February 2025
The Australian Agents-General propose to startle the culinary connoisseurs of London with a series of sixpenny dinners at the Colonial Exhibition of 1886, the viands being exclusively Australian. The menu will comprise kangaroo tail soup, smoked barracouta, pickled Murray cod, stewed iguana, possum ragout, roast wombat, haricot bandicoot, wallaby pie, salt bush salad, munyaroo tart, preserved loquats, syrup of native cherries, bottled quandongs, and a conserve of “bardies” and wild honey (as a bush substitute for strawberries and cream). The repast will be moistened with she-oak beer, Warrenheip gin, Mount Gambier potato brandy, and ” stock and rider” tea, served in quart pots and concocted with Yan Yean water. Queensland corn cob pipes, New South Wales sheepwash tobacco, and cigars of Victorian leaf will be provided to top off with.[1]
This humorous item was published in October 1885 in the Port Augusta Dispatch, Newcastle and Flinders Chronicle purporting to be part of the Australian display at the 1886 Colonial Exhibition in Britain. The Exhibition was the fourth in a series ‘intended to display as perfect a Collection as possible of the natural and manufactured products of our Colonies, as also of our Indian Empire … Australia, too, will certainly do herself more than justice on this important occasion, and will be represented on a scale of remarkable completeness’. At least I think the item was humorous: it was in a column called ‘Grapeshot’ which was a mix of short items some which looked credible others of which looked to be satirical. Certainly, there was no mention of the dinners in reports of the Exhibition.
But let’s say it did happen, let’s (re)construct the menu via recipes and substitutes and let’s play around with time as well.
