Our current obsession with Masterchef, the Good Food Guide and all things foodie, makes it hard to imagine a time when eating meant survival. Food has also played an integral role in building relationships, livelihoods and communities. During History Week 2011, the History Council and the Oral History Association are pleased to present an exciting online experience that explores the value of food to human survival and relationships through the intimate medium of oral history. Visit the History Week website to listen to stories of struggle and joy. Exclusive snippets of interviews conducted by professional historians will be available for you to download as various characters tell of their struggle to survive war torn countries, help others during the depression era or acclimatise to life in Australia.  

Tomato Stories
The knowledge and history of our ageing pioneering market gardeners is currently being collected through sound recordings and photography by the organisation, ‘Memory Bank’ before it is all lost.

Fish Favours
Joy McMaster remembers her mother swapping her home cooked family meals with Pyrmont fish workers during the Depression.

Jam and Lamb
Luigi de Angelis enjoyed working on the Snowy Mountains Scheme but found the mass cooked evening lamb meal intolerable so ate bread and jam for weeks until a fellow worker told him how to endure the food.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner
Life in Kakuma refugee camp in the north of Kenya, although extremely hard, was relatively safe for the thousands of people escaping fear, civil unrest and war in various parts of Africa but food was always in short supply.

‘Malta never fed us’
Rosalin Ven Der Sloot recalls the regular lunch and evening meal her mother prepared each day in Malta after World War 2 ended.  

Sound Bites is a collaboration between the Oral History Association of Australia (NSW Branch) and the History Council of NSW for History Week 2011: EAT History.