Cookery the Australian Way

Cookery the Australian Way by Shirley Cameron, Suzanne Russell and Winifred Williams. Hardcover book with pictorial boards published by Macmillan 1990, 408 pages with black and white illustrations and a few colour photographs and illustrations.

“Here, at last, is a hardcover edition of the well-loved and much-used cookbook that has already sold 450,000 copies. For over twenty years, Cookery the Australian Way has been important to every person who loves to cook and wants to learn more about food and its preparation. It is an ideal first cookbook for beginners and young people starting out on their own.”

Cookery the Australian Way is aptly described above as being well-loved and much-used. Most of the copies I find are certainly in this condition... that is when I can find them. Considering there were 450,000 of this book in 1990, I've got to wonder where they all are now or is just a matter of them being so well-loved and much-used that they have finally disintegrated into oblivion. Finding this copy, slightly used and not without some blemishes was a lucky find. That it was a hardcover was an added bonus.

A few years back I had a friend ask me if I could track her down a copy of this fine title. It took me nearly a month before I landed one and yep, it had been slightly well-loved and much-used but not as well-loved and much-used as her original copy which was something that she had from her school days at least 30 years previously. She showed me this well-loved and much-used copy explaining in the process that it was the cookbook she pretty much used all the time. Stains, rips, marks, wear and many loose pages were all there, as was an elastic band holding the whole thing together. Well-loved and much-used this copy had certainly been. The big question was whether she would discard the old volume and embrace the new and the answer was that she was too emotionally attached to her original copy and would never be able to part with this the most sacred of relics.