June 2024
In March 2024 Australia Post issued a set of four stamps under the heading of The Shared Table. The Overview accompanying the stamps states the intent of the issue:
Historically, Australia is not known for its cuisine. Transportation and settlement imported culinary expectations based on British and Irish traditions … Australia’s culinary landscape began to change from the middle decades of the 20th century …
This stamp issue seeks to counter the historical conception of a dreary Anglo diet, revising this with a more cosmopolitan take on gastronomic culture in contemporary Australia. This means signalling some of the cultural influences that have fired up and shaped our culinary expectations and habits, while also pointing to the abundant fresh produce and artisanal products that are now relatively commonplace to many of us.
Each of the stamps depicts ingredients from ‘The cuisines that have perhaps most influenced the contemporary Australian plate and palate’. One of the influential cuisines is Indian.
Taking 1950 as the middle of the century I wondered what the Indian Sub-continent cuisines had offered till then to the ‘Australian plate and palate’ as an option to ‘a dreary Anglo diet’.
