History Week and “Eat History”
Laila Ellmoos: ‘Tea and hominy’. Laila explored the politics of food for prisoners locked up at Sydney’s notorious Darlinghurst Gaol in the19th century.
Dr Margo Beasley: ‘Hunger on the Hungry Mile’. Margo looked at the different types of food that working families ate on Sydney’s waterfront in the early 20th century.
Margaret Betteridge: ‘Off the menu’. Margaret’s talk was about the civic receptions and functions which were regularly held at SydneyTown Hall throughout the 20th century.
Dr Lisa Murray: ‘Sweet and saucy’. Lisa’s talk reminded us that Sydney’s industrial southern suburbs were an important site of food production in the 20th century, especially lollies, tomato sauce, jam, flour and beer.
The district of South Sydney has contributed to the growing and manufacture of food products for over 150 years. In the 19th century the Waterloo and Alexandria areas were the food bowl of Sydney with market gardeners producing the majority of Sydney’s vegetables. In the 20th century, food manufacturing was one of the industries that came to dominate the district, along with the glass, paper and steel industries. These factories provided employment to thousands of men and women in the inner!
Jams, condiments and sauces. These were well represented in the district.
Fountain Tomato Sauce
Pick-me-up Condiment Company
Foster Clark’s
Aerated water and cordial factories
Barrett and Co.’s Aerated Water Works
The Kia-ora Factory,
Confectionery. These can be divided into chocolate, sweet and ice cream factories, with some overlap.
MacRobertson’s was the home of Cherry Ripe.
Bendollar Chocolate Company.
Francis Chocolates
Mastercraft chocolate factory was another big employer. Sweets included Pascals and Scanlan
Wrigley’s
Bakeries.
White brothers. became known as the Great Southern Bread Factories and then merged with two other firms in to form Gartrell White Pty Ltd and these in turn became TipTop Bakeries
Iconic brands
Rosella Preserving & Manufacturing Co of Rosebery
Peters Ice Cream had a large factory in Chippendale.
The White Wings brand emerged in 1910s.
Schweppes started manufacturing here. In 1877 a plant was set up in Foveaux Street, Sydney.
Reschs
The NSW Lager Beer Brewing Co. Ltd established a brewery on South Dowling Street in c.1895. The
plant, stock and goodwill were purchased by Edmund Resch in 1900. Resch bestowed the name
Waverley Brewery on the site.
James Stedman - Henderson’s Ltd “Sweetacres”
Probably the most iconic confectionery was produced at “Sweetacres”.. It was at this Rosebery factory in 1922 that the iconic Australian sweet Minties was first produced. These were soon followed by other wildly popular sweets, such as Jaffas and Fantales
Further afield down in Botany municipality, there were other iconic brands, such as Kelloggs, who
have been producing cereals in Botany since 1928.
Dr Lisa Murray 2011
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