Art, Craft and Other Things to Keep You Busy

The First Australia BBQ (1903)

Altona-Laverton Historical Society

Giant public feasts including whole roasted bullocks certainly occurred throughout Australia’s early days. William Wentworth celebrated the departure of the unpopular Governor Darling with a huge roast at Vaucluse House in 1831. In 1884, the townsfolk of Mudgee celebrated the arrival of the railway with a ‘bullock roast‘, a civic reception, torchlight parade and ball. But they weren’t called barbecues.

By 1887, the definition had expanded. The Tasmanian told readers that “A barbecue is a term used in America to express any great gathering of people where any large animal, such as an ox or a hog, is dressed whole and partaken off by those assembled”. By 1915, though, there was a much more modern definition, printed as a throw-away in many newspapers: “What’s a barbecue, Dad?” “A barbecue is an affair where you smack your lips over grub you’d turn your nose up at at home.”

It was in the early 1900s that events called barbecues emerged in Australia. The Waverley Bowls Club function was almost certainly among the first. According to a report in the Sydney broadsheet the Arrow, it failed to provide any actual legs of mutton, but offered lamb and pork. At this time, the backyard barbecue was still well in the future.

But by the 1950s the idea of the barbecue had taken hold, eventually becoming an ingrained part of our national psyche. The Australian Women’s Weekly’s outdoor living feature in 1953 gave detailed instructions for building your own brick barbecue. Then, in the mid-’60s, the gas barbecue arrived. Gas-fuelled ‘barbecues’ popped up in parks all over the country, sausage sizzles sprouted outside hardware stores and election-day polling booths and Australia was even promoted to the Americans by Paul Hogan ‘bunging another shrimp on the barbie’. In its various forms, the barbecue was here to stay.

Image note: Those of you who read last week's newsletter may recognise the barbecue image above from the article on picnics, there was a mix up and the wrong image was included, so we've included the picnic image below.  

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