The Shady Baker shares three recipes perfect for tea-break treats

In more recent times, life has had more ups and downs and this has been reflected in our conversations. Unexpected events and changed plans add to the complexity of life as we grow older. So, when Dad mentioned that a freak weather event had damaged the woolshed on the property where I grew up, near Ivanhoe in far-west New South Wales, I felt surprisingly emotional.

It was more than just my thoughts about the pieces of loose tin and exposed timber. Suddenly I realised that life itself can feel like a shed weathering the storm, with familiar pieces gradually becoming loose. Some bits are mended, some things remain intact and some parts are tricky to repair. Circumstances change, people drift away, children grow up and nothing remains the same forever.

Through all of life’s changes, the structures and spaces from my childhood still feel like home. They have mostly stood the test of time; the sprawling homestead and outbuildings, the big sheds, the small sheds and, of course, the woolshed. In the wool­shed, every creaky door, every hand-cut post, every shaft of light, every surface covered in greasy lanolin and dust feels familiar and reassuring in a complicated world.

Walking into that dark, cavernous space as an adult, I am instantly transported back in time. With a soaring roofline, practical louvred windows and timber yards, it is not a modern woolshed. It was built by hand in a time long before high-tech building equipment, bitumen roads, online ordering and mass prod­uction. Each year when shearing time arrived, we took the opportunity to watch in awe as the shearers would skilfully shear thousands of sheep with mesmerising repetition.

Sometimes we children would call in at the shearers’ kitchen on the way to the woolshed and chat to the industrious shearers’ cook. The kitchen was always warm and the aroma of roast mutton wafted from the ovens. In those days the property supplied the shearing team with sheep for slaughtering and mutton was served at almost every meal. Enormous boxes and crates of provisions filled the benches and were stacked on the floor. There would be tea, coffee, bread and butter on a scale that seemed enormous to me as a child. And, of course, flour and sugar for baking.

If we happened to be near the woolshed at smoko time, we would see the cook bustling up the steps and in through the back door with clockwork timing. She would be carrying boxes of sturdy sandwiches and cakes, enormous pots of tea and bottles of bright green cordial to keep the shearers sustained. During smoko the noisy shearing machinery would be shut down and the shed would become quiet, apart from some low chatter and the occasional enthusiastic sheep dog. When the food was washed down and aching backs were slightly rested, the noise and activity would resume and the team would once again face the endless sea of woolly sheep.

The reality of modern life is that not every old station building can be constantly maintained or fully restored, and changes in farming methods have made some of these buildings redundant. Time moves on, but I can’t help feeling sentimental about the noble structures that have seen so many changing seasons, animals and generations of our family pass through the doors.

The simple yet satisfying recipes on these pages are a tribute to bush woolsheds and the tradition of the smoko break. Long may this continue, in the old and the more modern sheds right across our country.