Food History

I did a number of posts last year about Victoria and Victorian food. This land and these people are devastated and I thought you might want to spare a thought for them.

Richard Thomas – that wonderful cheesemaker – is safe. I know this because he just commented on the post I did about him, back then. The Yarra Valley is not safe (and has lost a lot), but is not in the heart of the worst devastation. Yackandandah was surrounded by fire last thing I heard, so I am praying for everyone I know there. All the places and people I saw are at risk.

Some of the towns of my childhood have been wiped off the map. The death-count keeps going up and up and up.

For those of us who are outside the region, there are three things we can do. Give blood (if we’re able) and give money and give emotional support. There’s a good post here that covers where you can give these things.

What I am hearing from some people outside Australia is that the parts of Victoria that have gone up in flames are wilderness or marginal territory, that Australians live on the edge, that people are living risky lives and that this is the price. I don’t agree with them.

We are talking about rich farming land. We are talking about the part of Australia that has a lovely Mediterranean climate, that competes with France to produce fabulous cheese and also with France to produce fabulous wines. Dairy land. A good place to find fine dining and jazz. A dream destination for many peoples’ gourmet holidays. This is not frontier territory. These are not frontier lives.

In fact, many of the lives destroyed this weekend are city lives - small town commuters who work in Melbourne to keep their country dreams alive. A range of people live on this land, doing many different things with their lives. And all of them are hurting.

What is happening now is a catastrophe, but it is not apocalyptic. There will be much suffering for the people in the region and it’s going to be a hard slog to re-establish farms and businesses after such overwhelming destruction, but it will happen. Australians are good at picking up and starting over. I’ll try to go back to Victoria over the next year or so and I’ll tell you how it happens. Right now I don’t want to visit, because several places from my childhood have been burned to the ground. The tragedies are food history just as much as the small daily pleasures, though, so I shall visit and I shall report, and, if necessary, I shall cry.

In the meantime, I am putting together a little cookbook of old-time recipes from the bushfire-struck region. If you donate anything – money, blood, time, old shoes – email me and I’ll send you a copy. I will make it a rich text file rather than a pdf, because one day you will travel to Victoria yourself and you may well want to add your own recipes. If any of you have particular recipes you would like me to put in it, from you, then email them to me this week, or put them in the comments section of this post.

PS The picture is of Mountain Creek Farm, which was caught in the 2003 fires. It’s near here, and in an area of much lower rainfall than most of Victoria. I thought you might like a point of comparison.