THE DOG'S EYE: THE PIE IN AUSTRALIAN TRADITION - Robert Smith

The Dog’s Eye: The Pie in Australian Tradition

Robert Smith

The subject of the Australian meat pie would be considered by some as being too familiar and too uniform a product to be more than of cursory interest. Even the foundational Oxford Companion to Australian Folklore notes only two aspects to Australian foodways: those within various national groups; and the ‘pie-floater’ in South Australia—a bowl of thick green pea soup in which floats a meat pie. The standard meat pie is so pervasive and unremarkable that in Australia even a sign with the single-word Bakery can be read as meaning that one could buy a pie there. Against this lack of discussion of the ordinary pie, some direction and support can come from Steve Zeitlan’s description of contemporary folklore study, which can be paraphrased as ‘finding the meaning and the beauty in the ordinary’.  In the choice of this topic and in the wide-ranging participant-observer survey to be followed, one might also take guidance from Joan Radner’s description of folklore studies as being ‘eccentric by nature, marginal by choice, postmodern without ever having been modern’.  

Also, so ordinary and widespread is the linking of the meat pie to our national imagery that it is almost a cliché. Flikr.com, the on-line site for images, has many instances of Australian pies, often posted by tourists, then supported by approving comments by overseas Australians, declaring how homesick they are and declaring their desire for this distinctive item of Australian culture. From these perhaps-temporary ‘expats’ the expressions have an intriguing mix of playful humour as well as deep sincerity. Michael Symons in his One Continuous Picnic looks to describe the same feelings for all Australians: 

With typical sardonic humour … Australians hold up the meat pie and tomato sauce as their national dish. It has everything: it’s borrowed; it’s crude; its contents are dubious; it’s portable; it’s factory-made; and even the manufacturers are now mostly foreign.  

While the scorn is more Symons’ addition, here he touches several points of self-conscious humour and loyalty linked to the pie. One key reason that ‘expats’ feel such a link to the pie is that when overseas they find that a pie’s size, contents and the language used to refer to it are all different. The familiar and ordinary is no longer present.

Specifically, the Australasian experience of the pie is very different from that of the rest of the world. In North America a pie is large (what Australians would call a family pie) and predominantly sweet. There the word pie is defined as ‘a baked dish of fruit, or meat and vegetables, typically with a top and base of pastry’.  Looking back to Middle English, the word pie comes from the various combinations of ingredients typical of their product—and being compared to the objects randomly collected by a ‘magpie’. In Britain today, a pie is ‘a baked dish of savoury or sweet ingredients encased in or topped with pastry’. By comparison, the Australian use is not so broad. Our dictionary definitions continue some of the breadth of the British and much earlier meaning, but our vernacular usage shows a considerable narrowing of meaning. Here the single word, pie, does not have the sense of ‘sweet’, or of ‘vegetable’. In Australia all such meanings require the addition of qualifying adjectives to vary the base meaning. In Australia the base word pie, when alone, most usually has the folk meaning of ‘meat pie—a pastry case enclosing meat and gravy, and as a single serve’. This is what one would expect from all bakeries, the newer ‘hot bread’ shops, corner or convenience stores, take-away food stores, often at petrol stations (perhaps the only food available there that could be a meal) and so on—whenever one asked for a pie.

To have emerged as nationally ubiquitous and distinctive the Australian pie has met a need in the community. Pies were readily taken up by the working class—being self-enclosed (requiring no utensils), mobile (even able to be carried in the pocket of a workman’s coat) and cheap (with low-cost ingredients, when produced in bulk), —the pie was broadly accessible and useful.  Its availability was aided by the large number of small bakeries and also by the increasing number of street vendors The latter emerged in early nineteenth century Australia, and in Sydney the most notable of these was the Flying Pieman.  Janet Clarkson notes that 

The country’s early love affair with the meat pie was shared across all ranks… [an 1850 Melbourne article] noted that the town councillors preferred meat pies from the local pub to the food provided in the council chambers. 

Those with wealth could always afford more exclusive food, but this example suggests the ready class mobility, where an increase in power does not overly change one’s tastes or practices.

From such beginnings, today there are numerous codified practices on the eating of pies, starting with preference for the tomato sauce, present or not, and either being dispensed into the pie or into a small pool on the top. Some shared patterns are—the manipulation of the paper-bag, the application of sauce, the folding back of any foil base, the first bite of the crust only, and the cautious follow-up bite—all completed with a daintiness that can rival the use of silver service. Whether one is alone or in a small group is irrelevant, for eaters often exhibit a mix of embarrassment and pride/loyalty, or—if they burnt their mouth on the first main bite—of an anguish confidently shared with whosoever is nearest. Indeed, such is the abhorrence of a cold pie that eaters prefer to regularly risk the burning of their mouths. Even the author Patrick White was susceptible to this, and also willing to use the experience for metaphorical effect: [after a particularly emotional encounter] I ran down the hill and bought a meat pie, and jumped on the Sydney train, scalding my mouth on hot gravy and remorse. 

In all, to eat the pie, or to be seen eating one, can be seen as an act of empowerment—it is a statement of commonality, of memory, of shared experience and values, and perhaps that thereby one might feel more authority to speak on behalf of a broader group. 

Linked to the pie’s working class accessibility, for many years the pie has been the usual food consumed by crowds at sporting events. As hot food purchased from an itinerant vendor, a pie was able to be eaten while standing in a crowd, sometimes with a pie in one hand and a beer in the other. A leading Rugby League footballer of the 1960/70s in Sydney, Artie Beetson, was specifically characterised in the media as well as more popularly for pie-eating. For a character who appeared undemonstrative, quiet and large, it was a mild and affectionate label. However, as his already large front-row-forward size increased even more over the years, so he began to express irritation with the repeated linking of his name with pies.  Still, over even more time, as he moved on from his playing/coaching career (and less reliant on physical condition and performance) and the media and public attention declined, so he came variously to embrace a link with pies.  

Affluence, social mobility, and healthy lifestyles, have in part changed the practice of pie-eating. A television advertisement of the middle years of this decade shows two workmen in the cab of a truck each engaged in eating a pie with delight. One of the workmen notices two suited businessmen in a restaurant, wining and dining in what is a parallel lunch for another class. After a seemingly long thoughtful pause, the workman turns to his partner, and says that the businessmen do not know what they are missing. He then resumes eating his pie with even greater relish. The pausing is a tense moment, containing the potential for class antagonism (the juxtaposition of the ‘haves and the have nots’, of the ‘two cultures’ and the taking advantage of the ‘working poor’—the expression which so antagonised former Prime Minister Howard). The advertisement plays with the idea of the pie as a highly charged site of social difference—then coming down on the side of delight in the ordinary and familiar rather than of the elaborate or the pretentious. The advertisement has some ironic distancing, with the implication that it is actually the pie-eating workman who does not know what he is missing. Yet there is another level of irony, also beyond the workman, but which is implicit for Australian viewers, i.e. that the fine-dining Australian businessmen could themselves be hankering after a meat pie. All Australian businessmen of all eras would certainly be aware of pies, and when it suits them it is always a viable option as either a snack or a convenient small meal. While there is class tension in the advertisement’s pause, the pie plays a countervailing role towards the egalitarianism that is largely seen to bind the nation. Adapting Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s observation—it is not just the ‘challenging foods’ that are ‘highly charged’ —for the ordinary can also at various times be ‘beloved, detested, stigmatised, or reclaimed’.

A mix of affection and caution can be seen in the distinctive language used to describe pies in Australia.   The dog’s eye of the title of this work is rhyming slang for the pie. It might appear in a combination as in wanting a dog’s eye and dead horse—a pie and sauce. Underlining its importance, dog’s eye is one of the most widely used items of rhyming slang in contemporary Australian usage.  Graham Seal notes dog’s eye and dead horse for their humour, ‘colourful and generally visual nature’, which indeed is true. Perhaps in looking for variety he then omits dog’s eye and dead horse from his examples of ‘some startlingly colourful, whimsical and apt items’, when the rhyming slang would seem to capture the on-going concern over the actual ingredients as well as the fears of contamination.  Rhyming slang also provides a link with football, so that if it were said that a player needed to score a few more meat pies, it would mean that he needed to score more tries.  

Similarly derogatory usages for the pie are the rat’s coffin, mystery bag, maggot case/bag and so on.  While an impecunious baker could always vary the nature and amount of the ingredients (occasionally resulting in a rather flat, runny disappointing pie), actual examples of contamination always seem to be given a prominence well beyond their frequency. As with the rhyming slang, such pejorative expressions are not used to deter eaters. Rather, the terms are used by the eaters themselves in what is a form of self-deprecating humour and group-reinforcement. 

The origin of much Australian rhyming slang is located in the two War periods with their large gatherings cutting across normal groupings, and in peril in exceptional circumstances. While it might give the impression of being old, dog’s eye is however a relatively new usage and seemingly from the 1980s.  A closely related phrase has a much longer record—that of tinned dog, for ‘canned meat’. As Ramson’s Australian National Dictionary (1988)  records: 

1896: Comestibles… took the form of tinned meats, ‘tinned dog’, as all the various preparations of beef and mutton in the bush are humorously…designated. 

Ramson also records the steps of contraction, from (tin) dog, to the note that damper, ‘dog’ and tea is served up, meal after meal. The origin is one of rural workers in the period when canned meat became more available and convenient than slaughtering a beast—but where soon the tinned version, with its uncertain contents, became equally as monotonous, and deserving of humorous treatment. 

Symons notes that it is not until the Second World War that ‘pie and tomato sauce’ is referred to as a ‘national dish’.  It is reasonable to see the transition from rural to urban worker, stimulated by the catalyst of a WWII positioning with/against the British and Americans with a mix of cringe/assertion—all producing a broad need for national images, and having a specific expression in this case in a common food.  

The change from tinned food to shop-bought food, from eating dog to eating pie, charged by folk nationalist descriptions, found appropriately humorous new expression in dog’s eye. When many think of rhyming slang as having an older cockney source, it is pleasing to see that this prominent term dog’s eye has had a distinctive Australian and recent impetus/pedigree.

*

The commercial beginnings of the meat pie were in urban centres—whatever sized community could support a bakery. With increasing population numbers, a choice of bakers emerged, and the pies (just like the breads) were named after the particular bakers. I grew up in a ‘two baker’ town, and it seemed almost a point of honour to walk past the nearer bakery so that minor distinctions of preference could be exercised—over what was largely an identical product. For travellers there was the often-deprecated railway pie where its origins, reliability and accountability were always more suspect than that of local bakers.

Later there emerged broader distribution from regional, capital city and eventually national brands, where choice could be by reference to a distant/vague name, supported by local advertising hoardings. With such increasing variety, preference became more impersonal—with little scope for acknowledging the reliability or skill (or doubts about those) of a local baker. As one example for the features of this centralisation of production and distribution, one of the current major producers, Four‘N Twenty pies, takes its name from the older English nursery rhyme, but its advertising images are all national—the red sauce on the pie presented in the shape of the Australian continent, the word Australian appearing prominently and more than twice on much of its packaging. It is as though the older rhyme used for the name simply adds an air of longtime authenticity to the related meaning of ‘packs’ or ‘bulk’, with echoes of the land of plenty.

Quicker to prepare and serve than sandwiches (the other standard school-lunch food), pies quickly became the staple for school-supplied/purchased food, once a pie-warmer was installed. Recently an ABC Radio National program on volunteers presented the statement that ‘There’s more to working in a school canteen than turning on the pie-warmer.’ For the students, the on-site availability of hot food marked a change from the often once-a-week practice of pies needing to be pre-paid by arrangement with a local bakery and then later delivered to the school for distribution. In the early years of high school, the consumption of two pies (instead of one) for a boy’s lunch was a clear sign that he had reached maturity—a moment of transition, a schoolyard rite-of-passage, socially not so clearly noted elsewhere in this period of a boy’s rapid growth. With this increased teenage hunger and notable performance, food-eating competitions in Australia have often focussed on pies. The pie’s ubiquity, both prized and accessible, made it a suitable object for such endurance performances. 

At the other extreme from quantity are the competitions for quality. So many advertise their achievement as winners of an award, in one of various categories, at regional, state or national levels, that it would appear all makers could be rewarded at one point over a span of years. This profusion of awards suggests that ‘quality’ must be regularly reaffirmed in the public’s eye. Traditionally, at the local level, questions of ‘quality’ were shared across the community. For example, it is still not unusual for a non-pie-eater to proffer an opinion in answer to the question of ‘Who has the best pies in town?’ This seeming anomaly continues and is one indication of the pie’s community importance. Recently, social media have provided a means for consumer interest in such a search for quality to address a scale which is larger than the local—such as the on-line discussion group ‘Brisbane’s best pie?’ 

Regardless of the contemporary generally uniform product, it must be said that pies still, as traditionally, have fallen victim to stories of occasional lapses in quality. Alarmist newspaper articles often take the lead in stirring concern on the nature and ratio of pies’ ingredients, the potential for contamination, the preparation, freshness and service. With a fat content of up to 30%, a healthy version would be a minor curiosity. Health/weight concerns provide any individual with an acceptable reason to decline/opt-out, yet one could re-participate at any point—perhaps to gain the social benefits of egalitarianism. In health and social terms, the pie is not stigmatised in the way that, for example, are the multi-national fast-food chains.

Overseas visitors in Australia are often treated to a pie as an ‘authentic’ but baffling Australian experience. Two recent comedians from the United States have separately included items on meat pies in their television-broadcast routines. In these presentations neither could understand the Australian enjoyment of pies, and both were derogatory (e.g. one repeatedly describing the almost instant passage of a pie through the digestive tract). Perhaps because of this overseas’ impression, there has been no take-up of meat pies by the multi-national fast-food chains in their offerings in Australia.

Still, some change has come. An increasing range of pies is becoming available, with choices including steak and kidney pies, minted-lamb pies, Steak Diane pies, chicken mornay pies, Thai curry pies, all in the same display/pie-warmer as that ‘un-manly’ newcomer the quiche (pie). Yet, while customers are offered this wide choice, several bakers have confided that their main sales are still those slight variations on the traditional pie (with names such as plain pie, mince pie, beef pie, steak pie and chunky beef pie). The recent availability of varieties of pies aids a sense of social mobility, where the offering of choice may disguise one otherwise being stigmatised by ordering a pie. It may be that the long lists of pie varieties now advertised in shops may not need to be fulfilled—they may be merely a type of ‘social camouflage’ for those still wishing to consume the basic pie.

Distinctive regional variation can only be observed when those regions are widely-dispersed. The pie floater of South Australia (and of Broken Hill, NSW) has its origins in Britain with its pie accompaniment there of ‘mushy peas’. There is a Tasmanian variation of scallop pies, reflecting that state’s plentiful seafood. In New Zealand, until recent years the standard meat pie was made of minced mutton, with a strong odour characteristically different from that of beef-based pies. Otherwise, the New Zealand practice of pie-eating is largely indistinguishable from that of Australia. Indeed, on the evidence of their large number of their pie carts,  New Zealanders may be even more attached to the practice than are Australians. The smallness of this regional variation tends to throw into highlight the broad distribution, persistence and desirability of what is the standard pie. 

So standard is the practice of Australian pie-eating, that increasing cultural diversity is also able to be accommodated within it. In the capital cities with large Islamic communities, Halal meat pies have appeared and are increasingly available. The social impetus for this move can be observed in the collection of young people in schools. In a report on a particular school canteen introducing Halal meat pies, the chairman of the Halal Certification Authority Australia, Mr El-Mouelhy, said 

Kids want to identify with their mates. It is Australian to eat a meat pie. The child is an Aussie. He was born here and when he is with his mates he wants to eat an Aussie meat pie. 

This is a cheering statement of unity, based upon traditional Australian food culture.

*

Culturally and socially, regional Australia is comparatively stable, and consideration of pie-eating and its presentation in the regions can help in discerning basic features of the modern practice. Across the long thin North Coast region of New South Wales there is a sequence of local meat pie bakers and suppliers that have survived the expansion of metropolitan or national offerings. They have gained iconic status within their respective localities and often broadly across the region. While the prominent bakeries are spaced across the region in a pattern that is likely to attract at least one hungry tourist, these pie-eating sites have not been developed in the manner of ‘tourist traps’—those other places more characterised by the proliferation of themed branding and tourist memorabilia. Rather, for the outward-bound city driver, these rural pie-outlets supply a ‘taste of the local’, an element of heritage, and so to some extent they satisfy a desire of the metropolitan Australian to support the concept of Australian rural/country tradition.

From the larger city of Newcastle, heading north, the more prominent sites with their distinctive naming and signage are: 

Heatherbrae’s Pies: the name of the locality.

Fredo’s Famous Pies: in the village of Frederickton, long referred to by locals as ‘Fredo’. 

Uncle Tom’s Pies: attached to a petrol station at a T-intersection (now by-passed by the freeway), named after the original baker.

Lismore Pie Cart: inland, named after the city and its pie facility.

Mallanganee Pies: inland, named after the small hamlet.

Humble Pies: on the freeway, at Billinudgel, using a halo as emblem.

Yatala Pie Shop: named after the place. Also the site of a ‘big pie’, but no longer visible from the freeway.

One could trace a pattern of prominence and naming onward to Mocca’s Pies in northern Queensland.

Throughout, the self-representations include the shopfront, signs on the approaching side, signage on vehicles, brochures and napkins. The language of these representations typically addresses three set elements: 

place names

high quality

fame. 

Occasionally, the year of establishment is presented. Significant omissions are claims of authenticity—all have largely identical products and so authenticity is taken for granted. Also mostly omitted are the names of the current proprietors/bakers—in earlier times as important a marker as place. Only long continuity transfers a baker’s name to become a place name (e.g. ‘Uncle Tom’s’). In many cases the current bakers could all be new to the area—perhaps Vietnamese bakers bringing their fine-pastry French-style skills, aiding the consistency and quality of the product but where a Vietnamese name would break the illusion of long-time traditional continuity.  

The three most usual language elements have a particular effect. Place names draw upon local identity, loyalty and memory—perhaps long used as landmarks or reference points on journeys (e.g. ‘We always take a break at Uncle Tom’s’.) While representations of place-names can be humorous—as in the sign ‘Eat Moore Pies’ —this ‘place-name’ function can be completely divorced from the concept of ‘food’. For many years the slightly misleading signage at Uncle Tom’s (also a garage) seemingly offered pies in ‘leaded’ and ‘unleaded’ varieties. Official signage at Yatala for several years linked Yatala Pies with both the Crematorium and the Drive-in Theatre. This prominence of the place-name function is related to being long-established—where the tradition of many years at the site counts for more than does the actual food. Quality is repeatedly asserted—again, even though to a non-Australian the standard product is largely uniform across all producers. Key words attesting to this quality are hot and chunky, but prize, award and best are common. Mallanganee Pies even advertise their wares as ‘Best of the Best’.  Finally, one observes frequent use of the word famous. This element is almost as commonly found in the language for pie sites’ representations as are the locality names. The assertion of fame is seeming justification for both the claims on quality as well as for the name’s prominence, and encourages the process by which all will be reinforced. If one considers the discussion of the actual eaters, this usually centres on questions of the quality, which is nearly always affirmed, varying only in the amount of enthusiasm. They are already at the location, and are rehearsing stories which will be repeated with the name of the place. They have been partly drawn by the fame, and by reaffirming the quality, they again contribute to the fame—and the cycle continues.

*

Notwithstanding the humour and enjoyment which surrounds it, the Australian meat pie can be seen as a discrete folk marker of place, people, loyalty—and a link with earlier times. Whether emblematic of national identity or of regional loyalty, the British theorist Raymond Williams’ concept of culture as a ‘structure of feeling’  would seem to apply to the Australian meat pie. For Williams, much of what is termed culture is felt, and these feelings are tested and transmitted to new generations. In our case the idea/feeling of the meat pie can be considered as so important to us as to largely dwarf the actual food—an experience which is more head/heart rather than digestive. Perhaps in all this the ‘beauty in the ordinary’ is in the shared humour and loyalty with which we hold our pies.

References

  Steven J. Zeitlin, “I'm a Folklorist and You're Not: Expansive versus Delimited Strategies in the Practice of Folklore,” Journal of American Folklore 112, no. 446 (1999) : 4.

  Joan Radner, “AFS Now and Tomorrow: The View from the Stepladder,” (AFS Presidential Address, 28 October 2000), Journal of American Folklore 114, no. 453 (2001) : 263.

   Michael Symons, One Continuous Picnic: A Gastronomic History of Australia, 2nd ed. (Carlton, Victoria : Melbourne University Press, 2007) 300.

  Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Cleveland; New York : World Publishing Company, 1964).

  Here there are parallels with the differently shaped pasties still more popular in Britain. See Janet Clarkson, Pie: A Global History (London : Reaktion Books, 2009) 98-99.

  Warren Fahey, When Mabel Laid the Table: The Folklore of Eating and Drinking in Australia (Sydney : State Library of New South Wales Press, 1992) 4-5. For pies more generally, see elsewhere in this same work and also his Tucker Track: The Curious History of Food in Australia (Sydney : ABC Books, 2005).

  Janet Clarkson, Pie: A Global History, 93.

  Patrick White, Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait (London : Jonathan Cape, 1981) 16. 

  Perhaps there was also a lingering sense of the pejorative expression pie-eater meaning ‘someone who is ‘small-time’, of little account’—particularly used in horse-racing circles. See G. A. Wilkes, Stunned Mullets and Two-pot Screamers: A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms, 5th ed. (South Melbourne : Oxford University Press, 2008).

  See pictorial overview in “The Changing Face of Sport,” Alpha, January (2007) : 24.

  In, Lucy Long, Culinary Tourism (Lexington, K. Y. : University of Kentucky Press, 2004). xiii.

  For their distinctive Australianness, the examples which follow might be contrasted with the breadth of examples from elsewhere, which include a funding pie, humble pie, easy as pie, fingers in the pie, American pie, apple pie, etc.

  Perhaps only exceeded in use by the frog and toad (road) of early Cockney origin.

  Graham Seal, Dog’s Eye and Dead Horse (Sydney : ABC Books/HarperCollins, 2009) 18, 19. Of course the two examples have already been given exceptional prominence in their being chosen as the title for the publication.

  As was the case with footballer, Brad Thorn, where the NRL News report, 26 August 2007, began with the sentence ‘Brisbane forward Brad Thorn hasn’t scored a ‘meat pie’ all year.’ NRL News, <http://www.nrl.com.au/Clubs/Broncos/BroncosNewsArticle/tabid/104/NewsId/6815/Default.aspx> [accessed September 2, 2007]. In the AFL football code, the Collingwood team (‘the Magpies’) is affectionately referred to as ‘the Pies’.

  Such derogatory terms extend to children’s usage, with dog’s eye appearing in June Factor’s Kidspeak: A Dictionary of Australian Children’s Words, Expressions and Games (Carlton South, Victoria : Melbourne University Press, 2000). They also extend across the Tasman with maggot pack appearing in Sonya Plowman’s Great Kiwi Slang (Auckland, NZ : Summit Press, 2002).

   It is similar to swearing at a mate, expecting the same in return. 

   It does not appear in Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, ed. by Paul Beale, 8th ed. (London; Melbourne; Henley : Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984); nor in George W. Turner, ed. , The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary, 7th ed. (Melbourne : Oxford University Press, 1987); but is in A. Delbridge et al., eds. , The Macquarie Dictionary: Federation Edition (Macquarie University, New South Wales : Macquarie Library, 2001); and in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, eds. , The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. 2 vols. (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), citing published examples from 1988. The 1980s decade marks an increase in the numbers of young Australians travelling overseas—a wave subsequent to that of the Bazza Mackenzie generation, noted in Seal, Dog’s Eye and Dead Horse, 14.

  W. S. Ramson, ed. , The Australian National Dictionary (Melbourne : Oxford University Press, 1988).

  Symons, One Continuous Picnic, 158.

  The 1944 guide to Australia for USA Servicemen described the meat pie as the Australian version of the US hotdog. See Symons, One Continuous Picnic, 195.

  “Brisbane’s Best Pie?” http://au.messages.yahoo.com/news/localnews-qld/17345/ [accessed January 13, 2010]. Also see the attempted national coverage in “POI in Meat Pies” http://www.poidb.com/groups/view-poi.asp?GroupID=465&region=2_0 [accessed July 9, 2010].

  L. Neill, C. Bell and T. Bryant, The Great New Zealand Pie Cart (Auckland : Hodder Moa, 2008), [168 pp.].

  Vikki Campion, “Now Students Tuck into Halal Meat Pies’, Daily Telegraph, 26 May 2008, <http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23755707-5001021,00.html> [accessed May 4, 2009]. The article refers to Lurnea Public School in Sydney.

  For contrast here, consider the situation with wineries where often the name of the proprietor is prominent, whether the time is long or short, e.g. Tyrrells (Hunter) or Cassegrain (Port Macquarie). Pies in the region are produced for a market that might be described as ‘intensely local’.

  Moore is a small town in the Esk shire to the northwest of Brisbane.

  The expression fresh pies has been observed only on service station signage, here perhaps to dispel questions of the quality of the often maligned servo pie. 

  Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (London : Chatto and Windus, 1961), 48-49.

Bibliography

“Brisbane’s Best Pie?,” http://au.messages.yahoo.com/news/localnews-qld/17345/ .

Campion, Vikki. “Now Students Tuck into Halal Meat Pies.’ Daily Telegraph, 26 May 2008, http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23755707-5001021,00.html 

Clarkson, Janet. Pie: A Global History. London : Reaktion Books, 2009.

Dalzell, Tom and Terry Victor, eds. The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. 2 vols. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

Davey, Gwenda Beed and Graham Seal. A Guide to Australian Folklore. East Roseville, New South Wales : Kangaroo Press, 2003.

Delbridge, A. et al., eds.  The Macquarie Dictionary: Federation Edition. Macquarie University, New South Wales : Macquarie Library, 2001.

Fahey, Warren. Tucker Track: The Curious History of Food in Australia. Sydney : ABC Books, 2005.

Fahey, Warren. When Mabel Laid the Table: The Folklore of Eating and Drinking in Australia. Sydney : State Library of New South Wales Press, 1992.

Gwenda Beed Davey, and Graham Seal, eds. The Oxford Companion to Australian Folklore. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Long, Lucy. Culinary Tourism. Lexington, K.Y. : University of Kentucky Press, 2004.

Neill, L., C. Bell and T. Bryant. The Great New Zealand Pie Cart. Auckland : Hodder Moa, 2008.

NRL News, http://www.nrl.com.au/Clubs/Broncos/BroncosNewsArticle/tabid/104/NewsId/6815/Default.aspx . 

Partridge, Eric. A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, ed. by Paul Beale, 8th ed. London; Melbourne; Henley : Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984.

Plowman, Sonya, Great Kiwi Slang. Auckland, NZ : Summit Press, 2002.

Radner, Joan, “AFS Now and Tomorrow: The View from the Stepladder,” (AFS Presidential Address, 28 October 2000), Journal of American Folklore 114, no. 453 (2001) : 263-276.

Ramson, W. S., ed. The Australian National Dictionary. Melbourne : Oxford University Press, 1988.

Rolls, Eric. A Celebration of Food and Wine: Of Flesh, of Fish, of Fowl. St. Lucia, Queensland : University of Queensland Press, 1997.

Seal, Graham. Dog’s Eye and Dead Horse. Sydney : ABC Books/HarperCollins, 2009.

Seal, Graham. The Lingo: Listening to Australian English. 2nd ed. Kensington, New South Wales : UNSW Press, 1999.

Symons, Michael. One Continuous Picnic: A Gastronomic History of Australia. 2nd ed. Carlton, Victoria : Melbourne University Press, 2007.

“The Changing Face of Sport,” Alpha, January (2007) : 24.

Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary. 2nd ed. Cleveland; New York : World Publishing Company, 1964.

White, Patrick. Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait. London : Jonathan Cape, 1981.

Wilkes, G. A., Stunned Mullets and Two-pot Screamers: A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms. 5th ed. South Melbourne : Oxford University Press, 2008.

Williams, Raymond, The Long Revolution (London : Chatto and Windus, 1961).

Zeitlin, Steven J., “I'm a Folklorist and You're Not: Expansive versus Delimited Strategies in the Practice of Folklore,” Journal of American Folklore 112, no. 446,  (1999) : 3-19.