1929-1932 Great depression
The Wall Street crash of October 1929 heralded a worldwide depression that saw one in three Australian breadwinners unemployed. In…
1920s
1929 Wine Overseas Marketing Board established
In 1929 the Australian government set up the Wine Overseas Marketing Board. It was financed by a levy on all…
1929 Avocado on toast first mentioned
In an article in The Telegraph, Brisbane, in 1929, Margaret Cullen wrote about Robert Walsh's Redcliffe garden where avocados were…
1929 Fairy bread as we know it
Although people had been putting hundred and thousands (or nonpareils) on bread and butter for some time, the first known…
1929 Ginger industry established at Buderim
In 1929, a number of Buderim ginger growers formed the first Ginger Growers' Association with a view to developing the…
1928 Maxam Cheese launched in Queensland
In 1928, a 23-year-old entrepreneur named Oliver Kenneth McAnulty, opened a processed cheese factory in Brisbane. His Maxam Cheese operation…
1928 Sliced bread introduced in USA
In the town of Chillicothe in Missouri, the eponymous Chillicothe Baking Company was the first company to use a slicing…
1928 First espresso machine in Australia
The first espresso machine in Australia, according to the Massoni family, was installed by Rinaldo Massoni at the Café Florentino…
1928 Dim sims mentioned in The Argus
James Lambert of the Australian National Dictionary Centre has unearthed a reference to this popular fast food in the Melbourne…
1928 Melbourne’s Café Florentino founded
Rinaldo Massoni purchased Café Denat in Bourke Street, Melbourne and changed the name to Café Florentino. Now called Grossi Florentino,…
1927 MacRobertson’s Max-Mints Alphabet Book
MacPherson Robertson began making sweets in 1880 and by the late 1920s had 17 factories employing 2600 people. The Max-Mints…
1927 Darrell Lea founded in Sydney
The confectionery company Darrell Lea was founded in Sydney by an English immigrant, Harry Lea, in 1927, and named after…
1927 Aeroplane Jelly launched
The inventor of Aeroplane Jelly was a tram driver. Bert Appleroth first made jelly crystals at home in his bathtub…
1927 Brunch recommended to Queenslanders
In 1927, the Queensland Figaro and Punch published an article recommending brunch as a substitute for Sunday lunch. It seemed…
1927 Parliament House opened in Canberra
After the ceremony, the official party, including the Duke and Duchess of York, lunched on turtle soup, poached schnapper, fillets of…
1926 Australia’s first fresh juice bar
The Victorian Railways Refreshment Branch opened a stall selling freshly squeezed orange and lemon juice drinks at Melbourne's Flinders Street…
1926 Emily McPherson College opens
The Emily McPherson College, Melbourne, formerly the College of Domestic Economy, was named after the wife of its benefactor, Sir…
1926 Edgell begins canning asparagus
Gordon Edgell and Sons of Bathurst launched their canned asparagus in 1927 after 18 years of experimentation in growing the…
1926 Poem glorifies steak and eggs
During the early to mid-20th century, steak and eggs was considered by many to be Australia's national dish. In 1926,…
1925 Fred Walker gains Australian rights to Kraft Cheddar
The Melbourne entrepreneur, Fred Walker, had been experimenting with the processing of cheese. Learning about the process that had been developed and…
1925 The Empire Christmas Pudding
It started as a marketing idea. The original recipe for the Empire Christmas Pudding was published in an advertisement developed…
1924 Cherry Ripe Bar
The Cherry Ripe bar was introduced in 1924 by MacRobertson Chocolates (later to be taken over by Cadbury in 1967)…
1924 Kirks Ginger Ale developed
Although today's Kirks soft drinks proudly boast "Since 1865" there is no evidence for that date of origin. The two…
1924 Double cut rolls for 5d
In 2016, the revised edition of the Macquarie Dictionary included the term "double cut roll" for the first time. But…
1924 Passiona first developed
Spencer Cottee , a dairy farmer from Lismore NSW developed Passiona cordial which, when carbonated, became the foundation product of…
1924 Fruit kiosk at Flinders St station
The Chairman of the Victorian Railways Commissioners, Harold Clapp, wanted to see primary producers succeed, so the railways would succeed…
1924 XXXX Bitter Ale released
XXXX Bitter Ale was released by the Castlemaine Brewery in Brisbane in October 1924. The beer was promoted using a…
1924 Kellogg’s starts making corn flakes in Sydney
Seventh Day Adventist Dr John Harvey Kellogg filed a patent for flaked cereal process in 1895 when he and his…
1923 Green and Gold Cookery Book first published.
The Green and Gold Cookery Book was one of the earliest ‘charity’ cookbooks and was compiled as a fundraising initiative of King's…
1923 First Australian domestic refrigerator
The first commercially available, Australian-made domestic refrigerator to operate without ice was produced by Edward Hallstrom in 1923. It used kerosene…
1923 Railway raisin bread
As part of a campaign to promote fruit sales, Victorian Railways Commissioner Harold Clapp had a bakery built to produce…
1923 Golden North ice cream in South Australia
The Bowker family moved to Laura, 240km north of Adelaide, in 1870 and in 1880 began selling the milk and…
1923 Eight o’clock closing in Queensland
As other Australian states had done in the previous decade, Queensland introduced earlier closing times for pubs, but chose slightly more civilised eight…
1923 Brisbane Cash and Carry opens
Brisbane Cash and Carry (BCC) was among the first Australian self service grocery stores, opened by Claud Archibald Fraser in 1923. The…
1923 Vegemite launched
Vegemite was developed by food technologist Cyril P. Callister for the Australian company Fred Walker & Co. in 1922 and,…
1923? Balfour’s Frog Cakes introduced
Frog Cakes are small cakes made from two layers of sponge with a jam filling, topped by a dome of…
1923 Weet-Bix developed
A company called Grain Products Limited added small amounts of sugar and malt to flaked cereal biscuits and launched Weet-Bix…
1922 Minties invented by Sweetacres
Minties were invented in 1922 by James Noble Stedman and marketed under the Sweetacres brand. They were patented in 1926.…
1922 Cadbury factory opens in Hobart
Australia had been the first export market for the British chocolate giant, Cadbury. In 1922, a consortium of the British…
1922 Showbags for sale
Although giving away samples had been common at the various Royal and country shows for some time, it appears that…
1922 Eskimo Pie arrives in Australia
The Eskimo Pie – a foil-wrapped ice cream bar covered in chocolate – was invented by Christian Kent Nelson in…
1922 Life Savers arrive in Australia
In 1921, in Sydney, a group of businessmen, reportedly Americans, formed a company "To acquire by agreement from Mint Products…
1921 Flake on the market in Melbourne
Writing in The Argus in 1922, Mr F Lewis of the Fisheries Department sought to persuade Victorians to eat gummy…
1921 Violet Crumble first advertised
Some accounts would have it that the Violet Crumble dates back to 1913, while the manufacturers say 1923. The true…
1921 Group Settlement Scheme in WA
The Group Settlement Scheme in the south-west of Western Australia was a government venture designed to establish a dairy industry.…
1920 Anzac Biscuit recipe first published
The Anzac Biscuit may have originated in Dunedin, New Zealand. In Australia, the biscuits were baked by volunteers and packed…