This is the intro to chapter 5 in the same large project.
Some people think tucker
is an Indigenous word, but its first recorded appearance in Australia (in the food sense) was in
early 1856, on the Bendigo goldfields.
There are a number working on Sydney Flat, some very
successfully, but the majority are just making what they call ‘tucker.’ [1]
The tucker-bag itself showed up in print in May 1865, but it
was probably in use before that. On the other hand, grog is a venerable English
word. It comes in a roundabout way from a cloth known as grosgrain or grogram,
a coarse cloth, favoured by Edward Vernon as a boat cloak. He was a Royal Navy
captain at 21, and a rear-admiral at 24, and the men called him ‘Old Grog’, on
account of his cloak.
Vernon served successfully for many years until (according
to his admirers) he was forced out because he was right too often. By then he
had won many famous battles, but none so famous as his battle against sailors’
rum. He said too many Jack Tars went aloft with too much good Jamaica rum under
their belts, lost their footings, and fell to their deaths.
In 1740, drunkenness was still killing sailors, so Vernon
ordered that the rum be watered before it was issued. The daily allowance of
one pint of rum per man was mixed with a quart of water in a scuttled butt, a
barrel with one end removed and kept for that purpose.
This mixing was done on deck, supervised by the lieutenant
of the watch, to make sure no man was cheated of his proper allowance. The
sailors said Old Grog was depriving them of a life’s essential, and called the
watered rum “grog”. The word came to Australia, where Bowes Smyth heard it used
in the earliest days of the colony. The storm he refers to below is the one
that produced the animal-killing lightning bolt mentioned at the start of this
book.
The Sailors in our Ship requested to have some Grog to make
merry wt. upon the Women quitting the Ship indeed the Capt. himself had no
small reason to rejoice upon their being all safely landed & given into the
Care of the Governor…The Scene wh. presented itself at this time & during
the greater part of the night, beggars every discription; some swearing, others
quarrelling others singing, not in the least regarding the Tempest…. [2]
This was the way the colony would go, and the nation
followed in the footsteps of the colony. At first, people just wanted the
oblivion rum brought, to shut out the harshness that surrounded them, as
Reverend Johnson observed on November 15, 1788, looking on his flock with
disappointment.
They prefer their Lust before their Souls, yea, most of them
will sell their souls for a Glass of Grogg, so blind, so foolish, so hardened
are they. [3]
Seven years on, things had improved very little, Johnson
said on 27 November 1795.
Numbers of people have become settlers. The careful &
industrious do well, but by far the greatest part spend in drinking, their
crops, as or even before they become ripe. Hope this abominable Traffic will be
checked, if not abolished by the present change of Govt. [4]
Part of the problem in the early days came from the sailors.
According to David Collins, there was a lack of supervision as well, but grog
was the worst part:
Petty thefts among themselves began soon to be complained of;
the sailors from the transports, although repeatedly forbidden, and frequently
punished, still persisted in bringing spirits on shore by night, and
drunkenness was often the consequence. [5]
In the 1840s, Louisa Meredith found that drunkenness was all
too common among the servants, especially at Christmas:
I have heard of a Christmas-day party being assembled, and
awaiting the announcement of dinner as long as patience would endure; then
ringing the bell, but without reply; and on the hostess proceeding to the
kitchen, finding every servant either gone out or rendered incapable of moving,
the intended feast being meanwhile burned to ashes. Nor is this by any means a
rare occurrence; as the crowded police-office can bear ample testimony. [6]
It wasn’t just the convicts, either, as she had seen the
same thing among free people, like the wife of a turnpike-keeper near Homebush,
who collected the tolls on the Parramatta road.
One day Mr. Meredith was driving a friend to the races at
Parramatta, and on reaching the turnpike, this engaging female was discovered
seated at a table by the door, with a cup and a half-gallon bottle of rum
beside her, the effect of which was already evident; she offered Mr. Meredith a
ticket, which he told her was not required, as she knew him so well from his
passing constantly—“Oh, sir, you’d better take it, for I shan’t know anybody by
the time you come back!” [7]
Australians
learned early to make Christmas dinner an outdoor picnic.
William Westgarth saw drunkenness on the way to the diggings
in 1852: two men “transferring the weight and contents of a bottle or two of
their baggage from the outward to the inward man”. [8]
[2]
Arthur Bowes Smyth, Journal, 1787 –
9, 6 February.
[3]
George Mackaness (ed.), Some Letters of
Rev. Richard Johnson, 1954, part 1, 24.
[4]
George Mackaness (ed.), Some Letters of
Rev. Richard Johnson, 1954, part 2, 11.
[5]
David Collins, An Account of the English
Colony in New South Wales, 1798, 7.
[6]
Louisa Ann Meredith, Notes and Sketches
of New South Wales, 128.
[7]
Louisa Ann Meredith, Notes and Sketches
of New South Wales, 58.
[8]
William Westgarth, Victoria, Late
Australia Felix, 213.
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