The Cornish pastie carries a corner of the proud and varied banner that represents Australian cuisine. Australian culture is marked as much by immigration as by innovation, and Australian cuisine is no exception. The flower of Australian cooking blossomed in this fair country, but its roots spread deep across the globe. Consider the lamington; a quintessentially Australian desert named for the English Earl of Lamington, who compensated for his reputation as a dandy by cutting a wide and brutal path across South Asia during the Bombay Coconut Wars. Or Farmers Union Iced Coffee, South Australia’s most popular chilled beverage, which owes its existence to a theory of labour ownership, capital distribution, and social organisation developed in Austria.
So, too, the popular Cornish pastie. Now a popular choice at school canteens across Australia, the Cornish pastie was invented to satisfy the large hunger of the small men who came over during the mining boom of the late 19th century. These men, whose dominant hand constantly was preoccupied by acts of mining, drinking, or pugilism, needed a warm meal capable of both sustaining them and being wielded in their one free hand. Although the legions of dimunitive Cornish miners who once swarmed across the land have since faded into the mists of history, they shaped the land and its culture during their time here. Other than historic villages filled with rows of homes with doorways of forehead cracking dimensions, their most enduring contribution has been the Cornish pastie.
The Cornish pastie can be found in heated cases in every bakery in Australia. It can be seen in the hands of school children, early morning beach goers, brickies on lunch, and suited barristers sneaking a smoke-o and a quick bite before returning to the bench. In fact, the Cornish pastie has acsended to the highest realm of Australian ubiquity: a competition. As surely as Australia’s abundance of sheep have led to shearing races or its proximity to the coast has led to Speedo clad bronze-bodies competing to see who can save a drowning man the fastest, so too do local bakeries now attempt to best each other in the fine art of warpping dough around potatoes, carrots, peas, and assorted spices. Each year, the winning bakery earns the right to delcare itself the creator of Australia’s Greatest Cornish Pastie. After decades of annual competitions, hundreds of bakeries across Australia now proudly advertise their preeminence through meticulous hand-lettering on doors, windows, and A-frame signs.
It should come as no surprise that visitors and locals alike are welcomed into Ruth’s Bakery, in the centre of Nara, by bold letters proclaiming:
Australia’s Greatest Cornish Pastie, 1997
1997 was, frankly speaking, a pretty shit year for Nara. The Fighting Roos were in their fourth straight losing season, a drought had left most of the region browner and drier than a bing bong birthday, and Ruth’s entry to the cake decorating competition at the Murray Bridge Royal Show had come third behind some fancy, big-shot baker out of Waikerie, who had decorated a jaffa flavoured cake to look like an orange, and Darryl fucking Gergen from Gambo, who entered a chocolate cake that looked like a shoe. A fucking shoe! Not a nice dress shoe, either; he’d done it up to look like a bloody sneaker.
It had been a rough bloody year and no mistake. In a hard land, a people’s spirit sustain them as much as food, air, and cold beer, and the spirits of the people of Nara were low. Nara needed to kick a goal.
The chance came when Ruth received in the mail notice that her bakery was under consideration for the finals of Australia’s Greatest Cornish Pastie. The judges had been travelling the country and now were making their way to south eastern South Australia, their last stop in a nation-wide tour of excellence in baking.
Ruth took this as good and bad news. She was terribly excited to be considered and she knew that the people of Nara would benefit from such a great honour. At the same time, she also knew that Darryl fucking Gergen down in Gambo had an unfair advantage: He was pretty bloody good at baking and Ruth’s pasties were frankly shit.
* * *
The morning of the judging, Ruth was a nervous wreck. The judges would be coming through at four p.m., then heading on to Gambo for the final tasting, but Ruth was up at 4:00 a.m. working on the dough and mixing the spices. At 5:00 a.m., the balery was filled with the aroma of the first batch of pasties coming out of the oven when Old Man Shankey stopped in unexpectedly.
“Morning Ruth.”
“Morning Rog,” she said morosely. “There’s not much for it, I reckon. I’m going to let the whole town down.”
Old Man Shankey sucked thoughtfully through his teeth.
“Now, calm down Ruth. Let’s have a taste of this pastie and see what sort of shape we’re in.”
Ruth slid one Cornish pastie off the cooling rack and onto the counter. The dough was a pale white colour, turning to a singed black at the edges, and sunk in a crater in the middle. The filling oozed out when she sliced a piece off.
Old Man Shankey took the piece and inspected it. He held it in his fingers and sniffed at it, then put the morsel in his mouth and chewed.
Ruth looked up at him with only the faintest glimmer of hope on her otherwise despondent face.
“Well?” She asked.
Old Man Shankey looked around for a tasting bucket and, not seeing one, reluctantly swallowed.
“It’s pretty shit.”
The glimmer flickered and died.
“Nah, you’re not going to win against Darryl fucking Gergen down in Gambo with this. I hear he makes his own pastry, fresh, and uses locally grown peas and carrots rather than frozen. Seems like bloody cheating to me.”
Ruth nodded sadly. There seemed no hope for her. Old Shankey Man, seeing the look on her face and the peas crusted in her flyaway hair, decided it was time for action.
“Look, Ruth. You keep working at it. Maybe add a little more pepper? I . . . I’ll be back in a bit.”
Shankey was out the door in a flash, leaving Ruth alone with a tray of baked failure and tern and a half hours until the judges arrived.
By 10:00 a.m., she’d produced an array of pasties so full with pepper that the smell of them baking made her sneeze, and by noon she’d run out of frozen carrots. At two, when she heard Old Man Shankey’s ute pull up out back, she was curled in the corner sucking the jam out of a kitchener bun.
The smell hit her first. A rich, smooth smell of warm butter, delicate spices, and roasted vegetables. Old Man Shankey backed through the rear door of the bakery carrying a large tray of plump, golden, flaky pasties. The seam of each was perfectly crimped. They almost glowed in the lights of the bakery and let out puffs of aromatic steam as Old Man Shankey sliced into them. Ruth was in awe.
“Rog . . .” she began.
“Nah, love. No worries. I reckon these’ll do the trick.”
Ruth leaned forward and flared her nostrils as she savoured the aroma.
“They smell like . . .” She sniffed again. “They smell a bit like petrol, to be honest, Rog.”
“I reckon that’s just the smell of success.” He replied, hurrying to the sink to scrub his hands. “You just go ahead and set these to warming. The judges’ll be here soon enough.”
* * *
Ruth got the call two hours after the judges visited. They’d loved her pasties, of course, but were withholding judgement until they had a chance to visit the final baker on their naitonal tour: Darryl fucking Gergen down in Gambo.
It turned out that Darryl fucking Gergen had to forfeit on account of not having any pasties. He’d been up early baking his pasties for the customers and was about to set to work baking a fresh batch for the judges when a stranger had stopped through. He was on his way to the hospital, he said, and the kids he was visiting’d like nothing more than a fresh, warm pastie from Gergen’s Bakery. Darryl fucking Gergen felt bad leaving his loyal customers high and dry without their pasties that day, but . . .
“For the kids!” he said and sold the lot at half off.
As he watched the mysterious stranger hop in the passenger seat of a ute out front, he thought he caught the odour of a bakery set alight under mysterious circumstances.
* * *
Ruth had the sign painted on her window almost immediately, she was so proud. And it turned out to be just the kick in arse the town needed to restore a little civic pride. She hosted a big to do that weekend and half the bloody town showed up to celebrate her success. Ever since, there’s been a steady stream of locals and tourists alike walking in past the sign on her window:
Australia’s Greatest Cornish Pastie, 1997
Funny thing, though, despite the sign, most people go for the pies or sausage rolls. To be honest, her pasties are pretty shit.
Welcome to Narangong 