The food and drink that fed Melbourne primary school kids in 1982

Meat pies cost 60c, buttered rolls were a sandwich option and Ovalteenies, Chickadees and Wagon Wheels ruled the snack section. This is the canteen menu that fed Melbourne primary school kids in 1982. 

Four' N Twenty Lite meat pie with tomato sauce in the shape of Australia. Food

Do you yearn for a time when a tomato sauce sandwich on white bread and a bag of Ovalteenies qualified as a nutritious lunch?

It’s April 1982.

Moving Pictures’ What About Me was at the top of the 3XY top 40 singles chart.

Although he didn’t know it, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was into the final months leading his government.

On the other side of the globe, Margaret Thatcher had just sent the might of Britain’s armed forces liberate the Falkland Islands from Argentina’s invasion.

And at Yallambie Primary School, in the north-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, the Mothers’ Club released its new lunch order menu.

The Yallambie Primary School lunch order menu from April 1982. Picture: Supplied

That menu was a culinary tour de force when I was in grade four at Yallambie PS in 1982.

Just look at the prices!

Who says state schools weren’t great schools?

A pie or a pastie cost just 65c, and it was 35c for a sausage roll.

Free tomato sauce? Today the very notion brings a wistful tear to my eye.

Unless you counted the sauce or the option of iridescent mustard pickles on sandwiches and rolls, the only vegetable-like matter in sight on the menu was a slice of tomato.

Lollies and chips were popular items on the menu. Picture: Supplied

You could get any kind of bread you liked as long as it was white.

Sauce sandwiches - favoured by Glen Clark, my best friend at primary school - were 20c a throw. It was 25c if you opted for a roll.

It was the same deal for a buttered sandwich or roll.

There was no hot fried food but pies and sausage rolls were customary.

In a modern context, the inclusion of Big M on the menu seems dubious choice.

Our teachers must have been especially pleased when kids who opted for iced coffee ran back into class from lunch and bounced off the walls all afternoon.

These went down well in the playground. Picture: News Corp Australia

Unlike many schools today, we could order chips and lollies - and did so in vast quantities.

I was quite fond of Ovalteenies but, if push came to shove and my family’s weekly budget allowed, I’d opt for the Milo Bar - a bargain at 35c.

In ’82, a Milo Bar was a block of caked Milo that was dipped in chocolate and was so seductive it set me up for a lifetime of dreadful dietary choices.

I was always a pudgy kid. I stayed pudgy.

Twisties and (now long lost) Chickadees were 12c a pack. I repeat, 12c a pack.

They were a bargain compared to the 26c potato chips - and tastier, too.

An 18c Wagon Wheel was also a terrific option.

I have no memory of hooking into a Sonny Jim, but at 17c I’d venture it tasted just as good as the fabled Sunny Boys of my youth.

We had a lunch order system rather than a tuck shop at Yallambie, a small suburb wedged between Macleod, Viewbank, Greensborough and Lower Plenty.

Mum or dad had to write your order on a paper bag and drop in the money.

The bags went into the lunch order basket, a re-purposed laundry basket, which the lunch order monitors carried dutifully to the canteen.

Shortly before lunch, they made a second trip and returned with a basket full of goodies.

If Big M was good enough for “Lethal” Leigh Matthews (pictured in 1982), it was good enough for the kids at Yallambie Primary School. Picture: News Corp Australia

My friend Matt Austen somehow saved the canteen list, found the yellowing A4 sheet years later and shared the mini time capsule with me via social media.

The YPS Mothers’ Club worked incredibly hard for the school, and there’s nothing unusual in the menu for the times.

Looking back, with children of my own, I feel a lot of affection for the parents including my own mum who put in the hard yards in the canteen.

But with all that fat and sugar on offer, I’m not sure how we all survived.

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