The Contradictions of Australian Food Culture
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Terra Nullius, Culina Nullius: The contradictions of Australian food culture John Newton A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Creative Arts University of Technology Sydney 2014 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP I certify that the work in this thesis has not previously been submitted for a degree nor has it been submitted as part of requirements for a degree except as fully acknowledged within the text. I also certify that the thesis has been written by me. Any help that I have received in my research work and the preparation of the thesis itself has been acknowledged. In addition, I certify that all information sources and literature used are indicated in the thesis. Signature of Student: Date: 1.11.14 2 Abstract In addressing the contradictions of Australian food culture, this project asks four questions. First and most importantly: how is it that after more than 225 years, we have no Australian or regional Australian food culture, nor even any evidence – through recipes and dishes – of its more tangible and visible vector, cuisine? Secondly: what are the consequences for a nation and its people of having bypassed this important stage in the evolution of a society? Thirdly: why in over 200 years living here do we eat practically nothing that grows locally but those fish, birds, crustaceans and shellfish analogous to European produce? And finally, if we do not have a food culture in the historical sense, what do we have? The second third and fourth questions will be answered during the course of the project. The answer to all these questions will require, firstly, an exploration of the history of European occupation of this land and its occupiers. In 1788, eleven ships, carrying 987 mainly Anglo-Celtic convicts, guards and officers from a society going through tremendous social and economic upheaval arrived on our shores. The vast majority of the convicts were, in one way or another, victims of that upheaval. What greeted them was an alien landscape unlike any, even the few who had travelled, had ever seen. They arrived with their own food and methods of agriculture. In pressing ahead with planting and stocking, they destroyed the food sources and agricultural practices of the indigenous people. The land appeared inhospitable, and, for the most part, the new arrivals clung to the coast. Gradually, land was taken up in the interior, where the animals they brought with them were grazed, eventually very successfully. Soon, there was more meat being produced than could be eaten by the population, and, although the vast bulk of it was exported (it was produced specifically for exportation to overseas 3 markets), this over abundance of meat shaped the diet of the Anglo- Celtic Australians. But the ways in which it was cooked, and the diet that surrounded it was, until the 1950s, stubbornly based on the diet they had left behind. But change was on the horizon. In the 1950s Australia faced a second invasion of refugees from a war- torn Europe. They too brought their food cultures and ingredients with them. At first Anglo-Celtic Australia rejected the food of the newcomers. Then a post war economic boom and the arrival of the Boeing 747 saw millions of Anglo-Celtic Australians leaving the country and travelling to Europe and Asia for the first time, arriving home with a fresh perspective on food and food culture. There followed an explosion of new food, new produce, restaurants and wine. And now, in the 21st Century, this concatenation of events has resulted in Australia having one of the most innovative, multiculinary high (public) tables on the planet. Lévi-Strauss wrote that food is ‘good to think [with].’ In thinking with food in the context of this work, I have made connections not previously made which will be helpful in thinking about Australian culture generally. Australia does not have a food culture in the traditional sense of the word. And neither does it have a cuisine or cuisines in any sense of the word. Curiously, the very same set of societal circumstances that prevented us from having a cuisine in the traditional sense has resulted in our having something in many ways richer: we enjoy diverse, eclectic and original offerings from culturally unconstrained chefs at our high tables, an unmatched multiculinarity on our low tables and, paradoxically, mostly mundane dishes on our home tables. As for the long term rejection of our native produce, and whether it contains an element of food racism, this could well be the subject of future research. In sum, these are the major contradictions of Australian food culture. 4 Acknowledgements First and foremost my supervisor, Paul Ashton, who has carefully and patiently guided me to the end of this work with skill, academic rigour and endless good humour. Thank you. To my equally patient wife who allowed me the freedom to work on it and forgave me my bad humour when it wasn’t going well. To Paula Hamilton for the invaluable history seminars she has conducted. To Juleigh Slater in the FASS office for answering my stupid questions and guiding me through the labyrinth of the Ethics Committee and the grant system. To Michael Symons, Barbara Santich, Colin Bannerman and Anthony Corones for their pioneering work in the field of Australian food studies. They lit the path. And to all in the splendid UTS library for providing a safe haven and all the books I needed. 5 Table of contents Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 5 Orientation 9 Introduction 26 Defining terms 30 Evidence of absence 52 Chapter 1 A Bad Start 56 Take Away 61 Terra Nullius 72 Culina Nullius nullified 75 Sweet and dainty 88 Chapter 2 Land Grabs 93 Rosbif and roast beef 97 Sticking to our roots 102 Chapter 3 Start up: cultures and cuisines 112 Enter the others: 1950s and 1960s 127 But what about… 143 Chapter 4 The multiculinary society emerges: Australia in the 1970s 151 The clash of the critics 162 The magazines: kitchen dictators 170 6 Chapter 5 Mod Oz: the cuisine that never was? The 1980s to the 2000s 177 Celebration of nationalism 180 We needed guidance. We got guides 182 Mod Oz codified 189 And defined 194 Chapter 6 Chefs leap from the screen to the page: towards the 2000s 200 Masterchef: cooking, competing or conning? 204 Chapter 7 Australia’s tables today 211 New kids in the kitchen 216 Money & market at the high tables 229 The low tables 233 The home tables 236 Conclusion The contradictions 243 Mongrel nation, mongrel cuisine 248 Appendices Appendix One: Interviews with Native chefs/producers 264 Appendix Two: Interview with CWA members 281 Appendix Three: Departures 1970-79 302 Appendix Four Interview with Pamela Clark 303 Appendix Five Australian Contemporary Cuisine modules 306 Appendix Six: Mod Oz dishes 1980s/90s 307 7 Appendix Seven: Thirteen Restaurants 324 Appendix Eight: Chef Interviews 333 Appendix Nine: MLA Research 344 Appendix Ten: Table Watch 348 Appendix Eleven: 72 openings between 2012-2013 373 Bibliography 375 8 Orientation This exegetical analysis accompanies a non-traditional doctorate. That is to say, while it is surrounded by traditional academic ‘scaffolding’ – endnotes, bibliography – it treads a more literary path, as has its author. Although I have taught, I am not an academic, but a novelist, author and journalist. That, and the situation of this thesis in the field of food studies allows me great latitude to use information I have gathered as a journalist than would be the case in a more formal work.1 I have been concerned in this work with why Australians eat what they eat, and what that says about them. Throughout, I will follow, in the main, the developmental approach as laid out by Beardsworth and Keil, working around their concept of the ‘aliment’, which they define as ‘any basic item recognised as edible within a given nutritional culture.’ This builds to the alimentary totality of the culture, ‘the whole range of aliments available during a particular time period. This in turn builds to a group of menus: ‘traditional’ – pertinent to Australia’s long period of adherence to an Anglo-Celtic diet – ‘rational’, ‘convenient’, and, especially in relation to late 20th and early 21st century Australia, ‘hedonistic.’2 I am more interested in what is cooked and by whom than I am in the production and allocation of the raw materials. In Goody’s terms, I skip growing, allocating and storing, and go straight to cooking and eating.3 My interest is in the material of the meals but not at all in how they are eaten. That is, I am not interested in what Ashley et al designate as the proper meal: a meal that is cooked by the mother of the family, which is a ‘social occasion’, where the family sit down together and there is conversation.4 My attention is drawn to what is on the plate. Where a 1 See discussion of Miller and Deutsch below 2 Sociology on the Menu: An invitation to the study of food and society page 67. 3 Cooking, Cuisine and Class. 4 Food and Cultural Studies. 9 meal is eaten interests me only in whether it was eaten at home or outside the home at a restaurant, café or other form of public eating house. However, I see no problem in referring also to the structuralist approach, especially some of the concepts of Lévi-Strauss. For my purposes the two can quite easily live side by side. One more note on methodology. The field of food studies is far more intimate than many others. What is being studied – food – is the only subject which is a part of the body of work of the student as well as the body of the student.