Convicts & Colonials: Food

Food in the 1840s
When Walter Leslie and Henry Stuart Russell visited George and Jane Thorn at Limestone (now Ipswich) in 1841 they ate dinner with the Thorn's. Robyn Buchanan described the occasion in "Five Days at Claremont":

The squatters admired the pleasant domestic scene as Jane began to serve the meal. A cloth had been laid on the table and was set with china - a change from the tin pannikins which they had been using. A bunch of bush flowers was arranged in a jug, and there was real bread on a board at the end of the table! After their rough camping life, everything seemed so clean and neat and attractive.

 

The meal that followed was the best they had eaten for months: pumpkin soup, beef stew with sweet potato and beans, a jam pudding, bananas and watermelon.

Food in the 1850s
Goods were imported into the town in the 1850s. Advertisements in The Moreton Bay Courier in 1854 list the goods imported into Moreton Bay which included: