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Food Writing and the Australian Beach: From Leisure to Labour

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Writing the Australian Beach

Abstract

Recently in popular culture, the Australian beach has moved from being the site of outdoor, egalitarian leisure to an obviously classed and gendered site of work. The Australian beach as workplace is increasingly seen on screen in fictional representations, as well as in informational, lifestyle and reality television. Prominent in this imaging are culinary television episodes featuring cooking at the beach. Australian cookbooks also use the beach as setting and subject, including representing the beach as the actual site of culinary production. This chapter investigates what these contemporary texts reveal about ideas of the beach and culinary labour, the intersectionality of class and gender, and the phenomenon of branding, to reveal how evolving conceptualisations of the Australian beach have formed its representation in popular culture.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Creative Industries, Central Queensland University, Noosaville, QLD, Australia

    Donna Lee Brien

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  1. Donna Lee Brien
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Correspondence to Donna Lee Brien .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Creative Industries, Central Queensland University, Noosaville, QLD, Australia

    Elizabeth Ellison

  2. Creative Industries, Central Queensland University, Noosaville, QLD, Australia

    Donna Lee Brien

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Brien, D.L. (2020). Food Writing and the Australian Beach: From Leisure to Labour. In: Ellison, E., Brien, D. (eds) Writing the Australian Beach. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35264-6_5

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