The Quart-Pot and Billy-Can
No utensil is so generally used in the bush as the billy-can; none is more widely distributed, none better known in Australia. It is cheap, light, useful, and a burden to no man. It goes with every traveller, it figures in comedy and tragedy and has been the repository of the last words of many a perished swagman. Often it is found with the grim message scratched on the bottom, beside the dead owner.
Billy is famous! Story-writers and poets have immortalised him; he figures proudly in a hundred tales, and in a thousand poems. He seems to have originated in the Victorian goldfields. The early miners consumed great quantities of French tinned soup, called bouilli; and the empty bouilli-cans were used for the same purposes as are now the specially made “billy-cans.” Quart-pots, jackshays, pannikins, and other relatives followed as a matter of course.
For a horseman or cyclist on a short journey, who has no cooking to do, the quart-pot is the handier. But where there is one quart-pot in the bush there are ten billy-cans. The billy is carried in all manner of hands — black, white, yellow, and brindle. Shearers, miners, drovers, knockabouts, and even the poorest deadbeats on the track, carry it a-swing at their sides. It is swung under wagons, bullock drays, hawkers’ vans—every kind of vehicle that traverses the bush; and it jingles a tune to the Afghan from the back of his camel. The dainty housewife in town not infrequently sets it on her polished stove, and it often takes the place of the kettle in the cook’s home.
I’ll Back My Billy to Boil First.
Go into any aboriginal camp in the bush, and you will see billy cans there, but seldom any other utensils. All classes of people, whether city dwellers or back blockers, take it along with them when they go picnicking. There is scarcely a camp or hut in Australia without one, and some have a dozen. And what an array they would make if they were all stood in line! There would be a hundred miles of billy-cans! And the quarts and pannikins that are carried about would build a mountain.
Every traveller has a pannikin or two and one or two billies. Some have three—of varying sizes to fit one in the other. The tea-billy and meat-billy are the most common; the third is an auxiliary. Some swagmen have a special water-billy, carried in the hand, with a tightly-fitting bag drawn over it to keep it cool. The bag also prevents the footman’s trousers being blackened from contact and the horseman’s pack from being soiled. This is called a rugged billy.
A simple way of keeping liquid cool in a billy-can is to put the lid on upside down and fill it with water. Billies are of all sizes—from one to six quarts. The most favoured are the two-quart for tea, and four-quart for meat; while the general all-round billy is the three-quart size. I have seen many a hard-up swagman with an improvised billy made from a fruit-tin, with a bit of fencing wire for the handle. This is known as a “Whitely King,” from the fact that the Secretary of the Pastoralists’ Union, during a shearers’ strike, sent out a band of non-unionists furnished with this kind of utensil. They are therefore despised by bushmen.
Most travellers are particular as to how they boil their billies, for carelessness means waste of time and injury to the billy. The old style was to put a fork at each side of the fire, with a pole across to hang the billy from. The tripod answered the same purpose. Another method was to put two logs closely together so that the billy would stand on them—which left very little room for the fire. Some used a long pole resting on a fork, with the small end over the fire and the butt weighted on the ground. In using this the traveller had to be careful to keep his blaze down, or the pole would burn through.
A halt while the Billy Boils
No such clumsy, time-wasting methods are employed today—except at fixed camps, where the forks and cross-piece are put up, and a chain or looped wire for hooks hung therefrom. The traveller places two small sticks on the ground with the ends in the fire or rakes out a few coals and stands the billy on them, close to the fire. He doesn’t build a fire round it or jam it against the wood. The new chum does that, and his billy has a bright, shiny glow. This is caused by hot, vapoury smoke, the result of leaving insufficient air space.
One notices, too, that the old hand fills his billy to the brim, while the inexperienced man often puts his billy to the fire only partially filled, and consequently the rim, being unprotected, is very soon burnt off. A half-filled billy should never be placed against a fire but stood or hung over it. The old hand, again, lifts his quart from the fire and can carry it a long distance, with two sticks thrust crosswise through the handle so that the ends grip the sides like a pair of tongs. It looks simple, but it requires practice. When he has a smoky fire he lays two sticks across the top of the can to keep out the smoke.
An old whaler was once camped on the Severn River, living on fish. He had only one billy. He first made his tea in it, which he poured into a pannikin, then boiled his fish in it. He also had a small block of wood the same size as the billy, on which he sat and smoked. One evening at dusk he came up from the river with a tomahawk in his hand, and making for what he took to be the block, stuck the tommy into it. A yell of dismay escaped the old fellow when he found he had driven it through the bottom of his billy. Yet, with a piece of calico through the gap, and the edges battered down, he used it for months after. Another member of the battling band found a rusty billy, half embedded in mud, at the edge of a waterhole. It was full of water, and on forcing the lid off, he found a fish, about a pound weight, scurrying around in it. It was shaped like a boomerang and had undoubtedly gotten in through a small aperture in the lid when very young. That billy, probably, performed its last duty when it boiled its life-long prisoner.
Advertisement for Billy Tea 1900
Among some travellers, billy-boiling takes the form of a competition. The man of experience, looking over an array of well-used billies, says: “I’ll back my billy to boil first.” Interest being thus awakened, the others then put fiery spurs to their own utensils, each waiting, with a tea bag in hand, for the first ripple. Of course, some are specially adapted for quick boiling, whilst others are “naturally slow.” A man with a quick boiler is always ready to back it against any other. He understands it and can judge its boiling-time to within a few seconds. An old billy will boil quicker than a new one. The water is also worth considering. River water will boil quicker than rainwater, stagnant water quicker than running water, whilst water that has once been boiled and cooled will boil again quicker than any other.
Yet, there is many a tedious wait for the billy to boil, and rejoicing of hungry ones when it begins to bubble. The old diggers on Ballarat and Bendigo used to sing, “Oh, what would you do if the billy boiled over?” when it was time to make the tea. And what legends are wrapped around the billy! Yarns are always being told, and bush songs are always being sung around a million campfires while the billy boils.
Ref – Life in the Australian Backblocks by Edward S Sorenson
Billy Can Tea
You can talk of your whiskey and talk of your beer,
But there’s something much nicer that’s waiting us here.
It sits by the fire beneath the gum tree.
There’s nothing quite like it – a billy of tea.
So fill up your tumblers as high as you can,
And don’t you dare tell me it’s not the best plan
You can let all your beer and your spirits go free –
I’ll stick to me darling old billy of tea.
Well I rise in the morning before it gets light,
And I go to the nosebag to see it’s alright,
That the ants on the sugar no mortgage have got,
And straight away sling my old black billy-pot,
And while it is boiling the horses I seek,
And follow them down as far as the creek.
I take off their hobbles and let them run free,
Then haste to tuck into my billy of tea.
And at night when I camp, if the day has been warm,
I give to my horses their tucker of corn.
From the two in the pole to the one in the lead,
A billy for each holds a comfortable feed.
Then the fire I make and the water I get,
And corned beef and damper in order I set,
But I don’t touch the grub, though so hungry I be –
I wait till it’s ready – my billy of tea!
Moya Sharp
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