1900s

Meat And Two Veg
The diet at the start of the 20th century for most Australians was fairly simple. Breakfast was bread and porridge or sausages. The evening meal (often called 'tea') was boiled potatoes or cabbage and roasted meat, followed by tapioca, sago or rice pudding. This was the preferred food of the largest migrant groups at the time: English, Scottish and Irish. Sunday lunch was the most important meal of the week.

Many people drank strong sweet tea and added tomato sauce and WORCESTERSHIRE sauce to their plain food. Fruit and vegetables were grown locally or in the back yard and made into sauces and jams if they were in season. Many people kept chooks for their eggs and meat.

Yuk!
In the early 1900s there was no such thing as food labelling. Victorian Government employee, W Percy Wilkinson, tested a number of foods to see what they contained (coal tar in a raspberry drink, alcohol in lollies, for example). This led to the Victorian Pure Food Act in 1905, the first law of its kind in the world.

Ice Day
Kitchens were basic at the start of the 20th century. A typical kitchen had one sink with a cold water tap and a wood-heated or gas-fired cast iron stove. People kept food cool in an ice chest, a cupboard with a tray at the top to hold a block of ice delivered every few days.

Lamingtons first appeared in the early 1900s. This square of sponge coated in chocolate icing and covered in desiccated coconut owes its name to Baron Lamington, Governor of Queensland 1895-1901. Lamingtons remain popular today.
As the name suggests, the origin of hamburgers is the German city of Hamburg. German sailors in New York asked for mince Hamburg style in the early 1900s. They were sufficiently popular by 1903 to be served at the St Louis Fair and are still a firm favourite with Americans today. The hamburger fast food chains arrived in Australia in the 1970s but Australians had been eating hamburgers long before that. A recipe for Hamburg steaks (similar to hamburgers) appears in a cookbook by Mrs Maclurcan published in 1899.
By 1900 BUSHELLS tea, ARNOTT'S biscuits, ROSELLA jams and FOSTER'S lager were available.

Kraft News

Kraft Foods - nearly one hundred years old. The history of the Kraft Foods Company in Australia dates back to 1903 when 19-year-old Fred Walker from Melbourne set up Fred Walker and Company in Hong Kong, importing Australian goods and exporting Asian goods to Australia. After gaining sound business acumen and a good reputation, he returned to Melbourne in 1908 and started exporting Australian goods especially dairy products to Asia. By 1910 he was exporting canned butter and cheese to Asia and the Middle East under the Red Feather label.

How well do you know your Australian history? Population 3.8 million by 1900
1900	Australia starts the century in the grip of the country's worst recorded drought, lasting from 1895 to 1903.
1901	Some 1,500 Australian soldiers fight in the Boer War, South Africa.
1901	Australia celebrates Federation with the six separate colonies joining together as states to form the Commonwealth of Australia. Sir Edmund Barton becomes Australia's first Prime Minister.
1901	New laws are passed as part of a White Australia Policy including a dictation test in English that migrants had to pass.
1901	Miles Franklin's first novel My Brilliant Career is published, achieving critical acclaim.
1902	Australia is the second country in the world (after New Zealand) to grant women the vote. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as well as Asians and Africans do not yet have the vote and are not regarded as citizens. This same year the first woman doctor and the first woman lawyer graduate from the University of Sydney.
1904	Australian farmers start to sell their produce overseas and the Government encourages consumers to buy Australian.
1906	The surf lifesaving reel is demonstrated for the first time at Bondi Beach, the same year the first lifesaving club is formed.
1907	A phone link between Melbourne and Sydney is established.
1909	Mother Mary MacKillop, humanitarian and founder of the Order of the Brown Josephite Sisters dies. She is beatified in 1995.
Around the world in the 1900s
1899-1902	The Boer Republics in South Africa resist attempts by the British to control them. The Boer War ends with the Boer Republics joining the British Empire for four years before gaining self-government.
1900	Chinese try to oust foreigners but are unsuccessful and the Boxer Rebellion is put down.
1901	Queen Victoria of Britain dies and Edward VII reigns till his death in 1910.
1901	Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi succeeds in transmitting radio signals across the Atlantic Ocean.
1903	The Wright brothers from North Carolina, USA are the first people to fly a powered flying machine.
1907	New Zealand joins Australia in becoming a self-governing dominion within the British Empire.
1908	Henry Ford starts selling model-T FORDS in USA, the first affordable motor cars.
1909	American explorer Robert Peary reaches the North Pole with Matthew Henson and four Inuit.
1909	Belgian-American scientist Dr Leo Baekeland develops a new plastic called Bakelite.