Pleasures of the country table

In The Australian Ugliness, published in 1960, the architect Robin Boyd remembered a meal in a hotel dining room in Yass, New South Wales, served by "a waiter with arms bare to the pits dealing out soup bowls like playing cards round the packed table and responding to my circumspect enquiry about the possibility of a glass of wine with the succinct phrase, ‘I think you’ll be stiff, mate.’"

If the book is ever reprinted – and it is among the best books about Australian life and culture ever written – one hopes the publisher will not allow this anecdote to stand unrevised. Everyone knows, thanks to publications like "Epicure" in the Melbourne Age and interminable television hash-slinging competitions, that Australia’s cuisine has come of age, and that the sunburnt country’s hotels and restaurants lead the world in culinary excellence, hospitality etc. Not only that, but they are awash with wine. Had he been travelling today Robin could almost have floated out the door on it….