The Inspector-General of Misconception Read Free Page A

make associations between foods and parts of the body – where the food and the body become poetry – lubricous or not.
    We do not wish to dwell on this but comprehensiveness demands a few more notations.
    For example, Barbara Holland in her book Endangered Pleasures mentions oyster-eating as being ‘lubricous’.
    So does Tim Herbert in his wonderful essay on the anus in Australian culture – he refers to the ‘lubricous oyster’ (the Sydney Review , August 1995).
    A Toast: ‘To the Memory of the Sydney Review ’.

AN INQUIRY INTO THE FAILURE OF AUSTRALIANS TO EAT ENOUGH CHEESE
    In recent weeks there has been some questioning in parliament and the media of the terms of reference of the Office of the Inspector-General of Misconception.
    We believe that the Prime Minister has suggested that we are engaged in some sort of political ‘stew’.
    We are disturbed about the Prime Minister’s disparaging use of the word ‘stew’. We believe that the stew is an honourable dish. He has to realise that when he speaks like that it makes it difficult for stews everywhere to advance in the society.
    This month Our Office has been pondering the paradox that while Australia is one of the great dairying nations of the world, we have been slow to understand cheese or, what is called gourmet cheese; to distinguish it from those over-processed, incorrectly made yellow dairy products.
    Misconceptions about cheese abound and these involve the Australian identity and gracious living which is why The Office was called in.
    Furthermore, as usual, we are alarmed .
    The history of cheese in this country is not a happy story.
    May we be permitted to illustrate with a personal reminiscence? As a child in the heart of the heart of the richest dairying country in Australia, the south coast of New South Wales, in a family which invented, manufactured and supplied machinery to the dairying and cheese-making industry, the only cheese we tasted as a child was Kraft cheddar and smoked cheddar; neither of which were made in the district in which we grew up.
    Now we want to say this quite emphatically, as with tinned food, Kraft cheddar is not bad in itself.
    As for smoked cheese, we believe this could, at a pinch, be defended. It does combine something of the elemental bland solace of milk (the breast) with the comforting smell of warm, snorting farm animals in a barn, combined with the smells and flavours of the smoky open wood fire.
    That is, elemental flavours of the hearth and of Times Passed and Lost. But we do not wish, as a statutory body, to defend smoked cheese at this point in our gastronomic history.
    May we begin the Inquiry’s indulgence and continue our personal nostalgia?
    In the thirties, our father installed vats and Ronaldsonand Tippett diesel engines at the cheese factories on the New South Wales far south coast in places such as Yatte-yattah, Bodalla, Kameruka, Moruya, Tilba Tilba, Central Tilba, Candelo and Bega.
    And we had one of our first lessons in gastronomy from him. We had bread and cheese for lunch when we accompanied him on one of his business trips down to the farms and dairy factories of the south coast and we said how much we liked the bread and cheese.
    He said that bread and cheese was a simple dish but one of the finest.
    Back then these factories found little domestic market for their cheeses which were exported or perhaps used industrially in food processing.
    Except for Bega cheese, the cheeses sold under these names no longer come from small, local cheese factories and single breed dairies.
    Their honourable names have been taken up and applied to cheese made in mass-production factories elsewhere. The Bodalla cheese, for example, sold in the supermarkets is not made at the village of Bodalla; although there is a cheese factory at Bodalla which sells locally to passing customers.
    Legend has it that the cheese from these old coastal factories was enhanced by