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Life on Spring Creek

~ A blog by Jacqui Durrant

Life on Spring Creek

Category Archives: Gold rush food

Bad ale and even worse water? Drinking during the gold rush.

19 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Gold rush diseases, Gold rush food, Gold rush health, Gold rush sanitation

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alcohol, Ale, Beer, Billson's Brewery, Ginger Beer, Honeysuckle Inn, Raspberry Vinegar, Spruce Beer, Violet Town

By now, dear readers, you would all know how I like to question historical myths and anecdotes. In this post, I’m going to take issue with two: the first being that ‘in the olden days’ people drank alcohol instead of water to avoid getting sick; and the second, that colonial beer was bad because it was watered down.

English_Ale

Image: Hongreddotbrewhouse, via wikimedia commons.

Did people stick to drinking alcohol as a ‘safe’ alternative to drinking dirty water? And what else did they drink?

One of the most persistent ideas I’ve heard that grates on me as a historian is that people ‘in the olden days’ only drank alcohol, because it was safer than drinking water; or at least they were encouraged to do so. This idea is framed as conventional wisdom, but take a moment to think about it: this would have meant that almost everyone was constantly either drunk or tipsy (even children!); and quite clearly, they weren’t. Alcohol is also a diuretic, which means that it isn’t especially thirst quenching. Anyone who’s spent even a night drinking alcohol and nothing else with tell you about ‘the dry horrors’ the next day. For purely practical reasons, people couldn’t have drunk alcohol continuously.

So what else is wrong with the supposition that everyone drank alcohol instead of water? To begin with, prior to the 1880s, people had no idea that disease was transmitted by microbes and that these microbes could be water-borne. However, people did make a correlation between a lower incidence of illness and the availability of clear running water. William Murdoch, the attendant and tent-keeper to Assistant Commissioner Clow, said as much at the Spring Creek Commissioner’s camp on 20 November, 1852:

I think this is a very unhealthsome place — everyone has had a sort of influenza accompanied with dysentery — I have had a good touch but I think I have got the better of it yet the water is good here and plenty of it. The creek at the side of our camp is very fast and runs very deep but I daresay butcher’s meat is a great cause of it. Flesh must be eaten two hours after butchering or else it is crawling with large maggots. As soon as the fly blows them they seem to live and grow almost as you eat a meal — the piece will be alive before you stop eating. [1]

However, from this statement, you also can see his confusion: Murdoch was happy to be drinking the water from Spring Creek because it looked clear (even though it was almost undoubtedly polluted with the excrement of the gold diggers), and he attributed the illness on the diggings to another cause entirely: the maggoty meat.

When an outbreak of an unknown illness, dubbed ‘low’ or ‘colonial fever,’ killed numerous people on the Buckland diggings in the summer of 1853-4, William Howitt attributed the disease to bad flour and bad air, rather than the falling water levels in the heavily polluted Buckland River.

29th January 1854

Partly, I suspect, from the bad flour sent thither, but still more from causes connected with the situation, there is a great deal of sickness here. Though the diggings are but of a few weeks old, there is a considerable burying ground already, where you see numbers of fresh graves surrounded by a rude paling, and on the post at each corner placed a square of turf, the digger’s monument!

These deep valleys, inclosed between steep, wooded mountains, are intensely hot, and rarely traversed by any wind. There are vast jungles here and there where the valleys opens out into flats, and everywhere the soil is of a light porous quality, which absorbs the rain like a sponge, and in the heat exhales malaria. You may smell the dry-rot of decaying roots of trees as you walk over the surface. A species of low fever prevails, and has attacked, more or less, almost every tent. [2]

Despite the tendency to blame bad food and bad air for illness on the diggings, let’s assume for a moment that people did actually blame dirty water, and therefore sought substitutes for clean water when none was available. Clearly the substitute wasn’t solely alcohol. Instead, it seems that the most common drink on gold diggings was in fact tea.

While staying at Bontharambo (near Wangaratta), in 1854, Mary Spencer observed that ‘far less wine appears to be taken by the gentlemen in Australia than in England. Tea is the chief beverage. I have never seen such tea drinkers.’ [3] Spencer may or may not have been referring specifically to upper classes when she referred to ‘gentlemen’, however, there is little to indicate that the entire digging population weren’t hardened tea drinkers. Tea could disguise the taste of dirty water, and although the health benefits of boiling the water were not clearly understood, putting the camp kettle or billy on was a ritual for virtually every gold digger. (As an aside, on the basis of advertisements from The Argus, it would seem that the tea on the goldfields in 1852-3 was mainly Chinese in origin, and that people drank both black and green teas.)

However, it still doesn’t appear that people actually avoided unboiled water: Edward Ridpath, a digger who was an early arrival on the Spring and Reid’s Creek diggings, reported that ‘during the summer refreshment tents were numerous over the diggings, where ginger beer, lemonade, raspberry vinegar, and spruce beer were sold.’ [4] While the spruce beer and ginger beer were brewed, and therefore boiled; the syrup-based drinks probably used unboiled water.

I don’t doubt that a lot of hard-drinking was done on the diggings during the gold rush. A browse of the newspaper advertisements of the period will tell you that anyone with access to the Melbourne markets could buy brandy, Scottish whiskey, Jamaican rum, gin (and the Dutch gin-like spirit genever), wine (French: Médoc claret [i.e.: Bordeaux], Margaux [i.e.: cabernet sauvignon], Sauternes and Champagne), Portuguese sherry, bottled beer, stout, porter and cider. However, no matter how much alcohol was consumed, there is no evidence that people did so for reasons of health. Everyone also drank a lot of tea, and yet there is still also no evidence that people did so to prevent illness. And in any case, virtually everyone on the diggings still experienced some form of water-borne illness.

wo_eugene-von-guerard

Eugene von Guerard, the inside of a digger’s tent in 1853. The kettle, ready for making tea, is a stand-alone item.

Bad Ale at the Honeysuckle Inn

Almost everyone coming from Melbourne to the Ovens diggings during late 1852 and throughout 1853, stopped at certain pubs along the way. One of the most remarked upon was the Honeysuckle Inn, at what became Violet Town. The thing that has always intrigued me about the Honeysuckle Inn during the gold rush is the comments about the beer being awful. Here’s what Thomas Woolner had to say in November 1852: ‘We camped today at Honeysuckle Creek: there is a large tavern where enormous prices are charged, 1/6 for a glass of bad ale, 3/6lb for common cheese.’ [1] And here’s what William Howitt (who was travelling with his son 22-year-old son Alfred and his friends), had to say in December: ‘We found everything now monstrously dear on the roads, the nearer we got to the diggings. My youngsters, at an inn called The Honeysuckle, would insist on my having a pint of beer. It was 3s., and most disgustingly vapid…’ [2]

It’s easy to explain the complaints about the expense. We can get a sense of the cost firstly by the fact that it was one shilling and sixpence in November, and then by December — by which time thousands of gold seekers were heading up the Sydney Road — a whole three shillings (i.e.: double the price). Secondly, we can compare these prices to a pot of ‘Billson’s Best Ale’, which was being made in Beechworth and was available on draught at local pubs for sixpence (half a shilling), fifteen years later. [3]

Aside from the cost, for years it’s intrigued me as to how and why was the beer so ‘disgusting’ as to be remarked upon. But how does a historian manage to work out why the beer tasted ‘vapid’ (i.e.: bland), more than 150 years after that beer was drunk? The common assumption is that the beer was watered down. However, other more meaningful answers to this question came to me late last week, while I was working on the history of Billson’s Brewery in Beechworth (which started as Billson’s Ovens Brewery in 1867, was renamed Murray Breweries in 1914 [4], and has recently been switched back to ‘Billson’s’ by new owner Nathan Cowan). Working on the history of Billson’s compelled me to think deeply about beer.

The key constituents of good beer — other than water — are yeast, malted Barley grains and hops. At the time of the Victorian gold rushes, most malt and hops were imported. In Britain, malt had been subject to a tax, which was major source of public revenue in the 18th century — a tax which was still in effect by the time of the gold rushes (the tax wasn’t repealed until 1880) [5]. In Australia, the expense of imported malt, to which freight and tax had been already added, drove many brewers to replace it in the ferment either in part or sometimes wholly with sugar (which, incidentally, came from the cane plantations of Mauritius). Moreover, beer brewed with sugar had the advantage of turning ‘bright’ in only a few days, as opposed to malted brews, which required far longer periods of maturation. And beers which had to be matured over a period of weeks or months, had to be stored in cellars — which, at the time, were also in relatively short supply.

The use of sugar in the brew is probably one factor that made the beer seem ‘vapid’ to many British gold seekers, who were used to beers brewed only with malt. In Britain, it had been illegal to make beer with sugar in the ferment until 1847 [6]; so even by 1852, British tastes probably still ran to traditional pure malt beers: hence William Howitt’s and Thomas Woolner’s distaste for the colonial brew.

The other factor that might have made the beer taste disgusting was that it might have gone bad in the heat. In the days before refrigeration, beer-brewed in the warmer months often deteriorated, and for this reason, some brewers only brewed over winter [7]. This certainly seems to have been the case for many decades at Billson’s Brewery in Beechworth, which advertised the release of its beers in September and October, also making capital of Beechworth’s cooler climate, and their cool cellars. [8] Conversely, the ale at the Honeysuckle Inn may well have been brewed cheaply and hastily with sugar to cater to the sudden influx of gold seekers, and then had been exposed to hot temperatures when Howitt and Woolner drank it in the summer of late 1852. It might also have been contaminated with microorganisms like Lactobacilli.

So what of the legacy of colonial ‘sugar beers’? Despite various moves in the industry throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to end its use, the propensity of Australian brewers to use sugar in their ferments has remained. Beechworth’s Alfred Billson was one of the purists, who wanted to ‘compel brewers to use only malt and hops in the manufacture of beer.’ However, these visions of enforcing beer purity laws never came to fruition, and even Billson had to admit, the public had grown used to its sugar beers, and now preferred the taste. [9] We still brew plenty of beer in Australia using sugar today.

As for the Honeysuckle Inn, it is now owned by my dear friends, Annette Walton and Andy Guerin, who have opened an art gallery in its front room. They assure me that they still serve ‘bad ale’ and ‘common cheese’.

Notes

Did people stick to drinking alcohol as a safe alternative to drinking dirty water?

[1] William Murdoch, A Journey to Australia in 1852 and Peregrinations in that Land of Dirt and Gold, unpublished diary manuscript (digital form), held by the Robert O-Hara Burke Memorial Museum. This is from an entry dated: 20 November, 1852.
[2] William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, or Two Years in Victoria, Volumes 1 & 2, Sydney University Press, 1972 [first edn: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, London, 1855]; Volume 2, pp.153-4.
[3] Mary Spencer, Aunt Spencer’s Diary (1854): A Visit to Bontharambo and the North-east Victorian Goldfields, Neptune Press, Newtown, 1981, p.46.
[4] Edward Ridpath, Journal, transcription of letters to his father, possibly in his own hand, 1850-53? [manuscript MS 8759], State Library of Victoria, Box 1012/4 [Box also includes his gold license from 3 August 1853, p.32.

Bad Ale at the Honeysuckle Inn

[1] Thomas Woolner, Diary of Thomas Woolner,  National Library of Australia, MS 2939, 12 November 1852.
[2] William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, or Two Years in Victoria, Volumes 1 & 2, Lowden Publishing Company, Kilmore, 1972 [first edn: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, London, 1855]; Volume 1, p.81.
[3] Numerous advertisements in the Ovens and Murray Advertiser for the Temple Bar (e.g.: 28 November, 1867) in Ford Street show this price. The beer was being made by Billson’s Ovens Brewery in Loch Street.
[4] Confirmed by the Minutes of the Board of Directors of Murray Breweries, still held at the brewery in Last Street, Beechworth, today; and reported in Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 21 November 1914, p.2.
[5] Raymond A. Anderson, ‘The History of The Maltsters Association of Great Britain.’
[6] Dr Brett J. Stubbs, ‘Brewing with Sugar’ Brew News, September 5, 2011; Keith Farrer, To Feed a Nation, CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Victoria, 2005, p.86.
[7] ibid.
[8] An example would be an article from the Ovens and Murray Advertiser, Saturday, 2 June 1900, p.12, which states: ‘The specialty [of the brewery]… is the high-class character of the bottled ale turned out under the well-known brand, “Anglo-Australian Ale.” This high-class bottled ale is brewed only during the cold months of the year, and is made from a special malt suited to the production of such an article. … the demand for this ale exists all over the colony, and is even sent into the heart of New South Wales, …. the climate and water supply [of Beechworth are suited] for the brewing of high-class ale…’
[9] Corowa Free Press, 16 July 1901, p.3; Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, 19 July, 1901, p.31.

 

 

What did the gold miners eat? (A quick follow-up).

05 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Bush Food, Gold rush, Gold rush food, Ovens diggings

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Native Raspberry, Rubus parvifolius, Small-leaf bramble

In an earlier post, What did the gold miners eat? (Part 1. Bush food in Beechworth), I mentioned that one of the wild foods of the area was the Pink-flowered Native Raspberry (aka Small Leaf Bramble) (Rubus parvifolius). I have it on authority that native raspberry still occurs in bush areas around north-east Victoria, including the Chiltern-Mount Pilot National Park — although it is probably often sprayed with herbicide, because it resembles the imported blackberry. Until this weekend, I hadn’t seen it growing anywhere, let alone tasted the berries.

Native_Raspberry

Ripe native raspberries (Rubus parvifolius). Note that the leaf is much finer than the imported blackberry.

However, I’ve just returned from a weekend away in a remote hut on the Big River at Glen Wills, where I was finally able to taste ripe native raspberries, and I can report: Unlike the introduced raspberry, the berries are shiny, and quite bright red when ripe. They are smaller than the imported raspberries, but also sweeter, and with a more delicate flavour. As I was not in the Alpine National Park, I took some rootlings to cultivate at home in a tub.

A gold rush swag

12 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Californian gold rush, Gold rush, Gold rush clothes, Gold rush food, Gold rush swag, Ovens diggings, Spring Creek diggings, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

You’ve heard the term ‘swag’ — the minimalist belongings that a gold seeker carried with him to the diggings. But what was in it, how much did it weigh, and what indigenous kit was included?

EugenevonGuerard—Aborigines

Eugene von Guérard, Aborigines met on the road to the diggings, 1854 (image/collection: Geelong Art Gallery). Aboriginal people trading possum skin cloaks with a gold seeker, who has laid down his swag — comprising a bed-roll, billy and tools.

Numerous guides of the time — the Lonely Planets of their day — advised prospective gold seekers as to what to take to the diggings in their ‘swag’ or ‘traps’ (trappings). The most basic advice reflected the experience of the tens of thousands of ‘miner ’49s’ who had travelled overland from the East coast of America to the Californian goldrush only a couple of years before, where the trail became littered with unnecessary cast-offs. The key advice was this: travel light.

James Bonwick (in Notes of a gold digger and gold diggers’ guide, 1852) recommended diggers only to take what they could carry:

• hard-wearing clothes
• strong boots
• waterproof coat and trousers of oilskin
• a roll of canvas ‘for your future home’
• good jacket for Sundays
• pick, shovel and panning dish
• a cradle ‘may be carried in parts without much trouble’. (You can read about the cradle in this earlier post, Cradling for Gold in the Woolshed Valley).

William Williams, a gold digger who came to the Ovens diggings, gives us an idea of how much this kit actually weighed: ‘We started from the McIvor [i.e.: Heathcote, central Victoria] … carrying about sixty pounds weight including Grub, Blankets, Tin Dishes, Pick and Shovels, etc, this being our first attempt at carrying a ‘swag’ as it is termed in the colonies…’ [1] In metric measure, this was roughly 27 kilograms.

Unlike Bonwick, Williams also mentioned ‘grub’, the key components of which were sugar, tea, flour and salt (fresh food was generally picked up en route), which of course necessitated equipment for cooking and eating. Mrs Campbell, who lived at the Commissioner’s camp on the Spring Creek diggings (May Day Hills) in 1853, offered an overview of what a gold seeker might carry with them, including cooking implements: ‘As the digger is a migratory animal, he contents himself with few of the comforts or even necessaries of life. A small unlined tent, or rough bark hut, serves for his dwell­ing, while his furniture consists of a couple of blankets, which he spreads on the ground, a kettle, an iron pot, a pannikin [i.e.: tin mug] and tin plate, and knife and fork.’ [2]

William Williams, however, had no need of an iron pot or kettle, because he had a piece of equipment that would become synonymous with the swag — the ‘billy’. ‘[G]ot up before sunrise’ he wrote, ‘— boiled the “Billy” (a small tin pail that is used for boiling water for tea, or boiling a bit of mutton, or boiling a shirt, etc. The “billy” is an indispensable companion on a journey (it is preferred to a kettle or pot because it is so much lighter) boiled the “billy”, ate our bit of Damper, etc and started…’

Just as the billy had a multitude of uses, the gold panning dish did double-duty as a bowl in which to mix dough for bread or damper, and the neck-kerchief may have even doubled as a pudding cloth (not to mention arm sling or wound dressing). However, those travelling and working as a team often had a camp oven between them —  the workhorse of the goldfield’s kitchen. Some were designed to hang above a fire, but many had three legs so that they could sit in a fire with coals placed underneath. Many also had a flat top with a lip, which could hold coals on top to create all-round heat.

Potjie4-1

A camp oven, also known as a dutch oven. (Image: Digrpat, via wikimedia commons).

Another essential bit of kit — so essential as to be taken for granted and therefore was never mentioned except in advertisements, was the means to light a fire. Diggers routinely lit their pipes and cooking fires from other peoples’ fires, but when that opportunity didn’t present itself they had to resort to their tinderbox, or use some congreve lucifers — early friction matches tipped with phosphorous, which were only just beginning to replace tinderboxes during the 1850s.

As for accommodation, many gold seekers en route to the diggings expected to sleep out under the trees, or under a wagon if they were travelling alongside one. On the diggings, those who did not have tents adopted an indigenous solution: the mia mia.

En route to the diggings, gold seekers passed through several indigenous countries, and were able to glimpse the ways of life of various Aboriginal clans. This included their use of temporary shelters made of bark, branches, leaves and grass.

While visiting relatives at Bontharambo near Wangaratta, English woman Mary Spencer explained as best she could: ‘I cannot describe the bush. It means such an extent of country covered with trees; some large, some small, no sign of human habitation except here and there a few camps or tents; some inhabited by blacks, who construct their huts by placing poles in position and covering them with the outer bark of the trees.’ [3]

mia_mia

Unknown photographer, circa 1907-1915 (Image: Art Gallery of NSW, accession #520.2014)

The gold seekers quickly adopted the term ‘mia mia’ for such shelters — the word coming from the Wathaurong (Wadawurrung) people who lived near present day Geelong. Some diggers favoured mia mias over tents, no doubt as they were free, and could be easily rearranged depending on wind direction.

Thus William Howitt noted the adoption of indigenous dwellings by miners on the Spring Creek diggings in early 1853: ‘…there are huts of mingled boughs and sheets of bark; and here and there simple mimies, in imitation of the mimi of the natives; that is — just a few boughs leaned against a pole, supported on a couple of forked sticks, and a quantity of gum-tree leaves for a bed.’ [4]

And then there was the bedding. Assembling his items of bedding was one of the final tasks artist Thomas Woolner undertook before heading off to the Spring Creek diggings in the Spring of 1852: ‘After breakfast I went into the cottage to arrange my traps: my bed will consist of a piece of green baize [a coarse wooden fabric], one blanket and a waterproof coat to place on the ground as protection against the damp….’ [5] Some miners even carried Indian rubber blankets against the damp, particularly as exposure to damp ground was thought to bring about rheumatism.

In the height of summer, it wasn’t necessary to carry more than one or two blankets, but the gold seekers quickly opted for something superior to wool blankets — in fact, an option so superior that they immediately became a feature of gold fields life: the possum skin cloak.

nma-img-ci20041109-011-wm-vs1_o3_640

Possum skin cloaks (the above is a reproduction of one that came from Echuca in 1850). [Photo: National Museum of Australia]. Thankfully many talented artists are making these again.

Often referred to as a ‘rug’ by gold seekers, possum skin cloaks were traditionally worn by Aboriginal peoples throughout south-eastern of Australia. They were (and continue to be) made from brush-tailed possum pelts (as many as 60 or 80), trimmed and sewn together with kangaroo sinew. Traditionally, a person would be given one as a child, and the cloak would be added to as a person grew. [6] They were decorated with patterns imbued with significant cultural and spiritual meaning, and there was much importance around the making of the cloaks and their wearing. Some were handed down through generations as heirlooms.

From the perspective of a gold seeker, a really top-notch ‘opossum rug’ rubbed with a protective and decorative layer of fat and ochre, was a significant bit of kit because it was waterproof, said to be as warm as a half dozen blankets, and exceptionally light to carry (in fact, it is difficult to describe how surprisingly light and soft they are). Therefore, the indigenous art of making possum skin cloaks was widely recognised among the gold diggers, and the cloaks themselves were a highly valued inter-cultural trade item. [7]

The comfort that possum skin cloaks offered travellers in the bush can be felt in this vignette written by Phillip Johnson as he was travelling to the Ovens diggings:

‘In the course of a few hours I fell across a couple of bullock drivers who were quietly reposing on their opossum cloaks, and enjoying that cheapest and at the same time the most consoling luxury in the bush, their pipes; in the midst of a wilderness they were at ease & evidently at home..’ [8]

And again, the splendid luxury of a possum skin cloak is almost palpable, when reading this description by George Wathen:

‘I was soon asleep on the ground, by the fire, under an overbowering banksia, wrapped in the warm folds of my opossum rug.  For a night bivouac, there is nothing comparable to the opossum-rug.…’ [9]

Many of us are still familiar with, if not users of a few of the items in a gold rush era-swag: the billy and the camp oven especially. But sadly too few of us are familiar with the possum skin cloak. You can see them in on display in Albury Library Museum encased in a glass vitrine, and yet you will still not gain a real sense of why this is a truly magnificent and luxurious a piece of kit. However, there is one on display in the Falls Creek Museum that you can actually touch (as I did last Friday), and I encourage you to seek it out.

Notes

[1] William Williams, ‘Notes of a Journey from the McIvor to the Ovens River’, MS8436, State Library of Victoria, no date, p.1.
[2] Mrs A. Campbell, Rough and smooth, or, Ho! for an Australian gold field, Hunter, Rose & Co., Quebec, 1865, p.97.
And as an aside, for those unfamiliar with the term, a ‘pannikin’ is a tin camping mug — the word being derived from the Flemish ‘cannikin’ being the diminutive of ‘can’. So just as a small can was a ‘cannikin’, a small pan became a ‘pannikin’.
[3] Mary Spencer, Aunt Spencer’s Diary (1854): A Visit to Bontharambo and the North-east Victorian Goldfields, Neptune Press, Newtown, 1981, p.40.
[4] William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, or Two Years in Victoria, Sydney University Press facsimile edition of an 1855 imprint, 1972, p.252.
[5] Amy Woolner, Thomas Woolner: His Life in Letters, Chapman and Hall, London, 1917, p.19.
[6] This piece of information I recently learned from Wiradjuri woman Tammy Campbell.
[7] Fred Cahir, ‘Dallong – Possum Skin Rugs, A Study of an Inter-Cultural Trade Item in Victoria,’ The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria, issue no. 4, 2005.
[8] Phillip Johnson, Journal 3, Document 5, 1852, National Library of Australia, MS.7627, p.4.
[9] Wathen, The Golden Colony, or Victoria in 1854: With Remarks on the Geology of the Australian Gold Fields, p.131

Plum Pudding!

09 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Gold rush food

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

plum duff, plum pudding, plum pudding recipe, spotted dick, stir-up Sunday, suet

Plum duff or spotted dick — by whatever name, it was the king of gold rush desserts. It’s getting close to Christmas now, which is a good excuse to talk about Plum Pudding.

Plum_pudding.jpg

Plum pudding. (Image: Lachlan Hardy)

Along with boiled mutton, plum pudding in one form or another was one of the most commonly cooked items on the gold diggings. It was ideally suited to the camp kitchens of the gold diggers for a number of reasons: the first of which was the style of cooking. As social historian Daniel Poole explains, ‘Plum pudding had the great merit of not needing to be cooked in an oven. Wrapped in a pudding cloth, it could be wrapped up into a ball and dropped in the cooking pot along with whatever else was cooking…’ [1]

Secondly, all of the dry ingredients (dried raisins and currants, spices, flour, sugar) were readily available on the goldfields. And thirdly, plum puddings are traditionally shortened with suet rather than the usual butter. On the goldfields butter was rarity, and even when it could be bought it was usually rancid, and always expensive. Fortunately, the alternative shortening, suet, could be had at any butcher’s shambles. Suet is raw beef or mutton fat — especially the hard fat found around the loins and kidneys. Now, I know what you’re thinking: ‘I don’t want no kidney fat in my dessert,’ but trust me on this: it tastes great.

During her first day on the Spring Creek diggings in mid-1853, Mrs Campbell, Canadian wife of the new Police Magistrate, panicked about the lack of ingredients for cooking, but she was soon reassured by her male house-hand:

“Oh, dear!” I sighed, “no vegetables—eggs for a pud­ding, Barnes?” A shake of the head was the only reply. “Rice—you can surely get that?” “ Yes, ma’am, at two shillings a pound.” “Oh, then !”—and I breathed more freely—“milk; I know you can,” pointing to the half­ emptied milk-jug on the table. With a smile, Barnes said, “The milkman can only let me have a pint a-day, and it is half-a-crown a quart; but if you like I can make a plum-pudding—plenty of suet at the butchers, and raisins and currants at the store, though very dear.” “Well, then, that will have to do for to-day—boiled leg of mutton in rice, and a plum-pudding—not so bad after all,” I said, handing him some money, which he good-humouredly took, and walked off to purchase the needful.’ [2]

The pudding mixture was tied air-tight in nothing more than a square of calico, which (in an ideal world) had been boiled and thoroughly rubbed with flour to seal its surface. (Incidentally, a typical pudding cloth is about the same size as a square neckerchief, which is also amount of fabric needed to make an arm sling. It’s about 80cm or 2 1/2 foot square.)

There were two ways of making a pudding. One was to make a flat sheet of suet pastry sprinkled with dried fruit, which was then rolled up into a circular pudding; the other was to make the pudding with everything mixed at once.

Due to the length of time required for cooking, plum puddings were strictly Sunday fare, when the diggers were obliged (by the conditions of their licences) to down tools and observe the Sabbath. And of course, plenty were eaten when it was Christmas on the diggings of 1852:

Christmas-day we celebrated with the good old orthodox roast-beef and plum-pudding… and drank a Merry Christmas to all our friends in Old England, in a tumbler of brandy-and-water. We tried to believe it Christmas, spite of the thermometer at 120°, of diggers’ tents in the distance, and the bush around us. [3]

Here’s what I suspect the recipe would have looked like (and a recipe for suet pudding dough beneath that):

Traditional Plum Pudding

1/2 cup finely shredded suet
1/2lb (250grams) moist (soft brown) sugar
1lb (500 grams) seeded raisins
3/4lb (250 grams) sultanas
1/4lb (125 grams currants)
1/4lb (125grams) breadcrumbs
1/2lb (250grams) plain flour
2oz chopped blanched almonds
1/2 nutmeg, grated (or 1 level tsp nutmeg) (other spices commonly available may also have been added, such as cinnamon [cassia], mace and cloves).
1tsp baking powder (i.e.: combination of bicarbonate soda and tartaric acid [cream of tartare]
salt
4 eggs (I question whether these would have been readily available on the diggings; they may have been omitted.)
2 or more tablespoons brandy (Some recipes call for soaking the dried fruit in the brandy beforehand.)

Rub the suet into the flour, then add the sugar and breadcrumbs. Mix together the beaten eggs, and brandy, and add to the dry ingredients. The mixture should be reasonably stiff as you put onto the cloth; if it seems loose, just add a little more flour.

Your pudding cloth: A piece of unbleached, well-washed calico is excellent but anything can be used provided strong weave and with no holes! Have handy some string to tie the pudding cloth. It needs to be boiled and rubbed with flour to seal it.

Get help to tie your pudding – this is advantageous. Very important to ensure all ends are to top and will be included in the string tightly tied. If this is not done, water can get into the pudding and will create a soggy, spoiled end result. That’s very disappointing.

Be on guard to see water does not boil dry! Top up regularly throughout the cooking process with boiling water.

A good guide as to whether your pudding is cooked is that when you lift your pudding out of the steamer to hang, is that the cloth will very quickly show a drying appearance.

Cook for 6-8 hours, and to reheat, boil for one hour.

Suet Pudding Dough

The combination of suet and butter makes the flavour mellow and the texture flakey.

250g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
2 tbsp (50g) butter
75g suet, prepared or fresh grated
100-125ml water

Place the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and rub in the butter until it vanishes. Add the suet and water, then mix to a soft dough. This is ready to use straight away.

References
[1] Daniel Poole, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-the Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England, 1994.
[2] Mrs A. Campbell, Rough and smooth, or, Ho! for an Australian gold field, Hunter, Rose & Co., Quebec, 1865, p.83
[3] William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, Or Two Years in Victoria, Lowden Publishing Company, Kilmore, 1972 [original first published 1855], (this reference is from Chapter 10).

What did the gold miners eat? (Part 2: Did miners eat Damper or Sourdough?)

20 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Californian gold rush, Gold rush food

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Damper, Emily Skinner, Sourdough bread, Yeast

About this time last year, my friend Sandy Bogusis and myself were elbow deep in our own sourdough starters. I’d worked up a minor obsession with the idea that there was no commercial baker’s yeast during the period of the Spring Creek (Beechworth) gold rush, which in my fevered mind begged certain questions concerning how bread was leavened in 1852.

Meanwhile, Sandy, who owns The Baker’s Cottage B&B in Eldorado, was exploring all things baking related: a state which tends to happen when the property you own includes a fully-functional historic Scotch oven bakery. (1)

After receiving some sage advice from Richard Verrocchio, chef at Wangaratta’s Cafe Derailleur (where kitchen staff regularly have to beat over-vigorous sourdough starters into submission), we were modestly successful. Having proved to ourselves that we could make a slurry of flour and water, use this to capture and culture wild yeast, and use this culture to leaven and bake tolerable sourdough loaves, Sandy and I let our sourdough starters go.

[If you’re just interested in tips for sourdough starters, skip to the last paragraph of this post.]

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Inside the Scotch oven bakery at Eldorado, built c.1900. (Photo courtesy Sandy Bogusis.)

About damper

Since childhood, I’d held the assumption that in ‘the olden days’ bush people only made damper — because leavening dough (making it rise) with baking powder (a combination of bicarbonate soda and tartaric acid) was quick and easy. Like a million school kids, I’d even made damper on a campfire.

Given that commercial baker’s yeast was in its infancy at the time of the Victorian gold rushes, I subsequently imagined that all bread on the goldfields was damper. This supposition was supported by the fact that one of the key guidebooks of the period, written specifically for prospective gold diggers, James Bonwick’s Notes of a gold digger, and gold digger’s guide (1852), gives a (somewhat cheesy) explanation of how to make damper:

Take a washing tin dish, and clearing off the dirt a little, six or eight pannicans of flour are thrown in; half a tablespoon of carbonate of soda, the like quantity of tartaric acid, and a spoonful of salt are then mixed together in a pannican, and then well mingled with the dry flour. Water is then poured in, the whole thoroughly knuckled, rolled into a good shaped loaf, and tumbled at once into the warmed camp oven. Fire is applied beneath and in a couple of hours or less will turn out a loaf fit to set before a queen. (2)

About ‘yeast’

Then one day, I came across this historical account from Emily Skinner, a young English miner’s wife living in the Woolshed Valley in the 1850s. Initially, I ignored it. (However, I later realised that it is quite funny if you read it aloud with accents):

Soon after my arrival, one of the men (a Yankee and a baker by trade) working in the claim was in the house and said to me, “are you acquainted with the art of making bread, because if you like I will come and show you.” I was obliged to confess that I was not “that at home”. “Sakes alive, gal, don’t quote,” interrupted he, “This is your hum, and though by no means equal to our great and glorious America, still ’tis a very decent country and miles before your worn out old country over there.” I was obliged to keep quite, though I didn’t quite agree with him, so he gave me a very good lesson, showed me how to make the “risin’” or yeast, and very soon by practice I became quite expert. (3)

As I said, I ignored Emily Skinner’s talk of making yeast for years, until I came across another reference — this time written by Mrs Campbell, who was married to the police magistrate for the Ovens Goldfields, Alexander Campbell, and who had the luxury of a man servant to help her keep house at the Commissioner’s Camp in 1853. She described how:

Frederick and I having overcome our greatest difficulty—the making of yeast and bread—were bold enough to try muffins, cakes, pastry, &c.; and here I found myself more at home, as the latter I had often made, to please myself, in Canada… (5)

Exactly how this ‘yeast’ was made was unclear to me until I came across yet another reference, which really spells it out. This, from an English gold digger, Edward Ridpath, who lived on Spring Creek in 1852-3 and who seemed well-pleased with himself when he wrote in his journal,

…on my arrival here I was as ignorant of cookery in any shape as on the day of my entry into the world, now I am somewhat initiated into its mysteries, and might advertise in case of necessity to the situation of a plain cook, I can bake a tolerably good loaf in a camp oven, made to rise with yeast composed of flour, water, and sugar, this makes the bread so light that it will bear comparison with a French loaf… (6)

So here we have five people (three men, two women) during the Beechworth gold rushes, involved in making ‘yeast’ in a form which today we’d call a ‘sourdough starter,’ and using it to make bread. That they bothered to celebrate their efforts by writing about it suggests that they considered making ‘yeast’ a significant step towards self-sufficiency in their new environment. I doubt that they were alone in their efforts.

About sourdough

When the Californian gold rushes (1848-9) began to peter out, many Americans made their way to the Victorian diggings — so many, in fact, that within the first year or so, the Spring Creek diggings had its own ‘Yankee Hill’. (4) Sourdough bread was a staple on the Californian diggings, and apparently plenty of American ‘Miner Forty-Niners’ knew how to make it. I think there’s a fair chance that just as the gold cradle was a piece of technology imported from California to Victoria, so was the art of making sourdough.

Sourdough_Starter_(4524119623).jpg

A bubbling sourdough starter. (Image courtesy Veganbaking.net).

However, I still felt that I had to confirm whether making ‘yeast’ was really something so simple it could have been done in a tent or bark hut on the diggings. As it turns out, it’s so simple that you can do it: take a quantity of flour (say, a cup or two) and mix it with water until it is the consistency of loose pancake batter, cover the bowl with a piece of muslin or a tea towel, and put it somewhere warm. Every day, add fresh flour and whisk it in with more water (aeration is good) to ‘feed’ the mixture. Do not underfeed your starter! If it looks lame (brown liquid floating on top is a sign — just pour it off), up the amount of flour you feed it. It will become increasingly bubbly, and should smell vaguely fruity and pleasant, almost like overripe fruit that has fallen on the ground. The best results come from using organic flour which has not been over-processed, because it has a greater chance of containing the wild yeast spores, as well as the lactobacilli bacteria that create the distinctive sour flavour. Undoubtedly the flour on the gold diggings was not as sterile and bleached as today’s supermarket offerings, so it would have been ideal.

(1) Sandy Bogusis is currently researching a book on Scotch ovens in Australia.
(2) James Bonwick, Notes of a gold digger, and gold digger’s guide, R. Connebee, Melbourne, 1852, p.20.
(3) Edward Duyker (ed.), A Woman On The Goldfields, Recollections of Emily Skinner, 1852-1878, Melbourne University Press, 1995, p.54.
(4) Gordon F. Tucker, Journal, 1853 Apr. 12-1857 June 6. [manuscript MS 10649], State Library of Victoria. Sunday Oct 29, 1853: ‘moved our tent up on Yankee hill near the woods.’
(5) Mrs A. Campbell, Rough and smooth, or, Ho! for an Australian gold field, Hunter, Rose & Co., Quebec, 1865, p.89.
(6) Edward Ridpath, Journal, transcription of letters to his father, possibly in his own hand, 1850-53? [manuscript MS 8759], State Library of Victoria, Box 1012/4 [Box also includes his gold license from 3 August 1853].

 

 

 

 

What did the gold miners eat? (Part 1: Bush food in Beechworth)

15 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Bush Food, Gold rush, Gold rush food

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Australian bustard, Emily Skinner, Freshwater Mussels, Murray Crayfish, Seweryn Korzelinski, Trout Cod, Wild Turkey, William Howitt

Ask anyone what the miners of the Spring and Reid’s Creek gold rushes ate, and they will tell you it was boiled mutton and damper, washed down with plenty of black tea. While this isn’t exactly incorrect; it is a fantastic over-simplification. So for the next few posts, I want to look more closely at what the gold diggers ate. In this post, I will start with wild or ‘bush’ foods.

proud-australian-bustard-pic.jpg

An Australian Bustard or ‘Wild Turkey’ (image from birdwallpapers.com)

One of the reoccurring themes seen in letters and diaries from the early gold rush period (1852-3) is that of the diggers telling us what animals they’d caught. Initially I glossed this as newcomers to a strange land, fascinated with Australia’s unusual flora and fauna. However, eventually, I began to wonder why diggers so frequently remarked upon hunting and fishing. Only when I considered the broader social context of the period did this really make sense: In Britain, the right to hunt game had been restricted to the aristocracy and gentry from 1671 until 1831. After this, anyone could hunt, but a game licence was required — a ploy which once again restricted all but the wealthy. So it seems that the gold diggers in Australia were remarking out of sheer amazement: that anyone could hunt and fish, and do it for free!

When we think about wild food around Beechworth in 1852, we have to imagine the forests without Samba or Red deer, wild pigs, goats or rabbits; and the streams without trout or carp. There weren’t even honey bees (the Australian native bees that produce honey only live in warmer climates), nor edible mushrooms like the saffron milk cap or slippery jack. Still, there was plenty to eat.

Miners either hunted game themselves (usually on a Sunday when their gold licenses compelled them to down tools) or bought it — either from European or Indigenous suppliers (1). Mary Spencer, who stayed on Bontharambo Station during the gold rush, explained, ‘We are kept well supplied with quantities of fish and game; such as wild duck, turkeys, waterfowl, geese and black swan. The fish is very fine; fresh water trout, cod and a kind of salmon and various other kinds.’ (2)

The favourite feathered game species of the period seems to have been Wild Turkey, otherwise known as the Australian Bustard (Ardeotis australis). One of Australia’s largest birds, it became regionally extinct as its grassland habitat was taken over by grazing pasture. Hunting saw the end of local populations around Victoria, just as it had with Britain’s Great Bustard in the 1830s. However, the Australian Bustard can still be found inland today, and I’m reliably told that they taste like chicken.

The rivers and streams were abundant with delicious fish, shellfish and crustaceans. There are 38 species of freshwater crayfish in Victoria (27 of which are now threatened). Murray crayfish (Euastacus armatus) can still be found in Spring Creek, along with, of course, the humble Yabby (with the magnificent scientific name of Cherax destructor), which is more common in billabongs. Sometimes diggers could get a pail of Freshwater Mussels (Velesunio ambiguous), which are native to the Murray-Darling River system. Apparently they are tougher to eat than salt water mussels, being more like a clam in texture.

While en route to the Spring Creek diggings in late 1852, English author William Howitt wrote of how ‘The boys amused themselves with fishing, and caught what they call black-fish and trout, to us quite new fish, and a brilliant blue crawfish, with prickles all down each side of its tail.’ (3) He was probably referring to (in order) River blackfish (Gadopsis marmoratus), Trout cod (Maccullochella macquariensis) which was originally widespread in the south-east corner of the Murray Darling River system, and has spots like a rainbow trout (during the gold rushes, it was often called ‘bluenose cod’), and finally, the Central Highlands Spiny Crayfish (Euastacus woiwuru). Other prized fish included Golden Perch (Yellow Belly) (Macquaria ambigua), Murray Cod (Maccullochella peelii), and Short-finned Eel (Anguilla australis), which Indigenous people had been trapping and preserving by smoking, for millennia. Today Trout Cod is endangered, and it is prohibited to take them across the whole of Victoria, with the exception of two lakes at Beechworth: Lake Sambell and Lake Kerferd.

[Since writing this blog post, I had a conversation with fresh water fish ecologist Dr Paul Humphries, in which I learned that two species other were found in the local billabongs of the Ovens and Murray Rivers in North East Victoria, which were very good eating, and perhaps as a consequence, are no longer found here: Freshwater Catfish (Tandanus tandanus), and Silver Perch (Bidyanus bidyanus).]

When it came to red meat, possum was a popular meal. Seweryn Korzelinski, a Polish digger who visited Spring Creek in 1853, said of the diggers, ‘Some carry a gun and shoot cockatoos and possums on moonlit nights, which they bake on wooden skewers. Possums can be shot only at night, because they spend their days in holes in the trees. Only natives know how to find them in the day time.’ (4)

[Once again, since writing this original blog post, I have learned that local Aboriginal people sometimes wrapped the possum in clay before slow-baking them in an oven. Possums were the ‘go-to’ meal for most Aboriginal people of North East Victoria, although dozens of animal species were eaten — from Emu (with its deliciously oily skin that could be roasted until crispy), to slow-moving echidna which were only considered to be fair game for equally-slow moving elderly people. Even a humble handful of  tadpoles could make a quick meal.]

But bush foods weren’t all about blood and guts. Miner’s wife Emily Skinner collected Pink-flowered Native Raspberry (aka Small Leaf Bramble) (Rubus parvifolius) while living in the Woolshed Valley in the mid 1850s. She said, ‘The best of the native berries that I have seen is the wild raspberry, which nearly resembles its namesake in appearance, but its taste is more like the blackberry. We used to gather it in sufficient quantities to make tarts, a change from the preserved fruits.’ (5) Although Pink-flowered Native Raspberry is not as prolific now as the introduced blackberry, it can still be found in the Mount Pilot section of the Chiltern Mount Pilot National Park. And it’s not even the only native fruit: if you’re keen, you can try the red succulent stalk of the fruit of the Cherry Ballart (Exocarpos cupressiformis), along with the fruit of the Hairy Geebung (Persoonia rigida).

  1. Fred Cahir’s Black Gold: Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850-1870 (Australian National University, 2012) is comprehensive in providing firsthand period accounts of Indigenous people supplying gold miners with food.
  2. Mary Spencer, Aunt Spencer’s Diary (1854): A Visit to Bontharambo and the North-east Victorian Goldfields, Neptune Press, Newtown, 1981, p.46.
  3. William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, or Two Years in Victoria, Volumes 1 & 2, Sydney University Press, 1972 [first edn: 1855]. This reference: Volume 1, p.40.
  4. Seweryn Korzelinski, Memoirs of gold-digging in Australia, translated and edited by Stanley Robe, foreword and notes by Lloyd Robson, University of Queensland Press, 1979, p.63
  5. Edward Duyker (ed.), A Woman On The Goldfields, Recollections of Emily Skinner, 1852-1878, Melbourne University Press, 1995, p.69

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