the drink of the elite.17 With the arrival of European migrants post- World War II and the ‘Don’t Drink and Drive’ public awareness campaigns from the 1980s, wine has become democratized. Wine, generally has lower alcohol content and a wide variety of tastes which reflect the environment and conditions under which it grows. Since the 1980s, these characteristics have helped to move wine from the elite market into the mass consumer market.
In 1980 to 1981 Ted Fardell founded Nashdale Vineyard and Christopher Bourke founded Sons and Brothers at Millthorpe. John Swanson established a vineyard at Cargo Road Wines and Stephen and Rhonda Doyle moved to Griffin Road and founded Bloodwood Wines in 1983. Other early planters were Murray Smith and family of CanobolasSmith in 1986 and Philip Shaw in 1988. Some of the early planters were locals like Ted Fardell, a solicitor in Orange and Borry Gartrell, who was from an apple orcharding family. Others like Rhonda and Stephen Doyle, Murray Smith and Philip Shaw were passionate about wine growing and deliberately moved to the area to start their vineyards.
Borry Gartrell attributes the growth of wine grapes in the district to this arrival of enthusiastic wine growers, attracted by the climate, temperatures, elevation and soils.18 The Doyles provide a perfect case study of the type of wine makers attracted to the region during the 1980s.
The Doyles Rhonda and Stephen Doyle were initially from North Queensland and had moved to Sydney. Stephen was a librarian and Rhonda was a manager for the Department of Social Security. While
WINE 84 living in Sydney they discovered wine and were inspired to make their own, which is what they did in their own backyard. Stephen read everything on wine he could and completed a post-graduate wine making course at Roseworthy College, Adelaide. From 1976, they began making wine with the grapes from a winery near Wellington. The owners of this winery Glenfinlass Brain and Nyassa Holmes taught the Doyles about making wine and in a way the Doyles had a hands-on apprenticeship over many weekends with the Holmes. They purchased grapes from vineyards around Australia, developing a good knowledge of different types. In 1980 the Doyles made a Chardonnay and Shirax from Mudgee grapes. With this, the Doyles won a major award for amateur wine makers. It was this award which made them think seriously about developing their own vineyard and winery.
“Once we won that, we thought lets get serious about this and do it for ourselves.” Rhonda Doyle19
Stephen, through his post-graduate qualification in wine from Roseworthy College, had learnt the details of careful site selection. He applied his knowledge and skills to isolating regions of Australia which would be ideal for a vineyard. Orange emerged as a very stable cool climate region, comparable to Bordeaux in France. Bordeaux had frequent coastal showers in Autumn which causes problems for ripening grapes. However, traditionally in the Orange region, Autumn is the driest time of the year. The soils were also favourable, as Stephen Doyle describes on his website:
“These soils are low to moderate in vigour, warm and free draining gravel based soils which hug the northern edge of the Mount Canobolas volcanic red mountain earth plateau. They provide good air drainage for frost control and provide plenty of opportunity with their red clay base to construct hill side dams for irrigation.”20
From these early beginnings the Doyles grew their vineyard, along with the help of the community. Elisabeth Edwards and the Central Western District team helped to promote the growing industry In 1991 they asked Rhonda and Stephen to write about food and wine. So they did a weekly column from 1991 onwards, one week writing about wine, one week about food. Rhonda is also extensively involved in F.O.O.D Week and is keen to ensure it is inclusive of all people. She has worked with local Aboriginal women and Sudanese refugees to ensure they are part of the week.21
The Gartrells Borry Gartrell’s story is an interesting example of a local family moving away from the traditional apple industry into a diversified wine and food business. Borry purchased his current property at the age of 20 in 1965 as he could see that his family’s original orchard would soon be under threat from Orange city expansion.22 On the 135 acres he planted apples, cherries and plums selling into Sydney and other markets.
In the early 1990s the family planted their first wine grapes, which was the result of several factors. Borry was influenced by the arrival and vineyard growth of the Doyles, Smiths and Swanstons. On a study trip to China in 1991, Borry learnt that a government-sponsored orchard of 12,000 hectares was being planted. This was the entire Australian land under orchard. In this period, most of Orange’s export of fruit went to South-East Asia. With such huge competition from China for this market, it was likely that Australian fruit would suffer. Borry and his new wife Gaye saw this as a
WINE 85 sign of the times and moved the family business aware from a traditional fruit orchard into a “wine and fruit tourism business.”23
They have continued to diversify their business. In 2003 they planted 500 oak trees inoculated with Black Perigord truffles. They opened onsite accommodation in 2002 and a restaurant in 2005.For many years, Borry reports they were the event venue for the majority of weddings in Orange. Today they grow quinces, truffles, cider apples, wine grapes, cherries, apples, plums, persimmons, make wine and apple cider and run events and dinners. Borry sells the bulk of his wine through restaurants and cellar door, he has wines stocked by Qantas and has been in the top six wines of Australia.24
WINE 86 ENDNOTES
1 Notes from a Westward Journey, Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser Saturday 7 December 1878, page 887 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/162697936, viewed 10 July 2017
2 Molong Agricultural Statistics, Molong Express and Western District Advertiser Saturday 3 October 1891, page 2, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/140163774, viewed 10 July 2017
3 Heritage Study by Hughes Trueman Ludlow for Orange City Council, 1986.
4 Orange Region Vignernons Association, Orange Region Terroir, Orange, 2010, p4
5 Grape Growing at Molong, Molong Express and Western District Advertiser, Saturday 15 November 1913, page 18, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article101041731, viewed 10 July 2017
6 Molong Grapes Boomed Molong Express and Western District Advertiser, 22 March 1924, page 20, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/139391413, viewed 10 July 2017
7 Orange and District Illustrated 1928 Historical, Statistical and Descriptive, Orange City Council, 1989 reprint, p155
8 The Possibilities of Our District Molong Argus, 23 December 1921, page 3 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/101038317#, viewed 10 July 2017
9 Molong Grapes Searl’s Window Display, Sun, 25 March 1924, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news- article224571687, 10 July 2017 and Molong Fruit Comprehensive Display, Sydney Morning Herald 17 March 1926, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article28062713, 10 July 2017
10 Molong move for grape development, Western Herald 10 May 1963, page 8 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article142318967, 10 July 2017 and Rhonda Doyle, pers comm 5 July 2017
11 Molong move for grape development Western Herald, 10 May 1963, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/103925148/10630450, viewed 10 July 2017 and Good Prospects for Molong Grape Industry Western Herald 12 July 1963, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news- article142317819, viewed 10 July 2017
12 Oral history interview conduct by Elisabeth Edwards for the NSW Heritage Centre, see file note
13 Orange Region Vignernons Association, Orange Region Terroir, Orange, 2010, p4
14 Ibid p1
15 The Orange Wine Region Varieties http://www.winesoforange.com.au/varieties.html, viewed 10 July 2017
16 Winefacts, Orange Region Snapshot, Wine Australia, https://www.wineaustralia.com/market- insights/regional-snapshots, viewed 11 July 2017
17 Rhonda Doyle, Bloodwood wines, pers comm 5 July 2017
18 Borry Gartrell, pers comm 4 July 2017
WINE 87
19 Rhonda Doyle pers comm 5 July 2017 and Orange New South Wales https://www.wineaustralia.com/whats-happening/stories-of-australian-wine/june-2017/orange, viewed July 2017
20Bloodwood Wines Our History https://www.bloodwood.biz/history-blog/2016/11/12/the-new- tradition, viewed 10 July 2017
21 Rhonda Doyle pers comm 5 July 2017
22 Maker Profile https://theciderlink.com.au/maker/borry-gartrell-borrodell-vineyard, viewed 10 July 2017
23 The Story of Borrodell, https://borrodell.com.au/story-of-borrodell/, viewed 10 July 2017
24 Borry Gartrell pers comm 4 July 2017, please confirm with Borry directly if you intend to use his words in the exhibition
WINE 88 8. Technology
“The hay was cut with... with a chaff cutter... to feed the horses through the year and the same as the grain but the surplus was then sold for a profit…. about when I was sixteen- seventeen we did a little of that harvesting but then it seemed to go right out as tractors were introduced and the whole way of farming completely…the horse days went by the wayside then. William Nicholls, Huntley.1
Why does technology and infrastructure matter? Technology on the farm and orchard means the tools like tractors and machinery. Infrastructure for the farm and orchard in the broadest sense ranges community and regional level infrastructure, like railways and roads (see separate chapter), through to private or co-operative buildings, like cool stores. Technology directly leads to different infrastructure, without the invention of large-scale commercial refrigeration, the cool stores found on orchards all over the district would be impossible.
Technology and infrastructure is critically important to the history of farming, orcharding and viticulture. On an economic level, it radically increases productivity of individual farms and raises the overall sector output. On the personal level, at each successive stage of technological invention and adoption, the lived experiences of those doing the work radically changes. What they do every day changes and what they produce can change. Much of the work on farms and orchards is physically hard, and there is an ongoing quest to make this both more efficient but also easier. In Fruitful Landscapes, Elizabeth Edwards identified four pieces of technology which changed the way local orchardists worked, and made life easier for them. They are:
1. Light tubular steel ladders replaced the heavy Oregon wood ladders. 2. Air-operated pruning shears, first used by local orchardist Bill Munro, made pruning easier. 3. Orange Fruitgrowers’ Cooperative Cool Stores used a forklift for the first time in 1956. 4. Wooden bushel boxes replaced with cardboard boxes, which were lighter to carry.2
On Thornbrook Orchard, operated since the 1950s by the Treweek family, the change in technology is clearly seen, including in the following: • The orchard spray carts including the horse drawn wagon adapted to fit to a tractor. • The collection of wooden bushel boxes and cardboard boxes. • The change in the canvas picking aprons, which, while they have stayed essentially the same overall design, small modifications have been made to improve their carry capacity and reduce strain on the worker’s shoulders. • Automated netting machine which reduces the strain on workers and also the number of people hours to net the fruit trees and grapes. Also an automated hedge row trimmer which trims the fruit trees, changing the desired size of fruit trees and people hours required. Fruit trees can now be planted closer together and are grown for smaller heights.
Stages of development over time Changes in technology and infrastructure happen with one person or a small group of people creating an invention or improving and adapting the technology. This is then slowly adopted one
TECHNOLOGY 89 farm or orchard at a time. Field Days and Agricultural Shows historically played an important role in raising the knowledge and awareness of farmers in the application of new technology, particularly machinery and synthetic fertilisers. The changes in technology and infrastructure over time are mapped below on a macro scale with references to first the Australian experience and then to the Orange and district experience.
Detailed exploration of technology is not that appealing to a visitor in an exhibition like Paddock to Plate which has to survey a large story over a sizeable district. There are places within the region, like Millthorpe Museum, which explores this angle of the story very well already, and the visitor with a particular interest in technology can be directed to Millthorpe on the driving tour. However what is relevant to the overall story of food in this region is:
a) How on early white settlement village technologies and the industrial revolution technologies were both present in this district. b) How change over time in technologies has changed the nature of what is produced (e.g. apple varieties, see the Fruit chapter) and the productivity of what is produced. c) How change over time in technologies aims to make life a little bit easier for the farmer and orchardist, to reduce the physical strain.
TECHNOLOGY 90 Indicative dates Description Events Environmental Social challenges challenges Village Technologies >1788 Very simple machinery European settlement Lack of knowledge of Convict labour which relies on human, of Australia with village land and climate Need for capital horse, wind or water based technology power
Industrial Revolution 1760s – 1950s More complex Key inventions of Frequent droughts The question of land machinery using agricultural machinery ownership in this steam, diesel, petrol like tractors and Lack of water natural environment harvesters knowledge Application of Decline in employment synthetic fertilisers and Impact of wars and Soil degradation and on farms insecticides depression exhaustion (1920s)
Mechanisation of farm activities
Technological / 1960s to today Genetic engineering of International Frequent droughts Changing farm Information Age crops (early 1990s) competition practices due to Soil salinity, erosion, technology, Automation of farm Changing export degradation environmental work through markets away from the challenges machinery UK to ASEAN, EU, Finding suitable crops Middle East and North for this environment Decline in employment Precision agricultural America and number of farms internet and satellite Consumer awareness Refined use of of food issues: GM, fertilisers and food miles, chemical chemicals inputs
TECHNOLOGY 91 Village Technologies European settlers in this district brought both village technology with them, and some from the Industrial Revolution. Human or horse power on the farm, orchard and in the home sat alongside industrial technology like steam powered flour mills. The complete transformation from a village based technology system to an industrial system gradually took place until the 1960s.
Village technologies on the farm relied on human, horse or bullock power in Australia. The collection of farm ploughs at Millthorpe Museum and Canowindra Historical Museum show the nature of village technologies applied on the farm and orchard in this area. The ploughs are either driven by hand or attached to at least one, if not more, horses and bullocks to plough a field. Hand pruning of orchards and picking of fruit is another example of village technologies.
Village technologies in food production rely on human, horse, wind or water power to transform the raw material into food. The earlier flour mills in colonial New South Wales were human powered, wind powered and then horse powered. By the time this district was being settled, industrial technologies were slowly being used. Templar’s Flour Mill is an interesting example of this cross over period, it is noted and advertised as a steam-mill, as are the later Bowen’s Steam Flour Mill and Dalton Brother’s Flour Mills in Orange.
Another cross-over technology of the village technologies to the Industrial Revolution is the selective breeding of animals. Shorthorn cattle were common in the district and many local farmers became renowned for the quality of their breeding stock. Animal genetics and breeding is a practice that continues to be refined.3
A characteristic of village technologies is that large numbers of people were required to grow, process and cook the food, whether that’s in the home or in the factory. In 1901, 30% of the male population and 10% of the female population in Australia were employed on the farm. (White population only as Aboriginal workers weren’t counted in the 1901 census.) An example of this is the number of workers needed to cut chaff. Canowindra residents remember the large number of chaff cutters needed in season even into the 1920s and 1930s and that they used to travel from district to district and farm to farm following the work.4 In the home, much of the work is done by hand with simple technology like butter churns, bean slicers and apple peelers.
TECHNOLOGY 92
Chaff cutters on a property around Mandurama (most likely). Note the large number of men at work but also note the tractor engine on the right and its steam engine funnel. This photograph shows exactly that transformation period from village technologies to the Industrial Revolution. Evan Lumme, Mandurama Collection National Library of Australia. The quality of this image though for replication is quite poor.
TECHNOLOGY 93 Industrial Revolution
“Of course you’ve got the super. But they use liquid super these days as well as the dry. Well there’s not as much manual labour is there?... Well… it’s all done by machinery.” John Hammond, Molong5
The technology brought by the industrial revolution was more complex machinery that could be operated with internal and independent energy, first steam and then later diesel and petrol. In Australia steam powered tractors were used on farms from the 1880s onwards, and it would not have been uncommon to see horses standing alongside such tractors on farms. From 1939 to 1956, the number of tractors on Australian farms quadrupled from 42,000 to 202,000. At the same time the number of men and women employed fell to 14% of the population.6
The Industrial Revolution also saw the transformation in supporting infrastructure, particularly refrigeration. It took many years for refrigeration in Australia to be perfected. Refrigeration, in these early days, was the chemical process of consecutive compression and liquefaction, then decompression of ammonia to produce freezing temperatures. James Harrison in Geelong and the business Mort and Nicolle in Sydney experimented from the late 1840s onwards to prefect the process for Australian conditions. The first successful export of frozen beef from Sydney to London took place in 1880, over a journey of 59 days. Freezing works for country towns were much discussed and the first freezing works in the colony of NSW was tried at Orange in 1881. However it only lasted less than two years as the lack of refrigerated rail transport meant the meat thawed on the way to Sydney.7
Refrigeration also allowed the type of crops and fruit grown in the district to change. Prior to refrigeration, orchardists deliberately grew a wide variety of apples which were ready for picking and sale at progressively staggered times to maximise sales throughout the year. After refrigeration arrived, there was a slow change in the types of apples, but also other fruits grown.
The Orange Fruit Growers Cooperative Cool Stores is an example of the use of technology to transform the infrastructure available to growers. It was first established in 1928 and over the next three decades grew into a substantial facility, which could hold 120,000 cases and by 1970s 400,000 cases.8 Refrigerated ships from the mid-1880s onwards also opened up export markets of apples to the United Kingdom.9
In the home, refrigeration would not become widespread until the 1950s, with early adopters using electrified and gas refrigerators from the 1920s. The main reason for this is that it is technically more difficult to create the small scale refrigeration needed for the home, so it took some further years for this to be developed at an affordable price for households. So while Blayney Freezing Works was producing ice using mechanised and chemical refrigeration on a commercial scale, it was common for families in the district to still be using ice boxes and cool safes. Jill Cole recalls as a child going across to the Blayney Freezing Works in the 1940s to get chips of ice to make home made ice cream.10
The other significant contribution of the Industrial Revolution to farming was the application of synthetic fertilisers. It had been common practice to apply natural fertilisers, such as lime, to
TECHNOLOGY 94 paddocks. However, the industrial revolution allowed chemical fertilisers to be produced on a mass scale. Plants require three main nutrients to grow – nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous. Australian soils are often deficient in phosphorous, which was found to help cereal crops like wheat. From the 1900s onwards, imports of phosphorous were common and plants throughout the country were manufacturing the two main fertilisers, nitrogen and phosphate.11
Steam engine tractor and bicycle stand side by side with the workmen. This photograph shows the different types of technology on the farm in the late 19th century. Evan Lumme. Mandurama Collection. National Library of Australia.
TECHNOLOGY 95
Advertisement in the Australian Pastoral Directory 1903. It shows just how many pieces of equipment using steam technology was being applied in this cross over period.
TECHNOLOGY 96 Technological / Information Age Since the 1950s, the technological / information age has continued what the Industrial Revolution started, through further mechanisation which is now becoming automation and further application of information technology. It has also seen the refinement of certain farming practices, like the application of chemicals to control pests.
While the tractor brought the most change to the work and the numbers employed on the farm, since the 1950s gradual but steady change has seen other aspects of work automated, either fully or partly. Aspects of orchard work that were automated included watering through irrigation, pruning and trimming through hedge trimmers, and netting. By 1998, the number of Australians employed on farms was 4% of the population, a significant decline from the 1900s. The size of farms and orchards, as seen in the district’s orchards, also reduced so that there are now fewer but often larger operations.12
Since the 1990s, satellite technology has also provided satellite imagery to guide decisions on land use and crop production, and guided spraying and cultivation equipment. This is currently being extended with the use of internet and satellite connections to develop precision agriculture. This is where technology like Global Positioning Systems and soil sensors provide data for farmers to make decisions about when to plant, harvest and the exact quantity of inputs like fertilisers, water and insecticides required.13
Awareness of the problems of the Industrial Revolution technology has also caused changes in farming and orcharding practices. Past practices of wide scale application of insecticides were successful in killing many (if not all) pests, even those pests that were beneficial to the crop and environment. Dr Peter Gillespie of the Orange Agricultural Institute noted that more refinement of the application of sprays has taken place in recent years, in both type and application method.14
TECHNOLOGY 97
ENDNOTES
1 William Huntley interviewed by Stefanie Rezko for Villages of the Heart, 2013 see The Rowan Tree Villages of the Heart Telling Rural Stories, Orange City Council, 2014, p94
2 Elisabeth Edwards, Fruitful Landscapes, Orange, 2006, p17-18
3 Helen Hayes pers comm 19 May 2017
4 Peggy Nash, Jan Harrison and Jill McDonald pers comm 11 May 2017
5 John Hammond interviewed by Marg Carroll for Villages of the Heart see The Rowan Tree Villages of the Heart Telling Rural Stories, Orange City Council, 2014, p218
6 James Pollard A Hundred Years of Agriculture, ABS 1301.0 Year Book 2000, http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/b4005c38619c665aca25709000203b8d/3852d05cd2 263db5ca2569de0026c588!OpenDocument, viewed 28 June 2017
7 Keith Farrer, To Feed a Nation A history of Australian food science and technology, CSIRO, Collingwood, 2005, p55
8 Elisabeth Edwards, Fruitful Landscapes, Orange, 2006, pp17-19
9 Keith Farrer, To Feed a Nation A history of Australian food science and technology, CSIRO, Collingwood, 2005, p57
10 Jill Cole pers comm 14 June 2017
11 The Australian Chemical Industry, Australian Academy of Technical and Engineering Sciences, http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/604.html, viewed 28 June 2017
12 James Pollard, A Hundred Years of Agriculture, ABS 1301.0 Year Book 2000, http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/b4005c38619c665aca25709000203b8d/3852d05cd2 263db5ca2569de0026c588!OpenDocument, viewed 28 June 2017
13 Precision Agriculture CSIRO https://www.csiro.au/en/Research/AF/Areas/Sustainable- farming/Precision-agriculture, viewed 28 June 2017
14 Dr Peter Gillespie, Orange Agricultural Institute, pers comm 13 June 2017
TECHNOLOGY 98 9. Manufacturing
“[My father] used to rise early of a morning to stable them for a feed and then he milked the cows – we had a dairy as well – and my mother and father hand-milked about a dozen cows. They used to separate the cream and take it to the Spring Hill railway station by sulky and it was sent the Blayney butter factory.” Bill Nicholls1
Secondary industries grew up around the agricultural and pastoral producers of the region. They processed the raw product from farms, pastoral stations and orchards. At first this was a farm based enterprise. Many farmers and orchardists developed their own small scale processing plants or factories on their properties. Other businessmen and women developed stand alone factories to process and transform the raw product for resale.
The early diversity of manufacturing in the region reflects the self-sufficiency of farmers, orchardists, pastoralists and families in the 19th century, when products transported in from Sydney would spoil or be expensive. Into the 20th century with changes in technology and transport, many of the small manufacturing enterprises grew into substantial businesses while others closed in the face of first national and then international competition.
Flour Mills Flour mills were one of the earliest manufacturing industries in the region. Farmers established flour mills on their own properties and then processed their surrounding neighbours’ grains. Initially much of this production was for each homestead’s consumption with the excess sold to bakeries in the towns. Mechanisation from the mid to late 1800s saw many smaller mills replaced by larger flour mills, and from the late 1940s these large mills also moved into baking bread.2
Templer’s Mill, the district’s first flour mill, was built by John Arthur Templer on a property Narrambla five kilometres east of Orange on the Ophir Road in the middle of wheat fields. The mill operated from 1848 to 1869 and was powered by a stream-driven twelve horse power beam engine.
Many smaller villages soon also had their own flour mills, Canowindra had two flour mills and Cudal had one. Molong, Manildra, Blayney, Carcoar, Kerr’s Creek and Millthorpe also had flour mills.3
The flour mills at Carcoar shows the complexity and number of mills in one small village, and just how much flour was needed before the mills were consolidated into large enterprises. Thomas Icely had an operating flour mill from 1849. Another mill was opened in 1856 by Solomon Meyer, who was a local storekeeper. He sold it in 1862 but continued with his store. This mill was operated by Thomas Hilliar until 1875 when he sold it to Bayliss and Isaacs who ran it until 1881, at which point they couldn’t find a buyer. Great Western Steam Flour Mill opened on Naylor Street in 1877 in a new building. It continued operating until 1922 when it was demolished and a motor garage (presumably selling petrol and serving cars) built on the site.4
MANUFACTURING 99 Some of these mills grew into substantial businesses, assisted by the arrival of the railway. The Great Western Milling Co. Ltd at Millthorpe established in 1882 became one of the largest mills in the state. It employed 30 people and processed flour, pollard (a fine bran) and an early breakfast cereal. It was extended in 1907. There were also branches of this mill at Summer Hill and Canowindra. This mill closed down in 1962.5
“…somehow I eventually got a job in the flour mill in Millthorpe. I wasn’t very old 17 or 18. I was on the packing machine and taking flour off the packer then and sewing it and putting a tag on it. We tried to keep the place very clean. It was very trying for the first night I can tell you. Worked 8 hour night shift was twelve pm to 8am or 8am to 4pm. It was all shift work. They were in the £8 mark (approximately $18) between eight and nine pounds the idea I think was to do the work. You were paid pretty well in those days. Colin Nixon6
Molong had at least two flour mills, one on Gidley Street owned first by Charles Blakefield, then James Haslam, before being sold to James Black in 1889. At this time Black also owned the other mill called Black’s Flour Mill on Watson Street. Black’s Flour was exhibited at the Chicago Exhibition in 1893 and was awarded first prize.7
Orange had flour mills in the town including Nelson’s Steam Flour Mill from 1862 on the corner of Byng Street and Anson Street, and Dalton Bros Flour Mill from 1866 on the corner of Summer and Sale Streets, which moved to Peisley Street in 1908.
Dalton Bros Flour Mills In June 1874 the Freeman’s Journal newspaper of Sydney provided a detailed description of the three mills in Orange: Dalton Bros Flour Mill, Nelson’s Flour Mill and Bowen & Gillard’s Mill. Dalton Bros Flour Mill in 1874 had a 30 horse power engine and all work was completed by machinery. The grinding stones were kept cool by an industrial refrigerator to improve the quality of the ground flour. Three kinds of flour were produced, first grade, second grade and ration. The reporter even noted a fine coffee mill which ground coffee daily for the Dalton Bros store.
“Everything here is done by machinery even to the sacking of flour bags.” Freeman’s Journal June 18748
In 1906 the Dalton Bros Mill located in the town was demolished and a new significantly larger mill built on Peisley Street, closer to the railway station. It was operational by late January 1908. The new premises loaded directly onto the railway siding complete with an 80-foot verandah to protect the flour, pollard and bran. The silos on site had capacity to hold 50,000 bushels of wheat and the mill now had a 300 horse powered engine.9
The 1874 visit reported in the Freeman’s Journal also described the Nelson Brothers Mill which was smaller in size than Dalton Brothers Flour Mill. Nelson’s produced two grades of flour, first and second, using a 12-horse power engine. The other mill in town, Bowen & Gillard’s Mill, was the same size as Nelson Brothers Mill and produced the same grades of flour.10
MANUFACTURING 100 Mills Today Faced with overseas competition and consolidation of manufacturing into large enterprises to produce flour at market competitive prices, the village based mills progressively closed down through the mid-20th century.
Manildra is the only village to retain an operating flour mill, part of a larger business. The first mill in the town, Worrell Bros Gem of the West Roller Flour Mills opened in 1904, after relocating from Cargo. In the 1920s it was bought out and renamed Hamilton’s Gem of the West Flour. In 1952 it was purchased by Jack Honan who called it Manildra Flour Milling Company - Gem of the West Flour.11
Manildra Group is still run by the Honan family with the Manildra wheat flour sent to its factories in Sydney, Melbourne, Nowra, Thailand and the U.S.A. Expansion into other fields now see Manildra Group produce ethanol, canola oil, flours, sugars, paper and cardboard with interests in beef processing and sugar.12
Bowen’s Steam Flour Mill, Orange 1870-75. Holtermann Collection. National Library of Australia
MANUFACTURING 101
Dalton Brothers Flour Mill, Orange 1870-75. Holtermann Collection. National Library of Australia.
MANUFACTURING 102
Breweries and Cordial Factories In the 19th century breweries and cordial factories were important providers of safe, clean drinks. Before enclosed and separated sewage systems, drinking water was frequently contaminated by human and animal waste causing cholera and typhoid. Breweries and cordial factories heated water and used fermentation processes which provided drinks that were safe. In a time where the importance of vegetable and fruit based nutrients had not yet been fully realised, cordials or mineral waters were also valued for their implied health benefits. Cordials were also promoted by the temperance movement as the alternative to alcohol.13
Most sizeable towns in NSW had their own breweries and cordial factories, for example Orange had a range of breweries and cordial factories. Some businesses had multiple sites across a region for example Newling’s Cordials had a factory at Cudal and Cowra.14
In Fruitful Landscapes author Liz Edwards provides a list of the early cordial and brewery businesses:
• Henry Boxall, Narrambla 1852 • Frederick Wittiet, Orange, 1852 • Thomas Lane, Summer Street, Orange 1861 • Richard Bates, Anson Street, Orange before 1862 • Geake Lune Bros, Summer Street, Orange 1864 • W H Elwin’s & Co Standard Brewery 1880 • Toohey's from the 1920s • Sharp’s Cordials • Stabback’s Cordial Factory, Anson Street, from the 1890s 15 • Weily’s Cordial Factory, behind the Prince of Wales Hotel, Orange • Mayfield’s Cordials of Orange 1948 (1955 franchise bottlers for Schweppes / 1969 produced Orchy fruit juice.16
It is likely that there were multiple breweries and cordial factories operating at the same time but just how many were operating at once is not clear. In 1881-82 local writer William Folster compiled a list of businesses in Orange, which provides some insight suggesting that the number operating at once was less rather than more. He lists one cordial maker Butler and Barrett and one brewer E. J. Heap.17
By the early 20th century the number of breweries in Orange and region declined. They faced competition from Sydney breweries using the railway to bring in products and changes to government regulation under the 1901Commonwealth Beer Excise Act, which introduced more stringent production conditions on breweries.18
MANUFACTURING 103
Mayfields Cordial Sign on old local store, Nile Street, Orange (2017), Jennifer Forest
Mayfields Cordial Factory at work from the Central Western Daily Newspaper photo collection held by Orange and District Historical Society.
MANUFACTURING 104
Common Australian Cordial Flavours
Lemonade Traditional lemonade, both carbonated and flat
Soda Water Carbonated water
Ginger Beer Fermented beer with ginger
Ginger Ale Carbonated water with ginger flavour
Potass Mineral water with potassium Believed good for the internal organs
Lithia Mineral water with lithium salts Believed good for mental health
Magnesia Mineral water with magnesium hydroxide May have been used as a laxative
Tonic Waters Carbonated water with quinine Originally used as a malaria preventive
Sarsaparilla Made from the root of the sarsaparilla plant, it can taste like liquorice with vanilla
Noyau Northern French liqueur made of apricots
Orange Bitters A bitter with an orange flavour, often added to soda water
Seltzers Carbonated water, often with local flavours added
Aromatic Bitters A bitter with the combined flavours of cardamom, cinnamon, anise and cloves Quinine Bitters A bitter with added quinine
Hop Bitters A herbal extract with hops and dandelions, not a bitter despite its name Believed good for the stomach, kidney and liver Raspberry Vinegar Raspberries with vinegar and sugar, used as flavour
Milk Punch A mixture of milk, brandy, vanilla and sugar, served cold
Lime Juice Syrup Used in the same way we use cordials today to flavour water
MANUFACTURING 105 E. J. Heap Brewery Orange 1870-75 Holtermann Collection. National Library of Australia. Interestingly it is a relatively modest size when compared with the Dalton Brothers Flour Mill of the same era. E. J. Heap was on the corner of Moulder and Hill Street Orange.
MANUFACTURING 106 Diverse Food Manufacturing Orange and region has a long and diverse history of manufacturing with a range of different produce. Many of these were family based enterprises. Examples of businesses that have substantial information are included below.
Dairies and Butter Factories Before refrigeration, one of the goals of farming families was to provide for their own milk, butter and cheese needs. Regardless of the commercial produce of the farm, families kept their own dairy cows. It was common to keep up to five or six cows, which would be more than adequate to meet the needs of a family. The excess milk and cream was swapped with neighbours or turned into butter that was then sold into Orange.19
“[My father] used to rise early of a morning to stable them for a feed and then he milked the cows – we had a dairy as well – and my mother and father hand-milked about a dozen cows. They used to separate the cream and take it to the Spring Hill railway station by sulky and it was sent the Blayney butter factory. Then after a few years that was abolished and we went into bulk milk and it was picked up from Orange. His day consisted of getting up to stable the horses and then milking cows and then harnessing the horses and doing a full day’s work ploughing and then returning to milk the cows at night. And my mother, she worked very hard too. She used to do the milking and separate, apart from looking after us three children and her invalid mother.” Bill Nicholls20
Dairies grew up around Spring Hill, Huntley, Orange and Molong. Family sale and bartering was also consolidated into butter factory co-operatives. Late 19th century developments such as milking machines, commercial scale refrigeration and centrifugal cream separator transformed the dairy industry from small scale family based production to more commercial larger operations. Local butter factories predominantly supplied the region’s towns. While the bulk of butter production in New South Wales was on the north and south coasts of the state, there were butter factories at Canowindra, Spring Hill, Neville, Manduarama, Millthorpe and Blayney.
The Canowindra Butter Factory was started as a co-operative with district farmers contributing by purchasing shares with the full expectation of sending their milk and cream to the factory. It operated from 1910 to after the First World War, producing over 28,000 pounds of first grade butter in 1922.21
The Blayney Butter Factory began in 1897 with the ability to produce one ton of butter daily. It had a churn which could process 550lb of butter at a time and two De Laval separators which could process 530 gallons of cream an hour. In the first month of operation they produced two tons of butter. It was a highly mechanized process with cans of milk entering the building through a tower at one end of the building and then poured into weighing vats, which fed into pipes to the tanks and separators. One of the brand names used by the factory for their produce was ‘Snowflake’. The Butter Factory was incorporated into the Blayney Freezing Works in 1908, and closed in 1950 due to dwindling supply of milk and cream.22
Mr Atkinson’s Biscuit and Confectionary Factory The Sydney Mail in 1878 reported on a visit to a number of businesses in the town of Orange, including a biscuit and confectionary business.
MANUFACTURING 107
“I went to see Mr Atkinson's steam biscuit and confectionery factory in Anson Street; I had often passed the shop under the impression that the attractive articles exhibited there had been imported from Sydney, but I was surprised to find that all of them were manufactured on the premises. Thirty-two different kinds of confectionery, and nineteen kinds of biscuits, are supplied to suit various tastes, and the quantity of the two made every week amounts to half a ton. They are of excellent quality and are sold as cheaply as they are in Sydney. I witnessed the process of manufacture in a room behind the shop, where steam machinery had been erected, together with many ingenious contrivances for converting the raw sugar and flour paste into the palatable articles which children so highly prize.” 23
Other similar manufacturing enterprises were: • Hartley’s Sweet Factory • Frank Kingston’s Sweets • Barrett’s Ice Cream • Jos. Fubbs confectioner (1881-82) • E. Eyles confectioner (1881-82)
Barrett’s ice cream started in 1908 as an ice and cool stores, and later became a manufacturer and distributor of ice cream, and was a milk bottling plant. Peters Ice Cream brought out the business in 1958.24
Middleton’s Ice Blocks Max Muir started an ice block business in Orange in 1947. This was taken over by the Middleton family in 1984 who received on the job training from Max in the traditional methods of mixing flavours with water and milk bases. They can produce 500 ice blocks every 20 minutes during the peak summer period. Middleton’s Ice Blocks are a local tradition with multiple generations of loyal customers and one Molong corner store has purchased blocks for resale since 1947.25
Appledale Processors Co-operative Appledale commenced operations in 1978 and was founded by local growers and orchardists to process fruit in a timely and cost effective way. It primarily processes apples into fruit juice but also produces grape juice. It is also crushing apples for a relatively new product, apple ciders.26
MANUFACTURING 108 Slaughter Houses and Abattoirs Early local farmers and pastoralists slaughtered their own meat lamb and beef. This grew into small slaughter houses to handle local animals for domestic use and commercial sale. Butchers also often had their own small slaughter house behind their stores. In the early 20th century community concern led to more stringent government regulation of various food production methods, including the slaughter of animals for human consumption. By the 1950s concerted government efforts led to the centralisation of abattoirs or what was known as the ‘captive market’ where the regional abattoir was government operated and smaller operators could not slaughter for sale. Examples of two meat processing facilities are included below.
Orange Abattoir In 1927 the Graziers Meat Service Limited spent £30,000 building an abattoir four miles out of the centre of town with a railway siding. The size of the site and the use of industrial scale refrigeration shows the relatively large scale of the operations for its time. 300 sheep and 60 cattle were processed daily. It had 500 acres to allow the sheep and cattle to be reconditioned if they had lost quality on long trips. The buildings were constructed of reinforced concrete. The beef freezing room floor was insulated by six inches of cork board, overlaid with four inches of concrete and walls insulated with two inches of cork board and 1/2 inch of cement. The refrigeration system was pressurised and depressurised ammonia coils, served by the ammonia machine of 30 tons which does 350 to 400 revolutions a minute.27
Blayney Freezing Works The Country Freezing Company (CFC) ran a number of freezing works and butter factories throughout the Central Western region. For example, Millthorpe and Blayney, had CFC freezing works which also had animal slaughter facilities. The Country Freezing Company started in Blayney in 1906 and had a railway siding to direct load onto the trains. There were six freezing chambers with the capacity to hold 500 crates each. The chambers were wood with charcoal insulation and maintained temperatures of -8C. The machinery ran 24 hours a day employing three engineers and three firemen on eight-hour shifts. They made and stored 1000 tons of ice in blocks up to 40kg. This ice was shipped to Narrandera, Newcastle, Broken Hill and Sydney, for domestic and export use.28
Rabbits were also in abundance in the first 50 years of the 20th century in the district. They were trapped in large numbers and sent to the region’s freezing works. The works paid five to six pence a pair for first grade rabbits. In Blayney, the freezing works processed rabbits, skinning them and freezing them for sale. At peak production, they processed 10,000 pairs of rabbits a day. Just from Carcoar alone, 500 to 600 rabbits a day were sent to Blayney to be frozen and sent overseas. 400 trappers and 100 carters were kept in constant work supplying rabbits to the freezing works. The New South Wales Trappers Union was formed to represent these rabbit workers.29
The Blayney Freezing Works was purchased by Messers Swift Pty Ltd during World War II to feed the USA armed forces based in Australia. They started poultry production and slaughtered lambs. During these peak production years, the freezing works employed over 200 people, including 50 women in chicken processing. The freezing works closed in 1952 but the site re-opened as an abattoir which operated from 1958 to 1999. During the 1970s, Blayney Abattoir was one of the largest in the state, employing 220 staff with the capacity to process 3000 to 5500 sheep a day, 400 pigs a day and 250 to 400 cattle a day.30
MANUFACTURING 109 Canowindra Butter Factory Butter Churn. Canowindra Historical Museum
Blayney Abbattoir, Bill Pippen, 1987 Orange Library Photographic Collection.
MANUFACTURING 110
ENDNOTES
1 Bill Nicholls, Huntley Spring Hill, interviewed by Alex Rezko for the Villages of the Heart Project 2013
2 Denis J Chamberlain Greater Western Flour Mills, Bathurst, 1987, self published, p1
3 Elizabeth Edwards Fruitful Landscapes An edible history of the Orange District, Orange City Council, Orange, 2006, p9
4 Denis J Chamberlain Greater Western Flour Mills, Bathurst, 1987, self published, p6, p16, p26
5 Elizabeth Edwards Fruitful Landscapes An edible history of the Orange District, Orange City Council, Orange, 2006, p9 and The Rowan Tree Villages of the Heart Telling Rural Stories, Orange City Council, 2014, p123
6 The Rowan Tree Villages of the Heart Telling Rural Stories, Orange City Council, 2014, p219
7 Denis J Chamberlain Greater Western Flour Mills, Bathurst, 1987, self published, p35
8 Mills and Stores of Orange Freeman’s Journal 20 June 1874 page 2, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news- article128809338.3.html?followup=fae867ae32d4d0c7e29154036cdeb373, viewed 7 June 2017
9 Great Milling Works at Orange The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser 15 January 1908 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/164345123?searchTerm=dalton%20brothers%20flour%20 mills&searchLimits=, viewed 7 June 2017
10 Mills and Stores of Orange Freeman’s Journal 20 June 1874 page 2, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news- article128809338.3.html?followup=fae867ae32d4d0c7e29154036cdeb373, viewed 7 June 2017
11 The Rowan Tree Villages of the Heart Telling Rural Stories, Orange City Council, 2014, p218
12 Manildra Group, History, http://www.manildra.com.au/timeline/, viewed 6 June 2017
13 Breweries and Cooling Factories Watermarks http://watermarks.orangemuseum.com.au/pages/water_home/brew.cfm, viewed 6 June 2017
14 Breweries and Cooling Factories Watermarks http://watermarks.orangemuseum.com.au/pages/water_home/brew.cfm, viewed 6 June 2017
Jill McDonald, Canowindra Historical Museum, pers comm 11 May 2017 remembers buying cordials from Newling’s in Cowra especially for Christmas.
MANUFACTURING 111
15 Elizabeth Edwards Fruitful Landscapes An edible history of the Orange District, Orange City Council, Orange, 2006, p24
16 Elizabeth Edwards Fruitful Landscapes An edible history of the Orange District, Orange City Council, Orange, 2006, p24
17 William Folster’s Articles, compiled by his Grandson Paul William Weatherson, Local History Collection, Orange, 1988, p103 18 Breweries and Cooling Factories Watermarks http://watermarks.orangemuseum.com.au/pages/water_home/brew.cfm, viewed 6 June 2017
19 Jan Harrison, Peggy Nash and Jill McDonald, Canowindra Historical Museum, pers comm 11 May 2017
20 Bill Nicholls, Huntley Spring Hill, interviewed by Alex Rezko for the Villages of the Heart Project 2013
21 Canowindra Butter Factory Canowindra Star and Eugowra News 6 October 1922 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news- article99690560.3.html?followup=90a5b1fb095b0fea2ea5027aff56facb
Canowindra Star and Eugowra News Friday 18 February 1910 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news- article99673063.3.html?followup=b6f19a208b23af4d8edb4520008f4a30
Other newspaper articles chart the perilous nature of the Canowindra Butter Factory as a business operation. See the Canowindra Star and Eugowra News for 1 September 1911 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/99679739?searchTerm=canowindra%20butter%20factory &searchLimits= as an example.
The Rowan Tree Villages of the Heart Telling Rural Stories, Orange City Council, 2014, p94 and p126
22 Jill Cole provided research for the Blayney Butter Factory, drawing on her own recollections of the factory and independent Trove research, research provided 15 June 2017
23 The newspaper ‘Sydney Mail 28 September 1878’ quoted in History Alive Orange & District Historical Society Newsletter Spring 2016 http://www.centralnswmuseums.orangemuseum.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/History- Alive-Spring-2016-.pdf, viewed 6 June 2017
24 Orange Regional Museum Dairying Panel prior exhibition
25Lisa Cox, My Working Life, 13 October 2009, http://www.centralwesterndaily.com.au/story/778790/my-working-life-/, viewed 6 June 2017
MANUFACTURING 112
Robert Virtue, Old School Trades - Ice Block Maker, 17 October 2014, http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2014/10/17/4109171.htm, viewed 6 June 2017
26 Elizabeth Edwards Fruitful Landscapes An edible history of the Orange District, Orange City Council, Orange, 2006, p17
Cider House Rules on Landline 30 October 2011 http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2010/s3351557.htm, viewed 6 June 2017
Appledale processers co-operative limited http://www.appledale.com.au, viewed 6 June 2017
27 Orange and District Illustrated 1928 Descriptive, Historical and Statistical, republished 1989, Orange City Council, Local History Series, Orange, p87
28 Jill Cole provided independent research for Blayney Freezing Works based on her recollections and Trove research. 15 June 2017
29 Jill Cole provided independent research for Blayney Freezing Works based on her recollections and Trove research. 15 June 2017
30 Garry Reynolds, The Kings Colonials A Story of Blayney & District, Blayney, 1982, pp42-44 and p53
Jill Cole, Carcoar Hospital Museum, pers comm, 21 May 2017
Blayney Abattoir http://www.lostcollective.com/gallery/blayney-abattoir/, viewed 7 June 2017
MANUFACTURING 113 10. Distribution & Transport
The arrival of the railway encouraged small-scale farms and orchards to supply Sydney’s needs.
Early Roads Indigenous Australians for many years walked to find food, and the early settlers did likewise in their early years in Australia. This method of transport has the ability of moving around and through dense bushland with greater ease than a mounted rider or bullock trains. In the 19th century, horse ownership was also too expensive for many so it was not unusual for workers to walk from farm to farm, or when bicycles arrived, to cycle.
The early walking tracks often followed existing tracks made by Indigenous Australians as they moved through their country. Knowledge of land and directions from one source of food to the next were passed down through generations by singing. These song lines chart the Indigenous pathways through the landscape. Many of the early dirt roads then grew over these walking tracks, which date back millennia, raising an interesting, troubling question about the origins of the country’s roads. Are we driving over Aboriginal song lines used to follow the food?
By the late 1820s to early 1830s when farmers and graziers moved in greater numbers over the Blue Mountains into the central west region, a rudimentary system of dirt roads connected farms and small settlements. These early roads had no drainage and were not surfaced in any way. Horse ownership slowly increased and carting businesses hired out horses, men, carts and wagons to take families to their properties. The road over the Blue Mountains to Bathurst was notorious for the steep gradients and the difficulty of safely pulling loaded wagons up and down the gradients. In 1838, George Hawke’s family and fruit trees made a six-week cart journey from Port Jackson to Byng.1
As the region developed, there were often complaints of the poor nature of the dirt roads and lack of bridges to cross creeks and rivers. While traveling in dry weather was preferred, the tree stumps in the road slowed down both horses and carts as their drivers navigated carefully around them. A tree stump caught on a cart wheel could easily frighten the horses or turn over the load, damaging the load and hurting or killing the people aboard. One of the first tasks of the newly formed municipality of Orange in 1860 was to clean up the tree stumps for the main streets of the town.2
Traveling in wet weather was even more difficult. Dirt roads became filled with large puddles and turned to mud. Creeks and rivers flooded and washed out the roads. Confronted with mud the limitations of both horses and bullocks are clearly evident. The animals can panic digging themselves deeper into the mud or overturn themselves and their heavy loads. It was not uncommon for men and women to wade or swim across flooded areas carrying the load and pulling the horses and carts across with ropes. Blackman’s Swamp was well-known at the time as a significant hazard, often trapping bullock teams and their heavy loads in the creek and moist land.
TRANSPORT 114
Horse and cart bogged in old gold diggings on Clark Street, Hill End. Holtermann Collection. State Library of New South Wales. While this is Hill End, it is the best illustrative photograph of the problems for horses of unsealed roads in rain. See resource file for other photographs.
The commercial reality of this road system for farmers and graziers attempting to sell into the Sydney market meant long and dangerous journeys. Without a major river system running through the Orange region to provide transport for goods and people, the bullock team was the main method of transport down the mountains, a costly and dangerous exercise.
Cobb and Co The 1850 gold rushes saw the transport system radically changed by Cobb & Co. Started in 1853 in Melbourne by a party of Americans including Freeman Cobb, it would greatly influence the settlement and transport patterns of Eastern Australia. Cobb imported the Concord coach which was used in the American Mid-West. The rounded lightweight body rested on leather straps, smoothing out the ride and turning the bumps into more of a swaying motion than a jolt. Cobb’s horses could also travel at fast speed over a limited distance. The horses then needed to be changed every 16 to 20 kilometres. Around these staging posts grew up hotels and stables, and in some places into a settlement. The arrival of Cobb & Co in the Bathurst-Orange district in 1862 opened up travel for people, freight and the exchange of information through the mail. In 1866 Cobb & Co opened a carriage building works in Bathurst, where it now had its main office.3
TRANSPORT 115 The Railway What would significantly change both the region and the fortunes of local farmers and orchardists was the arrival of the railway line into Orange. The Main Western Line had slowly been expanded from Penrith since 1863. It arrived in Orange in 1877 and the town was to be the terminus of the Western Line before it was continued further west to Wellington and Dubbo.
In the immediate years prior to 1877, local farmers and orchardists had produced more than local demand required. Now their excess produce could be sold into the city. The railway opened up cheaper and quicker access to the largest market in the colony, Sydney.4 The rail goods yards at Darling Harbour with their close proximity to the local city fruit and vegetable markets, and the port for overseas export, received increasing numbers of boxes and crates from the region for over 100 years.
“All English cereals and fruits find on the Orange tablelands a congenial habitat…the extension of the railway to the district has given the famers a sure and accessible market.” Sand’s Country Directory 18805
The arrival of the railway provided a stimulus to the local farmers and orchardists. Many switched from wheat farming to those fruit and vegetables, like potatoes, in high demand in Sydney. The 1876-77 drought, which saw wheat output fall, also encouraged a shift to fruit and vegetables. The railway saw the demand for land by new farmers and orchardists rise. By 1888 “…a very large number of fruit trees [were] being planted out this season…”.6
Since the 1850s gold rush, Orange had been growing as a regional service centre. The railway assisted the city’s growth as a service centre. As the rail terminus for a number of years, graziers from further west were attracted to Orange to load their wool clip down to Sydney. This then had an impact on the associated industries to support these visitors including hotels, cafes, stores and restaurants, as well as agricultural equipment and machinery suppliers.7
In 1885, a branch line opened to Molong on its way to the Broken Hill line, and to Wellington and Dubbo on a separate track. Many smaller villages like Lyndhurst, Mandurama, Carcoar, Blayney and Millthorpe were all connected by the railway. Local residents lobbied their local member of parliament, as they saw the benefit of having the line connected. The line to Canowindra was opened in 1910 and an extension to Eugowra opened in 1922. Local residents used the railways extensively. Bakeries in Carcoar loaded their morning baked breads onto the train for sale in Blayney. The freezing works at Blayney used the railway to ship ice and rabbits to Bourke and Sydney.
TRANSPORT 116 Fully loaded train, Mandurama collection. National Library of Australia. This photograph shows a number of relevant features including the size of the trains in this region, the mixed use carriages, the nature of the biophysical environment and gradients through which the train passed and the light settlement of houses around the railway station.
Delivering cherries to the railway station. Orange and District Historical Society.
TRANSPORT 117
The Highways For many villages in the region, the arrival of the railway happened just as the mode of transport was changing. By the late 1920s, while they hadn’t yet taken over from the railway, motorised lorries were increasingly seen on the roads. They would not take over from rail for large scale transport of agricultural produce until the 1950s.
While the railway was an economic catalyst for the region as a fruit and vegetable producing hub, the state of the roads to the railways remained a cause for complaint. Many were still dirt or gravel with no foundation. Advances in road building, such as the use of crushed metal and bitumen developed during the 1920s, was still confined to city roads. Farmers and orchardists brought their produce to the various railheads by horse and cart, bullock wagon or into the 1930s, increasingly by car or small truck.
In 1925 New South Wales established the Main Roads Board in recognition of the need to develop a better arterial road system through the state. The Great Western Highway was sealed before the Second World War but many of the network of roads leading to the highway and the railway heads would not be transformed to heavy metal foundations and sealed until the 1950s and 1960s.8
Car stuck on dirt road c. 1900-1915. Mandurama Collection. Evan Lumme. National Library of Australia. Note the number of people and horse involved in getting the car out. It also shows the depth of churned up dirt and mud on the road.
TRANSPORT 118 Exporting fruit With the arrival of refrigerated ships in the 1880s, apples from Orange were exported overseas, predominantly to the United Kingdom and Europe. Apples stored well in the cold storage and arrived in good condition. In 1933, over 300,000 bushels of NSW apples were exported from Sydney.9 Since the 1980s the major growth sector for export of Orange regional produce has been the wine sector. A bottled and long lasting product, wine is easily exported. Today the region exports 726 million litres of wine a year.10
Today The majority of freight leaves the Orange region today by road, with bulk items like grain transported out by rail. (Statistics for regional NSW indicate that 63% of freight is by road and 33% by rail.) Air freight of produce has the advantage of getting time sensitive products to market quickly. However it is not a major freight carrier for the region with a relatively low carrying capacity.11
TRANSPORT 119 ENDNOTES
1 Robert Macklin, Hamilton Hume Our Greatest Explorer Hachette Australia, Sydney 2016, p187
Australian Bureau of Statistics History of Roads in Australia 1301.0 Year Book Australia, 1974, http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/0/2e904c15091c39a5ca2569de0028b416?OpenDocum ent, viewed 5 June 2017
2 Richard Waterhouse The Vision Splendid A Social and Cultural History of Rural Australia, Curtin University Books, Freemantle, 2005 p34
Orange and District Illustrated 1928 Historical, Statistical and Descriptive, Local History Series, Orange City Council, Orange, reprinted 1989, p49
3 Heather Nicholls The Cobb and Co Story Trails and Tales, http://www.aicomos.com/wp- content/uploads/The-Cobb-Co-story-trails-and-tales.pdf, viewed 2 June 2017
Kathy Reilly Cobb and Co Coaches: Historic Transport in Australian Geographic 18 October 2011 ahttp://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2011/10/cobb-co-coaches- historical-transport/, viewed 2 June 2017
4 Ian Collins Economic Aspects of the Extension of the Railway into Orange District 1870-1890, unpublished 1976
5 Quoted in Ian Collins Economic Aspects of the Extension of the Railway into Orange District 1870-1890, unpublished 1976
6 Ian Collins Economic Aspects of the Extension of the Railway into Orange District 1870-1890, unpublished 1976
7 Ian Collins Economic Aspects of the Extension of the Railway into Orange District 1870-1890, unpublished 1976
8 Australian Bureau of Statistics History of Roads in Australia 1301.0 Year Book Australia, 1974, http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/0/2e904c15091c39a5ca2569de0028b416?OpenDocum ent, viewed 5 June 2017
History of the Great Western Highway, http://www.ozroads.com.au information drawn from the Department of Main Roads 1949 Journals, viewed 5 June 2017
9 A Great Year for Apples in Sydney Mail 10 May 1933 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news- article165959855.3.html?followup=46bfb674bc582b3193eb3a624bdb1706, viewed 5 June 2017
10 Wine Australia, Winefacts - Orange Regional Snapshot, https://www.wineaustralia.com/getmedia/18fda7e1-180d-4be0-b52e- 77aaeeabd1a3/Orange_2016?ext=.pdf, viewed 5 June 2017
11 Regional Infrastructure NSW, http://www.infrastructure.nsw.gov.au/media/16991/sis_report_section10.0_print.pdf, viewed 5 June 2017
TRANSPORT 120
Invest New South Wales Transport and Logistics http://www.investnswcentralwest.com.au/industries/transport-and-logistics/, viewed 5 June 2017
TRANSPORT 121 11. Retail
“Those days there was nothing prepacked. Everything had to be weighed. The sugar was in 60-pound calico bags. We pre- weighed all our sugar. Progressively biscuits were bought in packages, and then frozen foods were introduced and then of course self- service.” Peter Amos, Millthorpe.1
Over the last two centuries, changes in technology, customs and practices have shaped how we shop for food. The shape, size and look of shops reflects these historic changes. Hotels and small general stores were the first retail experiences in Orange and district. Specialists in their area like bakers, butchers and greengrocers had their own stores and also delivered straight to the home. By the mid-20th century, the cash-n-carry self-service grocery stores and the rise of retail malls replaced the baker’s cart. The change in how we shop and the distances we are prepared to travel to shop is one contributing factor in the decline of many small rural villages.
View of Orange Poster, supplement to the Orange Leader, Christmas 1902 by W. Tibbett and John Sands, State Library of New South Wales. This is a gorgeously illustrated poster showing the range of stores in Orange in 1902. It is very hard to see in detail at this size so it can be found in the images folder. It’s well worth a look.
RETAIL 122 Hotels It was at the 19th century hotel that you’d find much needed food, a place to wash and a bed for the night. Often earlier settlers would act as an informal pub to others providing simple meals and somewhere to sleep in their own huts. As the district grew during the gold rush period, hotels became larger, commercial endeavours. The arrival of Cobb & Co also played an important role in the development of hotels. They needed hotels to keep, rest and change their horses at regular intervals. Food to serve the passengers was also highly sought after and a husband and wife team often ran these hotels. He was the groom to the horse and she provided the food.
“Some inns offered passengers delicious homemade bread, butter, prickly-pear jam, eggs and dry hash (a meat rissole with gravy) for breakfast. At others, you would be lucky to get a slice of damper with treacle, or corned beef and tea could be considered standard breakfast fare. Afternoon tea might be tea and brownies, a cake made of yeast dough with currants, sugar, butter and any spice one could find.”2
The first hotel in Orange was the Coach and Horses, a simple weather-board structure built in 1838.3 The second hotel was the Limmerick Castle built by Denny Hanrahan who later built the Wellington Hotel, now known as the Royal. Over the last decades of the 19th century, many of the hotels in Orange developed into substantial premises. In 1880 it was recorded that Orange had 33 hotels, with many of these built in Piesley Street to meet the new trade brought by the arrival of the railway in 1877.4 In 2013, Orange Council produced a walking tour brochure of the historic pubs of the city. This walking tour is in the resource file, and rather than replicate information that is already available please see that brochure. It provides a range of images and locations for the historic pubs in the city.
As time progressed, many hotels moved away from being places where all travellers including solo women and families with children felt comfortable. This is one reason by the early 1920s many Country Women’s Associations built rooms and halls for women to use when travelling. Throughout the early 20th century hotels were also consolidated in number with breweries purchasing some hotels, and government regulation more tightly administering the number of licenses issued. Some hotels like the Hotel Canobolas maintained large dining rooms catering to the wider community throughout the 20th century. Often, each hotel developed its own loyal clientele with subtle demarcation lines between which hotel you would visit depending on your various community affiliations. In recent decades, some pubs have repositioned themselves to be more welcoming for all, as food destinations for the wider community.
RETAIL 123
Hotel Canobolas Dining Room, 1960. Orange Library Photography Collection. There has been a hotel on this CBD site since 1875. In 1939 the Sydney based brewery Tooheys constructed an Art Deco style building which stands today.5
General stores A general store in the 19th century sold pretty much anything a rural family visiting Orange could possibly want to purchase and take back home to the farm. The general store was mercers and drapers, selling lengths of fabric as well as ready made cloths. It sold homewares and linens, selling a range of cookware, dinnerware and flatware items, as well as table, bed and bath linens. It sold a range of food items with well-stocked grocery sections for a range of items. Perishable foods like ham and cheese were kept in a cellar or cool room. Dry goods like flour were kept in large hopper bins under the counter. Hardware was there as well, often found at the rear of the shop. There was typically a large counter from which customers would be individually served. In larger shops, store floorwalkers would seat customers on chairs and manage a flow of shop assistants to serve you, take your order and present you with options.6
This was also the era of customer accounts. You maintained an account at the store, which you cleared monthly or quarterly. Cash registers weren’t needed because you didn’t pay on the spot, though for many smaller stores cash registers were in use by the late 19th century and both Millthorpe Museum and Carcoar Stoke Stable Museum have beautiful silver cash registers dating to this era.
RETAIL 124
Inside cover of Henry Dunbar’s 1899 Ledger showing the fees levied by local shopkeepers for keeping his account – see resource file for scans of ledger
The most well-known example of this type of general store was Dalton Brothers’ General Store on Summer Street in Orange. James Dalton was an Irish born merchant and pastoralist. He came to New South Wales from Ireland in the late 1840s as a teenager. His father opened a small store at Orange in 1849. James opened his own general store in 1853. A year later his brother Thomas joined him and the business became the Dalton Brothers, which had a range of interests including the flour mill built in 1861, pastoral stations in the Lachlan district, a substantial wholesale distributor business to the western districts and the retail store built on Summer Street Orange in 1865, with the present building on the site dating to 18707. He also had considerable success producing roasted and ground coffee on a large scale. The Dalton family became one of the wealthiest Irish Catholic families in the colony. James was involved with the Irish nationalist movement, built Duntryleague and was Mayor of Orange in 1869.8
The Dalton Brother’s General Store on Summer Street became more than just a general store, later newspaper reports described it more as an emporium, a large retail destination with everything for sale.
A 1884 report in The Australian Town and Country Journal describes the range available in Dalton Brothers.
“We may mention that the lion’s share of business done in the town falls to Messers Dalton Brothers …they are large importers of every description of merchandise and have successfully shown that a wholesale business can be done as well in the country as it can in Sydney. Their premises are divided into several departments viz. drapery, ironmongery, grocery, wines, spirits and beers, crockery and glassware, furniture, and agricultural supplies. They do an extensive business in station supplies which they forward throughout the western and north-western districts of the colony.”9
RETAIL 125 A 1912 newspaper report in The Leader describes a visit to the Summer Street store with particular attention to the renovations to the interiors and the sheer size of the store. Interestingly for our area of interest, they describe the kitchen department.
“On the second floor …here are stoves of all kinds from the diminutive kerosene stove for heating your office to the commodious kitchen range capable of cooking for the biggest hotel in the Commonwealth, neatly displayed as samples where the housewife can select her fancys displays in comfort…It is the same with every other department…”10
In 1928 Dalton Brothers merged with the Western Stores and Edgleys to become The Western Stores. Mr F. Dalton continued on as a director with the new company.11 In 1962 they merged again with Farmer Brothers and Myer and traded as ‘The Western Stores – A Myer Store.’ It became fully owned by Myers in 1975. It briefly became Grace Bros from 1994 to 1996 and then resumed the Myers name. Throughout these years they maintained the variety of an emporium with modern adaptions for the 20th century, such as dropping various lines no longer needed but retained the groceries department for many years. They did retain the department store cafeteria until Myers closed in January 2017. 12
Dalton Brothers Summer Street, Holtermann Collection, State Library of New South Wales c. 1875
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The Western Stores in 1960 with the newly installed escalators. Orange Library.
Smaller villages in the district also had general stores. Peter Amos’ family ran a general store in Millthorpe for many years. He was interviewed for the Villages of the Heart project in 2013. An edited version of his interview is provided below which provides a sense of the change over time in the life of one general store, and in the retail life of a small village.
“My grandfather used to trade in the collection of eggs and sell them to the markets and there were lots of farming people in this district who used to bring their eggs to my grandfather who used to pack them up in these big wooden crates and take them to the Millthorpe railway station. Some of the eggs would go to Orange and other crates would go to Sydney markets. That was his main income until he moved up town.
There was a little vacant shop in Victoria Street and having had a lot of experience in the menswear and mercery trade he started to sell clothing and overcoats and boots and things as well a continuing to collect eggs.
One of my grandfather’s customers he used to bring in eggs, a fellow by the name of Jack Wise, had heard that there were some Greeks interested in buying the bigger of the two stores on the Western side of Pym Street. And Mr Wise felt they didn’t want to have Greeks coming into Millthorpe and he put it to my grandfather that he would help finance him to move up the street into bigger premises.
I can remember my grandfather telling me that when he moved up to the bigger shop the goods that he had in his small place had hardly enough to fill the window space displays, let alone have anything in the shop. My grandfather went ahead and put in a grocery as well and this fellow used to manage it for him.
RETAIL 127 We lived above the shop. My grandfather established his business and it was fairly busy during the early 1900s and my dad when he reached 3rd year of Orange High School, grandfather wanted him to come home and work in the shop. So my Dad started there and worked with grandfather for several years until he was married and then purchased the local newsagency which was a little shop further down Pym Street.
My Dad and Mum had the newsagency for four years when they were first married and then they went back up to the general store to work with grandfather.
[The general store had] two main entrances. So the one that was right on the corner – when you walked in that entrance way you walked through all the hardware and used to sell a lot of cooking utensils and things like that and hardware, lots of hardware. Then you would eventually come to the grocery, a big long counter. That was on the Victoria Street side of the building.
Coming in the other entrance on the Pym Street side that was when you walked into the menswear, the footwear and as we were saying, the haberdashery and the mercer.
When we were kids at school. We used to get jobs like wrapping up the butter. That was always a great job. Ah, the butter used to come in a box of 45 pounds of butter. We used the Women’s Weeklys. The sheets were a perfect size to wrap a pound of butter in.
Those days there was nothing prepacked. Everything had to be weighed. The sugar was in 60 pound calico bags. We pre- weighed all our sugar. Over the period of time we all worked in the shop for a little bit of pocket money after school. So I suppose I really started to work in that shop when I was about 10.
Progressively biscuits were bought in packages, and then frozen foods were introduced and then of course self-service. So then more or less you had to go with the times. Back in the early days it was all counter service and home deliveries and all that sort of thing.
We had Millthorpe divided into two sections. We had top town and bottom town and Park street which was the main road going through the barrier. Every Tuesday we’d go door knocking and collect orders in the morning, deliver of an afternoon. That was the type of town run. And come Thursday we’d do the same. One fortnight we’d take delivery out around Shadforth and Greghamstown, out sort of Bathurst way - Guyong and then the next Monday we would go the other way – we’d go to Forests Reef, Beneree and Browns Creek.
I used to collect the orders. You’d sharpen your pencil and get on your bike with your docket book and take off and collect the orders and come back and there was always staff back at the shop and then when I’d get back with the orders, write them up and price the dockets and we had all the goods together and put them in a box. And in the afternoon the delivery driver would deliver them.
[There was another general store]…and it was established in the early years, so by a fellow by the name of Vic Bennett. And it was quite strange really. He had his clientele and we had ours. The two major general stories, there were one, two, three, four smaller corner stores that sold fruit and vegetables and lollies, a butcher in Victoria street, a boot maker, a coffee shop and a newsagent.
RETAIL 128 Looking back I think our best years of trade were through the sixties. It’s really hard to believe today, that through those years we were selling televisions and refrigerators. And we went through the era of the Namco kitchen table with the chrome legs. And the Hoadley kitchen cupboard and the sink were becoming very popular. People were getting away from using the wash up dish on the table and installing a Hoadleys cabinet. Selling those and these things were always on display in our windows.
They were great years. I can remember come Saturday afternoon, we’d have sold a TV through the week, so I had to go with Dad. We had an old Holden with a ladder and a rack, a rack with a ladder on the roof. And we’d be up on people’s rooves putting television antennas up on their chimneys and in the ceilings putting the wires down, you know, hook up to their TVs.
It was in the early seventies that things were starting to progressively die off, particularly in the electrical trade because the bigger centres were opening in Orange, and selling for much cheaper than we could and I think from the early seventies the whole trade started to decline.13
Let’s take another of the region’s towns. Canowindra in the 1930s and 1940s has been described as a self-sufficient, busy town by written memoir and conversations I had with historical society members. In her written memoir of life in Canowindra in this time, Berna Wright provided these observations which show four general stores and a range of other food stores.
“Canowindra was a very self sufficient town in the 1930s being made so principally by the transport situation…the town was the centre of business and social activities because cars were fewer than now – the unsealed roads were rough, especially shocking in wet weather and very dusty in dry times. It was a great effort and time consuming to drive too far….
The other element that gave momentum to the town was the number of businesses in town with jobs to offer. The four general stores – T. J. Finns’s, McDonagh’s, Purcell’s store (later The Western Stores) and Malouf’s all employed a number of people. I counted ten at Finn’s plus four family members…Finn’s had a shoe department, a ladies haberdashery department, a men’s department, a grocery department, an ironmongery department, and a gift department with china, toys and jewelry…The Western Stores was built in the late 1920s as Purcell’s Store by Andy Purcell who made his fortune from Belubula flats lucerne – green gold as it was then called…Malouf’s was in Blatchord Street run by Mr and Mrs Nick Malouf and other members of the Malouf family and it was always busy. There were a couple of other grocery shops in town…a bakery, Sandy Grnt’s butchery…The other butcher shops in town belonged to Mr AL Patterson… There were several specialty shops…three legal men in town… and electrical engineer…an accountant…Canowindra had four hotels – the Junction…the Victoria… The Royal Hotel and the Canowindra Hotel…two doctors, two hospitals, two dentists and two pharmacies.”
She also describes four banks, a picture theatre, garages, car hire service, stock and station agents, the post office and the local telephone exchange which provided jobs for girls as well.
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Corner stores If the Dalton Brother’s General Store/Emporium is typical of the 19th century, the corner store could be seen as distinctive of the early 20th century. In the days before domestic refrigeration and easy travel by car, it was common for the town family to need to purchase perishables like meat, milk and butter. They were also popular with children for lollies, carefully selected from jars and packaged into little paper bags.
Service in a corner store was provided from behind the counter and a customer asked for what they wished, which was then wrapped. For many years, customers also kept accounts at corner stores paying weekly or monthly. Many migrant families also ran corner stores, open long hours from early morning to late at night. It was not uncommon to work 8am to midnight weekdays.14
Research by the Central Western Daily newspaper has discovered 30 corner stores with such names as Whybrows, Cornings, Quoins, Nagle’s, Mead’s, Mrs Egan’s, Gardiner’s McKenzie’s Wells’ Waterson’s, Mackies and Thommos. They’ve also developed an interactive map showing these stores which may be able to be used in the exhibition.15 Supermarkets with long opening hours are generally considered to have caused corner stores to close down from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Mary Egan’s Corner Store, corner Hill and Summer Streets by Ross Maroney16 His research indicates that it was operating as a corner store from at least 1933. He notes that in the 1960s the site was a service station and in the early 2000s a carwash.
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The Corner Store Gallery 382 Summer Street. Ross Maroney dates construction of this store to 1895. It was operating as a corner store (mixed business) until at least 1985. Like many stores they’ve been reused as homes or continued as retail or business.
Bakeries, butchers and greengrocers Until the 1960s it was also common for dedicated specialty food providers to deliver to the home. Bakers, butchers and green grocers generally had their own store front but would either ring and take orders which were then home delivered. Chinese market gardeners are remembered as delivering vegetables door-to-door from the late 19th century in at least the Carcaor, Blayney and Orange areas. It was common too for bakers to travel door-to-door selling bread to homes.
In Fruitful Landscapes Elisabeth Edwards included a photograph of Willie Hang Sing with his son Frank and grandson Pat at their greengrocer's shop at Five Ways, Orange, in the late 1950s. This is a clear photograph of three generations standing against neatly packed shelving of fruit and vegetables, and may be useful for the exhibition.
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Local bakery (unknown) making hot cross buns 1955, Orange and District Historical Society
Kevin Thomas and Michael Halpin delivering bread July 1955 Orange and District Historical Society
RETAIL 132 Butcher shops were also different retail experiences. In early 19th century butchers’ shops, the struggle to keep meat cool meant it was common to hang carcasses at the front of the shop to allow fresh air to circulate. Ice boxes, cool rooms and marble surfaces helped keep meat cool. It was common for a butcher to kill animals behind his shop, and it was possible to take your own animals down to the butcher store for him to slaughter. Jill Cole of Carcoar remembers how meat was delivered to the towns.
“My husband's family had the butcher shop in the small village of Neville. They killed the meat at a slaughter yard on the edge of town. Every Friday they loaded up an old ute and set out to deliver meat to other small villages such as Trunkey Creek, Hobbys Yards, Barry etc and farms in between - winter and summer - there was no means of keeping the meat cool, no ice, just covered with a tarpaulin. The buyer would come to the truck and get the meat they wanted - it would be cut up on the tailgate of the truck and handed to the buyer - no way to wash hands, no paper, no doubt flies everywhere. However, they had a lot of customers and everyone seemed happy with the service. Saturday they went to the mining village of Gallymont. This continued until 1957/58, about the time Blayney Abattoir opened.”17
From the 1900s to 1950, attitudes towards food hygiene changed. This is when more stringent and acceptable standards were placed on milk and meat production in particular. Milk sold was required to be pasteurized. Butcher shops were required to be fully enclosed with first mesh, then glass, walls were to be tiled and floors made of concrete.18
Cash-n-carry self-service supermarkets From the 1950s onwards, self-service supermarkets gradually replaced the large general store and the corner store. They also threatened the existence of the specialty food providers like butchers and bakers. The self-service supermarket used cash, no longer could a family hold an account, food was paid for on the spot with cash. Customers also served themselves from large displays, with little or no assistance from floor staff. Coles supermarket was operating by at least 1958 in Orange with a new building constructed in 196619.
Eating out In the 19th century if you wanted to eat out, hotels were generally the destination. These options gradually widened with first tea rooms and refreshment rooms, which were the forerunners of cafes and the department store cafeteria, like those found in Myers. What we would call a café now was called a refreshment room in the late 19th century. In Orange, the Central Refreshment Rooms were located opposite Daltons on Summer Street. Refreshment rooms and tea rooms typically sold bakery items, light meals and hot drinks. Ross Maroney’s research into the streets of Orange reveals a number of cafes over time. For the exhibition it would be possible to select a site on Summer Street and track the change over time in one building using his research. It is questionable how many photographs would be available to support that tracking but is worth considering.
Oyster bars were also very popular in this period. Oysters were still abundant and cheap in the days before overfishing. They were stewed, curried, turned into soup, pies and patties, pickled in vinegar and made into a sauce to be served with chicken, fish and steaks. Oysters were railed to Orange from Sydney.20 In 1882, Mr AE Haywood, baker, pastry chef and confectioner, advertised
RETAIL 133 that he now had a licence to sell oysters, which sold with bread and butter for one shilling.21 The London Café, Oyster Bar and Restaurant advertised in 1903 that it sold fresh fish and oysters daily. It was run by S. Melonas and was opposite the post office in Orange.22
Into the early 20th century, eating out options widened significant in number. Local migrants before and after the Second World War often went into business. Greek migrants like the Gryllis brothers ran Australian-food cafes and in the 1960s and 1970s also ran restaurants. Chinese migrant families and their descendants also opened restaurants during this time. Locals as well went into milk bars, cafes and restaurants. Summer Street had an increasing number of cafes. Bartles’ Acme Refreshment Rooms, cake shop and café with tea and scones, advertised their premises opposite the Post Office in 1910. They operated to 1969. The Liberty Café at 349 Summer Street was started by John Jaeger in the 1920s and were still in operation in 1957 .The Carlton Café later became the Orange Food Bar and Orange Restaurant which provided meals for functions in the adjoining Strand Theatre.
In his recollections, Orange local John Milne recalls a number of cafes in the central business district of Orange in the period from the 1920s to the 1960s. He lists these cafes:
• Eastern end of Summer St there was the Century owned by the Garlic family.
• Western side of Summer St near Strand Theatre there was the Carlton Cafe owned by the Chellis Family, changed name to The Orange Restaurant then Helene’s owned by the Gryllis Family, known as Gumbos in 1995. In the 1940s and 50s this cafe catered for the Balls held in the Strand Theatre. Some Balls would have three to four sittings for meals with 300 to 800 people attending.
• Corner of McNamara Lane and Summer St was the Mayfair.
• In the centre block of town was the Rose Marie which was popular with secondary school students at lunch and farmers coming to town on sale days. Owned by two brothers from Greece.
• On Anson Street towards Sale Street was The Best Yet cafe popular with the top end of town.
• Next to the Coronet Theatre was Shannon’s specialised in milkshakes and drinks. Owned by Shannons who sold it to a Greek family. They supplied the theatre with drinks and sweets.
• On the southern Side of Summer St was Ranchs Cafe owned by Ray Ranch, former police detective, popular with sports teams and church groups.
• Robert’s Cafe and Cake Shop on Piesley st, popular with primary school kids who’d buy their lunch there. Known for pies and cream buns.
• The Patmos was in Lord’s Place next to The Australian Theatre. Mr Gryllis brought it offf Mr Allcorns who made meat pies, who had brought it off Mr Mayfield of Mayfield Soft Drinks. All supplied the theatre.23
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Many Greek migrants also brought with them the milk bar culture from their own time in the United States of America or from learning about milk bars from relatives there. Milk bars developed after the post-war period. They became popular meeting places for children and adults, and were widely seen as family friendly. Families would come in from the farms on Saturday to do their shopping and go to the cafes and milk bars, perhaps stay for a picture at the theatre.
Where did all the shops go? Looking at retail in regional Australia, I am prompted to ask ‘what happened?’ Stories from the past paint pictures of vibrant, busy communities – villages and small towns – with many stores and many people. Today though driving through many small towns, shops are closed and empty. People are often few and far between.
Yeoval has very few viable retail stores, yet two primary schools. Carcoar has empty shops. Blayney is busy all week long. Millthorpe on a Thursday is empty. But on a Saturday afternoon it’s full of people. The opening hours of Millthorpe stores clearly show the change in retail trade from that described by Peter Amos above. Many Millthorpe stores are only open when the tourists and local residents are off work and there – Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Canowindra on a Thursday is the opposite – its busy. But on a Saturday its empty and the shops do not advertise weekend opening hours, which suggests that tourists haven’t got as far as Canowindra and that the Thursday traffic was locals doing their banking and getting groceries.
Retail history and economics is an area of extensive study for historians and I do not propose to address the topic here in any substantial way. It does however go to the heart of retail and community history in this district. Taking Canowindra as an example, my observations suggests that the following reasons may have contributed to the decline in the number of retail outlets in Canowindra and other smaller villages and towns as well:
• In the 19th century before wide spread mechanization on the farm and the arrival of the tractor, planting and particularly harvesting required many farm laborers. Viable farms could support workers other than just the family. This is seen in the photos of chaff cutters and men working fields in the late 19th century in the district – there are often and usually at least five to ten men pictured working if not more. With mechanisation on the farm, from the 1950s onwards there are just significantly less jobs there. This means they are not coming into town to go shopping and it means the men and their families leave the district to look for work. • During the 20th century agricultural jobs also moved to other parts of Australia and offshore. The Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, which developed from the 1920s to the 1970s, produced competing crops, such as table grapes and peaches. The former are no longer grown in this district. This would suggest that demand from consumers for fruit and produce is not infinite. • In the post-war period roads were sealed and car ownership became more widespread. This meant people could now easily travel and shop in the larger towns, reducing the need for stores in the smaller towns. • Railways closed in many country towns, replaced by truck transport. Canowindra railway station closed in 1974. The closure of railways is often seen as the end of easy bulk transport, raising the transport costs for farmers.
RETAIL 135 • Cities like Sydney and larger regional towns like Orange act as magnets to individuals and families seeking employment and education opportunities, and health care, drawing them away from the smaller towns.
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ENDNOTES
1 Peter Amos interviewed by Ann Harrison for Villages of the Heart project 2013, see oral history interview file note
2 Sam Everingham, Wild Ride The Rise and Fall of Cobb & Co, Penguin, Camberwell, 2009, p26
3 Orange Town Trail Cobb & Co, https://www.cobbandco.net.au/trails/town-trails/98-orange-town- trail, viewed 11 July 2017
4 Historic Pub Tour of Orange, walking tour brochure, Orange City Council, 2013
5 Ibid
6 Department of Environment, Living History How shops show their age, http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/heritagebranch/heritage/alotinstorech4.pdf, viewed 11 July 2017
7 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-24/the-dalton-bros-store-orange-c1870/7440100, viewed 11 July 2017
8 Martha Rutledge, 'Dalton, James (1834–1919)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dalton- james- 284/text5061, published first in hardcopy 1972, accessed online 10 May 2017
9 A Country Wholesale Store, Australian Town and Country Journal, 29 November 1884 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/71020454?searchTerm=dalton%20brothers%20general% 20store&searchLimits=#
10 Dalton Brothers Ltd, The Leader 18 June1912, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news- article101281097.3.pdf?followup=dac52f039a684291494eb53beb04b914, viewed 11 July 2017
11Western Stores Merger, Tweed Daily 24 July 1928, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news- article191575999.3.pdf?followup=db10f7fe988b2523bdca3dd6498f0d18, viewed 11 July 2017
12 http://www.localstudies.cwl.nsw.gov.au/orange-district-historical-society/the-western-stores/, and http://www.dailyliberal.com.au/story/4404962/time-to-say-goodbye-staff-reflect-on-oranges- department-store-photos/ and http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-24/orange-myer-store-closure- history-in-pictures/7440494, viewed 11 July 2017.
13 See oral history notes for Peter Amos for full transcript, Villages of the Heart Project, 2013
14 Department of Environment, Living History How shops show their age, http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/heritagebranch/heritage/alotinstorech4.pdf, viewed 11 July 2017
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15 David Fitzsimmons Remembering when Orange had over 30 corner stores, 10 April 2017, http://www.centralwesterndaily.com.au/story/4583441/remembering-when-orange-had-more-than- 30-corner-stores/, viewed 11 July 2017
16 Ross Maroney An Historian’s Sketchbook of Orange, Orange City Council and Ross Maroney, 2003, p8
17 Jill Cole pers comm 29 June 2017 via email
18 Department of Environment, Living History How shops show their age, http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/heritagebranch/heritage/alotinstorech4.pdf, viewed 11 July 2017
19 http://www.centralwesterndaily.com.au/story/3363613/46-fruitful-years-kerry-is-nsws-longest- serving-coles-employee/, viewed 11 July 2017
Ross Maroney of the Orange and District Historical Society has conduced extensive research on the CBD streets. His research was provided by Orange Regional Museum and the entire comprehensive data collection of his work is in the resource file. From his Summer1.Doc I extrapolated that Coles was at least here by 1958 as a manager for Coles is listed at his residential address and there is a newspaper report on the progress of the 1966 build in that document.
20 Jacqui Newling, Eat Your History Stories and Recipes from Australian Kitchens, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2015, p34.
21 Information supplied by Orange Regional Museum see resource file under ‘cafes’
22 Ibid
23 John Milne History of Orange compiled by John Milne of Lone Pine Avenue Orange, unpublished memoir, 1994, p33-34
RETAIL 138 12. Migration
“Our mother maintained an enormous vegetable garden with absolutely everything – corns, peas, tomatoes, cabbages, potatoes. Everyone helped one another back then and bartering was common.” Olga Kich1
Post-war migration to Orange is significant as it changed the nature of food available and eaten in the district. The gold rush period brought many different cultures to the district but the impact on cuisine was minimal. The food was predominantly, for many decades, that which the British had brought with them. But it would be wrong to assume this was just white bread and mutton for all, there was greater nuance than that. Professor Barbara Santich argues that Australia actually has a tradition of adopting new cuisines from abroad and that there were a wide range of ‘exotic foods’ available for the curious right from the 19th century. For example, curries were very common and used to flavour all sorts of meat from mutton to goat and wombat.2
It was the arrival of migrants from Europe after the Second World War though which would see the adoption into mainstream Australian cuisine of a lot more variety. Cookbooks prior to the 1950s had recipes from many countries often in an ‘exotics’ section. For example the CWA Cookery Book of 1936 had four pages of curries, Italian recipes and a chapter devoted to recipes from 24 countries as diverse as Turkey, Brazil and Denmark. 3 From the 1960s, those recipes moved from the exotic section into the mainstream section. The exotic foods and recipes would slowly and progressively be adopted into the mainstream, so that today Australian cuisine is characterised by the diversity of cultures.
Migration to Orange Elisabeth Edwards has written extensively on migration to the district in the book Half a World Away Post War Migration to Orange 1948-1965. This is an invaluable resource for images as well as story that can inform the exhibition. She notes in the book that in 1948 Orange was predominantly British-Irish, of the 14,000 residents seven people were counted as of Chinese extraction and 13 were Greek.4 Over the next 20 years, Orange received a number of migrants from the Netherlands, Hungary, Germany, Macedonia, Italy, Greece, Estonia, Britain, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Croatia. By the 1961 Census about 5% of the city of Orange was born overseas.5 Some migrants like Michele Ostorero had been an Italian Prisoner of War captured in North Africa and sent to Australia, and then Orange to work on orchards. Repatriated home to Italy, he and others then sought sponsorship to return to the district like he did in 1949.6 Others were displaced persons in Europe who had applied to be resettled anywhere else but Europe following the turmoil of World War II. Some were joining family members in Orange who had migrated prior to the war.
Growing a Garden One of the first acts of recently arrived migrants to the district was to find a permanent home, and then plant a garden. Most houses at that time were on quarter acre blocks, which provided ample room to plant a vegetable garden and fruit trees. This was partly to save money in the household budget and following family traditions of growing vegetables and fruit in Europe. Perhaps of more
MIGRATION 139 relevance to this food topic, it was also to ensure they had access to the foods they were used to and couldn’t then get in Orange, or indeed Australia.
“Well, I have got used to blowflies, mutton, lamb and I am now a naturalised Australian and love this country and its people.” Brunhilde Srejic, German Migrant, Half a World Away7
Luba Hilbrink remembers her mother making sauerkraut and picked gherkins out of her garden. Olga Kich, quoted at the beginning of the chapter, remembers her Ukrainian parents’ garden on Tynan Street, Orange as full of vegetables. Alex Rezko’s parents (Ukrainian and Belorussian) planted a garden at Huntley. Her quote used in the Half a World Away book shows the self- sufficiency of many migrant families and their determination.
“We had cows and butter, we grew our own vegetables…Mum used to pick peas at Worboys place in Spring Hill for extra money for her kids and she used to pick apples at Charles and Harry Ironmonger’s place at Huntley as well.”8
Stefan and Jozefa Grzejszczak in their back yard of their Bathurst Road home, harvesting crop of beans. Half a World Away by Elisabeth Edwards.9
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Bringing new foods Migration was influential in bringing new foods to Orange and district through retail and cafes. Greek migration was particularly influential in bringing American food. Many Greek migrants had either worked in American cafes before coming to Australia, or were in regular correspondence with relatives in the U.S.A. Many opened cafes or brought existing cafes when they came to Orange. The key foods that they introduced to the region are the milkshake, the spider (soda with ice cream), American style hamburger and American style candies. 10
Orange and region had a number of Greek cafes. For example, Canowindra has the Garden of Roses Café which dates back to the 1920s. It was a popular destination for ice cream with children, and a place for friends to meet before or after the pictures. In Orange there was the Silver Key Café on Summer Street which started in the early 1930s. Rose Marie café was at 262 Summer Street.11
“You’d keep your milk, your flavours, your ice creams in it [the soda fountain]…We had a staff of about eight to ten local girls and two to three cooks…There were two boys behind the soda fountain serving drinks…We could sit 170 people.”12 Maude Kringas, Rose Marie café c. 1930s-1960s
The Gryllis family are well-known in the district. Michael and Theo Gryllis came from the island of Patmos, Greece in 1956. Theo worked on the railways in Orange and his brother Michael joined him a few months later. In 1959 they brought Jim’s Café at 298 Summer Street, Orange and went on to buy and sell several other cafes and restaurants over the years. Another brother, Chris Gryllis, joined the family businesses in 1962.13
“We didn't have the guts to introduce Greek food to Australians. We just gave them what they wanted.” Michael Gryllis14
Italian families also contributed significantly to changing the food culture of the region. They brought European foods to the area and made them available, helping the process of mainstreaming many foods we eat today like olives, pasta and parmesan.
The D’Aquino family have been in the district since the 1930s. Carmelo D’Aquino migrated from Sicily in the 1930s and went first to Sydney where he had a fish shop and fruit shop. In the 1940s he purchased a liquor license from an Orange local already making alcohol for sale behind Mayfields Cordials on Sampson Street. He started making liqueurs from the local fruit of cherries, plums and peaches. In 1946 he made six barrels of wine from Molong grapes. In 1952 land was purchased on Bathurst Road with liqueur and wine made at the back and a shop facing the road. Carmelo’s wife Nina ran a delicatessen selling the European foods that the recent migrants couldn’t find anywhere else.
“We had 84 different varieties of cheese…there were different salami and cooked meats. We introduced smoked eel to Orange and were the first ones to get the truffles and pickled walnuts. For a lot of the Dutch and German people we had pickled herrings and Bismarck herrings. I don’t know how many different types of pasta we sold.” Nina D’Aquino, Half a World Away15
MIGRATION 141
The D’Aquino Delicatessen, Half a World Away16
The D’Aquino site, Highland Heritage Estate, Bathurst Road today. Jennifer Forest. 2017
MIGRATION 142 Getting involved in the community One of the key ways new food was mainstreamed into the predominantly British – Australian cuisine was through social gatherings and community events, like the Cherry Blossom Festival. During the early 1950s, different ethnic groups had floats in the annual Cherry Blossom Festival. In the early 1950s the Dutch had a float with 35 people in national costume and the Greeks had a float as well with 8 people in national costume. Ukrainians also marched in national costume.17
There were also frequent dances where new migrants and existing residents had the opportunity to meet and socialise, and eat supper.
“Clergate Hall was used for dances by Italians and Australians. My brother-in-law also had a hall for local functions such as weddings and dances”. Pasqua Centofanti
“It was a Ukrainian-Australian social club. At the socials were a mixture of Ukrainians and Australians. We had such a wild party that at midnight the police would come and tell us to quieten down. Helen and Sam Lihos18
Fairbridge Another group of migrants to the region had a different experience of food than the post-war migrants discussed above.
The Fairbridge organisation, established by Kingsley Fairbridge, brought orphaned British children out to Molong and other locations in Australia, Canada and Zimbabwe. Kingsley Fairbridge wanted to provide opportunities for orphaned or poor children in what he saw as the lands of opportunity. His focus was on training the children to be farmers and farmers’ wives. Not all children who migrated under this scheme were orphans, some parents were persuaded to sign over legal custodianship of their children to the organisation.
Fairbridge Farm School near Molong operated from 1937 until 1974 during which time about 1200 boys and girls went through the school. It was essentially a residential institution on a farm.
The relevance of this migration story to the story of food is that the children worked a farm which largely sustained them. There were extensive vegetable gardens, pigs and poultry, along with the supporting infrastructure of a dairy, silos, bakery and slaughterhouse. The children did the work on the farm and also attended school.
This is not a straightforward story. Some of the now adult children remember Fairbridge Farm at Molong better than others. Some grown children are traumatised by their experiences and report physical and sexual abuse. Alan Gill’s book Orphans of the Empire recounts a number of these experiences as told by the adult children. These accounts show the abuse suffered and the deep pain with which it is remembered. In 2015, 150 former residents at Molong were awarded $24 million in compensation for survivors of institutional abuse, which so far is the largest payout ever made to survivors.19
This is a very difficult story to tell within the context of food and wine in the region. A judgement call will have to be made by Orange Regional Museum about whether the story of Fairbridge Farm Molong is to be part of Paddock to Plate. It is also a story that has been told by Molong Museum and the NSW Migration Heritage Centre.
MIGRATION 143 ENDNOTES
1 Elizabeth Edwards, Half a World Away Postwar Migration to the Orange District, NSW Migration Heritage Centre and Orange City Council, 2007, p96
2 Barbara Santich, Bold Palates Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2012 p15 and p302
3 Toni Risson, Souvlakia’s Journey in (eds) Donna Lee Brien and Adele Wessell ‘Text Special Edition Issue 24 Cookbooks: writing, reading and publishing culinary literature in Australasia, http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue24/content.htm, viewed 30 May 2017
4 Elizabeth Edwards, Half a World Away Postwar Migration to the Orange District, NSW Migration Heritage Centre and Orange City Council, 2007, p35
5 Extrapolated from the Australian Bureau of Statistics 1961 Census data, full census report in the resource file.
6 Elizabeth Edwards, Half a World Away World Postwar Migration to the Orange District, NSW Migration Heritage Centre and Orange City Council, 2007, p41
7 Oral history record taken by Elisabeth Edwards for Half a World Away, see resource file for Brunhilde Srejic
8 Elizabeth Edwards, Half a World Away Postwar Migration to the Orange District, NSW Migration Heritage Centre and Orange City Council, 2007, p17
9 Also available online http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/halfaworldaway/settlingin.html
10 Effy Alexakis and Leonard Janiszewski, Greek Cafes and Milk Bars of Australia, Halstead Press, Canberra, 2007 pp 13-15
11 http://www.kythera-family.net/en/history/archive-research/1935-38-greek-businesses-in-nsw
12 Effy Alexakis and Leonard Janiszewski, Greek Cafes and Milk Bars of Australia, Halstead Press, Canberra, 2007 p. 157
13 Ibid p 238 and Councillor Chris Gryllis profile http://www.orange.nsw.gov.au/site/index.cfm?display=152408, viewed 30 June 2017
14 Effy Alexakis and Leonard Janiszewski, Greek Cafes and Milk Bars of Australia, Halstead Press, Canberra, 2007 p238
15 Elizabeth Edwards, Half a World Away Postwar Migration to the Orange District, NSW Migration Heritage Centre and Orange City Council, 2007, p94
John Lewis, Italian Spirits fuel success, 2 May 2017 http://www.theherald.com.au/story/4633950/italian-spirit-fuels-success/, viewed 30 June 2017
16 http://halfaworldaway.orangemuseum.com.au/pages/settling/daquino.cfm
MIGRATION 144
17 Elizabeth Edwards, Half a World Away the World Postwar Migration to the Orange District, NSW Migration Heritage Centre and Orange City Council, 2007, p139
18 Oral history record taken by Elisabeth Edwards for Half a World Away, see resource file for Pasqua Centofanti and Helen and Sam Lihos.18
19 Rachel Browne, $24 million payment for Fairbridge Farm abuse victims, 29 June 2015, http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/24-million-payment-for-fairbridge-farm-abuse-victims-20150629- gi0hah.html, viewed 30 June 2017 and http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/fairbridge/fairbridge-transcripts/index.html, viewed 30 June 2017
MIGRATION 145 13. At Home
This chapter is divided into decade segments to examine the change over time in the home. In each segment, I look at what food was eaten, where it came from and how it was stored and cooked. While some generalisations are inevitably necessary, I have tried to give the sense that what you ate, even in this region, was greatly influenced by socio-economic standing and geographic location. For example, men working away from the homestead, as many shepherds did, ate damper and mutton stew, while those with more income living in Orange and the more established towns had access to a variety of foods, including even oysters sent by rail from Sydney.1 Not everyone ate the same and what you ate was greatly influenced by income and location.
At home in the 19th century
“Elizabeth Thomas of Ferndale at Springside was an enthusiastic gardener. The Thomas family had an orchard, which included stone fruits, apples, pears, persimmons, quinces, grapes and cherries. A vegetable garden was also cultivated. For the most part the family were self-supporting…they grew vegetables, kept poultry, therefore had eggs and an occasional chicken in the pot. There were pigs, calves and cows which their milk, cream and butter derived… Friday was market day. Elizabeth and husband Henry sold any surplus fruit, vegetables, butter and eggs at the market.”2
This quote about the Thomas family who moved into the district in 1854 is a perfect example of what a family aspired to in that era. The aim was self-sufficiency and a variety of foods to provide protein through chickens, cows and pigs, dairy from the cow or goat, vegetables from the garden and fruit from the orchard. The only food missing is the carbohydrates, which indicate that the flour would have been purchased.
The cultural tradition of food during this 19th century period was very much inspired by country of origin. Many families brought with them their Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Scottish or English food traditions. To this was added willingness amongst some to eat native foods, particularly sought after protein in kangaroos, wallabies, emu and wombat. Cookbooks of the time have recipes in particular for kangaroos, and more than just the kangaroo tail soup, which has entered popular mythology. Jacqui Newling writes of the time that was willingness and a curiosity amongst some migrants to the colonies to cook the exotic flora and fauna. Like the rabbit though, by the early 20th century this willingness to eat native became associated with poverty. Only poor people would eat kangaroo or rabbit.3
What we ate
Rabbits Released at Barwon Park in 1859, rabbits soon became a blessing and a curse for Australian farmers. They provided jobs and food but also destroyed crops and the land. Rabbits multiplied at alarming speeds, so much so that in 1883 the NSW colonial government was forced to introduce
AT HOME 146 legislation to make farmers control the pest. Rabbits destroyed the land by digging burrows, eating native vegetation and eating farmed crops.4
The abundance of rabbits provided food for many families in rural areas, free protein that only needed to be caught. Families trapped and ate rabbits. Farms were supported by the work of the men going off on rabbit trapping trips. Rabbits were sold for their fur to agents who sold them to factories. Rabbit meat was also frozen at freezing works around the district. The Country Freezing Company ran the large Blayney Freezing Works and a number of smaller works at Millthorpe, Yeoval, Canowindra and Orange.
Rabbit trapper, his family and camp. Joseph Check, Country Freezing Works Album 1917, National Library of Australia. Note both Mum and Dad holding rifles and dead rabbits, the small dog suitable for hunting out rabbits and the mixture of technology from the car, to the bicycle and the horse and cart.
Rabbits provided valuable food and work for rural farming families, and employment for the landless. Men would work in a gang of three to five for two to three weeks at a time. A trapper would use a small pick to dig a trench, place his trap in the trench and cover it with a thin layer of dirt. A curious rabbit then comes along to see what is in the trench and his foreleg is caught in the trap. The rabbit is still alive. The trapper then checks his traps at sunrise, sundown and 9pm. Finding a rabbit he gives a sharp blow to the neck, breaking the spinal cord and killing the rabbit. He then bled the rabbit and removed the entrails. On a typical night he’d return to camp with 60 to 100 rabbits which were then hung in a fly proof screen before being taken to the freezing works.5
AT HOME 147 Eugowra Museum has the bicycle, lantern and rabbit traps used by Elaine Cheney’s father on his rabbiting trips.
So how would a family eat a rabbit? Rabbit stew was very common, Elaine Cheney recalls eating quite a fair bit of rabbit stew. Rabbits could be boiled, slow braised, fricassee and of course, curried.
Edward Abbott published one of the earliest cook books with Australian recipes in 1864. In English and Australian Cookery Book: cookery for the many as well as the upper ten thousand he is rather dismissive of the rabbit saying it is too dry “…only fit for pies and curries.”6 His does use the rabbit though in some recipes. Note how the curry powder recipe below could have been taken from a recent cook book.
Edward Abbott’s Rabbit Recipes
Game Pie for Christmas Take a pheasant, a hare, a capon [chicken], two pigeons and two rabbits. Bone them and put them into the paste in the shape of a bird with the livers, hearts and two mutton kidneys, forcemeat and egg balls, seasoning, spice, ketchup and mushrooms, filled up with gravy made from the different bones and bake sufficiently.7
Curry Cut meats, fowls or rabbits into small joints and fry them brown in a pan with an onion chopped up. When half done take them out and put them in a stew pan with two tablespoons of curry stuff, ad a dredge of flour, and let it simmer with the juice of a lemon, a tablespoon of butter and a little ketchup. The Bengal, Malay or Madras curries are excellent and wholesome dishes, but a curry in a deluge of broth, with meats floating about it like so many islands, is an abomination.8
Curry Powder One and half ounce mustard seed, four ounces coriander, four and quarter ounces turmeric, two and half ounces black pepper, one and quarter ounces cayenne, half ounce ginger, quarter ounce cinnamon, cloves, mace each. To be well pounded, mixed and stored in a stoppered bottle in a dry place.9
Kangaroo Kangaroo and wallaby were widely eaten. Indeed many meats which we wouldn’t think to eat today were eaten like wombat, emu, native birds and bush turkeys. Kangaroo and wallaby was cooked in a variety of ways: curried, stewed, soups and in more exotic styles like ‘jugged wallaby’ or kangaroo steamers. Wallaby was likened to hare and cooked in a similar way by putting the meat into an earthenware jug and boiling the jar, which then steams the meat in its own juices. This kind of slow cooked meal was seen as an upper class dish.10 Edward Abbott in 1864 gives detailed instructions on how to cut up a kangaroo for roasting. He also stuffs his kangaroo like a turkey.
Edward Abbott’s Kangaroo Recipes
Slippery Bob Take kangaroo brains, and mix with flour and water and make into a batter, season well AT HOME 148 with pepper, salt, then pour a table-spoon at a time into an iron pot containing emu fat, and take them out done. Bush fare required a good appetite and excellent digestion.11
Steamed Kangaroo Cut the meat off the hind-quarters, take away the skin, and mince, pound or grind the meat in a sausage mill, not set finely; set it aside until next day, and prepare the gravy meanwhile; for this you can use the bones, skin, tail or part of the fore-quarter, well bruised and hacked up, and slowly simmered with three pints of water and a small onion till reduced to little more than one pint. Do this the day before you want to serve the steamer, and strain off the gravy to be cold. Next day take a pound of nice fat bacon, free from rust, cut it into dice, add it to the minced meat, and stir all well into the cold gravy (which should be a jelly, if good), let the whole warm gradually and simmer until slowly cooked. Season to your palate being carful not to add much salt, if any as the bacon salts it. A spoonful or two of mushroom ketchup and a dredge of flour will improve the flavour and consistency of the steamer.12
A variation of the Kangaroo Steamer has marjoram and pepper also added along with the bacon before being steamed. When cooked it is then packed into open-mouthed bottles and sealed with beaten egg white and can be kept for up to 12 months. When needed, the whole bottle was then placed into a saucepan and boiled for 15 minutes.13
Mutton Given the many sheep farms in the district it was inevitable that mutton was commonly eaten. We tend to eat lamb today but this only started from the 1920s onwards. Mutton was the preferred way to eat sheep, and the older the better. Edward Abbott is firm in his belief that while three year old mutton was what the butcher will give you, five year old mutton was preferable.14 Many cookbooks from the era including the popular Mrs Beeton’s Guide to Household Management and Edward Abbott’s book include a range of ways to cook mutton including boiled which was hugely common, as hams, broth, roasted and stuffed, salted, stewed, corned, curried, eaten as chops and turned into sausages.
The chop became such a signature dish of rural Australia, so much so that it was common to welcome a visitor with a chop – plain or crumbed – and a cup of tea. The chop picnic was what Australians did before the arrival of the American BBQ in the 1940s. The chop was plentiful and quick to cook on open coals in the paddock or the open fire of the kitchen. There was even a saying dating to around 1874 that says ‘to take a chop’ was to eat with an equal. The whole saying was: “You may dine with a duke but you ‘take a chop’ with an equal.”15
Mutton Recipes
Mutton Sausages To each pound of mutton add a pound of beef suet and anchovies for relish chopped finely and what ever seasoning you choose. Herbs if you please.16
Salt Mutton If it be a leg, bone it, put it into a pan and pour over it a marinade made of oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, garlic, onion, thyme, a bay-leaf, and parsley. Let it marinade three days and roast it. It may be stewed, and any part of mutton is good dressed in this mode.17 AT HOME 149
Cuts of meat, Edward Abbott’s English and Australian Cookery Book for the many and the upper
AT HOME 150 ten thousand, 186418 Other meats Many orchards kept pigs as they eat the fallen apples and thereby clean up the orchard. Pigs have large litters and don’t take up much space when compared with sheep and cattle. They also become a useful source of meat, making them an ideal small farm and orchard animal. Pork is easily preserved with salt, portable as ham, bacon, salted or smoked. Common ways to eat pork were in pea and ham soups, pork and beans, picked or cut up and fried to add flavour to vegetables.19
Goats were often kept as they too eat scraps, are easy to handle and provide more than one use, in this case providing milk which can be turned into cheese. Goat was also commonly eaten, so much so that the author Marcus Clark in 1874 said that Australia’s national dish should be curried goat “…mixed with three eggs, white of a coconut scraped to a powder, two chilies and half a dozen pieces of pineapple.”20
Fish and oysters were much more widely available than they are today, as we suffer the consequences of past overfishing. Cheap and abundant fish was often eaten on Fridays by those of the Catholic faith and others who weren’t. In Orange saltwater fish was brought up on the train from the Sydney market. It was common to eat it baked boiled, fried, in breadcrumbs, curried and in pies made of pastry or potatoes. More exotic seafood like oysters were also railed to Orange and prawns, lobsters and anchovies often appear in cookbooks of the era.21
Jellies There were some foods which are distinctively 19th century, and the widespread use of jelly in many creative forms has to be the most unique. Not just the sweet jelly we know in little packets prepared and served to the sick or children, but jellies of all different (usually fruit) flavours and shapes. Edward Abbott has recipes for jelly with a range of fruit – apple, red currant and raspberry.
Mrs Beeton had a recipe for preparing your own jelly.
Ingredients – 2 calf’s feet, 6 pints of water Mode – The stock for jellies should always be made the day before it is required for use, as the liquor has time to cool, and the fat can be so much more easily and effectually removed when thoroughly set. Procure from the butcher’s 2 nice calf’s feet, scald them to take off the hair, slit them in two, remove the fat from between the claws and wash the feet well in warm water, put them in a stew pan, with the above proportion of cold water, bring it gradually to boil, and remove every particle of scum as it arises. When it is well skimmed, boil it very gently for 6 or 7 hours, or until the liquor is reduced rather more than half, then strain it through a sieve into a basin, and put I in a cool place to set. As the liquor is strained, measure it to ascertain the proportion for the jelly, allowing something for the sediment and fat at the top. To clarify it, carefully remove all the fat from the top, pour over a little warm water, to wash away any that may remain, and wipe the jelly with a clean cloth; remove the jelly from the sediment, put it into a saucepan, and supposing the quantity to be a quart, add to it 6 oz. of loaf sugar, the shells and well-whisked white soft 5 eggs, and stir these ingredients together cold, set the saucepan on the fire, but do not stir the jelly after it begins to warm. Let it boil about 10 minutes after it rises to a head, then throw in a teacupful of cold water, let it boil 5 minutes longer, then take the saucepan off, cover it closely and let it
AT HOME 151 remain ½ hour near the fire. Drip the jelly-bag into the hot water wring it out quite dry and fasten it on to a stand which must be placed near the fire to prevent eth jelly from setting before it has run through the bag. Place a basin underneath to receive the jelly; then pour it into the bag, and should it not be clear the first time run it through the bag again. This stock is the foundation of all really good jellies, which may be varied in innumerable ways, by colouring and flavouring with liqueurs, and by moulding it with fresh and preserved fruits.22
AT HOME 152
Coloured plate, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, note the dual coloured jelly.23
AT HOME 153
Henry Dunbar’s 1899 Ledger contains a few handwritten recipes of importance to the local Dunbar family. Preserving food was important in the days before refrigeration, hence the picked beetroot and green tomato jam. See the resource file for scans of other Dunbar family recipes such as lemon tart.
Cooking it The kitchen of the early to mid- 19th century on small properties right through to larger homesteads or houses in town looked remarkably similar. Where possible, the kitchen was built separately some distance from the main homestead for fear of fire. The fireplace or range kept an open flame over which different pots were hung, from a pivoting metal arm or bracket.
One of the early innovations in the colonies was the colonial oven. This early colonial oven was a cast iron box set into a fireplace. A fire could be lit both in the box and on top of the box to create different sources of heat, allowing more than one pot or dish to be heated. From the brackets pots and joints of meat could be hung. Oven baking as we know it was rare, usually the work of bakers with their bread ovens.24 If a roast was needed, you could pay the baker a small amount to roast your meat in their bread oven. Over the open fire or colonial oven, it was common to find a large kettle of hot water used by the household for washing and drinking. What we now call camp ovens sat in the hot coals of an open fireplace. In these meats could be roasted, stewed or slowly braised.
By the later part of the 19th century, the method of cooking was changing. Closed, cast iron ranges were becoming more commonly used, taking the colonial oven to the next stage. They had been available to the wealthy before this but it’s from this later time that you start to see them more widely in other homes. It used wood or coal. This closed range meant that it was easier to cook a roast in the oven of the closed range. They also provided a flat cooktop, as we know it and as you see in the Molong Museum kitchen. On this flat cooktop you can fry and boil, and keep a kettle of
AT HOME 154 hot water. In many places these ranges were used into the 1960s and beyond. Mrs O’Halloran at Yeoval, in the house that is now the historical museum, used her closed range until her death in 2004.25
Keeping food cool and unspoiled was a constant struggle through the 19th century. Wealthy town homes and country homesteads built an underground cellar which can be quite effective in storing meats, milk and butter for a few days, and very effective in storing vegetables, preserves and dry produce for months. Many homes, across the socio-economic spectrum, used cool safe boxes hung in the shade to catch the breeze and iceboxes. An icebox was a two-layered case with an outer case made of wood and an inner metal case with shelving. Between the two cases layers of insulation were installed. The insulation could be any range of materials including cork, animal furs, wool, ash and asbestos. Usually on top, a large block of ice was placed. Different iceboxes have different ways of then using the cooled ice, but many collected the water in a bottom tray allowing the ice to run down the sides of the icebox. Iceboxes were effective at keeping butter firm and meat cool for several days.26 Ice was imported into the colony of NSW from the 1850s from North America and by the turn of the century companies like the Blayney Freezing Works responded to the strong demand for ice. 27
Cast iron range above and dresser below in the kitchen at Molong Museum. See the objects file for other photographs of furniture, kitchen utensils and a range of cool safes and early refrigerators at the museum.
AT HOME 155 At home from 1900 to 1960
“When I was growing up we were self-sufficient: we milked our own cows, killed our own meat and had an orchard and preserved fruit. In the Depression years in the 30s, when I was a child, to buy goods was frowned upon; you only bought absolute necessities from the store and you produced everything that you ate, virtually.” Harold Balcomb28
What we ate Changes in technology and lifestyle gradually changed what we ate during the years 1900 to 1950. The years opened with many people self sufficient, as Harold Balcomb’s quote shows. Many homes in Orange, and the surrounding villages, continued the practice of growing vegetables, having chickens and harvesting from their own fruit trees. For those on the farms, this was even more so. For those in town, there was also daily deliveries available from grocers and bakers, and weekly visits from butchers and Chinese market gardeners.
Food was also sourced in other ways, showing a close relationship with local food, foraging before it had that name. Marie Hammond, who grew up at Molong, remembers the family going black berrying and mushrooming, something which is treated fearfully today due to loss of knowledge. Then the knowledge of the right mushrooms to pick was passed down from adults to children so that they “just knew” which ones were okay. She also remembers the children fishing in local creeks.29
“It was exciting to go blackberrying we’d go in the back of our neighbours truck and go up the back of Mount Canobolas.” Marie Hammond30
Alison Russell, many years after Marie Hammond’s experience, remembers foraging for mushrooms with family members.
“It was after the Sunday roast lunch and always after good rain. Three car loads would head out near the airport, we would climb fences and enter peoples’ property. (I can never remember asking for permission). The mushrooms were located under the rows of pines that were used for windbreaks and out in the paddock. You could see them all popping up from the ground. Some were the size of dinner plates, which we thought was great. We’d fill buckets and baskets with mushrooms. Mum used to watch up to ensure that we weren’t picking something else, but there was no real fear of that as they were all field mushrooms.
The cousins in one car and Nan and Pop in the other would all go back to their homes. When we got home, we would help mum prepare the mushrooms for dinner, by way of peeling them and cutting off the stalk. As we had a large lunch it was mushrooms on toast for tea (dinner). We would call it tea. Mum would fry the mushrooms with some butter, salt and pepper and make a white sauce out of cornflour to add to the mushrooms. They were served on toast. I can still taste them now, it was all that we knew, but they were to die for. I make the same recipe myself sometimes, maybe it was out of the Common Sense Cookbook. Cornflour was my mother’s friend, I don’t think she made a rue.”31
AT HOME 156 This was also the age of the corner store and home deliveries. The home cook relied on her cool safe or icebox to keep butter, milk and meat cold. But even these at their best could only keep butter firm for a few days. It was also in the day before the car, which made it quicker to go to the shops. If you had to walk, cycle or take the horse just to buy bread, you want it to be close. These factors meant frequent shops to the corner shop to get fresh supplies. Marie Hammond, who grew up in Molong, remembers the butcher and milk men making deliveries by cart every day and the grocers taking your order in the morning to deliver in the afternoon.32
Breakfast as we know it today slowly evolved over this period. A cooked breakfast was the country tradition, usually of porridge, sausages or chops and eggs, fried, poached or boiled. The Greater Western Mill at Millthorpe in this period was producing pollard (a fine bran) and a breakfast cereal, suggesting that breakfast cereals were being adopted. The mass production of cereals in the ready to use format we know received a huge catalyst when Weetbix was first made in 1926. It would go on to be a widely Australian and uniquely Australian cereal product.
“Porridge of a morning with chops. We used to roll the oats. There weren’t bought oats. We used to roll them ourselves [chops] off the corriedale. Or else it used to be livers…and Bill always got the brains…we’d have a picnic lunch round the sheep yards or if we were harvesting we’d have it out in the [paddocks] Mrs Carroll would pack a lunch for us…mostly sandwiches….” John Hammond, life on the property Redbank, Molong33
“We had our dinner in the middle of the day and it was mostly hot roast lamb and baked vegetables and then a cooked sweet such a rice or …baked custard…we used to kill a beast in winter time between the neighbours and we would all take a quarter and then the next neighbor would kill one and that way there was no refrigeration until the 40s so that you couldn’t keep the meat for very long …so it was kept in the cool safe or hung up in the winter time you could keep beef quite a while hanging up in a linen bag on the verandah…” Harold Balcomb, Tekoona [farm]34
Cookbooks Cookbooks, written for the Australian home cook, were widely available with so many printed that you could reasonably expect almost every middle class home to have at least one cookbook. The State Library of New South Wales has a cookbook collection and the catalogue compilation of these is including in the exhibition materials file. The National Library of Australia has also digitized the entire book of some selected cookbooks. I have included in the file the full digitized version of Edward Abbott’s cook book 1864 and Harriet Wicken’s cook book 1913. A sample of her suggestions for family dinner menus are included below as an image.
Other cookbooks of the era are Mary Gilmore’s The Worker Cookbook 1915, Amy Monro’s Practical Australian Cookery, Elizabeth Craig’s New Standard Cookery Illustrated 1933 and the well-known CWA Commonsense Cookery Book published in many editions. Orange Library has a cookbook collection as well which I also included the listing of these in the exhibition materials file. Of particular note is the Orange Auxiliary Cook Book also known as the Orange Recipe Gift Book, which went into at least four editions in the 1920s. Recipes from this cookbook are included below. Interesting between the late 1800s to the 1950s the majority of cookbook writers were women. This was part of the increasing awareness of nutrition and government becoming interested in community health. Women during this period held significant positions in the various departments writing, developing policy and educating the community about nutrition and food.35 AT HOME 157 Kingswood cookery book / by H.F. Wicken.
Harriet Wicken’s cook book 1913 includes a number of menu plans for different occasions including feeding a family, example above. She doesn’t identify vegetables in her menu plans, but just says to serve potatoes and two vegetables in season with a roast or to dress vegetables occasionallyPage 47 to accompany the other meals. The family meals look rather substantial. See the nla.obj-43991849 resourceNational fileLibrary for ofthe Australia whole digitized cookbook.
AT HOME 158
The golden age of antipodean baking Food historian, Michael Symmons refers to the 1890 to 1940 period as the’ golden age of antipodean baking’. Professor Barbara Sanitach uses this term ‘the land of cakes’ to describe Australia from the 1890s onwards and through to at least the 1950s/1960s.36 Baking powder, flour and sugar was cheap and widely accessible. Each also stored well.
Cooking cakes was clearly women’s work, all part of providing food for the family and men at work, particularly on farms out in the paddocks. It was a mixed experience, some women hated the expectation of producing cakes all the time. But for other women, it was a challenge many took to with relish to show their creativity and skill. Not all women’s work was drudgery as popular perception would take of the past. Australian home cooks, overwhelming women, were creative and innovative, incorporating exotic flavours like the new imports of passion fruit and coconut. They invented new recipes and were proud of their creations.
Passion fruit and coconut are almost synonymous with Australian cooking. Where would the lamington be without coconut? Coconut was first imported into Australia in that dried and desiccated form from Fiji and Ceylon in 1885. Coconut’s greatest legacy lives on in the lamington and Anzac biscuit, both invented during this golden age of baking. The lamington was invented in 1902, and the Anzac biscuit during the First World War. Passion fruit was used in sago, puddings, cakes, jellies and jams. It also became the ‘done thing’ to grow a passion fruit vine. Perhaps the greatest legacy of passion fruit is its use in pavlova.37
Baking recipes – Orange Gift Recipe Book (1920s to 1930s)
Australia Cake Recipe for the Orange Gift Recipe Book (Orange Hospital Auxiliary 2nd Edition) provided by Mrs P O’Shea.
Ingredients: ½ lb butter, ½ lb sugar, 2 eggs, 1 lb plain flour, 2 teaspoons baking powerd, 1 lb dates. Method: cream sugar and butter, add eggs and flour sifted with baking powder. Put half the mixture in a flat dish. Cover the dates with boiling water; add ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg, and stir to a thick paste. Spread over mixture, then cover with the other half. Spring with nuts and bake.
Apple Cake Recipe for the Orange Gift Recipe Book (Orange Hospital Auxiliary 2nd edition) provided by M. Niness
Ingredients: 8oz flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 large egg, 4 oz butter, 4 oz sugar. Method: mix flour and powder, sugar and butter together, add beaten egg and mix well. Divide into two pieces, roll out, put one piece into a round tin, cover with stewed apples and put the other round on top. Bake in a moderate oven till brown. Sift icing sugar on top.
Pineapple Meringue Recipe for the Orange Gift Recipe Book (Orange Hospital Auxiliary 2nd edition) provided by Miss Rene Torpy.
Fork a medium sized pineapple into small pieces, add sugar to taste and a little cold water. Cook AT HOME 159 for a little while, then thicken with arrowroot. Take off fire, and add two well-beaten egg yolks and make a meringue with the two egg whites. Cook until light brown. Serve with whipped cream.
Sponge Sandwich Recipe for the Orange Gift Recipe Book (Orange Hospital Auxiliary 2nd edition) provided by E.D. Bradley.
Ingredients: ¼ lib sugar, ¼ lb flour, 3 eggs (yolks and whites beaten separately), 2 tablespoons warm water, ½ teaspoon cream of tartar, ½ teaspoon carb. Soda. Method: beat sugar and yolks of eggs together, add water and flavoring, then beaten whites. Beat well and add flour, with cream of tartar and soda (well shifted). Bake about ten minutes.
Rainbow Cake Recipe for the Orange Gift Recipe Book (Orange Hospital Auxiliary 2nd edition) provided by Mrs E.A. Cameron.
Ingredients: ½ lb sugar, ½ cup milk, ¼ lb butter, ½ lb flour, 3 eggs, ½ teaspoon of cream of soda, 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar, 1 oz chocolate, vanilla, soft icing. Method: beat butter to cream, add eggs, milk and sugar. Mix flour, soda, cream of tartar together, add butter and eggs. Flavor with vanilla and beat well. Divide into three parts, beat one plain colour, one with cochineal and one with chocolate. Bake each about 10 minutes. Soft icing for cake: 1 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon water, 1 egg. Put water and sugar into a saucepan and boil for about 5 minutes. Beat white of egg to stiff froth, pour boiling sugar on to it and beat until nearly cold.
Rainbow Cake Recipe for the Orange Gift Recipe Book (Orange Hospital Auxiliary 2nd edition) provided by Mrs E Bouffler.
Mix ¼ lb butter and ½ cup sugar to cream; add two eggs; sift in 1 ½ cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, pinch of salt. Press on to cake tin with floured fork. Spread with raspberry jam and the following mixture: beat 1 egg, ½ cup sugar and 1 cup coconut and spread in jam. Bake in a cool oven.
Cooking it
“I can remember electricity being introduced and spreading into the country in the ’50s. We used to have to persevere with fuel stoves and fuel heating and kerosene lamps. But all that changed. Refrigeration was very difficult - drip trays weren’t the best – everything went mouldy in them, but that didn’t matter – we scraped it off and ate it! Bill Nicholls, Huntley38
In the years 1900 to 1960, the methods of cooking changed dramatically. The century opened with the majority of people cooking on wood fueled closed ranges, colonial ovens or open fires and with perhaps a few of the wealthy and lucky aware of gas ovens. Gas ovens didn’t become wide spread until the 1930s when the ‘Early Kooka’ gas oven with a flat top of four burners was a highly desirable piece for the modern housewife. It was clean, easy to use and fast. Those who couldn’t AT HOME 160 afford a full gas oven and stove top may have purchased a single or double gas ring to boil hot water or cook a one saucepan stew.39
Electric oven and stove tops were also making their way on to the market but took longer to be adopted. This is mainly as many towns introduced gas to the home first before electricity. Orange had gas lighting as early as 1877, and some larger stores and hotels used gas lighting from then too.40 It’s unclear if they would have used gas in the kitchen that early, I think it unlikely as it is generally accepted that gas cooking was more common in the 1920s and 1930s. Electricity came to the city in 1922. Many families though in rural New South Wales continued to use bottled gas well into the late 1970s for both heating and cooking, alongside electric lighting.41
Adoption of new technology is also not a simple streamlined process. It is reasonable to expect that some families may have gone from a wood fuel stove to an electric oven, as Bill Nicholls’ quote suggests or gone from a wood stove, to a gas oven to an electric oven/stove, or perhaps retained their gas stove. Mrs O’ Halloran of Yeoval kept her wood stove and continually used it right through to 2004. By the 1960s though most families had moved from the wood fuel stove to cooking with gas or electricity.
Refrigeration at the beginning of the 1900s was still the icebox and cool safe. Molong Museum has a collection of iceboxes and early refrigerators showing the various attempts to perfect a cooling system on a domestic scale. Refrigerators did not become affordable until after the Second World War.42 Their adoption relied on a good supply of electricity and an affordable unit. It was after the war that Emmco in Orange produced a number of electrical appliances, including the refrigerator. Peter Warwick Amos’ family had a general store in Millthorpe during this period and he remembers the sale of refrigerators in the 1960s as picking up then.
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Photo on previous page and the kitchen photos: Yeoval Historical Museum, former home of Mrs O’Halloran from the early 1950s to 2004.
Note there is no sink and the washing up basin is on the side bench. AT HOME 162 A Note on Resources There are a number of photos of Yeoval Historical Museum, the O’Hallorans former home which has been kept exactly as they lived in it, including the fully equipped walk in pantry and cool safe. Two local women, Jill Cole and Shah Alford, also each have substantial personal collections of kitchen ware. Jill Cole has lived in Blayney / Carcoar since the 1940s and over the years has acquired through purchase at estate auctions and sales a range of kitchen items. Shah Alford brought her grandmother’s house and with the house came all her grandmother’s cooking items dating back to at least 1945/46 when her grandparents moved to Orange, but also older when they were on the farm at Eugowra.
AT HOME 163 At home from the 1960s
“The food we ate on a typical day was porridge and toast for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, stew for tea and a special treat was a chicken and plum pudding for Christmas. During my youth we would make savoury pies and was one of the favourite foods for the family….In the 40’s after the war ended there was an increase in the building of houses, more people were able to purchase a car to travel about.” Margaret Sharp, Eugowra43
Food eaten at home from the 1960s onwards shared a lot of continuity with the early 20th century years, but also saw significant changes in how the food got to the home kitchen and what was eaten. With the wide spread ownership of cars, that Margaret Sharp refers to above, it was now far easier for families to shop at the new ‘cash and carry’ self-serve supermarkets. Electric refrigeration at home meant they could shop themselves once a week often on the late night Thursday night shopping. The days of the grocer, butcher, milkman or baker delivering to the door would slowly disappear through the 1960s to the 1980s, so that the milkman was the last of a long tradition.
Food at home moved into the packaged products. Food technology and transport could now quickly and very cheaply move canned vegetables, packet cake mixes and frozen pizza. While many families did retain their vegetable gardens and fruit trees, particularly migrant families, the period from 1960 to 1990 saw them decline in number. Pickling and making your own also declined during these three decades. Along with self-serve supermarkets, fast food also arrive, led by McDonalds who first arrived in Australia in the late 1960s.44
It would be very easy to paint a picture of these three to four decades from 1960 to the 1990s/2000s as a period of packaged food, rising sugar consumption and decline of local food production. And this is very much the reality of food in the home for many decades for many families. The rising levels of obesity in Australia is a testament to these last four decades of food availability and choices. The intersection of socio-economic factors with food choices also plays a role in these decades.
It is arguable though that despite these changes residents of Orange never quite lost their sense of locally produced food. Many families worked farms or orchards themselves, or had parents and grandparents who had. The availability of local produce continued alongside the arrival of the supermarkets. Alison Russell remembers going out to the orchards to buy cherries in season.
“During cherry season we would go to an orchard and buy a box of cherries… we all had to help prepare the cherries for stewing. They were stewed in a large pot on the stove with sugar (not sure how much). Then they were frozen. We had a very large chest freezer. We ate cherries all year round. They were particularly nice with blancmange – made with cornflour, sometime it was pink, sometime white, but it nearly always had shredded coconut on the top.”45
By the early 1990s, there was a decidedly growing interest in local and fresh food, both in this region and by that market which plays such a big role here, Sydney. Consumers started to ask what was in their foods and where did it come from. Concerns about genetic modification of food AT HOME 164 and application of chemicals spurred on an organic food market. What was once the domain of a few, organic food production had become mainstream by the mid-2000s. The history of food since the 1960s is a duality – the loss of many historic local food traditions and practices along with a rediscovery of both home cooking and local produce, all of course with a flourish of inspiration from the celebrity chef of the day.
What we ate
Cookbooks In each of the sections above I have used a signature cookbook to reference that era, so Edward Abbott’s English and Australian Cookery Book 1864 for the 19th century and Orange Recipe Gift Book for the years 1900 to 1960. To select a signature cookbook for the post-1960s era is difficult, there are so many cookbooks and so many local and national chefs and cookbook writers. During this period from 1960 though, Margaret Fulton has to be the most iconic cookbook author of the time. Possibly Australia’s first celebrity chef, Margaret Fulton recipes appeared in Australian women’s magazines for many decades. She was instrumental in encouraging home cooks to explore and bring home international cuisines from other countries, and to take nutrition seriously. Her classic 1968 book is still in print today and provides a few good examples of what she was encouraging the home cook to do. (Please note: unlike the other cookbooks which are out of copyright, this one isn’t. So if you did wish to use Margaret Fulton recipes in the exhibition, copyright permission would need to be obtained from the publisher.)
Recipes from Margaret Fulton46
Indonesian Satays Ingredients: 500 grams of pork fillet, juice of 1 lemon, 1 clove garlic, crushed, 2 tablespoons light soy sauce. Peanut sauce: 3 tablespoons peanut butter, 30 grams of butter, ½ teaspoon of Tabasco, ½ teaspoon sugar, ¾ cup of coconut cream or fresh cream. Cut pork into 2cm cubes, Combine lemon juice, garlic and soy sauce. Marinate pork cubes in mixture, turning occasionally or 2-4 hours. Drain and reserve the marinade. Thread cubes onto skewers. 3 – 4 cubes each and grill for 6-8 minutes serve with hot sauce. Peanut sauce. In a saucepan blend the reserved marinade with the sauce ingredients, except coconut milk or cream. Pour the sauce over the satays or serve as a dip. Serves 4 as a main course or 8-10 as part of an hors d’oeuvres tray.
Antipasto Arrange crisp fresh vegetables such as celery sticks or tender stalks and fennel pieces on a platter. Olives, small artichokes in olive oil, cooked capsicum or pimentos in oil, cheese, anchovies, salami, prosciutto and any cold meats may be added. Serve a small bowl of oil and vinegar alongside for dipping.
A more elaborate antipasto might include stuffed mushrooms or mussels or grilled sardines. Garnish the platter with lemon wedges and serve with mayonnaise or virgin olive oil in small bowls. Crusty bread slices may also be offered.
AT HOME 165 Cooking it From the 1960s onwards the electric refrigerator, electric or gas oven with stove top were firmly part of the kitchen. The main change in technology over these decades is the move from hand powered work to electrical appliances. Hand cranked meat mincers and egg beaters gave way to the blender, mix master and electric kettle. Most changes to the kitchen now are large aesthetic and are not a substantial change in the fundamental technology as seen in the period 1900 to 1960.
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ENDNOTES
1 Jacqui Newling, Eat Your History Stories and Recipes from Australian Kitchens, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2015, p33
2 Kate Gahan and Jo Kijas, Byng & Beyond A Thematic History of Cornish Migration to Orange and District, 2012, p65
3 Jacqui Newling, Eat Your History Stories and Recipes from Australian Kitchens, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2015, p45
4 Jacqui Newling, Eat Your History Stories and Recipes from Australian Kitchens, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2015, p133
5 The Country Freezing Works, CFC Co Ltd Photo Album and Company Information, Photographer Joseph Check, Writer The Country Freezing Works, 1917
6 Edward Abbott English and Australian Cookery Book – cookery for the many as well as the upper ten thousand, London : Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, 1864, p135
7 Ibid p85
8 Ibid p25
9 Ibid p209
10 Jacqui Newling, Eat Your History Stories and Recipes from Australian Kitchens, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2015, p56
11 Edward Abbot English and Australian Cookery Book – cookery for the many as well as the upper ten thousand, London, Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, 1864, p86
12 Ibid p82
13 Ibid p83
14 Ibid p10
15 Jacqui Newling, Eat Your History Stories and Recipes from Australian Kitchens, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2015, p122
Barbara Sanitach Bold Palates Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2012, p114-116
16 Edward Abbot English and Australian Cookery Book – cookery for the many as well as the upper ten thousand, London : Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, 1864, p71
17 Ibid p195
AT HOME 167
18 Ibid p51
19 Jacqui Newling, Eat Your History Stories and Recipes from Australian Kitchens, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2015, p126
20 Barbara Sanitach Bold Palates Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2012, p115
21 Jacqui Newling, Eat Your History Stories and Recipes from Australian Kitchens, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2015, p29 and p33
22 Isabella Beeton, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000 (reprinted from original), p287-288
23 I obtained this image from wikipedia, there are quite a lot of coloured plates from Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, but if they were to be used in the exhibition, I would suggest that Oxford University Press may be able to source high resolution images for you and also clarify the copyright status, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Beeton%27s_Book_of_Household_Management, viewed 5 July 2017
24 Scott Hill in Jacqui Newling, Eat Your History Stories and Recipes from Australian Kitchens, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2015, p136-141
25 Ibid, p 136-141
26 Smith, C. (2005) Domestic Refrigeration & Refrigerators in Museums Victoria Collections https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/articles/710 , accessed 04 July 2017
27 http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/sydneys_first_ice, viewed 5 July 2017
28 Harold Balcomb, interviewed By Marg Carroll, Villages of the Heart project, 26 November 2013 (Canowindra)
29 Marie Hammond pers comm 15 June 2017
30 Marie Hammond, pers comm 15 June 2017
31 Alison Russell, pers comm 7 July 2017 via email
32 Marie Hammond, pers comm 15 June 2017
33 The Rowan Tree Villages of the Heart Telling Rural Stories, Orange City Council, 2014, p168- 169
34 The Rowan Tree Villages of the Heart Telling Rural Stories, Orange City Council, 2014, pp192- 193
AT HOME 168
35 Barbara Sanitach Bold Palates Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2012, p183. The observation about women in the public service is my own from reading a number of biographies in Sanitach’s work but also on the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
36 Barbara Sanitach Bold Palates Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2012, p198
37 Barbara Sanitach Bold Palates Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2012, pp200-201
38 Bill Nicholls, Spring Hill/ Huntley, Villages of the Heart project, November 2013. See oral history transcript
39 Scott Hill in Jacqui Newling, Eat Your History Stories and Recipes from Australian Kitchens, New South Publishing, Sydney, 2015, p136-141
40 East Orange Heritage Trail, https://www.visitorange.com.au/images/880070.pdf, viewed 8 July 2017
41 Author’s personal experience Goulburn NSW 1979-1982
42 Rebecca Gross, Recipe for Success: a history of the modern Australian kitchen, 8 August 2015, https://www.houzz.com.au/ideabooks/48528894/list/recipe-for-success-a-history-of-the-modern- australian-kitchen, viewed 8 July 2017
43 Margaret Sharp, interviewed by Judy Smith, Villages of the Heart project, 2013
44 Michael Symmons, Australia’s Cuisine Culture – a history of our food, 27 June 2014, http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2014/06/australias-cuisine-culture-a- history-of-food, viewed 8 July 2017
45 Alison Russell, pers comm 7 July 2017, via email
46 The Margaret Fulton Cookbook reprint of the 1968 classic https://books.google.com.au/books?id=S8HTuENdZxgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewA PI&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
AT HOME 169 14. Community
“And [Mum] thought if Joyce was to join CWA she would get to meet all her neighbours ... which I did. It was wonderful to get to know some of the women in that district…” Dorothy Joyce Pascoe, Millthorpe1
Country Women’s Association The Country Women’s Association started in Orange in 1924, with a strong focus on baby health. It also provided a place for country women coming into Orange to rest, sit down and wash up. This was in the days before shopping centres, which now provide this kind of place. In the past, it was quite common to have 5000 country women come through in a year and use the CWA rooms in Orange.
The CWA has a long tradition of encouraging skill development in a range of areas including cooking. Within a branch, different skill areas are allocated officers. For example there is at least a handicraft officer, an international officer and a cookery officer. They devise programs around their areas. The international officer in Orange this year is organizing a program of study around Nepal and has organised a Nepalise dinners with Nepalise chefs, dancers and talks from people who have visited the country. They have also study the local flora and fauna, in the past they have studied local garlic production and this year are studying finger limes.
Cooking competitions are one way to foster skill development in this area. The CWA have a long history of cooking competitions, which start with branch competitions, then the winners go to the group level and then the state conference. The competition is sponsored by The Land newspaper with a range of categories including preserves, butter cake, sponge cake, biscuits and icing. The CWA provides the recipes and the women bake the cake/biscuit to their specifications. At last years state conference there were 370 entries. Merle Parrish is the old style CWA cook and judge, with attention to perfecting the recipe and delivering the traditional style CWA cake.
Some branches of the CWA, not so much Orange, also have a strong history of catering for funerals and community events. Some branches also use catering to raise funds for CWA work and donations to the various programs the wider CWA support such as education programs for rural children and international charities. In the past, during World War One and Two, the CWA were also heavily involved in sending food packs to Australian servicemen. Fruit cakes and ANZAC biscuits were signature items as they could be placed in a tin and sent off to the servicemen overseas, confident that it would keep and arrive in good condition.
In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in preserving food as part of the Orange branch’s involvement in the United Nations Zero Hunger challenge. There is also growing interest in food preserving from a younger generation.2
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The Red Cross The Red Cross formed in Australia in a response to World War One. Through both the world wars, the Red Cross played an important role in supporting servicemen and women overseas through fundraising, blood donations, providing rest and recreation facilities making showers and food available, missing persons service and sending food parcels. In World War One the early focus was on sending food parcels to service personnel overseas and in World War Two the focus shifted to supporting the large number of Australian Prisoners of War. Food parcels were commonly sent overseas and local women volunteered their time to prepare the food packages. Fruit cake and Anzac biscuits were most commonly sent as they can survive a long journey and arrive edible.
In World War One, the district of Orange supported the work of the Red Cross in providing fruit to Sydney to be made into jam, which also transported well overseas to service personnel. In one six month period from January to July 2017, 2 ½ tons of fruit was donated by the region’s growers to the Red Cross to make into jam.3
The community also actively supported fundraising for the Red Cross. For many years, Orange ran a number of events to raise money for the work of the Red Cross. As an example the annual Red Cross Day in 1918 was held on Friday 10 May. Market stalls were set up on Lord’s Place, a raffle was held with the prize a donated bullock and the local councilors exalted the crowds to donate. By the end of the day a very respectable £3000 was raised.4 The annual Red Cross Ball was also a feature of the community calendar in both Orange and surrounding towns for many years. In 1939, it was held in September.5 Prizes were awarded for the best dress, dances were accompanied by local bands and supper was provided by the Red Cross volunteers.6 In the year 1939/40, Orange was the second highest donating country town in New South Wales to the work of the Red Cross.7
Dig for Victory During World War II, Australia committed to supplying the United Kingdom with much needed food. As much as possible, items like meat, fruit, and butter were shipped to the United Kingdom. Many farms also experienced labour shortages as men joined the defence forces. The country was also in drought during the early 1940s. As a result, pressure was placed on food production and food rationing of certain items were introduced. As part of feeding the people policies, Prime Minister John Curtin launched the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign in January 1942. Households and communities were encouraged to grow their own vegetables. As we’ve seen, many families at this time in this region already had their own vegetable gardens and fruit trees, even in the towns. The campaign encouraged them expand their gardens and plant areas like the front yard and develop community or neighbourhood plots. The Dig for Victory campaign was remarkably successful with a range of people getting involved in growing their own vegetables.8
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Australian War Memorial Art Collection ARTV02569
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Hospitals “The hospital was the axis of the other villages around. Where villages like Lyndhurst and Mandurama and Barry and Neville had their own churches and schools and halls, there was only one hospital and they all worked together for it. So it became a social hub as well as an employment hub, and one couldn’t have existed without the other. Those villages needed a hospital and the hospital needed those villages, and it was really admirable the way those other villages supported Carcoar and its hospital.” Jill Cole9
Community support of hospitals with food is a key part of their history. Jill Cole, curator at Carcoar Hospital Museum has researched the story of the hospital. There was a vegetable garden and a diary cow managed by the hospital’s handyman. The community also supported the hospital with food donations and fundraising events with the food going to the hospital. The local school held competitions to see which children could bring in the most food. The eggs and home produce like vegetables was then donated to the hospital. Harvest festivals from the local churches were also donated to the Carcoar Hospital. Throughout the 1920s, Jill has minutes from hospital administration meetings which show the one-off donations also made by local people, the extra chicken killed that’s taken to the hospital, the pair of rabbits brought in by a trapper or the bundle of vegetables donated to the kitchen.10
Bloomfield Hospital tells a different story. Bloomfield was the asylum for the mentally ill opened in 1925, one of the key hospitals to serve regional New South Wales. It was designed to be a calm place where patients could receive treatment and do productive work as part of their therapy. The hospital was like a small self-sufficient village with a range of services and trades onsite including carpenters, shoemakers, cooks and gardeners. In 1932 there were 1100 patients and 195 staff.11 The hospital had a farming plan, and as part of this a piggery was opened at the hospital in 1928. Food scraps were saved and feed to the pigs. The pigs were then raised and sold at market or used in the hospital kitchen.12 Bloomfield Hospital also had a vineyard, a small orchard and a vegetable garden producing potatoes and other vegetables. In the 1960s, the food gardens declined as it was no longer acceptable to use patient labour to maintain them.13
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Menu for the opening of Bloomfield in 1925 from Elisabeth Edwards In Sickness and in Health How Medicine Helped Shape Orange’s History, published 2011
Community gardens Orange and region has a history of different volunteer groups working community-based gardens for a range of purposes. The local food movement and the connection to eating locally inspire many community gardens. Others are seen as educational tools for teaching children the origins and uses of healthy food, and this is what inspires many school based kitchen garden programs. Other gardens are therapeutic devices to assist the vulnerable in the community develop new skills and connect with community members.
Examples of community gardens in the region include:
• The O’Brien Recovery Garden in Orange for people living with a mental illness, and their carers, friends and families. This is a permaculture garden and the program aims to rebuild confidence and social networks.14
• The oldest community garden in the region is the Environmental Learning Facility Community Garden in Orange. It was established in 2005 at the Orange Showgrounds. The group is made up of volunteers, many of whom are already members of the
COMMUNITY 174 Environmentally Concerned Citizens of Orange (ECCO), Central West Permaculture or Central Tablelands Landcare.15
• Canowindra Community Garden established in 2011 on Uniting Church land. It is 600 sqm and was designed to attract local school groups. It produces seasonal organic vegetables and herbs, with a significant proportion of the produce donated to the Food Basket supermarket run by the church.16
• Orange East Public School have a kitchen garden program. Students maintain the vegetable gardens and cook the produce. It was constructed with funds raised by the P&C and the school is part of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program which places an emphasis on cooking fresh produce grown by the students.17
Food equity and waste Growing awareness of social and economic justice issues around food access has led to community responses. The best well-known Australia wide example of this is Oz Harvest which collects excess donated food from retailers and then donates that to charities who distribute it to people in need. In Orange this concern has led a community of volunteers to provide FoodCare Orange. This is a not-for-profit organization which collects donated food and then sells it at the Glenroi Community Centre on Tuesdays and Thursdays at reduced prices. They purchase food from FoodBank, Australia’s largest food rescue organization. FoodCare Orange has also received donations from the following people and groups in the community: • Eggs and frozen chickens from Carbeen Pastured Products • Milk from Paul’s Milk and Dairy Farmers • Bread from Coles and Racine Bakery • Salads from Fresh Fodder • Strawberries from Borenore Strawberry Farm • Apples from Bonny Glen Fruits and Orange Fruit Growers Co-op • Fruit and vegetables from Aldi, Huntley Berry Farm, Country Fruit Distributors, NetWaste Community Garden and local individual gardeners of Orange • Non-perishable items from Baptist Church parishoners • Pork from Fresh Pastures Pork.18
Local personalities There are a number of local residents who have become well-known in the region and nationally due to appearances on popular cooking shows, awards or publications of books. A short-list is included here. It would be possible to profile these personalities in the exhibition. A decision would just have to be made on the overall direction of the exhibition and which stories you want to tell, as well as perceptions of promoting one business endeavor over another.
Sophie Hansen Sophie Hansen was Rural Australian Woman of the Year in 2016 for her celebration and support of the local food movement, including support for local farmers. She is a passionate advocate for farmers using social media as a way of connecting with their customers and tapping into that local food interest from customers. She has published a book Local is lovely which profiles growers and farmers in Orange and region, including her family venison business Mandagery Creek. It would be possible for the exhibition to reproduce images and case studies from this book by contacting the
COMMUNITY 175 Sophie Hansen and the publisher for permission. They will be able to confirm who owns the copyright to individual photos. Sophie Hansen also runs a business providing workshops in a range of related topics around food production and food marketing. There may be potential there for Sophie Hansen to deliver a workshop or talk as part of the museum’s exhibition programming.
“My ever-constant goal is to support and celebrate Australian farmers by encouraging consumers to seek out their produce as directly and locally as possible, then cook and share it,” she said.
“I find at the farmers markets where we sell (our venison), customers are so interested in local produce and want to know how it is grown or produced, where it comes from and who are the farmers behind it.
“But what I say now to any farmer is that if they have a iPhone in their pocket, they have the tools to multiple that a thousandfold and talk directly to any customer, involve them with what is going on at the farm and to tell them when and where their produce is available. That is a very powerful message.”19
Kate Bracks Kate Bracks is an Orange based former school teacher and specialises in baking. She was the winner of the third chef of MasterChef Australia television show in 2011. She runs her own business Kate Bracks Baking launched in 2014 and has had a book The Sweet Life published. She also runs cooking classes and demonstrations in the district.
Merle Parrish Merle Parrish is a traditional CWA cook with an emphasis on cooking traditional Australian baked items. She appeared on MasterChef Australia in 2011 in a bake-off competition. When the television show went searching for a chef in the CWA tradition, Central Western Group president Gail Hayden nominated Merle Parrish from the Cudal Country Women’s Association Branch.20 She has also had several cookbooks published, and again it would be possible to use the photos and recipes in the exhibition by contacting the publisher.
Michael Manners Borry Gartrell attributes the arrival of Michael Manners in the district as helping to kick start the food scene. Manners relocated his two star-hatted restaurant to Orange from Sydney in 1997 to open Selkirks. Apparently there was some doubt about whether such a move would work, but Manners’ Sydney based customers followed him to Orange and helped to raise city awareness of the food and wine renaissance in the region.21 Manners has over 40 years in the industry and is a judge in food and wine competitions.
Wilia and Shaun Arantz / Tony and Nicole Worland Wilia and Shaun Arantz moved to Orange in 2007 and now run the two-hatted Racine restaurant on Mt Canobolas Road and the bakery in town. They could be used as an example of local restaurateurs growing food based businesses using local produce. Likewise the owners and chef of Tonic in Millthorpe, Tony and Nicole Worland have developed a local and national profile since opening their hatted restaurant in 2003.
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Government support In conversation with Rhonda Taylor, Executive Officer of Brand Orange, she identified the long history of government support as critical to the success of the region. State government support for both the region and agricultural producers is seen from the mid-19th century when first the state Department of Mines and then the Department of Agriculture visited the district to learn and advise growers. The Agricultural Gazette published from the 1890s onwards by the Department of Agriculture is an example of the support they provided. It disseminates the latest scientific and agricultural research and observations, as well as improvements to help growers get their produce to market and maximize their returns.22
The Department of Primary Industries continues this tradition today with an extensive range of print and web materials, officer support and training sessions. The Orange Agricultural Research Station was established in 1963 and became the Orange Agricultural Institute on the Forest Road site in 1981. It plays a key role in supporting the work of agricultural, livestock and cropping producers to create profitable agricultural systems grounded in science and sustainability for this region. Dr Peter Gillespie and Dr Jordan Bailey of the Institute care for the plant and pest collection on site and are most interested in assisting the exhibition with items and images for display.23
Further state government support of food production in the region was the 1991 relocation of the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries Head Office to Orange to be closer to the farmers. At the time, half the staff of the department moved to Orange.24 Given the highly contentious nature of decentralisation in both the state of New South Wales and Australia this was a particularly progressive and forward thinking move which helped to confirm the city’s position as a leader in agriculture.
Education Orange Agricultural College started in 1973 to offer courses in agricultural business. For many years it offered a Bachelor of Agricultural Business Management, which is no longer available in Orange. Over the years they also offered other associated short and long courses such as farm secretarial studies and horse husbandry. From 1990 to 2005 it was managed by first the University of New England, then the University of Sydney until it was dissolved in 2000 and became part of Charles Sturt University.25
COMMUNITY 177 ENDNOTES
1 The Rowan Tree Villages of the Heart Telling Rural Stories, Orange City Council, 2014, p131
2 All information for the CWA section from a conversation with Deborah Marr, Secretary CWA Orange Branch, pers comm 11 July 2017
3 Leader, 22 January 1917 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/117821387/13052065 and Leader, 13 July 1917 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/117829115
4 National Advocate, 10 May 1918, page 2 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article158493062
5 Sydney Morning Herald 18 September 1939 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article17641276
6 Molong Express and Western District Advertiser, 23 July 1954 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news- article140054042
7 National Advocate 2 November 1940 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article160873465
8 Victory Gardens Second World War https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/homefront/victory_gardens, viewed 11 July 2017
9 Jill Cole, Villages of the Heart oral history, interviewed by Ann Harrison June 2014 see oral history file
10 Jill Cole pers comm 20 May 2017
11 http://www.localstudies.cwl.nsw.gov.au/orange-district-historical-society/the-history-of- bloomfield-hospital/, viewed 10 July 2017
12 Elisabeth Edwards, In Sickness and in Health: How Medicine Helped Shape Orange’s History, Orange City Council, 2011, page 304
13 Information supplied by Orange Regional Museum
14 Information supplied by Orange Regional Museum
15 http://www.centroc.com.au/squaredeal/2012/10/04/community-gardens-of-central-nsw/, viewed 11 July 2017
16 Ibid
17 Orange East Public School Annual Report 2015 http://www.orangeeast- p.schools.nsw.edu.au/documents/64593331/64627227/orange_east_public_school_asr_2015_final .pdf, viewed 11 July 2017
18 FoodCare Orange, https://www.foodcareorange.org.au/about_us, viewed 11 July 2017
19 Sue Neales, Sophie Hansen named Australia’s rural woman of the year, 15 September 2016, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/sophie-hansen-of-orange-named-australias-rural- woman-of-the-year/news-story/e91fd0ab3658d3b593bc2c708acdc8a9, viewed 11 July 2017.
COMMUNITY 178
Please also see Sophie Hansen’s blog http://local-lovely.com which links to her business The Open Kitchen
20 Ben Harris, Merle butters up MasterChef, 29 June 2011, http://www.centralwesterndaily.com.au/story/789278/merle-butters-up-masterchef-judges/, viewed 11 July 2017
21 Borry Gartrell, pers comm 4 July 2017
22 Elisabeth Edwards, Fruitful Landscapes, Orange City Council, 2006, p32
23 Key research areas Orange Agricultural Institute http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/content/research/centres/orange/research, viewed 11 July 2017
24 Tom Lowry, Architects of Orange public service move say government should learn from the past, 9 May 2017, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-07/public-service-decentralisation- architects-orange-canberra/8504418, viewed 11 July 2017
25 Kim Chappell and Jessie Davies, Door shuts on Ag College, 18 December 2014, http://www.farmonline.com.au/story/3373242/door-shuts-on-orange-ag-college/
COMMUNITY 179 15. Celebration
“…but the only time you ever had chicken was Christmas time.” Brian Bennett, Newbridge1
Food is a key part of celebration. Special food dishes or expensive food dishes are often saved and served just for special celebrations. Families, communities and whole cultures create special dishes or preserve special recipes just for that once in a life time or rare, annual celebrations. This chapter will first look at family celebrations, where they celebrate a wedding, birthday or Christmas with food. Then it will blend into a look at community celebrations where food was used to mark special occasions but also where skill with farming and making food were admired.
Christmas
Perhaps this table is set for Christmas dinner? Evan Lumme, Manduarama Collection NLA
Every culture has special foods they keep for major religious or cultural festivals. In Australia that has traditionally been Christmas. In the past, in this district but also Australia as well, the traditional English Christmas lunch was prepared and eaten. Despite the summer climate, roast meats usually beef or lamb/mutton were served alongside a range of roasted vegetables, sometimes sauces, Yorkshire puddings or pickles. Up until the 1980s, chickens or turkey were often only
CELEBRATION 179 eaten at Christmas because they were expensive and not yet mass farmed. Many families in the district remember that Christmas was when you had a chicken.
Dorothy Balcomb of Canowindra recalls the place of poultry on the Christmas table. (c.1940-1950s)
“Christmas was the special one because poultry wasn’t so available then... Harold’s mother used to have turkeys and kill one for Christmas.” 2
Colleen Howarth of Carcoar also had turkey for her Christmas dinners. (c.1940s-1950s)
“Christmas time we usually had turkey, ham, pork; we loved the apple sauce that went with that. Then on other occasions we’d have chicken. Mum had fowls and we used to.. kill our own fowls. We had our own eggs, ducks and turkeys and geese. We all helped with mixing the Christmas pudding and also mixing the Christmas cake.”3
Christmas was also a time of community and visiting neighbours, and picnics.
“Everybody seemed to know everybody, and one of the big features during Christmas week was that almost every family paid return visits generally in the evening, enjoyed a musical get together around the piano and sampled the home-made Christmas cake and home- made ginger beer.” Joe Glasson4
Weddings Weddings during the 19th century and through the 20th century until the 1960s were fairly simple events for the majority of families. Very few could afford the expensive wedding, which was reserved for the wealthy. And there was also too, very much a belief that money shouldn’t be wasted on a wedding event that could be used by the new couple for investments in farms or houses. Therefore, wedding breakfasts were very common. This would be a simple or elaborate breakfast meal to which family and close friends would be invited. The wider community and other friends would then be invited to the church service held after the breakfast. Even though it would be served at nine or ten in the morning, it was not our modern connotation of breakfast but a more substantial meal. Wedding breakfasts often had a range of foods from cold meats, fruit, bread, cakes, vegetables and soups. By the late 19th century, for those who could afford it, substantial wedding cakes had become common place.
Photographic evidence from the Manduarama Collection gives us an insight into one potential wedding breakfast (the assumption is made here that it was breakfast though it is entirely possibly a later meal like lunch). Evan Lumme’s photos date to 1900-1915.
CELEBRATION 180
Note the elaborate wedding cake with horseshoes for good luck, the condiment bottles, lamingtons and apples. Evan Lumme National Library of Australia
By the 1960s, weddings had become more substantial affairs, and moved away from the breakfast to lunches or dinners. These were often catered for in hotels or at home. Dorothy Balcomb also remembers churches catering for weddings with each woman expected to bring her signature dish.
“When Cranbury catered for a wedding, everyone knew what she had to do. Because this one was good at cheese straws and this one made wonderful lamingtons and jelly cakes.”5
CELEBRATION 181
Afternoon teas and picnics
“The village and surrounding farms always felt like a complete unit where all we needed was available and everyone knew everyone. It had a heart. Everyone supported activities in the Temperance Hall and at the school (annual picnic days, sports days, etc), the ladies bringing along generous contributions of food. We had a Globite suitcase we called the food port. My Mum would make several cakes or cake and biscuits for the occasion - as did others. “Margaret Edwards, Spring Hill6
Other typical special events where food would be a key part of the celebration was birthdays, afternoon teas and picnics. A more simple homemade cake, nothing like the wedding cake above, often marked family birthdays. Generally birthdays were also kept within the family and were not widely open to others. Children may have a small group over for afternoon tea after school to share cake.
Afternoon teas in the country were very common. Friends would get together to socialise or to hold meetings for one of the community organisations. Dorothy Balcomb remembers the afternoon tea as the way women would met.
“…afternoon teas were the big things. Women entertained one and other more by having people to afternoon tea and so we all had our special recipes... I came into the district and all I could do was pikelets because my parents were Scottish. …I think country people still go in for a lot of fancy cooking. If you have an afternoon tea or a meal in a country town, they certainly... they know how to turn on the food.”7
Picnics were very common community events and were held in a variety of locations from churches, bush areas or on substantial homesteads. The Cranbury Picnic is remembered by local residents with fondness. Cranbury was a local Methodist church just outside Canowindra. Tables would be set up and a woman from the church in charge of each table. This led to fierce competition about who would have the most elaborately and beautifully presented table, complete with table linen and multi-layered sponge cakes. Women would bake at home and then carry their multi-tiered creations in Globite suitcases to the picnic. Into these suitcases too would be packed all the cutlery and crockery from the kitchen to take to the picnic.
CELEBRATION 182
Jan Harrison of Canowindra has hunted out a photo which shows the Globite suitcases.
Spring Creek picnic, c.1926-27 Jan Harrison
A newspaper report for 1906 in the Canowindra News gives an insight into what the picnics were like. Nyrang Creek Methodist Church held a picnic in a paddock where a game of cricket was expected to be played but the competing team failed to arrive. The church also set up tables selling lollies for sale to raise funds. Picnic food was eaten off tablecloths on the ground before a series of
CELEBRATION 183 games for men, women and children. Teasingly the article doesn’t go into detail on the food eaten but mentions that “the cloths were soon surrounded… the work of demolishment soon begun and piles of good things disappeared.”8
We do know from other sources, such as the 1911 Kookaburra Cookery Book, that picnic food was highly creative. This was not just your ordinary sandwich (which was common) but also other foods like olives with cream cheese, boiled bacon, eggs and green chilies, celery and walnut, rabbit pie, chicken legs, chicken wings, pies, pasties, fried sausages, lettuce, tomato slices, egg and bacon pie and scotch eggs. And don't forget the billy for a cup of tea.9
Ploughing matches and agricultural shows In the 19th century, communities in the district started to celebrate both the skill of those who worked on farms and orchards and what they produced. Research by Phil Stephenson indicates that the first ploughing match and display of wheat and potatoes may have taken place at Narambla in 185610. These would be held intermittently over the next few decades. At ploughing matches, men and their horses or bullocks would compete for prizes based on skill and speed. These ploughing matches soon spread to other towns in the district. At the ploughing matches, local farmers and orchardists also displayed their fruit, vegetables and animals such as sheep.11
These ploughing matches and displays became agricultural shows, with Agricultural and Pastoral Societies set up to run the show. Orange Show started in 1873. Canowindra held their first show in 1900.12 Molong had an agricultural show in 1880 and Millthorpe in 1881. A key part of the mission of these A&P societies was to use the shows to encourage skill improvement in farmers and orchardists and education of new research or equipment coming available. Agricultural shows also developed many categories which captured all the skills required to live and work on the farm, from the work in the kitchen to the work in the field. By the 1920s there were competitions in cooking, prizes for butter, and by the 1930s and 1940s in some shows prizes for JFC – Junior Farmer Competitions, where the next generation were encouraged to show their skill with animals and produce.
The displays of produce formed a key part of the Orange and district agricultural shows. In a newspaper report for the Australasian in 1911, the journalist noted the fine produce but also the temperamental impact of weather on the fruit displayed.
“The strongest features of the show last week were the agricultural produce and the sheep. Further fine displays were made by Mr. Trevitt and Prevost Bros., in the large pavilion, and in the classes there were good entries, particularly in potatoes. The fruit side was not nearly so good as former shows. Orange is a late fruit district. Growers there catch the very last day the market for grapes… This year, however, March was a very cold month. The grapes did not ripen while hailstorms knocked the apples about in a shocking manner.” 13
Agricultural shows also had a strong social element with many holding dances and balls by the 1930s and 1940s. These were also partly fundraising events and the A&P Societies used the funds to improve the showgrounds. Jan Harrison from Canowindra remembers the women in the A&P Society Auxiliary working furiously to make food to feed the show officials. Coppers, used in laundries, would be taken down to the showground to help in the preparation of food. One copper
CELEBRATION 184 would be heated up for hot water for washing up and in another one Auxiliary member carefully, and with some secrecy guarding her recipe, prepared a copper full of coffee.14
The Australian National Agricultural Field Day started at Orange in 1952. These field days have a strong focus on technology and equipment on the farm, which differentiates them from the A&P Shows where it is often more encompassing on the whole food and produce experience, the home skills as well as the farm skills. The first Field Day was actually held outside Orange on the Dutton property and now has a permanent base in this district at Borenore.15
Western District display at the Royal Agricultural Show, Sydney 1959. Orange Library Photography Collection.
Festivals Community celebrations of food also include festival events. The very first of these in the district were the harvest festivals held by churches. Harvest festivals are an English tradition transplanted to the colonies and were usually held by churches of the Protestant tradition from April to May. Residents of Manildra, Carcoar and Canowindra remember harvest festivals. Members of the congregation bring in food they have produced on the farm and orchard for display in the church and a service of thanksgiving is then held. The harvest festival in Carcoar donated their produce to the local hospital.16
CELEBRATION 185
Harvest Festival Billimari Hall, Mr A Bowd via Jan Harrison
The Cherry Blossom Festival was, from 1948 to 1960, the social event for the community of the year. It was first held in 1939 but then discontinued during the Second World War. Held every year in spring, when the cherry trees blossom, the festival raised funds for local community facilities. For many years they raised funds for the Gnoo Blas race track and the swimming pool. Led by the Chamber of Commerce, a busy week of activities was planned including balls and dances, sports matches and cultural events. The signature event though was the parade of floats down Summer Street. Businesses and community groups decorated floats (cars and trucks) in different themes every year. Bands would play, local migrant groups danced, Scouts and Girl Guides marched and it was a cross-section of the community at that time.
Each year a Cherry Blossom Queen was crowned with a coronation ceremony and queen’s attendants. The queen would be a local girl. Each girl had a team of supporters who competed to raise money for community causes. The festival ended in 1960 amidst accusations that local businesses and community groups were finding it more difficult each year to find the time and energy to contribute. 17
CELEBRATION 186 From 1978 to 1988 the Apple Country Fair held similar parades down Summer Street and crowned an Apple Queen each year. It ran every alternative year and held a similar calendar of sporting and cultural events.18
Maureen Sands, Cherry Festival Queen 1959, Orange City Library
F.O.O.D Week F.O.O.D. Week is a week-long celebration of the food and wine of Orange, Blayney and Cabonne Councils. It has helped the region to recreate itself as a cultural tourism destination providing a program of food events and activities to attract visitors to the region. Inspired by similar food experiences in Italy, F.O.O.D Week has both tapped into, and also helped to create, the renewed
CELEBRATION 187 consumer interest in food and where it comes from, that has been steadily growing since the early 1990s.
The Food of Orange and District Week Association started in 1991 and held their first week of events in 1992. Farms and orchards that do not normally open to the public do so in this April week. Restaurants and cafes hold signature dinners, night markets are held in Robertson Park and Forage, a walk through a vineyard and property with produces to meet and food to eat every 500 metres, has become a popular event. It has also helped to kick start other food events in the district like farmers’ markets and has encouraged product diversification into niche areas like olives, figs, nuts and apple cider.19
CELEBRATION 188
ENDNOTES
1 The Rowan Tree, Villages of the Heart, Orange City Council, 2014, page 180
2 The Rowan Tree, Villages of the Heart, Orange City Council, 2014, page 32
3 Ibid p 46
4 Elisabeth Edwards A Gentleman of the Inky Way, Orange through Joe Glasson’s Looking Glass, self-published, 2011
5 Ibid p203
6 Margaret Edwards, interviewed by Alex Rezko, Spring Hill, Villages of the Heart project, November 2013
7 Ibid p32
8 Nyrang Creek Methodist Picnic, Canowindra Star and Eugowra News, 26 April 1907
9 Barbara Santich, Bold Palates Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2012, pp100-101
10 See Phil Stephenson’s Orchard Timeline ODHS in the resource file
11 Elisabeth Edwards, Fruitful Landscapes, Orange, 2006, p28
12 Canowindra, Carcoar Chronicle, 3 November, 1899 and Molong Agricultural Show Sydney Morning Herald 26 May 1880
13 Rural News New South Wales Australasian 13 May 1911
14 Jan Harrison, Canowindra Historical Museum, pers comm 11 May 2017
15 Elisabeth Edwards, Fruitful Landscapes, Orange, 2006, p30
16 Jan Harrison, Peggy Nash and Jill McDonald, Canowindra, pers comm 11 May 2017 and Jill Cole, Carcoar, pers comm, 20 May 2017 and The Rowan Tree, Villages of the Heart, Orange City Council, 2014, page 121
17 Information on the Cherry Blossom Festival from materials supplied by Orange Regional Museum and Denis Gregory, Chequered Times A History of Gnoo Blas 1953 –1961 Orange City Council 2012, p 163
18 See Phil Stephenson’s Orcharding Timeline and The Canberra Times 19 March 1988, page 22
19 Elisabeth Edwards, Fruitful Landscapes, Orange, 2006, p31
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Adams, Prue, Cider House Rules on Landline ABC 30 October 2011 http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2010/s3351557.htm
Austin, Peter, Recorded for Prosperity, http://www.theland.com.au/story/3592476/recorded-for- posterity/, 12 May 2013
Boyce, James, The Biggest Estate on Earth by Bill Gammage in The Monthly https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2011/december/1322699456/james-boyce/biggest-estate- earth-how-aborigines-made-australia-bill-g
Browne, Rachel, $24 million payment for Fairbridge Farm abuse victims, 29 June 2015, http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/24-million-payment-for-fairbridge-farm-abuse-victims-20150629- gi0hah.html
Cavangh, Michael, Hazelnuts are gold for one couple, 11 May 2017 http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2017-04-19/hazelnut-harvest-baldwin/8455052
Cox, Lisa, My Working Life, 13 October 2009, http://www.centralwesterndaily.com.au/story/778790/my-working-life-/
Gross, Rebecca, Recipe for Success: a history of the modern Australian kitchen, 8 August 2015, https://www.houzz.com.au/ideabooks/48528894/list/recipe-for-success-a-history-of-the-modern- australian-kitchen
Hamling, Melissa, Orchard netting saves apple crops from hail and fruit foxes, 6 March 2015, http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2015-03-06/orchard-netting/6285292
Harris, Ben, Merle butters up MasterChef, 29 June 2011, http://www.centralwesterndaily.com.au/story/789278/merle-butters-up-masterchef-judges/
Lewis, John, Italian Spirits fuel success, 2 May 2017 http://www.theherald.com.au/story/4633950/italian-spirit-fuels-success/,
198 Manson, Skye, and Condon, Michael, Biggest Fires ever for NSW Farmers and Orchards, 21 October 2013, http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2013-10-21/nrn-nsw-fires/5034790
Neales, Sue, Sophie Hansen named Australia’s rural woman of the year, 15 September 2016, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/sophie-hansen-of-orange-named-australias-rural- woman-of-the-year/news-story/e91fd0ab3658d3b593bc2c708acdc8a9
Neaune, Sibohan, Chinese restaurants in Australia documented for prosperity by historians, 21 February 2016, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-21/humble-chinese-diner-mapped-by-food- historians/7187218
Pearce, Melanie, Possum skin cloaks and bush medicine explained in Aboriginal seasonal calendar app, ABC Online, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-12/aboriginal-seasonal-calendar- app-being-developed/7083696
Reilly, Kathy, Cobb and Co Coaches: Historic Transport in Australian Geographic 18 October 2011 ahttp://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2011/10/cobb-co-coaches- historical-transport/
Symmons, Michael, Australia’s Cuisine Culture – a history of our food, 27 June 2014, http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2014/06/australias-cuisine-culture-a- history-of-food
Woodburn, Joanna, Climate Change affects wine production in NSW Central West, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-11/wine-producers-face-climate-change-challenge-in- orange/7830280
Historical articles – no named author Canowindra Butter Factory Canowindra Star and Eugowra News 6 October 1922 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news- article99690560.3.html?followup=90a5b1fb095b0fea2ea5027aff56facb
Mills and Stores of Orange Freeman’s Journal 20 June 1874 page 2, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news- article128809338.3.html?followup=fae867ae32d4d0c7e29154036cdeb373
199 Great Milling Works at Orange The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser 15 January 1908 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/164345123?searchTerm=dalton%20brothers%20flour%20 mills&searchLimits=
Molong Agricultural Statistics, Molong Express and Western District Advertiser Saturday 3 October 1891, page 2, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/140163774
Grape Growing at Molong, Molong Express and Western District Advertiser, Saturday 15 November 1913, page 18, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article101041731
Molong Grapes Boomed Molong Express and Western District Advertiser, 22 March 1924, page 20, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/139391413
Notes from a Westward Journey, Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser Saturday 7 December 1878, page 887 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/162697936
A Question of Accounts, The Sydney Morning Herald 8 Mar 1900, page 4 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/14298449?searchTerm=isabella%20whitney%20court%2 0james%20rutherford&searchLimits=#
Death occurs at Carcoar, Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate, 28 August 1941, page 1, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news- article131296801.3.pdf?followup=cd0926782524441b6f29bb4a146432f8
A Great Year for Apples in Sydney Mail 10 May 1933 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news- article165959855.3.html?followup=46bfb674bc582b3193eb3a624bdb1706
S. J. Hicks Early History of Orcharding in the Orange District Society hears Mr S J Hicks, 21 September 1955, unspecified newspaper article provided by descendant Jenny Maher, see resource file.
The Possibilities of Our District Molong Argus, 23 December 1921, page 3 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/101038317#
200 Molong Grapes Searl’s Window Display, Sun, 25 March 1924, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news- article224571687, 10 July 2017 and Molong Fruit Comprehensive Display, Sydney Morning Herald 17 March 1926, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article28062713
Molong move for grape development, Western Herald 10 May 1963, page 8 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article142318967
Molong move for grape development Western Herald, 10 May 1963, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/103925148/10630450,
Good Prospects for Molong Grape Industry Western Herald 12 July 1963, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article142317819
A Country Wholesale Store, Australian Town and Country Journal, 29 November 1884 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/71020454?searchTerm=dalton%20brothers%20general% 20store&searchLimits=#
Dalton Brothers Ltd, The Leader 18 June1912, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news- article101281097.3.pdf?followup=dac52f039a684291494eb53beb04b914
Western Stores Merger, Tweed Daily 24 July 1928, http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news- article191575999.3.pdf?followup=db10f7fe988b2523bdca3dd6498f0d18
No author listed, Urgent assistance for NSW Farmers needed as drought worsens, 13 November 2013, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-13/urgent-assistance-needed-for-nsw-farmers-as-drought- worsens/5089138
Individuals Dr Jordan Bailey, Orange Agricultural Institute, pers comm 13 June 2017
Jill Cole, pers comm 14 June 2017
201 Rhonda Doyle, pers comm 5 July 2017
Elisabeth Edwards, pers comm 16 July 2017
Borry Gartrell, pers comm 4 July 2017
Dr Peter Gillespie, Orange Agricultural Institute, pers comm 13 June 2017
Marie Hammond, pers comm 15 June 2017
Helen Hayes, pers comm 19 May 2017
Gregory Ingram, pers comm 3 July 2017
Jenny Mahr, pers comm 27 June 2017
Deborah Marr, Secretary CWA Orange Branch, pers comm 11 July 2017
Peggy Nash, Jan Harrison and Jill McDonald pers comm 11 May 2017
Alison Russell, pers comm 7 July 2017
Phil Stephenson, pers comm 16 June 2017
202