Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

One Continuous Picnic: A history of eating in Australia by Michael Symons

by
February–March 1983, no. 48

One Continuous Picnic: A history of eating in Australia by Michael Symons

Duck Press, illus., index, 278 p., $19.95

One Continuous Picnic: A history of eating in Australia by Michael Symons

by
February–March 1983, no. 48

Adam Smith’s economics foresaw that capital would seek new ways to save us kitchen time, to brighten the dinner table and to stop us for a roadside snack, but each time an investment saved a minute here, lifted a moment there, filled a gap in the market, it separated eaters further from the source of food. The ‘middle­man’ slandered agrarian values, insulated us from the seasons, took away the diversity of distance, compromised quality for price, and then distracted us from the deterioration with the baits of cheapness, convenience and gourmet entertaining.

That statement on page 229 more or less summarises Michael Symons’s book and indicates several of its basic muddles. Yet in many ways it is an invaluable pioneering history and, if it often exasperates, it at least leads the reader to some stimulating and constructive fury, in a very enjoyable way.

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.