I was sitting at a table in Ricco’s Cafe in Spring Street wondering whether I would start off with a plate of oysters when I heard a voice I knew ordering Minestrone. I turned around and, sure enough, it was ‘Dervener’ Jack Mulgrew, the shearers’ cook I had last seen on the Paroo.
He looked momentarily embarrassed then explained, after a perfunctory, ‘How ya doin’?’, that he always liked to have a first-class feed once in a while.
‘I never have enjoyed tucker I’ve cooked myself,’ he said as I drew my chair around.
I could well understand it. ‘Dervener’ received his nickname because of his allegiance to a certain mongrel hash known to shearers as ‘Dervener’. Shearers’ cooks are always reticent in the face of enquiries aimed at discovering the ingredients of a Dervener. When asked, ‘What is it made of?’ they scowl at you as if you have cast a reflection upon their hash—as indeed you have.
In the days when the shearers’ cook was a man to be reckoned with and a power in any shed, many of them attained a fame that spread far beyond the station boundaries within which they operated. If a shearers’ cook was a good cook he had the backing, against an odd complainer, of all those who enjoyed his dishes. If he were a bad cook, however, then he only retained his position by force of arms, as it were. All bad cooks who held on to their jobs could fight like threshing machines.
‘Dervener’ was such a man. He had a most impressive chest. Those men who survived after hitting him thereabouts reported to their mates, as they were carried away on a hurdle, ‘When you punch him on the chest you can hear it echo round inside him like in a deserted pub.’
Whether this was true or not I do not know, but I do know that years ago on the Paroo when ‘Dervener’ packed a punch that would flatten most men like a tack, the shearers in a shed where he was cook, seeing no relief from weeks of mongrel hash, and angered by the speedy belting of those who complained, sent to a Sydney Gymnasium for the loan of a professional pug, cash on delivery.
The thickset chap with the battered face who duly arrived was given the simplest instructions:
‘As soon as he serves the stew bawl him out, see, then hop into him.’
The man from Sydney expressed himself as being satisfied with this procedure provided he got his tenner forthwith. The collection realizing the correct amount the pug took his place at the table surrounded by the happy shearers who were all confident that the Day of Judgment had arrived for ‘Dervener’.
‘Dervener’ dished out the hash with his usual aggressive demeanour so was unconsciously set to beat the gun when the man from Sydney spoke his piece. This confident gentleman suddenly stood up and flung his knife and fork on the table with an explosive: ‘What ya givin’ me—dog food?’
He was still rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth with grimaces of distaste when ‘Dervener’ hit him.
Later on, when the hurdle upon which he was lying was placed near the doorway of the Men’s Hut, he explained: ‘’Struth! I wasn’t ready. He musta picked it up from the floor. I never seen it comin’.’
The shearers’ cook known on the Darling as ‘The Black Dog’ could also scrap. He received his name after the circulation of a whispered tale that he had once cooked a black dog and served it up to its unsuspecting owner, a shearer who had been critical of his cooking. It is said that the owner enjoyed his meal and congratulated the cook on his excellent dish.
It was probably the only tribute to his cooking he had ever received.
The dish he specialized in was cold mutton. He served it for breakfast, dinner and tea in the manner of a man expecting criticism but quite prepared to meet it. However, there came a day when one shearer, sitting down without enthusiasm before the usual plate of cold meat, felt impelled to express something of what he felt.
‘What! Cold mutton again!’ he exclaimed plaintively.
‘The Black Dog’ heard him from the lean-to where he carved the meat and he appeared in the doorway with disconcerting suddenness. He stood there gazing wrathfully at the astounded shearer for a moment then thumped his hairy chest with his fist and yelled, ‘Here’s yer hot meat. Come and get it.’
The shearer didn’t accept the invitation.
‘The Blue Stew Cook’, another Darling identity, specialized in stew.
He had a large, three-legged pot into which mutton and vegetables were thrown each day. This regular addition to the stew meant that the pot always remained full. It simmered away above the fire from week to week, always retaining its volume though a score of men were patiently eating it.
It was only natural that they began, finally, to look at the three-legged pot with some distaste. It was said that pieces of meat and vegetable lying round the bottom of the pot had been resting there for a month or more despite the frequent stirrings to which the cook subjected the stew.
Finally, a dyspeptic shearer, determined to have the pot completely emptied for once, tossed a couple of knobs of Reckitts Blue into it as he passed.
Just before the next meal the cook gave the stew its customary stir, started visibly then recovered and yelled to the men as he ladled out the stew on to the waiting plates: ‘Blue stew today, boys.’
The Riverina cook known as ‘The Busted Oven’ had a deep dislike for some of the old-time, smoking ovens in which he was expected to prepare the shearers’ meals. It was his custom, therefore, when the shed cut out, to ram a crowbar through the offending oven so that he could be reasonably sure it would not be there when next he passed that way. The line of stations along which he travelled were always equipped with new ovens for his second visit despite the scowling reception he received from the station owners.
In those days it was unusual for a shearers’ cook to work with an apron on. Most men cooked in flannels. A Scots cook on the Lachlan, however, wore an apron and cap, dispensing with shirt and flannel. He became known as ‘Scotty-Without-a-Shirt’ and was reputed to be cultured, an imputation he always denied vigorously. Indeed, the conditions under which he worked did not encourage the development of an interest in the arts. Like all the shearers’ cooks of those days he slept when he wasn’t working and worked when he wasn’t sleeping. There was no in-between period of leisure.
There was no refrigeration on the stations. The meat was kept in hessian safes or excavated pantries, often inadequate protection against flies.
‘Hey! The meat’s blown,’ was a common complaint.
‘They’re dead, they won’t hurt you,’ was the usual rejoinder from the cook.
Each man ate about four ram-stag chops for breakfast. There was brownie and damper to be made. Seven meals a day had to be prepared.
At smoko’s, morning and afternoon tea, and at supper the men ate almost as much as at a regular meal.
The cook’s rouseabout—or offsider—carried the smoko tucker down to the shed together with a couple of kerosene tins of tea. He had a tough job. He was always on the run and had to put up with all the abuse about the place.
One cook who brought his eighteen-year-old son along as his offsider was in the habit of making long jam roley-poleys. The shearers enjoyed them provided they were served a piece from the centre section where the jam seemed to collect. The ends were jamless and avoided by the men.
The unyielding attitude of the shearers to the ends soured the cook a little and once, as he stood with raised knife before a roley-poley of great length he called out to the shearers gathered round the table, ‘Does anyone here like ends?’
There was dead silence.
‘Well, me and me son does,’ he announced truculently and cut the roley-poley through in the centre, pushing one half aside for himself and the other for his son.
Roley-poleys were a favourite dish. The cloths in which they were cooked were never selected with a view to suitability and sometimes the roley-poleys were coloured with dye.
One startled shearer on a Riverina station, looking unbelievingly at a cauldron of bubbling blue water, said to the cook, ‘Hey! The dye has come out of the cloth.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said the cook. ‘You should have seen the first two lots of water. I been changing it.’
Another cook once produced a roley-poley with the words, ‘Drummer-Boy Self Raising Flour’ printed along its length. The bag he had used as a cloth had originally contained this flour.
Nowadays the cooks are men who are conscious that they have to be good to last. Their kitchens are clean and their meals are varied.
Some of them even wear the hat of a chef upon their head.
As ‘Dervener’ finished his Minestrone he leant back and said, ‘I must ask the boss here to give me the recipe for that soup. I think the boys would like it.’
‘Are you square dinkum?’ I asked in astonishment, wondering whether I had heard aright.
‘I am that,’ said ‘Dervener’ sadly. ‘The days of the ram-stag chops have gone forever. Let’s have a drink.’