History Revisited - Regan embodied entrepreneurial tradition

THE FAMILY BUSINESS: Tamworth born Basil Regan traveled to England to learn the art of flour milling before returning to his home town.

The rivalry between Armidale and Tamworth is almost as old as that between Sydney and Melbourne and just as intense. Those in Armidale have sometimes seen Tamworth as hot, crass and commercial. Those in Tamworth have seen Armidale as cold, conservative and elitist, almost effete.

Of course, these views are caricatures. However, like all stereotypes, there is more than a grain of truth in them. In particular, Tamworth is simply more entrepreneurial and business focused than Armidale. To illustrate this, I want to return to the story of Basil Regan, someone I mentioned in my last column on the history of food.

John Basil Regan was born on 15 June 1903 at Tamworth, the fifth of seven children of Charles and Sarah Regan. By the time Basil was born, the Regan business interests were well established. These included Charles Regan Ltd’s store (the 'Palace of Trade'), as well as the George Fielder Phoenix Mill (photo) that had been  acquired by Charles in 1912.

After initial education by the Dominican nuns in Tamworth, Basil enrolled in 1915 at St Ignatius College in Sydney. he seems to have enjoyed his time there, but left in 1920 before completing the leaving certificate to work in the family business and especially the flour milling side.

In 1922, the nineteen year old Basil went to England where he was employed by Thomas Burton Ltd, flour-millers. He completed the London City & Guilds course in flour-milling before training at Aynsome Laboratories, St Helens, and the Woodlands Ltd laboratories, Dover.

This training would prove to be very important, for Basil would establish himself as a technological entrepreneur. 

In 1924 Basil rejoined the family businesses, managing with his cousin the new flour mill erected in West Tamworth. This became the main profit earner for the family company. Now established, Basil married Kathleen Mary Cavanagh, a striking redhead and accomplished pianist, on 30 September 1931.

In 1935 Regan began experimenting with the manufacture of gluten and starch. He employed an Irish milling engineer and by 1938 a process had been perfected, using wheat rather than corn or potatoes, and a starch factory had been erected. 'Fielders Cornflour' had been born. Not, mind you, that it actually contained cornflour!

By 1945, the Regan family enterprises were one of Tamworth’s largest employers. The main company that Basil grew is now known as Goodman Fielders.

One of the features of Tamworth business over very many decades is the way in which entrepreneurial business activities created business leaders and a pool of capital that could be deployed to other business activities. This facilitated start-ups and spread risk.

In Basil’s case, he was a board member and sometime chairman of the Tamworth Newspaper Co. Ltd, a director of East-West Airlines Ltd and later of Television New England Ltd. He was also actively involved in community activities.

A devout Catholic and a devoted family man, Basil died on 14 July 1987 at Normanhurst in Sydney , and was buried in the Tamworth cemetery. He was survived by his wife, son and three daughters,.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 18 November 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History Revisited - how railways helped revolutionise our food

CLASSIC: In his column, Jim Belshaw discusses the history of food in Australia and details why we have a man called William Arnott to thank for our Iced Vovo.

This column returns to something I talked about earlier this year, the history of food in Australia.  

One of the constant issues in discussions on food is Australia’s failure to develop its own unique cuisine and, as a subset of this, our failure to develop distinct regional cuisines in the way that happened in other places.

There is truth in these complaints, although I have argued that there was far more variety than people realised. I have also attacked the idea that our food somehow became more varied following the migrant intake after the Second World War.

At one level it did, but what we now see as variety is actually far less varied than the food we ate at points in Australia’s past. Current cuisine is also homogenized and packaged through magazines and cooking shows that present a standardized cross-country view that focuses on novelty.

Like lemmings, we are meant to rush off and do the latest thing together! Fashion rules, leading to food fashion cycles. You can see this clearly in the changing restaurant mix. In one day, out the next.

The role played by cooking shows and by the chain stores in imposing culinary uniformity is the latest manifestation of a long trend dating back to the industrial revolution.

The industrial revolution gave us faster transport, trains and ships, along with refrigeration and other new food preserving techniques. It also gave us an increased range of food additives designed to enhance appearance and taste.

These new developments hit Australia suddenly. The rapidly spreading railway network allowed food stuffs to be shipped more easily. Then from the 1870s, came the rapid spread to industrial food manufacturing and packaging.

These dates are important. Commissioner Macdonald established his headquarters in Armidale in 1839. The railway came to Armidale in 1883, just 44 years later. That was not a lot of time to build a unique local cuisine!

The new food businesses developed into major industrial empires. Scotsman William Arnott emigrated to Australia in 1848. He prospered in Maitland as a baker and pastry cook, only to be wiped out in the great double Hunter floods of 1857.

In 1865, Arnott re-established himself in Newcastle, achieving quick success especially with the supply of sweet and plain biscuits and ships' biscuits. His biscuits were sold to the growing number of ships in port and distributed to Sydney be sea and along the growing railway network. The Arnott’s biscuit empire had been born. .

Later, the Regan family and especially John Basil Regan (1903-1987) would build Tamworth based Fielder’s into a national food empire. Basil Regan played a major role in the twentieth century development of Tamworth, contributing also to other Northern causes including decentralization and the growth of the New England University College.

I can recognise the benefits that the new food companies brought to consumers. However, I also can’t help wishing that the process had been just a little slower, a little less all-consuming. That would have given us a better chance to develop our own unique cuisine.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 11 November 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History revisited - vegetable gardens a fading necessity

In January 1885, Albert Wright purchased Kangaroo Hills, now Wongwibinda. It had been done in a rush.

They had been living at Nulalbin outside Rockhampton. The year before eldest son Bertie had died after a lingering illness. The death came as a shock, and Albert and wife May decided that they must find a home in a more temperate climate.

They left Nulalbin in December for Bickham, a Wright family home in the Hunter Valley.. In early January Albert went north, buying Kangaroo Hill on the spot. At end January, the whole family shifted to the new property.

One of Albert’s first acts was to plant a large vegetable garden near the new house being built for his family. This was a common pattern on the properties around Armidale, for the kitchen garden and associated fruit trees were critical to the supply of fresh fruit and vegetables. It was a day’s ride to Armidale, so you could hardly buy there on a daily basis.

In town, people had more choices. Even so, most people had vegetable gardens, while much of the fruit and vegetables they might buy were grown locally. The Chinese market gardener was once a common feature in most Northern towns.

This reliance on locally produced produce created a pattern of seasonal gluts and shortages. When produce was plentiful, people bottled, preserved or prepared for storage in cool, dry, dark places. Later, when fresh produce was scarce, they ate.

Some of the tastes were wonderful. Some of us would kill today for a jar of Aunt Kay’s tomato relish!

That old world has largely gone, killed by supermarkets and modern transportation. In a time poor two income world, what’s the point of growing and producing your own when you can go to the supermarket and buy the quantity you want when you want?

The spring of 1885 was a very good one on Kangaroo Hill. Albert planted onions, cabbages, lettuces, pumpkins, beans and fruit trees. Then came that evil we all know so well, a sudden frost.

“It seems useless”, Albert wrote, “to try to grow anything in such a climate.” Nevertheless, he persevered.

Many years after Albert’s time, I read a book on New England gardens. The thing that struck me was the gardener’s ability to create micro-climates through location, wind-breaks and walls. We also learned when to plant things to best effect.

What did we eat with our vegetables? I have already spoken of beef and lamb or mutton. But then, the most luxurious meat was, arguably, roast chook.

Many people had their own hens, mainly for eggs, partly for meat. Those chooks were killed for special occasions. Others brought their chooks from local farms.

Today when chicken is the cheapest of meats, it’s hard to imagine a world in which chook was a luxury, when every part was eaten later. So the world changes.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 11 February 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History revisited - settlers' craved Australia's cheaper meats

In 1893, Sydney Doctor Philip E Muskett attacked Australian’s love of meat, tea and tobacco. Dr Muskett was one of the first if not the first Australian nutritionists, much concerned with children’s diseases and especially rickets.

Australians would be healthier, he suggested, if they ate more salads, drank more wine, substituted a small cup of coffee for tea and walked ten or more kilometres a day. This advice was largely ignored.

Australians had become the world’s largest per capita consumer of tea and meat. This love emerged in the early period of European settlement and for practical reasons.

Tea was a low bulk, high value product that could be carried easily to NSW from China and then distributed reasonably cheaply. It disguised the taste of often muddy water and replenished fluids lost in heavy work in high temperatures.

Vegetable had to be carted at considerable expense or grown on home or station gardens. By contrast, livestock was readily available and could be driven to market over considerable distances. New England beef helped feed the diggers on the Victorian gold fields.

The European settlers were attracted to meat for another reason as well. In the home countries, meat was expensive, a relative luxury. Many families rarely tasted meat in their daily diet. Now it was cheap and freely available.

In his book on the history of daily life in Australia up to the First World Way, historian Geoffrey Blainey suggests that meat was more than a food, more than an incessant topic of conversation; it had become a way of life.

In the absence of refrigeration, meat spoiled quickly. For that reason, it was desirable that meat be slaughtered close to the customer, often in the cool of the evening. One result was a proliferation of butcher’s shops. The name of the best butcher, the best place to buy your meat, was a common topic of conversation.

You can see the remnants of this pattern today in the number of former butcher shops in the older parts of Armidale. Often located next to a general store, the butchers were both a sources of meat and of information. This photo is actually from Quirindi. 

People had their favourites. When I was growing up, my mother always went to a butcher in West Armidale because, to her mind, he had the best meat.

Across Australia, beef was the most popular meat because it was cheaper. This was not true in Armidale, for here sheep meats were freely available and cheaper. The more expensive beef cuts were less popular. Steak was a special treat.

Growing up in Armidale, I now struggle with the price of lamb. It just doesn’t seem right!

In my next and final column in this food series, I will look at other aspects of Armidale’s changing diet.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 4 February 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History revisited - a bit about bread

Apparently, the first bread slicing machine was invented by Frederick Rohwedder. Rohwedder started work on the machine in 1912, but bakeries were reluctant to use it for fear that the bread would go stale. Then in 1928 Rohwedder invented a machine that would slice and wrap bread. The modern mass produced sliced loaf was born.

It took some time for this new trend to reach Australia. Here mass production of sliced and packaged bread had to wait until the rise of the supermarket. Tip Top, the first national bread brand, was launched in 1958.

Prior to the rise of the supermarket, bread was produced, distributed and sold by small, independent family-owned bakeries. The bread, unwrapped and unsliced, was mostly white and was often delivered to homes by horse-drawn cart or, later, vans.

The mass produced sliced loaf may have been slow to reach Australia, but it quickly wiped out the old bakeries, a process aided by selective purchase and closure. Then came new bread making technology that allowed the proliferation of the bread shops along side the supermarkets. Still, the bread they make does generally taste different from the old loaves.

Older Armidale residents will remember those old loaves. As kids, we used the break them open and pull out the soft bread from the centre. They tasted different in part because the bread was fresher, in part because of the absence of chemicals added now to extend shelf life. They also provided the raw material for bread pellets that could be thrown at other kids!

Bread is one of the oldest human foodstuffs, with a history extending back at least 30,000 years.

In Aboriginal Australia, bush bread or seedcakes formed part of the staple diet across the slopes and plains of inland Australia. The seeds used varied depending on the time of the year and area.

Women harvested the dry seeds, winnowing the grain sometimes several times. The grain was then ground using a millstone to create flour. This was mixed with water to create a dough that could then be baked in the ashes, providing a bread that was high in protein and carbohydrate.

We know about these bread making techniques in part from the observations of early explorers and settlers, in part from the presence of millstones and plant residues found at Aboriginal sites.

While exact dates are uncertain, it seems likely that Aboriginal bread making is one of the oldest examples in the world, pre-dating the rise of agriculture that would make bread a basic ingredient supporting the growth of urban populations.

The existence of Aboriginal bread making in fact challenges one of the continuing assumptions about the evolution of settled society, that hunter-gatherer communities did not have access to technologies that would come with farming.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 28 January 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History revisited - changing roles of food

THINGS OF THE PAST: kitchen gardens were once a common sight in Australian back yards, but Jim Belshaw explains they are becoming rarer as the years pass.

A week back, I was wandering around a Sydney suburb looking at the architecture and the pattern of life. The thing I most noticed was the absence of kitchen gardens.

Growing up in Armidale, the garden was part of our life. It had apple, apricot and plum trees. There were raspberries, gooseberries, red and black currents. And there were lots of vegetables.

In the mornings sometimes I would go outside and pick raspberries to bring back and crush with cream and sugar. Alternatively, I would pick a jar of preserves of the shelf made with the Fowlers Vacola outfit. This was stored in the garage for use during the flush times for various local fruits.

Suffering from an acute feeling of nostalgia, I thought that over the next few columns I might share with you a little on our changing habits in food. To understand this, there are just a few facts that you need to fix in your minds.

The first is the decline in the calories required to support daily activities. At the end of the nineteenth century, men humped weights as a matter of course that would now be illegal outside gyms. On the female side, too, the eighty per cent of women without servants engaged in the sheer physical drudgery of maintaining households without those labour saving devices we now take for granted. Both men and women walked long distances as a matter of course.

As life became more sedentary, the required daily calorie intake dropped. My best guess, and it is only a guess, is that it may well have halved over the twentieth century. This led to changes in food tastes.

At the start of the twentieth century, cook books were full of cake and biscuit recipes. They ran for pages. There were hundreds of local variations. Cakes were eaten at meals, served to visitors, taken in packed lunches.

By the end of the twentieth century, the cake was largely vanquished. This was partly due to greater choice in sweet things including ice cream, more to the decline in calorie requirements.

The second important fact to remember is the continuous improvements in the production, preservation, transportation and distribution of food stuffs. We know this, of course, but do we always understand just how it has affected the look, feel and taste of the food we eat?

Take a simple thing like bread. Today we think of bread largely in terms of bread types. Given the type, we expect taste to be common, although we do consider that some bread makers are better than others. It is hard for us to recognise that bread in one locality might have tasted different from the same loaf in another place depending on the wheat, wood and method of cooking.

Finally, we need to recognise the importance of changing fads and fancies, including the deeply held and strongly argued views of members of the medical profession.

In my next column, I will look at the changing roles of bread and meat.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 21 January 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History revisited – the kitchen becomes the heart of the household

I am not sure how old we were. We must have been young, for we travelled in the Morris Minor that was Gran’s car, although it always seemed to be driven by my aunts who were then living at home. In this case, Aunt Kay was going to see Great Aunt Sarah and brought us along for the ride.

I do not know how old Sarah was, although cousin Arnold might be able to tell me. Certainly she seemed very old to us. The house had a slab kitchen separated from the main house as many kitchens once were. While I can no longer remember all the details, I do remember how quaint and old fashioned it seemed.

Geoffrey Blainey in his fascinating study of early Australian domestic life, Black Kettle and Full Moon, notes that as late as 1850, less than half the dwellings in Australia had a kitchen. People cooked out doors or, if they had a sizeable hut, on open fires at one end of the room. Many huts had huge fireplaces running almost the width of the building. Cooking took place in pots or billies placed on or just above the open fire.

By 1850, the camp oven (image, Powerhouse Museum) was already a popular way of cooking. Essentially a small cast-iron box with a lid on top and often set on three legs, the camp oven could be placed in the open fireplace and ashes heaped over it, allowing for a more even distribution of heat. Bread could be cooked, puddings made or meat roasted.

As kitchens spread, they were (as in Sarah’s case) built separate from the house at the back, often linked by a covered pathway. They sometimes included the laundry, a store room and, in wealthier households, a servant’s room just off the kitchen, creating a back wing. You can still see signs of this configuration in some older houses.

This layout reduced the risk of fire, an ever present problem in colonial New England. It kept food smells away from the main house and, in hot areas, the heat of the constantly burning kitchen fire. In colder areas such as the high Tableland, it also made the servant’s room the warmest room in the house.

From the 1880s, houses even in the bush began to include an interior kitchen. The reasons for this shift are unclear.

Blainey surmises that it may have been due to acclimatisation. People were more willing to accept kitchen heat in summer, less willing to accept winter cold. My own feeling is that the shift was simply practical, it was easier to get hot food to the table.

The shift to an inside kitchen combined with another change from the 1860s, the introduction of the kitchen stove in place of open fire and camp oven. This greatly aided cooking while reducing the risk of fire.

The new kitchen and especially the kitchen table had become the heart of the household, a central workplace and point of family gathering.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 7 January 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History revisited – past offers food for thought

Next week I will resume my story of New England’s fight for self government, looking at the tumultuous years of the Great Depression. Today a little on food.

Port Macquarie, Tuesday 20 August 1844. The wedding party gathered for the wedding lunch. The seventeen year old Annabella Boswell recorded the event in her journal.

“The table was literally covered”, she wrote. “I do not think that it would have held another glass, for in every crevice were placed custards, jellies and creams. At one end was the largest turkey I ever saw, well supported by hams, tongues, chickens, ducks, pies, tarts, puddings, blanc mange, and various fruits.”

In those simple words, you can see the loaded table. Makes me hungry just to think about it!

Now track forward. While I was a day boy, as a sub monitor or monitor I used to eat at TAS when I was on duty. Mutton stews and huge heavy puddings draped in (I think) Golden Syrup were standard fare. That’s a huge remove from that 1844 wedding feast. So what happened?


In his book One Continuous Picnic, Michael Symons attempts to trace the history of Australian food. Symons is biased, his views formed by living in Tuscany during the 1970s where he fell in love with Tuscan life as so many Australians have. He has a particular romantic view.

Accepting that, Symons argues that the creation of a unique Australian national cuisine was an opportunity missed. Between the late 1800s and early 20th century, before the processing and industrialisation of food took full hold, Australia had city farms and markets and a host of keen, cosmopolitan gourmets.

If you had lived in Armidale during the 1870s, you would have drunk the local beer or, perhaps, a wine from a local property. Your flour might have come from Kelly’s Plains and been locally milled. The milk and meat came from local animals. You grew your own vegetables, while your chooks provided eggs and meat.
Much of this vanished in a few decades as the railway brought cheaper products from other areas. There was no time for that trial and error using local ingredients that created the peasant cuisine of Tuscany. Food and drink was standardised, homogenised, although some local differences survived.

The world continues to change. A few weeks back, and by accident, a friend and I ended up at Cammeray Craft. There, distant from Armidale, I had a New England beer before lunch, followed by a rather fine New England wine, one of a number on the menu. I was very pleased, chatting to the owner about New England wine and food.

History begins in the present. It would be nice to think that in fifty years’ time the then history writer for the Express might be able to chart the rise of a New England cuisine!

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 15 October 2014. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014.