LM Back in the ‘90s, the Bullen family decided to subdivide their land. They still had animals on their land, and they had to give them away to the zoos that would take them. There are still some safari animals that just couldn't be accepted by the zoos. So, they kept them on one part of the land. When we first started farming, it was actually really interesting on one side of the farm. There was zebras roaming around with water buffaloes, monkeys in the trees and emus running around. And sometimes they would actually escape to our own farm and start chasing us that created like a lot of adrenaline.
LTL The idea of the second kitchen in Italian culture, here and overseas, was about being resourceful. You didn't waste the glut of summer tomatoes; you bottled them into passata. And pickling and fermenting other excess ingredients was about giving food a longer life.
JV In Sicily as well there was, you know, famine, people were dying on the streets because they had nothing to eat. If you go and see my relatives there, in Sicily or in Italy, or they've always got the second kitchen. Maybe not these days, but like my aunties have got the kitchen, which is an immaculate kitchen, which you use very rarely, maybe to make a coffee in the morning. But then you've got the outside kitchen, which is usually flanked by three freezers, all with chicken or schnitzel, you know, brodo and things like that. But that's all in the garage. Usually, the car’s parked a few meters away and there's a little table and often mum would cook all the fried stuff outside, like you know, they would go out to Williamstown or Queenscliff, and they’d get things like calamari or garfish and things like that - crumb it.
Wasn't anything that you would put in into Vogue Living to win a kitchen design awards. It was literally just raw or concrete walls, gas piping that was often done on the sly. If you had to ask me the question, ‘Did I think it was cool back then?’ No, I thought it was pretty embarrassing, but we had so much fun. The garage held so many secrets. The garage held so much laughter, the garage held so much growth, not just as a family, but as a nation, as well as the Italians or the other immigrants that came across like the Vietnamese and the Indians and so on. Everyone's got a very similar story, but it all, I think, is centralised by the fact that it's food that you have, that you need to make do with.
LTL This tradition of not wasting food continues today. Even for a tomato farmer, like Laks.
