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while ruminating, the cows get fabulous view...
princes highway, bermagui to narooma ©240612 |
…there is a secret around the coast concerning buying cow's milk… the real stuff, still warm … literally straight off the cows' udders... because it is not treated, it is quite illegal to buy this directly from the farmer… unless… unless...
...I remember when I was a child, after my mother had given birth to her umpteenth baby - she had borne 13 in her lifetime, an average number among mothers in the malay villages and little towns… one of my uncles sired 25 kids by his three wives - my father would get a couple of bottles of milk from the local sikh cowherder for my mother during her 44-day postnatal recuperation... this was special and we got a little taste of this amazing stuff after it had been slightly warmed on the kerosene stove... coffee sold in the town's chinese coffeeshops was usually served in thick white porcelain cup and saucer filled with half-inch of sweetened condensed milk left unstirred at the bottom of your cup - you just stir the amount of sweetness to your taste and you pour the coffee onto the saucer to cool it and you slurp from the saucer... tea, the 'teh tarik', sold from the Indian roadside 'mamak teh tarik', was also pre-sweetened with condensed tinned milk and poured from a great height into a glass to froth and cool it... however, coffee served in homes everywhere was almost always black and pre-sugared - you wouldn't be asked how you'd like your coffee - and poured from a huge aluminium teapot... so everyday use of milk was the tinned condensed stuff whilst babies' bottles contained the powdered kind, a popular brand among families was 'dumex' made by the infamous nestlé - it was so prevalent even one of my cousins was nicknamed 'dumex' until well into his adolescence... sorry, I digressed a bit…
…and so coming back to how to get real milk around here… you can get it by asking around nicely to get yourself onto the discreet list - it took ages to get onto this secret list: the last owner of the house consumed raw milk… got her to divulge the name of another local woman who regularly drove to a nearby dairyfarm… understandably the farmer got a bit jittery at first when I turned up with a camera, which I always carry, to get some shots of his beautiful spread... he could be in for a fine of fifty grand no kidding...
...there is a line in a great australian movie ( "the odd angry shot" I think...?) the dairy farmer said something along the line "oh, we don't want the city folks spoilt now do we?" when referring to supplying his creamy milk to his friend, a character played by the great aussie jack thompson...
…for a dollar a litre, you turn up around the late afternoon milking time, about 5 o'clock…you don't notice the cowshit atmosphere, operate the tap yourself from the huge stainless steel cisterns while the ladies are being milked at the back… leave your money in the tin box provided, say goodbye to the farmer and away you go with your delicious loot… rest assured that you pay a dollar a litre to the farmer, whereas he gets 22 cents per litre from the corporation that comes to collect his milk every morning...
...there's hope yet for city folks though… I never knew this in my thirty odd years in canberra …bu t if you want raw milk you can get it quite 'openly' by going to the belconnen market… to get around the law, it is called 'bath milk' and they will sell it to you for $9 for two litres under the label cleopatra (legend has it that the famous egyptian used to bathe in the stuff… someone told me there's an enzyme in milk that does amazing things to your skin)… enjoy… in your tea, coffee or bathtub… udderly fantastic...
...did you not know that...homo-milk is a genuine produce of canada...
