Food
1860 to 1880: Obtaining provisions from the land and squatters
The early Queensland surveyors were fortunate that many squatters had taken up their selections before the surveys were carried out. It was from these original settlers that the surveyors were able to purchase a limited supply of food, mainly meat, sugar, salt, flour and tea. However, not all stations were able to assist, as they received their supplies only once a year when roads were passable.
A lot of the early surveyors spent a considerable amount of time on continuous field surveys. At times this would take them away from their home base for periods of twelve months or more. While they carried with them certain provisions depending on the space available, supplements such as bush food became necessary.
Duck, scrub and plain turkey, pigeon, kangaroo, possums, bandicoot, porcupine, goanna, snake, hare, rabbit, fish, eels, yabbies and many other native food items formed part of their daily diet.
Surveyor E.W. Peachy, while surveying on the Darling Downs in 1859, described one of his meals:
the dog caught a kangaroo rat and we cooked it and it was good as a hare, only it wanted flavour. Peachey EW 1859
1901 to 1920: Provisions and the cook
Surveyor CL Morell describes his diet in 1909 while working on the prickly pear surveys in south-western Queensland:
It was necessary, therefore, to purchase food supplies in bulk, and to restrict these to articles that would keep. This excludes fresh meat, green vegetables and fresh fruit. Our staple diet, therefore, consisted of salt beef, bread (and butter in winter), jam and other tinned items, rice, potatoes and onions. If a station homestead were handy, these could usually be replenished from station store, and fresh meat would, for one or two days, garnish the menu.Morell CL 1909
One of the most important members of a survey party was the cook. Morell describes the attributes of one of his cooks:
Cooks, of course, were a class on their own, and were generally older men. A good cook was hard to find, and like a virtuous woman, his price was above rubies, although he was not paid quite on that basis.
A bad cook can be costly. Each group of nomadic workers, whether surveyors, drovers, shearers, road or railway construction team, resembles a small army in one respect – it moves on its stomach, and bad cooking breeds grumbling. One cook engaged for my camp in Forbes, New South Wales, the only one offering, certainly had his limitations. He dished up boiled rice for every evening meal as a dessert, and then when pressed for a change, asked after hard consideration, 'would they like some currents in their rice?'
A cook’s most sacred cooking utensil was his camp oven, pictured. Courtesy Mrs M. Glasgow
Morell continues:
The camp oven – a round iron utensil with an iron lid, was the universal cooking oven for travellers camping on the track. In use, it was sunk in the ground on hot ashes, and the lid also covered with hot ashes. A good cook could consistently turn out light, well baked batches of bread, but with others the result seemed to rest in the lap of the gods. And if the flour bags became empty too quickly it was a sign that 'sods' were being unobtrusively buried 'at dead of night'.
There was a certain mystic rite in the kneading of bread called 'knockin' her back', which was usually performed at uncanny hours of the night, and savoured of black magic.
On one occasion, our cook having exhausted all more or less valid reasons or excuses for earlier failures, ventured the opinion (we were in the artesian belt at the time) that the flabby state of the latest batch was due to 'wind off the bore drain' - a sort of sea breeze, no doubt, from a stream of water two feet wide – an ill wind that blew nobody good.
Emu skin, Plain Turkey, pidgeon and hawk's egg captured in the wild Courtesy Mr G Bell
1920 to 1950: A diet of fresh wildlife
Cadet surveyor Albert Hammermeister, while working in the Ravenswood area in 1924, wrote home to his mother describing the local bush food supply:
Talk about wild pigs and ducks. We went pig shooting and got enough pork to last for a month. It was great fun. We would ride on to a mob, pick out a nice young sow and chase her until she knocked up. The dogs used to bail them up, then we would shoot her and bleed her, and there you are, prime pork. The meat wasn’t rank at all. It was just as if they had been fed on milk and sweet potatoes.
We didn't have a gun, worse luck, or we would have bagged a few ducks. Our cook that used to be, pawned the shot gun at a hotel for a few drinks. We have been going to get one ever since, but haven’t come to the point about it yet.
We tried fishing last weekend (we are only four miles from the river here), but all we caught was three eels. It must have been the fish's off season. Hammermeister A 1924
Scrub Turkey snared in the Dawson Valley, circa 1928
Courtesy Peart collection Surveys Board
A catch of Boney Bream, Ockenden Courtesy Mrs J Miller
Last updated: 17 June 2009