Topic: School days

My Great Grandfather Francis (Frank) Darchy and most of his nine siblings were born on remote pastoral properties in early outback NSW in the 1850s. Initially they were educated by a private tutor and/or governess, but eventually all seven boys were sent one by one to a prestigious boys’ school in Melbourne, Scotch College, where most of them excelled at sport.

The school retains their records. Recently a cousin offered them a silver cup won by one of the boys for “Vaulting and Steeplechase” in 1871. It was awarded to “F. Darchy” – but which F? – Francis my great grandfather or FritzEdward, his brother? The school says “Usually if two boys of the same surname and initial were at school at the same time they would be distinguished from one another in some way, but I have seen no indication of that thus far in their cases.” However, the general consensus is that it was Francis. FritzEdward has been identified as the top sportsman who played in the first cricket teams of 1869-71 and the 1st Football teams of the same years. Louis was also a member of the First XIII in 1877.  The oldest of the brothers, Thomas, who entered Scotch in 1861, was a member of the First XI in 1963 and sadly died later that year during the school holidays after a fall from a horse.

Drought, a rabbit plague and a severe Depression came along in the 1890s; much of the family’s fortune was lost, and the children had to go out and earn their livings. They became stockmen, a wool sorter, an outback mailman …. Occupations far removed from those envisaged during their early schooling and young-man-about-town days in the Melbourne Social scene – the photos were taken about that time.

Topic: Favourite Recipe

I DID have a favourite recipe – “Del’s Banana Cake’ – which I obtained from one of my mothers’ friends when I was about 12. I carefully copied it into my mother’s recipe book. I loved messing around in the kitchen even then. But time rolls on, and the huge amount of sugar in the cake became excessive. Easy enough to adjust. But now another problem has reared its head – I have become gluten sensitive. And somehow that recipe does not adapt so well to GF flour even in its many combinations. It just doesn’t taste the same.

But a friend has come up with an absolutely wonderful GF chocolate cake. Putting all the ingredients including melted butter and unbeaten eggs in a bowl all at once seems so counter-intuitive to one reared on old fashioned “first cream the butter and sugar… sift flour twice…” method – but it WORKS. It even adapts to a sugar substitute. Margaret’s Chocolate Cake is now my favourite recipe …..