KESAB
South Australia became a very tidy place to live in the ’70s. Sure, the odd kid might have been abducted off the streets, but at least the streets were clean.The social unacceptability of littering (‘Drop something, sport?’) and the financial risk (‘Litter. It’s a $20 fine’) were drummed into us by KESAB (Keep…er…South Australia Beautiful). Another incentive to be tidy was Premier Don Dunstan’s container deposit legislation—a refund of five cents on every drink can—which allowed tramps and bag ladies to make a decent income from rooting around in bins.
Those who grew up in South Australia in the ’70s are now morally incapable of dropping rubbish on the ground, and, on visiting cities such as Paris, have been known to comment loudly on the lack of bins. [HV]
Keswick Station
In Sydney, interstate trains terminate at “Central”, so named because it is in Central Sydney. It’s a ten minute walk to the CBD and you can directly connect with intrastate trains within the station and the tram and buses outside.In Melbourne, interstate trains terminate at “Spencer Street Station”, so named because it is on Spencer Street, the Western Boundary of the Melbourne CBD. It’s a ten minute walk to the CBD and you can directly connect with intrastate trains within the station and trams and buses outside.
In Brisbane, interstate trains terminate at “Roma Street Station”, so named because it is on Roma Street. It’s a ten minute walk to the CBD and you can directly connect with intrastate trains within the station and buses outside.
In Adelaide, interstate trains terminate at “Keswick Station”, so named because it is in Keswick. It’s a thirty minute walk to the CBD if you are not carrying baggage. It doesn’t connect with intrastate trains as there are none to connect with anymore and there are no buses outside to connect with, just a taxi rank that is often as empty as a teenager’s pre-paid mobile phone credit account.
This situation can be traced back to the State Government of the day giving the South Australian Railways to the Commonwealth in the mid 1970’s as part of the Commonwealth’s attempt to create a national railway authority. It seemed like such a good idea at the time and perhaps it could have worked. However, the problem was that South Australia and Tasmania were the only states to sign up, and Tasmania didn’t sign up because they had trouble running interstate trains.
And this was the same government that was planning “Monarto”, but I digress.
Plans were put in place to move the rail terminal out of Adelaide Railway Station to a site that was once the Keswick railway marshalling yards, as the Commonwealth did not own the Adelaide Railway station anymore and for some reason no-one was able to come to an agreement on its continued use as a terminal.
These plans came to fruition in the mid 1980’s and interstate passenger trains were moved from the Adelaide Railway station, which had been built in the 1930’s to a grand scale that was architecturally based on New York’s Grand Central Station, to a small brick building in a backwater that had once been used to load sheep for slaughter.
Travellers could be easily forgiven for thinking that the sheep may have had it easier, even taking into account the slaughter part. The terminal is cold in winter, hot in summer and so crowded whenever a train is in that a sheep holding pen would seem spacious.
Every few years, a Lord Mayor, premier or sitting member says that it would be a great idea to bring interstate passenger trains back to the Adelaide Railway station. Typically, others join the chorus, agreeing wholeheartedly and asking for the trains to come back. Then, in true Adelaide fashion, everyone forgets about it for a few years. It’s almost as regular as the seasons. [CL]
Kitchener buns
Everyone has heard about the American eateries that decided to rebadge french fries and french toast as ‘freedom fries’ and ‘freedom toast’ respectively, following France’s reluctance to blindly enter into a meaningless and uncalled for war in Iraq. Some American restaurants boycotted French’s Mustard, an English product, as reported on the Snopes website, simply because of the name.
And while it’s too easy to criticise Americans for being jingoist and xenophobic, South Australians have proven to be at least as intolerant in the past.
Case in point: the kitchener bun. From the Balfours web site: a ‘delightful yeast bun with a jam and non-dairy cream filling sure to please any sweet tooth.’ Well, I’m not too sure about the non-dairy cream filling, but what I grew up calling a kitchener bun, and was a staple in school tuck shops, is basically a berliner krapfen, or berliner bun (and here’s a recipe).
The berliner bun is famous in its own right, thanks to a speech made by President John F Kennedy (‘Ich bin ein Berliner’). Whether JFK said that he was a citizen of Berlin or that he was a kitchener bun is for someone better educated in these things than I am to decide (although this page seems to thoroughly debunk the kitchener bun theory), but the fact is that a kitchener bun is a berliner bun, and between the onset of World War One and the culmination of World War Two the Australian nation engaged in a systematic and thorough process of renaming anything that sounded even vaguely German or seemingly Germanic to something unquestionably patriotic: in other words, something that sounded authentically and unquestionably British.
Many areas of South Australia were originally settled by German and Polish and Prussian immigrants. Their progeny were labelled as Germans, and they suffered during and between the World Wars as a result. To avoid further recriminations, many Anglified their names. And somewhere along the line the berliner bun became the kitchener bun, named after Lord Kitchener, because he had done such a fine job of killing large numbers of Germans during World War One (and, later on, more than 33,600 Australian youths at Gallipoli).
Knowing this now, I feel thoroughly ashamed. I hope the next kitchener bun you bite into tastes bittersweet. [CG]