One Continuous Picnic: A History of Australian Eating by Michael Symons


One Continuous Picnic: A History of Australian Eating
Title : One Continuous Picnic: A History of Australian Eating
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0522853234
ISBN-10 : 9780522853230
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 368
Publication : First published January 1, 1984

2007 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first publication of One Continuous Picnic, a frequently acclaimed Australian classic on the history of eating in Australia. The text remains gratifyingly accurate and prescient, and has helped to shape subsequent developments in food in Australia. Until recently, historians have tended to overlook eating, and yet, through meat pies and lamingtons, Symons tells the history of Australia gastronomically. He challenges myths such as that Australia is 'too young' for a national cuisine, and that immigration caused the restaurant boom. Symons shows us that Australia is unique because its citizens have not developed a true contact with the land, have not had a peasant society. Australians have enjoyed plenty to eat, but food had to be portable: witness the weekly rations of mutton, flour, tea and sugar that made early settlers a mobile army clearing a whole continent; and the tins of jam, condensed milk, camp pie and bottles of tomato sauce and beer that turned its citizens into early suburbanites. By the time of screw-top riesling, takeaway chicken and frozen puff pastry, Australians were hypnotised consumers, on one continuous picnic. But good food has never come from factory farms, process lines, supermarkets and fast-food chains. Only when we enjoy a diet of fresh, local produce treated with proper respect, when we learn from peasants, might we at last have found a national cuisine and cultivated a continent.

One Continuous Picnic: A History of Australian Eating Reviews

  • Crystal

    First book to read about the food history of the country I live in. Totally recommend

  • Martine Bailey

    I so much enjoyed this exploration of Australia’s food history. Here is a rich store of knowledge on, for example, what early convicts and settlers ate (sad and desperate attempts at the English industrial diet of tea, bread and meat). Particularly interesting are accounts of what the first fleet carried with them (lots of live animals, with more taken on at Rio, most of which died). The thesis is that all of this led to the ghastly early Australian diet of damper, meat and no veg, instead of a diet closer to the natural Australian aborigine diet of fish and naturally growing (but non European) produce. Facinating.

  • Kathryn

    Finally!! I did enjoy this book, on the whole, although it took me about 6 weeks to read it (amongst other books). It was an interesting, albeit sometimes depressing, journey (for an Australian) through the history of Australian eating habits over the course of 230-odd years. I did feel that it wore a little thin toward the end, but the final part (written for the publication of the second edition - 25 years after the first edition) tied everything in nicely with the current trends in eating habits making it relevant today.

  • Caitlin

    A prescribed text for my university course. A fascinating and detailed discussion of Australia's culinary history, explaining exactly why Australian lacks its own individual food culture.