A cup of native or billy tea

 

   This is Smilax Glyciphylla, or Native Sarsaparilla, that grows in my native garden in Jerrabomberra. 

As you make your cup of tea and sit down to look at my blog, consider our early settlers and their tea.

Although tea was popular among all classes in Britain by the 1780s, including it in the first fleet rations was not considered necessary. In the first months of settlement (by observing Aboriginals), convicts and marines found the native sarsaparilla leaf.

Due to its saccharine-like sweetness, it gained the name sweet tea. It was universally enjoyed by convicts, marines and officers, who drank it avidly as a restorative and possibly a health tonic- it was thought to be a cure for scurvy. Indeed Smilax leaves and berries were used medicinally by Aboriginal people.

Naval Officer William Bradley wrote:

We also found a plant that grew about the rocks & amongst the underwood entwined, the leaves, of which boiled, made a pleasant drink & was used as tea by our ship's company. It has much the taste of Liquorish & serves both for tea and sugar & is recommended as a very wholesome drink & a good thing to take to sea.

The native sweet tea was probably the original "billy tea" made on a campfire. The leaves need to be boiled in water for 15 minutes or so and steeped for a similar time until the flavours are extracted.

The significant consumption of the leaves by the early settlers soon made it scarce around the colony, and they had to venture further afield to find it. After 1792 when regular imports of "real" Chinese-grown tea began, the native alternative was rarely mentioned in letters and journals.

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