A simple picnic coming up in Dryandra Forest: grilled chops, sausages and a billy of tea
Picnics in the bush have been part of my life for as long as I can remember, and they remain one of my most enjoyable pastimes. Indeed, having moved over into the slow lane of life, the combination of the picnic and the bush, has become even more enjoyable.
Only the other day Ellen and I spent a few days exploring mallet and wandoo forests at Dryandra and Highbury, and the highlight of each day was the ceremonial building of a small rock-bound fire on which to cook the chops and boil the billy. We have become quite good at finding a "perfect" spot for our picnics: there is a shady tree, a log upon which to sit and set up the food, shelter from a breakaway, and the sounds and aromas of a fine forest.
My love of the bush picnic did not derive from my childhood. Although my father had grown up on a farm and loved the outdoors, his idea of relaxation was a swim in the ocean on a seaside holiday. Both my father and mother were of the generation to whom the bush meant work, not recreation. There is a surviving photograph in the family album of my brother Peter, aged maybe eight, cooking something on a stick over a smoky fire on a family picnic at Churchman's Brook in the Perth hills, but this was a rarity.
After I left school and started my first job in a forestry gang at Dwellingup, the mid-day picnic became a daily event, thanks to the fact that I was working full-time in the bush. In the forestry lexicon of the day the cut-lunch was universally known as a "crib" - a word believed to have been brought to the Australian mining fields by immigrant Cornish miners.
One of my earliest lessons in the bush was to never let my crib (which I carried in an old haversack purchased from Army Disposals) out of sight. On a single day you might start off from the yard on a gang truck, be sent to a bushfire at mid-morning, seconded to swamp for a faller after lunch, be left alone to patrol a fire edge, or be ordered to man the radio at the control point in the afternoon. During all this you were careful always to make sure your crib accompanied you, as these were the days before gourmet meals were sent out to firefighters. It was my great mentor Barney White who, I think, introduced me to the old bushman’s mantra: a wise man and his crib are never parted. Certainly, I don’t ever remember Barney being separated from his [Endnote 1].
I was living in a single-man’s camp and batching in those early days in the bush, and my cribs were rudimentary. For weeks on end, I would take the same crib to work every day: a packet of Granita biscuits, a packet of Kraft cheese, a tin of sardines and an apple. This would be washed down with black, sweetened tea, boiled in a large black billy and shared by the whole gang.
Most of my workmates in those days were married men and had wives who packed them a substantial and enviable crib. Ron Kitson, the Assistant Forester at Northcliffe for example, was famous for his cribs, lovingly prepared for him by his wife Freda. There would be several rounds of sandwiches, some cold, battered fillets of fish, a couple of hard-boiled eggs and a wedge or two of home-made cake. Ron's crib box was the size of a small suitcase.
The wonders of Ron's crib contrast strongly with those of a mate of mine, who worked as a forester in Queensland many years ago. Newly graduated, and posted to a far-west district, he was briefed on the usual way lunch consumption progressed in the bush in that area:
For the first week you will find your lunch teeming with ants, and you will throw it away. After a month, hunger will rule, and you will eat your lunch, including the ants. After six months you will open your crib box, and if there are no ants, you will find some and sprinkle them on your sandwiches.
My breakthrough in the world of the crib came when I started eating my meals at the Pemberton Boarding House. I found that I could get the cook to prepare me a daily crib which would be ready for me to pick up when I finished breakfast. I recall:
The cribs prepared for me at the boarding house were very good. I would have my thermos filled with sugared black tea, and be handed a package with several sandwiches, usually with an interesting and tasty filling like cheese and pickled onions or cold meat and chutney, plus a slab of cake. Like my boss Barney White, with whom I was often in the bush those days, I could never wait to get into it. By some sort of unstated mutual agreement, Barney and I both used to like to sit down for lunch before eleven in the morning. We shared a concern that if we didn’t get lunch out of the way, something might come up, and we might miss the opportunity. If Barney was driving, he was expert at spotting a congenial spot for our daily picnic, usually by a pool in the river, and under the shade of a nice sheoak.
It was one of our conceits in those days, that a forester’s life was something special: we had a picnic in the bush every day. As that great cynic Ranger Roopaw once observed, this was not always relaxing, but even when it wasn’t fun, it was memorable.
After I married, and the Everloving took charge of me, my cribs became more imaginative, and the quality improved out of sight.
But the years have rolled by, I am no longer a working bushman; I am living in the slow lane, and the picnic in the bush has reverted to more rudimentary ingredients. Nevertheless, we cater for three meals - morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea. Preparation is minimal: the billy is taken off its hook on the veranda and rinsed, the wire grill is placed in an old sugar bag, and I make sure I have stowed the folding spade, the axe, two large bottles of water and a box of matches in the back of the Subaru. Ellen's role is to put the necessities into a picnic box: half a dozen lamb chops or sausages, salt, tomato sauce, bread and butter, our special Picnic Cake [Endnote 2] for morning and afternoon tea, a knife and mugs and plates. Sometimes there might be a touch of luxury with a couple of cold chicken drumsticks included, or a curried egg sandwich on freshly home-made bread. And there is usually a separate bag with a couple of apples and a supermarket snack bar for keeping us going on the drive home from the bush. If it is winter and the ground is likely to be wet, I throw in two picnic chairs, but with reluctance. I always feel there is something slightly effete about sitting on a chair in the bush.
Ellen gnawing a chop, watched with intense interest by the good dog Ruby.
Yes, our picnic fare is unsophisticated, but we don't mind. The actual food is almost secondary to making the campfire, listening to the sizzle of the BBQ and smelling the aroma of bush tea (to which, by tradition, a gum leaf is always added). Even the most rudimentary meal tastes good in the clean, scented air of the bush.
One thing that would not be possible would be for anyone to put us to shame, as happened to my favourite culinary writer Elizabeth David, as she recounts in her wonderful 1955 book Summer Cooking:
Not long before the war I was staying with friends in Marseille. One Saturday night a picnic was arranged for the next day with some American acquaintances. We agreed that the two parties should proceed in cars to a little bay outside Marseille, and that we would each bring our own provisions. On Sunday morning my friends and I indulged in a delicious hour shopping in the wonderful market of the rue de Rome, buying olives, anchovies, salame sausages, pates, yards of bread, smoked fish, fruit and cheese. With a provision of red wine we bundled the food into the car, stopping now and again for a drink; so that we arrived at our rendezvous well-disposed to appreciate the sea and the scent of wild herbs and Mediterranean. Presently our friends drove up and started to unpack their car. One of the first things to come out was an axe with which they efficiently proceeded to chop olive branches, and in no time at all there was a blaze.
Out of their baskets came cutlets, potatoes, bacon, skewers, frying-pans, jars of ice, butter, tablecloths, all the trappings of a minor barbecue. Our reactions as we watched these proceedings were those of astonishment, admiration, and finally, as realization of the inadequacy of our own catering dawned, dismay. How wilted they seemed, those little packets wrapped up in rather oily paper; the olives which had glowed with colour in the market stalls of the rue de Rome looked shabby now; the salame seemed dried up and the anchovies a squalid mess. Miserably, like poor relations, we sat with our shameful bundles spread out on the grass and politely offered them to our friends. They were kind, but obviously preferred their own grilled cutlets and fried potatoes, and we were too embarrassed to accept their proffered hospitality. Presently they produced ice cream out of a thermos, but by now we were past caring, and finally it was their turn for surprise when they found we hadn’t even provided ourselves with the means of making a cup of coffee.
My own feeling is that you can go over-the-top with a picnic. Take for example the provisioning recommended by the famous English cook Mrs Beeton (admittedly for a picnic for 40 persons):
A joint of cold roast beef, a joint of cold boiled beef, two ribs of lamb, two shoulders of lamb, four roast fowls, two roast ducks, one ham, one tongue, two veal-and-ham pies, two pigeon pies, six medium-sized lobsters, one piece of collared calf’s head, eighteen lettuces, six baskets of salad, six cucumbers, stewed fruit well sweetened, and put into glass bottles well corked; three or four dozen plain pastry biscuits to eat with the stewed fruit, two dozen fruit turnovers, four dozen cheesecakes, two cold Cabinet puddings in moulds, a few jam puffs, one large cold Christmas plum-pudding, a few baskets of fresh fruit, three dozen plain biscuits, a piece of cheese, six pounds of butter (this, of course, includes the butter for tea), four quartern loaves of household bread, three dozen rolls, six loaves of tin bread (for tea), two plain plum cakes, two pound cakes, two sponge cakes, a tin of mixed biscuits, half a pound of tea.
I have also come across other accounts of picnics, or at least of provisioning for a day in the outdoors, that make our arrangements seem primitive by comparison. An Indian Army officer at the time of the Raj recollected:
When I was going through the course of Garrison instruction, and accustomed to long days out surveying, I was partial to a galantine made of a small fowl, boned and rolled, with a block of tongue and some forcemeat introduced into the centre of it. A home-made brawn of tongue, a part of an ox-head, and sheep’s trotters, well-seasoned, and slightly spiced, was another speciality.
A "galantine" (I discover by looking it up on the internet), is "a Polish dish of de-boned stuffed meat, most commonly poultry or fish, that is poached and served cold, coated with aspic". I am not sure I could come at it.
The Australian food writer Donovan Clarke, in his little 1949 book Cooking for Occasions proposes an unbelievable, and in my view wholly un-Australian picnic menu, as follows: Salmon Darioles, Chasseur and Cheese and Olive Sandwiches, Scotch Eggs, Strasbourg Pate, Chicken Croquettes, Cucumber, Lettuce, Fruit Jellies, artelettes a la St. Denis, Cheese.
Clarke goes on to give the recipes for these obscure dishes and even prepares a shopping list for the prospective picnicker:
6 anchovies, 2 ozs. each of cooked rabbit, ham, beef, lamb, pork and veal, 4 ozs. cooked chicken, 16 eggs, 1 cup cream, 1\2 lb. bacon (streaky and some fat pieces), 1 lb. liver sausage (or the same of foie gras), 5 lb. butter, 1 lb. sausage meat and 1 lb. veal (minced), 1 large tin salmon, 1 small jar anchovy paste, 1 jar of mayonnaise, 2 lbs. flour, 2 packets jelly crystals, 1\2 lb. of your favourite cheese, 1 cucumber, 1 lb. green peas, 1\2 lb. mushrooms, 1 large bunch of parsley, 1-2 lbs. mixed fruit in season.
You will require to take with you to the picnic site, in addition, 1 bottle of peanut oil for frying, half the bunch of parsley, and a small bottle of tomato sauce. You should be able to buy all the above for under 30/-.
Thirty shillings! But that was 75 years ago and would be equivalent to about $100 today. All the same it is a shopping list that is a far cry from the six-pack of snaggers and a couple of bread rolls in which I usually invest!
I do give Donovan Clarke some credit, however. He has a recipe for "chachlik", which sounds a bit like what we would today call a kebab. Well, a simple kebab anyway. Before departing for the picnic, he requires you to assemble:
... any left-over mutton or lamb, or a small shoulder or forequarter of mutton or lamb, uncooked, two cups of white wine, vinegar and a sliced onion.
The meat is then cut into pieces the size of a walnut and placed in a large jar or jars with the slices of onion and covered with the vinegar or white wine, and the lids screwed on. All of this is packed in the picnic hamper together with a yard of stout wire or a grid-iron.
"When you reach the picnic site and the fire has produced some good embers for you, broil the pieces of meat over the embers, either in the gridiron or skewered along the wire. Put the meat as near as possible to the glowing embers; 10 minutes’ cooking should suffice, the meat should not be cooked through. Experts say that Chachlik should be eaten in one’s fingers accompanied by the slices of onion from the wine.
I have not tried kebabs at a picnic, but Chachlik sounds tasty, provided someone else does all the preparation and the cooking.
Over- the-top picnics seem to me to detract from the simple rustic experience which is the essence of the affair. Rather than with Mrs Beeton or Donovan Clarke, my sympathies are with the two forestry officers in the Indian Forest Service, setting out on a canoe trip in the Western Ghats in 1880. They took with them:
... one half a loaf of bread, one small tin of sardines, one bottle of soda water, one flask of brandy and plenty of cheroots ...
... or perhaps with the Walrus and the Carpenter whose agreeable seaside picnic was of the utmost simplicity. I recall that ...
… A loaf of bread,' the Walrus said,
Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed —
Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed.'
One of my favourite memories is of a breakfast picnic. It was a simple menu, but unusual, and the surroundings were beautiful and memorable:
It took place on the lawn outside a Huntsman’s Lodge deep in the early-morning shade of a towering spruce forest in Germany. It was September 1978, and I was travelling with a group of international foresters on a study tour, part of a course we were doing at Oxford University. For some weeks we had been working our way through various forests and forestry institutions across the face of western Europe, having started in Bordeaux, and we were now in the private forestry estate of Count von Bernstoff, high in the Hartz Mountains of what was then West Germany. The Count himself was present, along with his Forstmeister and his team of foresters, all resplendent in plush green uniforms, complete with plumed velvet caps.
It was a chill autumn morning, the temperature about 12 degrees, and the Count had arranged for us to be served with a Huntsman’s Breakfast before we began our tour of his forests. It was traditional to eat such a meal from the saddle, he pointed out, but in this case tradition could be overlooked. The meal was delicious: a rich stew-like soup eaten with a pointed knife, followed by a litre of dark pilsener beer which came with a hunk of crusty bread. All of this was chased down with a hefty shot of schnapps. Count von Bernstoff joined us for breakfast and ate and drank enthusiastically. His style of drinking schnapps (a very high-alcohol, colourless brandy, which he seemed to like very much) was to toss a great glassful straight down an open throat, so that it disappeared in an instant. This approach was closely copied by the international foresters.
There is no doubt about it. The old Prussian aristocracy knew how to prepare themselves for a day in the forest. I’m not sure whether it was his forests or his breakfast, but I can’t remember a happier day in the woods.
This memory reinforces my belief that the essence of a good picnic is that it should be a happy occasion.
There is, of course, another scenario. You do not need to look too deeply into Australian literature (especially Henry Lawson's short stories) or the painitngs of Frederick McCubbin to find examples of some melancholy bushman, down on his luck, his most recent meal being the dregs of black tea from his billy, and a smoke of the pipe.
I’d like to organise a Huntsman’s Breakfast for this old bushman … although it is possible he might prefer grilled chops, drumsticks, bread rolls and a slab of my Picnic Cake.
But for me here can be no melancholy involved in the whole-hearted enjoyment of a simple meal in bushland surroundings, shared with the Everloving and the dog, the air redolent with woodsmoke [Endnote 3]. This is not the everyday life of the swagman, but an escape from my everyday life, from its trappings, sorrows and constraints.
A billy fire in newly discovered country, somewhere east of Southern Cross
And although I have favourite places to which I return many times, I love the adventure of undiscovered country. Stopping to picnic in the midst of newly revealed bushland has a special romance. Under these conditions I can easily put up with ants and flies, a whiff of grapeshot from a passing rain shower, even the rumble of distant thunder with its portent that the day may soon be over.
For even a curtailed picnic carries a promise. There will always be another day, another exploration, another campfire, another grilled chop, another bubbling billy ... another picnic in the bush.
Endnotes
1. Barney once gave me another excellent piece of advice: “Just remember, son” he said sorrowfully, “once you are married, never take home a crib”. Apparently, one day early in his married life, Barney had visited a farm adjoining State Forest at about lunchtime. He had been invited in and then enjoyed an excellent meal with the farmer and his wife. That evening he handed back to his wife the crib she had laboured lovingly over before breakfast that morning, saying something about how he had not needed it, having dined in style, and that the unwanted crib could be disposed of. “I never did that again” he said.
2. Somewhere, years ago, I came across a recipe for a simple, but delectable fruit cake that even I can make and which always seems to come out right. We call it our Picnic Cake. In the bush, a slab or two of it goes nicely with a cup of billy tea. In case you want to try it:
You wil need: 125g butter; 2 small eggs; 50g white sugar; 200g sultanas; lOOg chopped dried apricots; l tsp vanilla essence; 150g plain white flour; 2 tsp baking powder.
Then: Pre-heat oven to 230°C. Then, in a large bowl gently beat together the butter and sugar until the mixture is soft then add the eggs one at a time beating into the mix.
Stir in the sultanas, apricots and vanilla essence, sift together the flour and baking powder, and fold into the mix using the spatula. If it won’t pour, add a little milk. Cover with cling wrap and place in fridge for 20 minutes.
Finally: Grease the inside of a 25cm x 8cm x 7cm cake tin and line with baking paper leaving about 2 or 3cm above the tin. Pour in the cake mix and place in the hot oven. Cook for 7 minutes at 230 degrees and then reduce the oven temperature to 170°C and cook for another 35 minutes. Once cooked, place the tin on a cake rack and leave for 15 minutes, then turn the cake out onto the rack and allow to cool.
3. I view with sadness the latest fad of the hard-line environmentalists: the banning of the campfire. Is there anything better than making a fire and cooking on it, or simply sitting under the stars, staring into the coals and musing on ‘the inevitability of the absolute’ (as my father liked to say), or cranking up last night’s fire on which to cook breakfast? It is one of the greatest of human pleasures and traditions. Yet the campfire is now banned in our national parks and elsewhere, on the grounds that to make a fire you need firewood, and firewood comes from trees, which are sanctified and therefore untouchable by the evil human.
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