1900s

According to legend, Hans Irvine, then owner of Great Western wines, heard that Dame Nellie Melba had expressed the wish to bathe in champagne. He commanded that a bathtub be brought to the winery and filled with 152 bottles of his sparkling wine – known in those pre-D.O.C. days as champagne. The diva bathed behind a screen. Cellar-hands later bottled the bubbly and claimed that, although 152 bottles went in, 153 bottles came out. In 1910, one of the underground drives at Great Western was named after Melba. Seppelts bought Great Western in 1918.

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The passing of the Quarantine Act in 1908 and its implementation in 1809 provided a national approach to the prevention and eradication of imported plant, animal and human diseases. In the same year the Government Bureau of Microbiology was established to do research in this field.

Founded in 1867 in Switzerland by Henri Nestlé, the company merged with the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Co. in 1905.  By 1906, Australia was the company’s second biggest export market and the decision was made to set up a business here.  The first factory was at Toogoolawah in South East Queensland. More

Kentucky Fried Chicken in Australia in 1908?  Yes, we discovered this in the household hints section of the Bundaberg Mail and Burnett Advertiser on 14 November 1908. Colonel Sanders clearly had nothing to do with it – he didn’t start his business in the USA until the 1950s. More

In the early 1900s, many butchers’ shops were still open-fronted, with the carcasses hanging where the air could circulate. In response to increasing concerns about food hygiene, New South Wales’ first meat inspector was appointed in 1908. By 1913 he reported that all except five butchers’ shops  in Sydney had enclosed premises.

The Carlton Brewery had been operating in Bouverie Street, North Melbourne, since the 1860s, but in 1907 it united with the Foster’s, Victoria, Shamrock, McCracken and Castlemaine breweries to form Carlton & United Breweries (CUB).  In the same year, the letters VB were first added to the label of the Victoria Brewery’s Bitter Ale. The CUB website has a timeline with some wonderful old photos. More

The College of Domestic Economy was founded to give  women an education in domestic arts and sciences. It offered diploma courses for teachers of domestic economy and dressmaking and vocational training for the hospitality and clothing industries. The Superindendent was Miss M. Sandes, who had a diploma from the Technical College in Sydney.  In 1926, with the financial support of State Treasurer Sir William McPherson,  it became the Emily McPherson College. More

In 1907, the  Mildura Raisin Trust and Renmark Raisin Trust joined to become the Australian Dried Fruits Association (A.D.F.A.). The two organisations had been established in 1895 to protect the interests of dried fruit growers in irrigation areas along the Murray River.  A.D.F.A. is now known as Dried Fruits Australia.

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Peters Ice Cream was founded in Sydney by American migrant Fred Peters. His first Peters Ice Cream family bricks, reputed to be made to his mother’s recipe, were sold  from a horse and cart in the suburb of Manly. In 1927, Peters Victorian factory opened in Melbourne. The slogan “The health food of a nation” lasted into the 1970s, when regulations about health claims forced a change to “Peters keep the good things coming”. The brand is now owned by R&R Ice Cream, based in the UK but owned by French private equity firm PAI Partners. More

SAO biscuits are up there with Lamingtons among the “iconic” Aussie foods. They are  still made by Arnott’s. There are conflicting reports about the origins of the SAO name. While some accounts say they’re named after a boat, it’s widely believed that SAO stands for Salvation Army Officer. This was in honour of William Arnott’s son Arthur, who joined the Salvation Army . More

The first person known to have planted rice in south-eastern Australia was  Jō Takasuka, an import/export merchant who had previously been a parliamentarian in Japan. In 1906 he sowed 35 acres (14 ha) of rice on flood-prone land rented from a farmer in Nyah, on the Murray River.  He struggled to produce a commercial crop, but in 1914 the Victorian Government granted him 200 acres of land to continue his enterprise. More

The world’s first patent for a household electric stove was issued to David Curle Smith, the Kalgoorlie Municipal Electrical Engineer, in November 1905. About fifty appliances were then built and leased to customers in Kalgoorlie in the following years. The design lacked a thermostat – the temperature was controlled by the number of elements in use. David Curle Smith’s wife, Helen Nora, wrote a cookbook to promote her husband’s invention. Thermo-Electrical Cooking Made Easy (Kalgoorlie, 1907) is therefore the world’s first cookbook for an electric stove.

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Although camp pie in various guises had been around for many decades, it appears that Foggitt Jones of Queensland were the first to market it in Australia.Their Rex Camp Pie became a well-known brand. The famous “Camp Pie” Case in the 1920s was a legal dispute over trade marks between Foggitt Jones and the Darling Downs Co-operative.  (Image courtesy of Tommy’s Pack Fillers) More

While the General Mills website claims Peck’s Pastes were  introduced to Australia in 1904, the brand advertised 60th birthday specials in 1961. Which is correct?  It’s hard to say, as the first advertising seems to have appeared in 1906. Pecks’s Pastes enjoyed a boom in the 1950s and ’60s and the name lingers on – although they’re called “Tasty Spreads” these days. More

John Sennitt was an English-born engineer  who, in 1899,  acquired his employers’ firm Victorian Cold Accumulator Proprietary Company Ltd. The firm began to manufacture Sennitt’s Ice Cream around 1904. In the early 1930s John’s son, William,  introduced the popular polar bear trademark.

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Melbourne Bitter was born in 1904, when a group of pub owners formed the Melbourne Cooperative Brewery Company and began producing beer in Abbotsford, Victoria. Over 150 publicans were shareholders. Melbourne Bitter gained a reputation as a premium beer and was distributed in other states including Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. More

William Farrer bred various strains of wheat to resist the common crop disease of rust. After many years of cross-breeding, he developed the Federation strain in 1900, just prior to the Federation of the Australian colonies. It was released to farmers in 1903 and contributed to the trebling of Australia’s wheat harvest over the next 20 years. More

The term ‘barbecue’, referring to a cooking method was certainly known in England well before the First Fleet departed for Botany Bay. But it was little used in Australia until the mid-1800s, and then normally in reference to events held in America.The first use of the term for an Australian event seems to be a report of the Waverley Bowls Club’s Leg o’ Mutton Barbecue in 1903.
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The bunya nut, from the Bunya Pine, was an important food source for aboriginal people of Queensland’s Darling Downs area. Every three years, many different tribes would travel to the region to feast on a bumper crop. The introduction of government settlements displaced indigenous people and these large gatherings ceased. The last large Bunya gathering is thought to have taken place in 1902.

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Australia’s oldest women’s magazine was launched by Thomas Shaw Fitchett as The New Idea—A Women’s Home Journal for Australia. Its cookery columns have influenced generations of Australians. More

No-one really knows the origin of neenish tarts, the bi-coloured pastries still widely available in Aussie cake shops. The first known mention of ‘nenish cakes’ is in an advertisement for the New South Wales Ice and Fresh Food Company in 1895. In 1901 a columnist calling herself “Housewife” published a recipe in The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser. The recipe was evidently new, as she remarked that she hadn’t had time to test it. More

Australia’s 1901 Population Census recorded around 14 per cent of Australia’s total population as working in the agricultural and pastoral industries. This contrasts with around 1.4 per cent in 2011. The number of workers in the farming sector in 1901 was, in fact, underestimated. The census did not count aboriginal people who were working as stockmen and in other roles on pastoral properties.

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Although others had earlier experimented with tea growing – notably the Cutten brothers at Bingil Bay in North Queensland – James Griffiths succeeded in producing significant quantities of Australian-grown tea in the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne. Griffiths Brothers established one of Australia’s first coffee and tea distribution businesses in 1879.
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As early as the 1860s, Chinese immigrants were growing peanuts in North Queensland. Commercial farming began in 1901 when Samuel Long planted 3 acres (1.2 hectares) in the Kingaroy district. Regarded as pioneers of the Queensland peanut industry, Ben and Harry Young, sons of another Chinese immigrant, began a larger operation nearby in 1919.’ More

A grand Federation banquet at Sydney Town Hall celebrated the creation of a nation, as the separate British colonies joined together to form the Commonwealth of Australia. The menu was presented in French, perhaps to demonstrate the international credentials of the new nation and to show that these colonials knew how to do things properly. More

There are various stories (probably apocryphal) about how lamingtons were invented.  However, it seems likely that they were devised by Armand Galland, the French chef to Lord Lamington, Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901.   There is debate about whether lamingtons were first served at Government House, at the opening of the Ipswich Technical College or, as the locals claim, at the governor’s country residence at Toowoomba.  Lord Lamington reputedly referred to the cakes as “those bloody, poofy, woolly biscuits”. More

The 1900 Meat Supervision Act introduced a requirement for meat to be inspected at the time of slaughter. Only inspected and branded meat could be sold. This was followed in 1905 by the Milk and Dairy Supervision Act and the Pure Food Act, setting new standards for food hygiene and lack of adulteration. Other states soon followed Victoria’s lead. More

Hans William Henry Irvine extended the underground cellars at Great Western, imported a French winemaker from the champagne house of Pommery and made wine by the traditional champagne method. All bottles and machinery were imported from France.  His Great Western sparkling wine, the first successful champagne-style wine in Australia, won the gold medal at the 1900 Paris exhibition. More

The Dairy Farmers Co-operative Milk Co. Ltd was among several dairy co-operatives formed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to help farmers market their milk and butter in Sydney. The co-operative, comprising 65 stakeholders, was founded on January 15, 1900. Many of the members were dairy farmers from the Illawarra region of New South Wales. Dairy Farmers is now owned by the Japanese Kirin Holdings, via its subsidiary Lion Dairy & Drinks. More

Until around 1880, most of the tea consumed in Australia came from China. However, from this time tea from Empire countries, like India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) began to make inroads into the market. In around 1890, Hawthorn, Rhodes & Co., major tea importers and the Melbourne representatives of the Pekin Tea Company, began selling blended teas under the Robur brand.  In 1900, the company was purchased by James Service & Co and from then on traded as the Robur Tea Company. More

Swiss doctor Maximilian Bircher-Benner invented muesli at his health clinic . He called it the “apple diet dish” or Apfeldiätspeise . The name muesli appeared later and is derived from an old German word for “puree”. His method called for combining a small amount of oat flakes and water with chopped apples, lemon juice, condensed milk or cream, honey and chopped nuts. More