The Humble Tuckshop: Memories of Childhood Foods
Growing up in the 1970’s in Brisbane, my diet was mainly influenced by my English background and traditional Australian foods. It wasn’t till the 1980’s that more international cuisine became more well known and tried.
We like many families ate meat and three veg throughout the week. The meat was generally a beef sausages, mince or rissole. I don’t know why whether it was because my mother grew up during rationing in England or she was not a great cook, but we ate a lot of tinned vegetables, the worst was tinned carrots. Of course, there was always a Sunday roast with gravy.
Vegemite on toast was a staple for breakfast with a glass of milk that the milkman had delivered early in the morning before the heat turned the milk sour. One of my favourite parts was eating the cream that had formed at the top of the bottle of the milk.
Before we had insulated bags, we took our lunch to school in a brown paper bag. It was not always the most appetising lunch specially during summer when Mum put tomato in your sandwich. The school tuckshop always seemed to do a roaring trade with a wide choice of sandwiches, meat pies, lamington’s, cream buns, and even soft drinks. Not the healthiest of food choices, but we loved it.
On a Friday night we would go for a drive to the local Greek owned Fish & Chips shop, where my favourite item was a Chiko roll. A Chiko Roll is a deep-fried snack roll filled with a mixture of vegetable and meat. Dipping the end of the Chiko roll in tomato sauce was my favourite bit. Do you remember looking at the lolly counter and being able to purchase a bag full of lollies for 10 cents while you waited for food to be cooked?
Saturday was the day that McMahon’s would deliver our lemonade order from Sarsaparilla, Creaming Soda, and Dry Ginger Ale.
Every child’s favourite especially at a birthday party was fairy bread made with spreading butter or margarine on white bread and then covering it with colourful hundreds and thousands sprinkles.
Today, our diet has much more of an international influence as Australia has become more multicultural. The 1970’s saw an increase in the availability and popularity of international foods, such as Chinese, Italian, and Indian cuisines.
SBS Food have an interesting article, “A (brief) history of Australian food”, about how migration has changed the way we eat and what we classed as ‘foreign food’ is just how “we eat around here”.
