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Billy tea was celebrated in song and verse and, most notably, in the 1950s New Theatre’s theatrical production of Reedy River which used Edward Harrington’s haunting ‘Old Black Billy’ as one of its most popular songs.

My old black billy, my old black billy, Whether the wind be warm or chilly, I always find, when the shadows fall, That my old black billy’s the best mate of all. (Chorus of Old Black Billy)

There was a belief that the blacker the billy the better the brew. It was also believed that a dirty, black billy would boil faster than a new one, and many the bushman made a sporting bet in a billy boiling race.

It was the Dutch, in 1610, who introduced tea to Europe and also the name by which it has been known ever since. It became immediately popular—if not expensive—and shipments from China, India and Korea enticed the European tastebuds and changed society forever. Around the time the First Fleet was preparing to set sail to Australia the average Englishman was consuming two and a half pounds of tea per capita and tea imports for 1770 totaled £9 million. William Gladstone summed up the national craving for tea:

‘If you are cold, tea will warm you. If you are heated, it will cool you down. If you are depressed it will cheer you. If you are excited, it will calm you.’

 

Tea Clippers transported tonnes of tea to Australia

It was the Victorians who really fashioned our tea drinking and the custom of afternoon tea became the main testing ground for fashionable ladies. If your manners passed the afternoon tea test you might be considered acceptable for other functions. Lord help the wench who tried to sip her tea out of a saucer! Afternoon tea ranged from two to over one hundred people and leading hotels started to introduce daily afternoon tea with light entertainment, a pianist or guest vocalist. At home tea was often followed by card games. Before World War I afternoon tea was combined with the latest craze for dancing and this continued until the 1920s when some bright spark introduced cocktails and the tea trolley rattled away.

Devonshire tea became the Australian version of England’s ‘cream tea’ and usually comprised of scones, cream and strawberry jam. Devonshire teas were mostly served in roadway cafés in the country and at the swanky city hotels where they were seen as representative of English culture. Not surprisingly they were also referred to as High Tea. The English, always up for a good cultural bun fight, say that Devon has no right to claim this market, as it is a custom common to all England; just as the following rhymes belong to us all:

Polly put the kettle on
Polly put the kettle on
Polly put the kettle on
And we’ll all have tea

Sukey take it off again
Sukey take it off again
Sukey take it off again
They’ve all gone away

Blow the fire and make the toast
Put the muffins on to roast
Blow the fire and make the toast
We’ll all have tea
(Traditional children’s song popular in Australia)

Tea was also intertwined with the mythology of the bushman and especially the traveling swaggies. One of the most popular tea brands was Billy Tea with their advertising depicting a swag-carrying kangaroo. It is probably no surprise that Inglis & Co., tea importers and marketers of the Billy Tea brand, purchased the musical rights to Banjo Paterson’s relatively new song, ‘Waltzing Matilda’, in 1903, as part of their promotional campaign. It was the manager’s wife, Marie Cowan, who set the poem to its now popular music.

It was believed that tea could hold body and soul together in the hard times. Steele Rudd’s On Our Selection, published in 1899, summed it up neatly: ‘We couldn’t very well go without tea, so Dad showed Mother how to make a new kind. He roasted a slice of bread on the fire till it was like a black coal. Then he poured the boiling water over it and let it draw well. Dad said it had a capital flavour—he liked it.’

There is some uncertainty to the origin of the word billy. Prior to the availability of light tin the quartpot was the most common cooking vessel. Some say the word biily derived from the French bouille soup that was available in tins and were often re-used as cooking utensil. More likely the word came from the Aboriginal word Billa, a creek or waterland, as in billabong.

The old-timers had all sorts of names for their billies, most affectionate, however one, the Whitely King, was despised and named for the renegade protagonist in the Great Shearing Strike of the 1890s. This billy was made from a disused IXL jam tin with a handle fashioned from fencing-wire.

In the city, workers in factories also broke regularly to take tea from massive urns of boiling water in what became recognised as a ‘smoko’, because of the popularity of cigarettes. The tea lady was a familiar fixture at most factories and offices up until the 1980s. They were employed to ensure the staff always had enough milk, tea, coffee and biscuits, and hot water in the urns. Most factories and offices had a designated morning and afternoon tea break as the tea lady pushed her trolley through the various departments. Biscuits, if not provided by the employer, were on an honour basis of around twenty cents a day. The tea lady was replaced by automatic ‘time saving’ café bars that disbursed hot water to go with tasteless tea bags, insipid coffee, packaged sugar, and wooden paddle pop sticks to stir the concoction. The old tea ladies would have been embarrassed to serve such muck.

In the twentieth century the invention and availability of labour-saving machines like the modern stove, washing machine, dishwasher, iron etc resulted in a reduction of household work and allowed time for a cuppa with the neighbours and friends.

In the first half of the century women took great pride in baking scones, cakes and biscuits to serve with their tea and coffee. To be found with an empty biscuit tin was a matter of shame.

Old bushies used to refer to coffee as ‘slosh’ and were fond of adding chicory essence to their brew. Although the coffee tree is native to Ethiopia and the Sudan it has been widely cultivated for centuries and was primarily imported to the colonies to be sold in cafes and restaurants.

a betta cuppa coffee in a better coffee cup

The creation of the drink itself is surrounded in legend. Some have it discovered by a goatherd who noticed his flock becoming agitated whenever they ate the red berries that contained the coffee seeds. Another has a hermit Dervish priest or mullah used the brew to stay awake so he could pray. By the end of the nineteenth century, coffee drinking had become an international fashion including Australia. Cappuccino, so called because of its pale brown colour reminiscent of the robes of the Capuchin monks, is one of the most popular coffee styles in Australia.

Over the past fifty years coffee has become very popular, possibly due to the large post-World War II European immigration programs or the determined television advertising by corporate brands like Nescafe and Maxwell House. We can also claim some excellent coffee retailers and some wholesalers even operate ‘coffee schools’ to train baristas.

The last few years have also seen coffee retail chains like Starbucks enter the market offering a startling range of hot drinks in a ‘club’ atmosphere where patrons are invited to plug in their laptops and even download their favourite music onto their ipods. Determined coffee drinkers tend to get a little nervous with some of the Starbucks offerings like Gingerbread Latte, Toffee Nut Latte, Peppermint Mocha and, for the Yuletide, Eggnog Latte. As a ‘reality check’ note that freshly ground coffee is still a small percentage compared to the sale of instant coffee.

Both tea and coffee attract superstitions and folk sayings. Many of these sayings are passed down through families and most are extremely old. One of the most resilient traditions is that of reading tea leaves and telling fortunes. Tasseography, as it is known, has been practiced here for well over 150 years.

Some Australian sayings and superstitions:

A watched kettle never boils.
Let a kettle boil away and you will boil away your friends
To stir a teapot is to stir up trouble.
If you add boiling water before the tea you can have trouble.
Strong tea means strong friendships.
If two women handle the teapot at the same time, one will give birth to ginger twins.
Love is crossed when milk before tea.
To pour tea back in the pot is trouble.
Always burn tea leaves for luck.
If a single tea leaf floats to the top of the cup expect a friend or a parcel
Burn coffee and you’ll have bad luck.
Never stir other people’s coffee as you will surely stir up trouble.

 

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