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Remember
the tiny red, green and white cocktail onions impaled on toothpicks
along with chunks of soapy cheese, pineapple and pieces of slimy
salami? How about rice salads decorated with bits of dried coconut
and slices of orange or platters stacked high with buttered slices
of white bread?
Throw in some pastel painted fibro fence panels,
a raging wood fire enclosed by bricks and topped with a heavy steel
plate and you had a barby - Australian style in the halcyon 1950s
and 1960s. Well, at least it would have been halcyon if the food
had been edible.
But that didn't worry those of us who were kids at the time. We
thought that sausages, like old Fords, only came in one colour -
black. Steaks were usually reserved for the grown-ups and they were
cut thin because most meat was a lot tougher in the days before
feedlotting. After case hardening over roaring flames, the steaks
would be speared with a long fork and proudly placed on waxed paper
plates - where they lay gleaming like anthracite waiting patiently
for the technicolour additions of mixed fruit and vegetable salads.
In addition to the vast opportunities it provided
to ruin food, a barbecue was a great social event. It was the first
introduction for most Australians to eating outdoors in their own
backyards. It also marked the only time it was permissible for the
typical Australian male to cook. For many others, it was an opportunity
to peel back a bit of that old Anglo-Saxon reserve and ask the neighbours
in for a meal and a beer (only Very Serious Drinkers and recently
arrived Europeans drank wine in those days).
Once television arrived in the second half of
the 1950s, the backyard barby took on a new dimension. TV shows
such as 'Leave it to Beaver' and 'My Three Sons' depicted an 'average'
American lifestyle - a lifestyle that appeared incredibly sophisticated
and luxurious to the vast majority of Australians.
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We have Queensland fruit and
vegetable processor Golden Circle Limited to thank for the use
of these wonderful vintage photographs which were published
in their Tropical Recipe Books during the 1950s and 60s.
"Scrape off the black bits,
love" I was once told when I dared to ask for medium rather
than well-done chops at a barby.
-
Susan Kurosawa, Travel Editor, The Australian.
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It was the first glimpse of the good life for
most of us and it had a profound influence. Australians (those with
the money anyway) could now shake off the British obsession with
understatement and build long and low ranch style homes, buy multi-hued
cars with fins and build giant barbecues that dominated their backyards.
Many of these brick and cement block shrines to
carnivorousness still stand and, because of their sheer indestructibility,
have huge potential to tease archeologists in the next millenium.
Like most social statements, the actual time they spent centre stage
was relatively brief. The 1970s bought the minimalist Hibachi, the
1980s the kettle barbecue and the 1990s became the era of the trolley
barbecue.
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Their numbers were boosted by legislation banning
backyard conflagrations in capital cities and their ease of use.
Trolley barbecues are, by far, the most popular outdoor cooking
appliances in Australia.
Around four out of five these days are sold with
a swing-up metal hood. This feature has made them more versatile
and consequently more popular. Until it became an affordable, common
accessory Australians used their gas flat tops for grilling and,
if they roasted outside at all, it was done in a kettle barbecue.
Now, most people have convinced themselves they can have it all
in the one unit.
Click here for the latest Australian bbq news
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The old house was
demolished but they couldn't budge the barby.
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