For 70 years, Broken Hill School of the Air has been bringing children, families and teachers together across some of the most remote country in Australia. Now, that remarkable history and the community that has grown around it is being celebrated in a special way: through food.
Dust Off & Dish Up is the fifth commemorative cookbook produced by the Broken Hill School of the Air’s P&C Association. It was published to mark the school’s 70th anniversary and to answer a long-standing call from the community: the school’s previous cookbooks had been out of print for years and people were still asking where they could find copies.
When the call went out for recipes and photographs, the response was extraordinary. Hundreds poured in from parents, students, governesses and teachers, each encapsulating little pieces of their life in the outback.
Behind the scenes, four parents and volunteer editors spent four months turning a mountain of material into a finished cookbook. They selected recipes, gathered stories, cooked and photographed dishes, and prepared everything for publication. The result is much more than a collection of recipes – it’s a portrait of a community.
Moments and memories captured in meals
In rural Australia, food is about far more than what’s on the plate. When the nearest supermarket, shop or restaurant is hours away, cooking is both a necessity and a passion. It’s how families make do – making things from scratch and making memories in the process.
Meals made by a loved one can mean a great smoko and a chat shared in a paddock, friendly drinks on the deck or dinner around a campfire. The recipes bring to life special moments such as yabbies caught in the dam and home-grown produce picked and brought into the kitchen by the kids.
Those experiences are wonderfully woven into Dust Off & Dish Up. Most of the recipes are accompanied by the contributor’s own story, giving readers a real sense of the people and places behind the food.
The landscape itself is an important part of the story. Rural life can be demanding, with families balancing distance education, healthcare, businesses and the challenges of sourcing supplies in remote locations. Yet alongside those challenges is an extraordinary sense of place: endless horizons, spectacular sunsets and brilliant night skies.
Food that brings people together
In Dust Off & Dish Up, there’s something for everyone to make and enjoy. There are classic scones and sponge cake recipes alongside sausage rolls served with homemade tomato sauce. There are the peanut butter choc chip cookies that were popular at the local agriculture fair, the spinach gözleme Nan made, and a creamy fettuccine carbonara that’s a regular favourite.
Photography plays an equally important role. Alongside recipes and stories, the book includes moments from the school’s history, but it is the photographs that truly bring the pages to life.
Dust Off & Dish Up is the sort of book that might be picked up for cooking inspiration but then remains on the kitchen bench, because there’s always another photograph to look at or another person’s story to read. And at its heart, it is a celebration of the community that has sustained Broken Hill School of the Air for seven decades.
The school’s legacy is its unwavering commitment to educating children living across some of Australia’s most remote regions, and the strong community it has built along the way.
Fundraising is an important part of making that experience possible. When students are scattered across vast distances, opportunities that other children take for granted can require considerable planning and expense. Instead of simply attending weekend sporting clinics, Broken Hill School of the Air students might come together for a special one-off clinic when everyone is in town. Learning alongside classmates, or playing together as part of a team, can be an especially exciting experience for children who normally learn in isolation.
Excursions can also involve significant travel costs, making fundraising essential to ensuring students have opportunities to experience the same things as their peers. Over the years, fundraising has supported excursions, mental health workshops, arts programs and social activities that might otherwise be out of reach.
Keeping everyone connected
Keeping children connected across such an enormous area has been one of the school’s greatest challenges, and one of its greatest triumphs.
In the early days, students relied on pedal radios and UHF communication. Schoolwork was posted away and could take months to return. Today, laptops, satellite internet and video conferencing enable teachers to deliver lessons in real time, and better roads have made it easier for students to gather for classroom days, camps, athletics carnivals and swimming carnivals.
Those opportunities to meet face-to-face are about much more than education. They build friendships, create memories and give children a sense of belonging to a school community that can otherwise feel very far away.
The school’s motto is “Parted but united”, and those three words capture the spirit of Broken Hill School of the Air: a community separated by enormous distances but connected by shared experiences, resilience and pride.
For 70 years, students, families and staff have helped create something remarkable. Many former students have gone on to make their own valuable contributions to rural Australia, carrying with them the connections and sense of community formed during their time at the school.
Dust Off & Dish Up captures that legacy in a uniquely tangible way. Turn its pages and you’ll find recipes, photographs, history, laughter, hard work, family traditions and stories from life in the outback. Most of all, you’ll find a community that, despite the distances between them, has always found a way to come together. And this book is a solid reminder of how important that is.
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Rex flies to Broken Hill. Head to the website here and check out the route map below for more details.
