Townview Fish Inn, Mt Isa, QLD

Camel Pies at Birdsville Bakery, QLD

Cameron Corner Store

Sunday Night Carvery, Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary, Flinders Rangers, SA

French Hot Bread, Port Augusta, South Australia

Traveling around Australia, searching for some ubiquitous variety of cuisine that can be found in every country town, like gozleme in Turkey or Fried Kuay Teow in Malaysia, one is left with few options other than the humble bakery and its stalwarts the pie and sausage roll.  Of course there are pub meals, but since the 1990s both city and outback pubs seem to have suddenly forgotten that they serve essentially working class drinkers, there being more profit in the fallacious idea of pubs being 'bourgeois' venues charging $22 for a chicken parma or $30 for a poorly cooked steak (no, rare does not mean cooked until the blood is gone).

During my last trip around Australia 4 years ago, i met with many a fine sausage roll and pie.  It is, for anyone who has cooked the things themselves, very difficult to make a bad sausage roll.  Yet, on my previous circumnavigation of Terra Australis, I soon discovered that both city and country bakeries had a knack for baking from cheap meat and a general lack of ingredients, unexciting pies and sausage rolls.  Almost all the fine, memorable specimens I met were of the 'home-made' variety found at remote roadhouses.  Ah, the memories of some of those hungry encounters in the outback!  One of the few bakery-exceptions was the French Hot Bread bakery in Port Augusta.

Having been colonised by the French, the Vietnamese soon adopted the French talent for baking crunchy bread rolls, butter rich croissants and delicate, fluffy puff pastry.  How I miss Footscrays delectable Pork Rolls and Pork Puffs!
Although it is not a Prado of the Art of Baking, with the pies being on the runny side and the sausage rolls mushy, French Hot Bread in Port Augusta is certainly a step up for the palate when compared to the present status quo of Australian bakery fare.  The pastry is all of the usual, quality Vietnamese standard.  The prices are so low that, for under $10, you can get two pies from their wide selection as well a delicious bee-sting for a sticky desert.  Obviously some thought goes into the large variety of baked goods, for it seems that the owners follow the archaic adage that putting care into their product, rather than skimping on quality and over-charging, will stir customers to return and increase profits. And it seems to be working for them, thankfully: at lunch hour in Port Augusta, there is no where busier. 
French Hot Bread Bakery may be no great vanguard of a traditional meat pie and sausage roll, but in a millieu where the Art of the Australian Bakery becomes something of an unpalatable, homogeneous Fordist nightmare, this intermingling of French-Vietnamese pastry with Australian/British baking offers something of a small beacon as one enters the Stuart Hwy.

Boat Haven Fish and Chip Shop, Robe, South Australia

As a teenager in Melbourne i recall the ebbing, glory days of an Australian fish and chip culture.  Everything that could be hand cut was, indeed, hand cut.  The batter was good and to fry ever involved some kind of animal fat.  Everything was wrapped in newspaper-sized sheets of paper, perhaps with some oil-absorbent lining hidden beneath the steaming chips.  It went without saying that one would receive extra chips and extra potato cakes.  These glory days involved many old Greek immigrants, and they took pride in their product.  But such days are, alack, long gone, and fish and chip shops that cut chips and potato cakes by hand are as rare as Bush Thick-knees on Sydney streets.

One of the few exceptions to this degradation of fish and chips towards boxed and frozen, mass produced products cooked in the cheapest vegetable oil is the Boat Haven Fish and Chip shop, by the harbour in Robe.  Like the main streets of too many seaside towns, there are several over-priced take-away joints in robe plying their lovelessly cooked, pre-frozen product.  But escape the main drag and behold, where the fishing boats unload one can have fried freshly caught fish, hand cut chips and beautiful, crispy, handcut potato cakes.
Hence, at the beginning of our journey to Darwin, we took time out in Robe, specifically to relive the memory of our last feast at Boat Haven.  Alas, being the middle of winter, the shop was closed.  In fact, it only opens in the warmer months.  But, for memory's sake, we thought we'd post up photos of what is very much a dying breed: a fish and chip shop that takes pride in its hand-cut product.