With kids going hungry around the country, the loss of the canteen volunteer has to be a brain drain on the children | Peter Goers

Australia is in a canteen crisis, writes Peter Goers. Perhaps it’s got something to do with what passes for a menu these days.

There’s a lot to be said for a Vegemite and cheese sandwich. Indeed, this nation was raised on same and we were happy little Vegemites with a rose in every cheek.

Do parents still make Vegemite and cheese sandwiches as part of a school lunch? They should be because lunch, as a wag once said, is the most important meal between breakfast and dinner.

The belly rules the mind and we need sustenance to think.

The class divide in SA is symbolised by canteen/tuck shop. Public schools have canteens and private schools have tuck shops. Really ritzy (and mega expensive) private schools now have cafes.

An Australian school boy eating lunch in the playground.

The brown paper lunch bag we used to have for the canteen in Adelaide / SA. Supplied

Sadly, canteens and tuck shops are disappearing.

We are in a national canteen crisis. Cost-of-living pressures, the lack of volunteers and the fact that canteens are rarely viable as businesses are all factors killing off the canteen. They are disappearing – like carbs and sugar from our diet, and just as much missed. Carbs and sugar are yummy in our tummy.

Lots of folk stopped volunteering during Covid-19 and didn’t return – especially anywhere near kids who are notorious vectors of germs.

Mums were once the main canteen volunteers but now most of them are too busy working, although many are able to stop work to pick up their spoiled, cosseted kids in a 4WD every afternoon.

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Parents are busy and harried and must make time to make school lunches and little lunches (a snack at recess time) for their kids and this apparently includes cutting sandwiches into fun shapes. (My generation never even had the crusts cut off because they gave you curly hair).

A bento box is crucial as is the traffic light system of nutrition – green for go, amber for choose carefully and red for everything you’d really like to eat. Apparently kids are only supposed to eat pies, pasties and buns twice per term. I would’ve starved.

A frantic, frazzled parent rushing off to the gym or pilates or to get Botox who has no time to make their child lunch could give money for a canteen/tuck shop lunch if there still is a canteen or tuck shop.

Parents must consider allergies not just for their kids but every kid at the school. You can’t have a nut near most schools. Some kids are given quinoa (Spanish for cardboard) and tofu for lunch. Sushi is popular although not for me – I’m instantly hungry after sushi with seaweed in my teeth.

Oldfield’s Bakery delivered in the western suburbs from horse-drawn carts – but not on Mondays, so I was given two shillings to buy lunch at the Woodville Primary School canteen. I’d buy two Balfours sausage rolls, a ham and cheese double cut roll and a kitchener bun. That is still my preferred lunch.

My mother was a great mother, but a lousy cook. On my first day at Findon High School, the school bully bailed me up and took my lunch. I was relieved because it included a sardine and tomato sandwich which would’ve been pink sludge by lunchtime and the next day the bully refused to take my lunch and demanded 10c. The canteen at Findon High served hot soup and pies, pasties, buns and we also loved a buttered round roll full of potato chips – and also having a Snip.

There were brown-paper lunch bags in which you’d order lunch from the canteen, enclose money and get change.

The really sad issue is that kids are going hungry. Some 18 per cent of SA kids have go to school without breakfast and are supported by, especially, the excellent KickStart for Kids which provides 60,000 free breakfasts for kids per week in 360 SA schools.

And the volunteers make 10,000 Vegemite and cheese sandwiches per week. The demand for this charity is ever increasing and KickStart needs more volunteers and funds.

Viva the canteen/tuck shop.

Amelia Mulcahy, Rosie Barnett and Jessica Adamson on a night out at the Entertainment Centre to celebrate the Royal Flying Doctor Service Wings For Life Gala in 2021. Picture: Shane Reid

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