Earning a Crust A century of the baking trade in Warwick (1860s–1960s)

This unique combination of local, cultural and family history explores the lives of the men and women who worked in the baking trade in the regional Queensland town of Warwick during the century after the town’s establishment in 1861.

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Judith Anderson - Earning a Crust Cover
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What Will You Get From This Book?

Fascinating stories of the baking trade in a Queensland country town in the era before sliced bread.
Family histories of more than 20 bakers and baking families in Warwick.
184 pages of historic photographs, advertisements, maps and newspaper clippings.
First-hand accounts of how bread was made and distributed when bakers made their own yeast and deliveries were by horse and cart.
A hundred years of the flour milling industry in Warwick.

What's Included

Photograph of Jack Clifford in an Overstead rig courtesy of Brian Clifford Photograph of Jack Clifford in an Overstead rig courtesy of Brian Clifford;

Photograph of Jack Clifford in an Overstead rig courtesy of Brian Clifford A standard bag of flour weighed 150 lb – without the Cain family dog. (Photograph courtesy of Janice Aldred.)
  • Warwick’s bakers and bakeries from the 1860s to the 1960s
  • Australia’s and Queensland’s earliest bakeries and flour mills
  • Bread distribution and delivery
  • Traditional ovens and other essential tools of the trade
  • Bread research and the bread-making process
  • The impact of technology and societal change
  • Industrial relations in the baking trade
  • Recommended reading and resources
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Who This Book Is For

Current and former Warwick residents

If you live in Warwick today or lived there in the past, there’s something in this book for you.

Historians and history buffs

Whether your interest is local history, family history, or the history of trades and small business, you’ll find something new here.

Schools

A vital resource for projects, this book allows students to explore part of Australia’s history through the story of a single product - bread.

Libraries and Councils

An important source of historical information for local residents, researchers and elected representatives.

Book Reviews

See what our readers are saying.
"This is a really good (and easy) read and I have learned all sorts of things about artisanal bread-making that I am pleased to know.

This is an excellent book for a number of potential readers: family historians, local historians, occupational historians and those who just want to get a feel for the Warwick of today and some of what contributed to making it so."
Ana Gray-Doughty
"I really enjoyed the read. It was a wonderful insight into some of Warwick’s early history that I hadn’t explored before."
David Owens
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Judith Anderson

About The Author

For Judith Anderson as a child, fresh bread was the smell of morning.

Born into a family of bakers in Warwick on Queensland’s Darling Downs, she lived for her first 18 years beside the Brown family bakery before pursuing higher education and a career which ranged from teaching, health education, and journalism to marketing, management and the performing arts. Now retired, she lives in Brisbane.