"Shrimp on barbie" myth rears head in UK

An Independent article today, 'What's so great about Australia', repeats the old furphy that Australians invented the barbecue. Not so. Australians got it from the Americans, and not so long ago, but the word is much older, having been introduced into the English language by the British pirate-genius William Dampier (pictured), who explored part of Australia long before the nation was even thought of. (The word has Caribbean roots in Taino, one of the Arawak family of languages.)

According to Diana Preston and Michael Preston, A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier, other words and expressions William Dampier introduced into the English language include: avocado; breadfruit; caress (verb); cashew; chopsticks; excursion (trip); kumquat; posse (iguana); rambling; sea-breeze; serrated; settlement; soysauce; subsistence (farming); swampy; thunder-cloud; tortilla (more)

The practice of barbecuing was known in Australia before WWII but generally referred to as a ‘picnic’, and sometimes other terms were employed. The barbecue of Australia is actually an import from the USA, probably following the presence in the war of thousands of American service people.

And the thing about Paul Hogan and "throw another shrimp on the barbie", as I have mentioned here before, is the biggest furphy of all, but we're not used to seeing it in British publications, just American. Australians don't have the word 'shrimp' in their vocabulary at all, unlike the Madison Avenue ad-men who made up the expression for a series of TV commercials. We do have prawns, however, but there is no tradition of cooking them on barbecues. Steaks, chops, sometimes fish maybe. We do, however, use the term 'barbie', so at least there's something true in the urban myth.