The Aussie Humour Thread

[Buckshot Bear]

WOODCHOPPING - 1870

 

The sport of woodchop has its origins in 1870 in Tasmania, where legend has it a wager of £25 was made between two men, Joseph Smith and Jack Biggs. In the backyard of the Sprent Hotel in Ulverstone they chopped three-foot tall standing blocks, but a dispute broke out over the winner, resulting in a free-for-all-brawl. Impromptu contests became common, however, and the sport gradually organised, gaining in popularity as it spread to all states. In 1891 the United Australasian Axemen's Association was formed to establish rules.

The first woodchopping event at the Show was held in 1899 in a paddock which doubled as a cattle ring. Programmed on the last day of the Show as an attraction to boost attendance, the match was an instant success with a crowd of 8,000 turning out to watch.

Twenty-six competitors vied for prizes which ranged from £5 to £25. Four of the eight Heckenberg brothers from Green Valley, near Liverpool, were favourites, but the day was won by a Victorian named MacKinolty, who had won championships in three colonies. Despite their initial defeat, the Heckenbergs were to become stars of the sport, finishing their careers with eleven championships between them. The suburb of Heckenberg is named after them. Family dynasties of competitors have been common ever since.

The Woodchop competition was successfully staged again at the 1900 Show, but was then discontinued until 1906, possibly due to the lack of an appropriate venue. Every year thereafter, Woodchop has been a feature of the Show – except for a brief, unexplained disappearance in 1910.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Buckshot Bear]

A young Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee)

 

[Buckshot Bear]

[Buckshot Bear]

[Buckshot Bear]

[Buckshot Bear]

Big Koala Qld

 

[Buckshot Bear]

THE LARGEST CATTLE STATION IN THE WORLD - ANNA CREEK STATION.

 

 

The Anna Creek Station was bought by Sir Sidney Kidman, Australia’s so-called “cattle king”, who owned large areas of land across Australia during his lifetime.

Kidman was thirteen when he ran away from his Adelaide home in 1870 with only 5 shillings in pocket and a one-eyed horse that he had bought with his savings. His teen years, Kidman worked as a drover, stockman and livestock trader, and made money supplying services to new mining towns springing up in outback. Eventually he had saved enough to buy his own station.

Kidman began gobbling up one estate after another until he was the biggest landholder in the world by World War I. At one point, the size of Kidman’s properties exceeded the size of the entire United Kingdom.

His family still owns more than 10 million hectares, or about three-quarters the size of England. With a herd of 185,000 cattle, S. Kidman & Co is one of Australia's largest beef producers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Buckshot Bear]

[Buckshot Bear]

Even our poor bloody snakes get these rotten bastards -

 

[Abilene Slim SASS 81783]

28 minutes ago, Buckshot Bear said:

THE LARGEST CATTLE STATION IN THE WORLD - ANNA CREEK STATION.

 

 

The Anna Creek Station was bought by Sir Sidney Kidman, Australia’s so-called “cattle king”, who owned large areas of land across Australia during his lifetime.

Kidman was thirteen when he ran away from his Adelaide home in 1870 with only 5 shillings in pocket and a one-eyed horse that he had bought with his savings. His teen years, Kidman worked as a drover, stockman and livestock trader, and made money supplying services to new mining towns springing up in outback. Eventually he had saved enough to buy his own station.

Kidman began gobbling up one estate after another until he was the biggest landholder in the world by World War I. At one point, the size of Kidman’s properties exceeded the size of the entire United Kingdom.

His family still owns more than 10 million hectares, or about three-quarters the size of England. With a herd of 185,000 cattle, S. Kidman & Co is one of Australia's largest beef producers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looks like an airstrip on the edge of the property in the third pic. 

[Buckshot Bear]

1 hour ago, Abilene Slim SASS 81783 said:

Looks like an airstrip on the edge of the property in the third pic. 

 

Its rare that the big (or smaller) stations don't have airstrips. 

[Abilene Slim SASS 81783]

13 minutes ago, Buckshot Bear said:

 

Its rare that the big (or smaller) stations don't have airstrips. 

I always loved landing on dirt/sod instead of concrete. There’s something primal about it - like black powder instead of smokeless. 

[Buckshot Bear]

Some old ads -

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Buckshot Bear]

“NECESSITY BECOMES THE MOTHER OF INVENTION” - 1876

The chance to find a fortune in the gold fields saw farm labourers abandon the vast wheat farms of NSW and Victoria in huge numbers. The cost of labour skyrocketed so enterprising landowners began making crude machines that could reap and bind grain, often built from leftover machine parts and scraps of metal, like the contraption pictured here. Such was the demand that the government of Victoria held a competition offering a prize of AUS £1,000 for the most viable reaper and binder machine.

 

[Buckshot Bear]

“THE TASMANIAN DEVIL”

 

The devil became extinct on the mainland some 3,000 years ago – before European settlement, due to being hunted by the Dingo. It is now only found in Tasmania. With no dingoes found in Tasmania, the Tasmanian devil is now the island state’s top predator.

Throughout the 1800s, there was a concerted effort by Tasmanian farmers to eradicate the species, which were thought to kill livestock. Thankfully, the devil did not suffer the same fate as it is a relative to the Tasmanian tiger.

 

[Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474]

Doesn't look anything like the one in the Bugs Bunny Cartoons!

Are you SURE it's a REAL Tasmanian Devil??

[Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062]

6 hours ago, Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474 said:

Doesn't look anything like the one in the Bugs Bunny Cartoons!

Are you SURE it's a REAL Tasmanian Devil??

 

 

       ........ the bandaged hand holding the camera confirms it .........  

[Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474]

1 hour ago, Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062 said:

 

 

       ........ the bandaged hand holding the camera confirms it .........  

 Soo, You can't make a pet put of them?

[Alpo]

[Buckshot Bear]

[Buckshot Bear]

[Buckshot Bear]

NED KELLY’S ARMOUR - 1880

Ned Kelly famously wore a suit of armour, fashioned from the thick metal parts of a farmer's ploughs (seen here laid out by police after his capture). The suit made him impervious to bullets and had the added effect of making Kelly seem larger and more intimidating.

The suit did however leave his legs exposed, a flaw exploited by the police during a siege in the small Victorian town of Glenrowan. Kelly stepped away from the fallen tree he was using as cover and was brought down by police gunfire.

 

[Buckshot Bear]

SHEARING SHEEP - 1880’s

It was back breaking work for shearers.

An average merino fleece weighs up to 40 pounds (18kg) and the blade shears they used weren’t much more sophisticated than gardening clippers. They were paid the relatively large sum of 11 shillings per hundred sheep, with rations.

One shearer at the time said that if he had a good run of shearing he could “take a trip to one of the big centres and live like a lord the rest of the year.” The shearers pictured are blade shearing on the Lilyfield property in Jindera, NSW.

 

[Buckshot Bear]

[Buckshot Bear]

[Buckshot Bear]

[Buckshot Bear]

“A LOG BARN” - CURING TOBACCO - 1933

Logan West News.

Log barns, just like this one pictured, were typically used for curing tobacco leaves before baling and shipping to market.

This one, was located in Park Ridge.

The tall wooden huts were designed to facilitate optimal conditions for leaf drying. Tobacco leaves were stored on racks within the drying shed, allowing airflow from bottom to top.

During the 1900s, tobacco farming was widespread across Queensland, particularly in the southern regions such as Logan West and the Beerwah-Beerburrum area.

In Logan West, drought conditions spurred a shift towards other types of farming, including timber, poultry, small-scale dairy, and tobacco.

Meanwhile, in Beerburrum, high levels of unemployment led the Queensland Minister for Agriculture, Mr. Bulcock, to implement a Tobacco Settlement Scheme.

This initiative aimed to convert abandoned Soldier Settlement pineapple farms into tobacco-growing enterprises, providing employment opportunities for the unemployed.

Tobacco is known as a difficult crop to cultivate., and unfortunately, due to inexperience, unfavourable weather conditions and other issues such as pests, farmers encountered many difficulties.

Tobacco farming in Australia has seen a significant decline over the decades due to changes in agricultural practices, reduced demand, health concerns, and government regulations.

Many former tobacco-growing regions have transitioned to other agricultural crops or alternative land uses.

 

[Buckshot Bear]

Camp Pie canned in Australia - c1905 (plus recipe)

Although camp pie in various guises had been around for many decades, it appears that Foggitt Jones of Queensland was the first to market it in Australia. Their Rex Camp Pie became a well-known brand. The famous “Camp Pie” Case in the 1920s was a legal dispute over trademarks between Foggitt Jones and the Darling Downs Co-operative.

The origins of the name “Camp Pie” are obscure. The dictionary defines it as: (Australian, history) tinned meat.

But it probably isn’t uniquely Australian. Camp Pie (at least in its tinned version) is recorded in Britain long before being manufactured in Australia. The term may have originated with the military, as tinned meat became a staple in the military diet around the time of the Crimean War (1853-6). Another theory (which would support its Australian credentials) is that it was made in miners’ camps on the Australian goldfields, but I can’t find any evidence for this.

It wasn’t always tinned either. A recipe for making a dish known as Camp Pie was published in the Scottish weekly magazine, the People’s Friend, in 1879. It sounded very like cottage pie, with a mixture of cold beef or mutton, chopped finely, mixed with gravy, covered with mashed potato and baked. Other home-cooked versions appeared over the years in the Australian press. The following recipe, similar to the one featured in People’s Friend appeared in The Bathurst Post in January 1883:

Camp pie

Ingredients. — Cold beef or mutton, pepper and salt, seasoning of ketchup or Worcester sauce, and onion if liked.

Method. — Mince the meat very fine, add pepper, salt, and the onion finely chopped. Make gravy of the bones and flavour it with ketchup or Worcester sauce; mix these with the minced meat, put it into a pie dish, with a tolerably thick layer of mashed potatoes, well seasoned with pepper and salt, and bake for an hour.

A 1930s recipe from Mrs C. H. Applebee of Ulverstone in Tasmania, took a completely different approach, with rather different ingredients:

Home-made Camp Pie

1 lb. sausage meat, 1 cup soft breadcrumbs, ¼ lb. bacon (rather fat), 1tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, 1 cup milk, salt, 2 hard-boiled eggs for garnishing. Cut the bacon into dice. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Turn into a greased basin. Tie greased paper over the top, and steam for 2 hours. Unmould, and allow to become cold and firm. Cut each egg into four lengthways, and garnish the dish with these.

This latter recipe would produce something closer in texture to the tinned Camp Pie, which had been imported as early as the 1870s. Well-respected brands included Maconochie Brothers of Lowestoft in Sussex, Shippams of Chichester and Glencairn Camp Pie from the firm of Cunningham and De Fourier in Glasgow. From the 1890s, St George Camp Pie was also imported from New Zealand.

These companies typically produced a range of potted and tinned meats. Advertisements in Australian, Canadian and United States newspapers in the 1870s and ‘80s promote a range of imported English luncheon meats including ox and sheep’s tongues, jugged hare and roast grouse as well as the more common ham and corned beef.

Foggitt Jones commenced trading in 1904 in Brisbane, initially producing hams but moving into meat canning. According to a 1916 newspaper report, their product range had grown to include ham pate, veal and tongue pate, pigs’ feet, camp pie, pork and beans, pork brawn, Lorraine sausages, pork sausages, pork and veal Fritz and luncheon cheese (an early form of cheese spread). The company later expanded its distribution and production facilities to Sydney, Perth and Adelaide.

Although Foggitt Jones was probably producing camp pie by around 1905, an advertisement touting Rex Camp Pie as a new product appeared in the Brisbane Courier in October 1915. Other manufacturers soon followed. In the 1920s, Foggitt Jones took the Darling Downs Co-operative to court, claiming their trademark had been infringed by the co-op’s KR brand, which had used a similar scroll on its label. The judge, saying “camp pie is camp pie”, threw out the case. Foggitt Jones appealed – and had the judgement reversed. The Darling Downs company took the matter to the High Court of Australia, but Foggitt Jones’s appeal was upheld. The case gained considerable coverage in the newspapers of the day.

Subsequent Australian brands of camp pie included Tom Piper, Swift, Smorgan’s (who also supplied frankfurts to the military, dubbed by soldiers as “Smorgan’s organs), and the Imperial brand owned by William Angliss. Initially, camp pie was supplied in round tins, but in 1955 Top Piper announced the introduction of “the latest American-style square cans”. These were opened with a key that rolled back a strip of metal around the side of the can.

Spam, a similar product introduced in America in 1937, is made from pork and ham. Camp Pie is generally made from beef and/or mutton. It was very popular until the 1950s and was eaten cold with salad, or sliced and fried. It is currently difficult to obtain in Australia, although Heinz continues to produce it under the brand names of Sita Ox & Palm and Globe, for export to the Pacific Islands. Until recently Heinz-Watties was selling camp pie under their Hamper brand, but this seems to have disappeared – at least from the major retail chains.

 

[Buckshot Bear]

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[Buckshot Bear]

ONE BEDROOM HOUSE - 1875

Shaws Court - off Kent St (between Druitt & Fowler Sts) Sydney. One bedroom house.

 

[Buckshot Bear]

NSW Police Ford Paddy Wagon from back in the day

 

[Buckshot Bear]

McDonalds DC-3 Restaurant

 

[Buckshot Bear]

Daylight savings ending Sunday morning brekky

 

[Buckshot Bear]