The Night They Stormed Eureka

by Jackie French

  When the colonies joined together (federated) to become a single nation — the Commonwealth of Australia — in 1901 they would still be part of the British Empire. But most, though not quite all, political decisions would bemade by those who voted in Australian elections. And while we are now part of the British Commonwealth, not Empire, politically that is still the case today.

  Kids like Sam

  According to the enquiry by the National Youth Commission in 2008, about 36,000 Australians under the age of twenty-five do not have stable accommodation: they are on the streets, in temporary supported accommodation, or staying for a short while with friends (couch surfing). The commission also stated that the number of young homeless people in Australia has doubled in the past two decades.

  Why don’t we see them? Because most try very hard not to be seen. Many have run from abuse, some are on drugs — sometimes both — and some are also mentally ill. And there just aren’t enough places for them to go, or people to help them.

  In 2008 there were also about 310,000 notifications to child protection authorities about kids living with their own families who were perhaps being hurt or abused in some way, or whose homes were considered unsafe. Child protection workers are overwhelmed — there just aren’t enough to do the job. (Interestingly, after the completion of 7,433 of the Intervention’s checks on Indigenous children in remote Northern Territory communities, only thirty-nine Indigenous children were found to be at risk of serious neglect or abuse. Kids at risk come from every background, and the poorest families can be the most safe and loving, too.)

  Why aren’t governments doing more? Surely the main aim of any government is to look after the young — everything, absolutely everything else, is less important. Why is it so often left to volunteers and voluntary organisations to help kids in need?

  Good question.

  THE EUREKA RECIPE BOOK AND INSTRUCTORY ALMANAC

  OR

  MRS PUDDLEHAM’S COMPENDIUM OF USEFUL RECIPES AND INFORMATION FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

  Griddle scones

  These are very good.

  1 tablespoon mutton fat (Jackie substitutes butter or margarine)

  3 cups flour and 1 tablespoon saleratus, or water that has been strained through wood ash, to help the flour rise (Jackie uses self-raising instead)

  ½ cup currants (pick out dead flies and beetles)

  1 egg (check it’s fresh before you ruin the mix)

  (Jackie adds a teaspoon of vanilla as well)

  a little milk

  Mix it all together with your fingers. (Wash yer hands if you’ve been rubbing liniment on the bullock’s legs.) Roll out pastry on a flat rock. Cut into rounds. Cook on a hot rock by the fire or in a greased frying pan till both sides are light brown.

  Welsh cakes

  Fit fer a queen or a hungry miner. And you don’t need an oven, neither.

  1 cup flour and 1 tablespoon saleratus (Jackie uses self-raising flour)

  ½ cup butter (or fresh dripping)

  1 egg

  two handfuls currants

  (Jackie adds ½ cup caster sugar. I don’t use none, o’ course, but you people expect sweeter ‘cakes’)

  extra butter for greasing

  extra flour

  Usin’ the tips of your fingers, rub the butter into the flour till it’s like breadcrumbs. Add sugar, currants and egg. Dust a cutting board or a clean rock with flour. Roll out the mix till it’s thick as your little finger. Cut it into rounds with the top of a mug. Loosen each one with a knife. Mix the bits together and roll ‘em out again to cut out more cakes.

  Warm a frying pan — use a low heat, but let it warm for about five minutes afore you add the cakes or they’ll have burned bums and soggy innards. You can also bake these on a hot stone by the fire — the dust from the stone and the fat in the cakes stops ‘em sticking.

  Rub a lump of butter over the pan and put the cakes in straightaway. Don’t let ‘em touch as they’ll swell as they cook. They’ll need about three minutes each side, and should be golden brown. Turn ‘em carefully with a spatula,and take ‘em out carefully too, as they’ll be very fragile. They firm up as they cool.

  Eat warm, or store in a tin for up to a month — they stay fresh if you can keep the ants out of ‘em.

  If you don’t have any currants and the ants have got into the sugar, make plain cakes, and spread ‘em with jam before you eat ‘em.

  Treacle dumplings

  ¾ cup plain flour with a tablespoon of saleratus (Jackie uses self-raising flour)

  2 tablespoons butter or dripping

  1 egg

  2 tablespoons milk or water (slightly sour milk makes the dumplings lighter; you can ‘sour’ milk with white vinegar — 1 teaspoon vinegar to 1 cup milk)

  Syrup

  2 tablespoons butter or dripping (smell it ain’t gone off)

  1 cup sugar (no ants)

  4 tablespoons treacle or golden syrup (Jackie says modern readers will probably prefer golden syrup, which isn’t as strong-tasting as treacle)

  juice of a lemon, or ½ cup of water

  Sift the weevils out of the flour. You don’t notice weevils in a stew or gingerbread but they make dumplings lumpy.

  Mix flour and butter or dripping with the tips of your clean fingers till it’s like breadcrumbs. Mix in the egg and milk or water. Roll out lumps the size of walnuts.

  Now boil all the syrup ingredients together for a minute. Add the dumplings and simmer on a very low heat for fifteen minutes or time for ten choruses of ‘Botany Bay'. Add more water and stir gently if it looks like it’ll burn or the dumplings stick. Serve hot with cream or custard, or eat ‘em cold. Store in a clean pillowslip hung up from a branch to stop the ants getting to ‘em.

  Damper

  If you add sugar and fruit and spices you turn your damper into ‘brownie'. If you fry rounds of damper in dripping in your frying pan you’ve got ‘Johnnie cakes'.

  a good fire, burned down to lots of coals

  a spade

  a camp oven, billy or a large tin can

  3 cups plain flour with 2 tablespoons saleratus (Jackie uses self-raising flour)

  1 tablespoon butter or mutton dripping (Jackie uses olive oil)

  1 cup water or buttermilk or sour milk (sour milk makes your damper lighter, but don’t use milk that smells bad or has green lumps)

  If you’ve got ‘em ½ cup currants, or ½ cup chopped dates, or 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, or 1 teaspoon mixed spice, or ¼ cup mixed peel or ½ cup of sugar. You can add the blinkin’ lot if you’re in funds.

  Mix it all with a knife. This is the secret to a light, fluffy damper — knead as little as you can. Don’t you be telling all and sundry, neither.

  Grease the bottom of the camp oven, or the sides and base of the billy or tin can. Make sure the damper don’t take up more than a third of the space as it’ll get bigger as it cooks.

  Put the lid on the oven or find a rock to cover the billy.

  Scrape the coals from the fire. Put the oven, billy or can where the coals were. Scrape the coals back over the billy or camp oven — all around and on top as well. (If you tries to cook damper on top of the fire you gets a hard burned bottom and raw insides.) Leave to cook for forty-five minutes or the time it takes to peel two hundred spuds, then use a spade to haul it out of the ashes.

  Get your gob round that straightaway — they ain’t good keepers — with butter or just a bit o’ golden syrup or treacle. Damper is good with jam and cream (even old doormats is good with jam and cream).

  In the oven: a note from Jackie

  If you’re cooking damper in the oven, preheat to 275°C and place the dough on a greased tray. Make two deep crisscross cuts in the top (this helps the dough to expand) and bake till the crust is pale brown and it sounds hollow when you tap it. This should take about thirty minutes.

  Sinkers

  You need to be a good cook to make light damper, but even a new chum can make sinkers.

  Make some damper dough.
Now find some clean green sticks.

  Press bits o’ dough into small, thickish pancakes. Roll ‘em around sticks and press the edges together.

  Hold your stick out over the fire. Turn it every now and then till the sinker is brown. Don’t hold the dough too close to the fire or the outside will burn and so will your fingers, and the inside will be raw and doughy.

  Gingerbread

  ¾ cup milk

  7 tablespoons butter or dripping (doesn’t matter if it’s a bit pongy: the spices will cover the taste)

  1 egg

  ½ cup brown sugar

  1 dessertspoon treacle

  ⅓ cup plain flour and 1 teaspoon saleratus (Jackie uses half plain, half self-raising flour)

  1 dessertspoon ground ginger

  1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

  ½ teaspoon ground cloves

  ½ teaspoon ground cardamom

  chopped glacé ginger or almonds (if you’ve got ‘em)

  Melt the butter, treacle and milk in a pan, stir in the sugar and egg and whisk well. Mix the rest. Pour into a greased and floured tin, scatter on the ginger and almonds if the dog ain’t ate ‘em while your back was turned.

  Bake in the camp oven under hot coals for about forty-five minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean when you poke it in the middle. (Jackie cooks it in an oven at 150°C.)

  Gingerbread is even grander a day or two after baking, if you can keep the ants out of it.

  Corn in the ashes

  Soak corn on the cob, still in its green leaves, in a bucket of water. Throw it in the hot coals. It’ll be ready in about half an hour, or time enough to mix the dampers.

  The Lemonade Man’s Lemonade

  6 cups white sugar

  4 teaspoons citric acid

  2 teaspoons tartaric acid

  a bit o’ lemon juice

  6 cups water

  Jackie uses 1 cup of lemon juice. The Lemonade Man would have used more citric acid and less juice — lemons were expensive.

  Boil for five minutes, or long enough to wash the bottles. Pour into clean bottles.

  Add 1 tablespoon of ‘lemonade’ to every glass of cold water. Serve with drums and revolution.

  Crystallised violets

  Crystallised violets on top of a cake make it fit to serve to a queen.

  Dip each dry violet in stiffly beaten egg white, then in caster sugar. Leave in a breeze till dry. Don’t store. Don’t let the bees on ‘em neither.

  Sauce eglantine

  This were one of Queen Victoria’s favourites.

  Boil 6 cups rosehips in 6 cups water. Press through a sieve. Throw out the seeds and prickly bits. Add 1 cup white sugar and the juice o’ three lemons. Simmer till thick, stirring all the time so it don’t burn. Serve with roast mutton or any fried food.

  How to render mutton fat

  Pull out all the lumps of fat from between the meat and the skin o’ the sheep. Place ‘em in a pot and cover with water. Put it at the edge of the fire so it cooks slowly for four hours. The fat’ll melt and float to the top. Take the pan off the heat and let cool overnight. The tough bits an’ blood will sink to the bottom of the pot and the layer of fat will turn firm on the top. Lift it off in the morning and store in a tin where the flies can’t get it. Keep the tin cool in the creek on hot days or it’ll melt and go pong out the tent.

  If you ain’t got time to render the fat, keep the lumps fresh in the middle of the flour bag, where they’ll stay cool and the flies can’t get to them.

  How to keep ants out of the sugar tin

  Pour water into your washbasin and put the tin in too. Ants ain’t swimmers. Or put each leg of your table into a tobacco tin filled with water. The ants won’t be able to climb the table and your sugar, treacle or currants will be safe on top.

  How to find a rock frying pan

  A smooth flat rock cooks flat bread or eggs a treat. Don’t use rocks straight from a creek, though — they’ll be full of water, and might explode. I saw a cove blinded when a rock exploded once.

  Dust off leaves or wombat droppings. Put it near a hot fire or, if you’re in a hurry, pile hot coals on it and count yer blessings ten times over, then brush the coals off with a green branch. Don’t worry if the rock has soot on it — it won’t do you any harm. You can always scrape it off.

  Drip a couple of drops o’ water onto the rock. If the water splutters and dances everywhere, or if it explodes in a cloud of steam, yer rock is hot enough. Break your egg onto the hot rock or lay your damper on it, squashed as thin as you can between yer hands. Keep lifting up the edge of the damper with a stick an’ when it’s brown turn it over.

  Cooking rocks can be used over and over. They get so hot that leftovers shrivel away — no washing-up. Sometimes they split and then you have two cooking rocks.

  Cooking with green sticks

  Stick a bit of meat like bacon or salt beef on a green stick and hold it over the fire till it cooks, if you’ve got a strong wrist and lots of patience. Otherwise prop up your stick against a log or a rock.

  Make sure you use green sticks, or your cooking sticks’ll turn into firewood and your tucker will land in the flames.

  How to roast ducks on a spit

  First catch your ducks. If Badger Joe caught ‘em pick out the bits of lead shot. Dip ducks in hot water with a bit of wood ash added. This’ll get into the oily coating on the duck’s feathers and make ‘em easier to pull out. Leave for as long as it takes to sing to three verses of Old Joe’s a Blowin'. Take out, and pluck off feathers. (If you want to use the feathers to make a pillow or quilt though, it’s best to pull out the feathers without washing ‘em, so they stays fluffy.)

  Take a sharp knife and cut through between the hip bones, just above you-know-where. Now put your hand in and pull out the guts. Make sure you don’t break the guts or you’ll taint the meat — just wriggle your hand between the guts and the meat.

  Wash the guts well. You can wash out the long wriggly bits to make sausage skins. Other bits makes good soup.

  Put a long green stick in through the you-know-what and out through the mouth. Rest the stick on two other sticks above a fire what’s been left to burn down to glowing coals. Turn lots so one side don’t burn. Watch out as the fat drips — it can flare up and set your apron alight.

  If you have old damper and some savoury and onions you can mix up a good stuffin'. Serve with stewed cherries if they’re in season, or redcurrant jelly.

  How to cook in a pumpkin

  A pumpkin makes a grand oven if you ain’t got a camp oven. You cuts off the top and scoops out the seeds, thenfills the pumpkin with chopped meat or fish and vegetables or slices of bread and cheese and lots of cream. Put the lid back and leave it by the fire for three or four hours. The food will slowly cook inside the pumpkin. Make sure you gives each cove a good serve of the pumpkin too. It’s cheaper than what meat is.

  How to cook an egg without a pan

  Prick a pinhole in one end o’ the egg. Lay it in the hot ashes of the fire. Cover with hot ash or coals. Leave for five minutes or as long as it takes to dash into the bush and do you-know-what afore breakfast. It should be nicely soft boiled.

  How to keep food cool

  Keep food cool by placin’ it in the creek, or wrappin’ it in a wet cloth and hangin’ it from a tree.

  Keep meat and lumps of fat fresh even in a tent by stuffin’ ‘em into the middle o’ the flour bag — the flour keeps the heat an’ flies away.

  A billy full of butter or milk stays cool under a tree in a camp oven filled with water. Make sure you keep the lid on the billy to keep out flies and beetles.

  How to tell the time from the moon and sun

  The sun is at its highest up in the sky at midday even if it ain’t overhead. You can push a stick into the ground and the shortest shadow is at midday.

  Most times it don’t matter what time it is — ye just need to know how long it is till sunset ‘cause that’s when the coves stop work and need a feed.

/>   Badger Joe showed me this trick: late in the afternoon, fill the gap between the sun and the horizon with your fingers with your arm outstretched. Each ‘finger gap’ is about fifteen minutes — so when you can only fit one finger between the sun and the horizon, you’ve only got fifteen minutes till the sun drops out o’ sight and the stew’s got to be hot.

  This works even when you’re near a high mountain, though then you’ve got longer till it gets really dark.

  How to cure maggoty meat

  Wash the meat in the creek till the maggots float downstream. Then rub the meat gently with your hands till all the slime washes away too. Soak the meat in 1 cup of vinegar in a bucket of water to take away the bad-meat taste. If the meat won’t fit into a bucket, paint it all over with a paste of 1 cup of brown sugar, 1 cup of salt and ¼ cup of vinegar. Let it dry then add some more afore you cook the meal.

  How to make a slush lamp

  A slush lamp is a tin o’ fat with a wick in it. The wick and fat burn an’ give off light. A slush lamp’ll burn for hours.

  Take an old tin (don’t use glass or it’ll break; Jackie says don’t use plastic neither) and cut off the top part — if the can is too high the light’ll be trapped inside. Small cans won’t need cutting back.

  Fill with dripping. A wick is a piece of string dipped in vinegar to make it tough, or in saltpetre to help it burn, then dried. If you wants a thicker wick plait the string afore you dips it in the vinegar.

  Find a small twig, no longer than your can is wide, and tie one end o’ the wick onto it. This’ll stop it sinking into the fat. Slide the wick into the fat, with the twig stickin’ out.

  When your wick has burned away put in another. When your fat starts to stink, get some more.