The early miners’ staple diet consisted of ‘Damper and Tinned Dog’, washed down by the inevitable mug of black tea – a meal sufficiently filling to satisfy the cravings of appetites blunted by protracted periods of roughing it in the bush.
Apparently, tinned meat, or tinned dog as it was mainly called, must have agreed with some. One night when a crowd of men was celebrating the birth of the first set of triplets born in the town, a collection was taken up and presented to the proud father (his poor wife was given no accolades). In reply to the good wishes and the presentation, the father’s reply embraced them all:
‘Beat that on damper and dog!’
‘Damper and Dog’ was featured as the main dish at the annual Pioneers’ Reunion Dinner held on September 17th each year to celebrate Bayley and Ford’s discovery of gold at Fly Flat in 1892. Edwin ‘Dryblower’ Murphy immortalised the dish in lines he penned for the fifth annual dinner in 1897, which read:
Damper-and-dog, Damper-and-dog,
Milestones of mem’ry fly past at the phrase;
Bringing us back as life’s journey we jog,|
To the olden, the golden, the Pioneer days.
Sit we tonight at a smart table d’hote,
Munch we a menu that costs half a quid:
Yet we sigh for a campfire and tea leaves afloat,
And a comforting swig from the old billy lid.
Recollections go roaming to tents up the track,
Or a ‘bluey’ unrolled to the sweep of the sky,
To the brumby we rode and the one we would pack,
And the perish we did at a gnamma hole dry:
To the summers we sweltered, the frosts we have fought
With the cheery old blaze of a salmon gum log;
To the shanty-house spree and the beauty we bought
Till a slack shammy sent us to damper-and-dog.
No use to worry, no use to flog
When the shanty boss bounces
And zero announces
It’s out for the ounces
And damper-and-dog.
Damper-and-dog, Damper-and-dog:
Hey-days of Bayley, Pat Hannan and motes;
Days when the world was with wonder agog;
And half its adventures knocked at our gates.
Coaches creaked out of old Northam and York;
Swagmen went streaming from Broomhill below,
The farmer boy, fed up with pumpkin and pork
Set his face to the eastern auriferous glow.
Double-banked teams cut the track to the find,
Shovels and shakers and dishes and picks,
Leaving the timorous rabble behind.
Building a town without brumbies or bricks,
Morning saw bush where the wild black had been,
Disk heard the click of the windlass cog;
Laughter and song at a camp-fire concert clean
And a crowd well contented with Damper-and-dog.
Damper-and-dog, damper-and-dog,
Tucker for toilers who yacker and slog;
Whether mixing or milling
When appetite’s willing
There’s plenty worse filling.
Than damper-and-dog.
We’ve thrived on at the Feather and U,
Lake Darlot, Kurnalpi and Spinifex Soak;
It brought all the Nullagine camel men through,
When the ham-and-egg prospectors started to croak.
When the pioneer pub in Coolgardie rang high,
With the first wedding feast and the first wedding toast;
It was damper-and-dog made their honeymoon pie,
Masquerading as mutton, boiled, curried or roast.
Once over the world when we felt pleasure cloy
Within half a mile of Dick Whittington’s chimes,
We drank billy tea at the London Savoy
Eating damper-and-dog for the sake of old times.
We toasted the absent in pannikan tea,
Leaving the lure of their gold-mounted grog,
And drank to the pioneers over the sea,
Who were battling along with their damper-and-dog.
Damper-and-dog, damper-and-dog,
We were sated by London’s luxurious prog.
Though round us was rattling
The world tittle-tattling
We thought of those battling
On Damper-and-dog.
Moya Sharp
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