Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 73
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[Page 73]
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waggons, but they were quickly disappearing off the roads.
Another big annual occasion, especially for the young, was the arrival of Wirth's Circus for a one night's performance on vacant land close to the railway siding. This big circus travelled, by special train, all over Australia and New Zealand. It delighted me to see one of the elephants pushing a railway truck, or a lions' cage into position with his forehead, and to see the quick and systematic manner in which the two huge tents were run up during the morning, one for the circus and one for the menagerie, and taken down and packed up again, immediately the show was over. The circus people lived and slept on their train.
Despite the much warmer climate than that of the "Old Country" big three-course hot dinners were eaten at noon, and a more simple supper for the evening meal, which usually started at 6 p.m.; in broad daylight in Summer. Breakfast was also a real meal beginning with hot porridge and followed by bacon and eggs, or sausages, or mutton chops. In Summer our family had gristed whole-wheat instead of porridge. These three meals were washed down with copious draughts of tea, the one and only beverage taken with meals.
Christmas Day was celebrated in traditional English style, with a great midday dinner of turkey and plum pudding, when the shade temperature was ranging around 90 degrees Farenheit, and some years in a searing heat wave, with the thermometer on the verandah recording about 100 degrees. There were, of course, no refrigerators, not even ice supplies: a cellar or just a large pit dug in the stiff clay, under the house, was the only means of keeping food a few degrees cooler; and a big waterbag hanging under the verandah, the only source of cold water for lemon squash and other flavoured drinks.
To produce these big dinners, heroic devoted women nearly fainted in hot kitchens, toiling over the tops of searing hot wood-burning stoves.
Gorged to the utmost, the diners staggered away to sleep off the meal for the remainder of the day, sweating on their hot beds and emerging only in the cool of the evening, to feast again on