Taste of Combat: Commander John Goss

What did you have for dinner last night? Imagine if we took your dinner plans, put it 100 metres below sea level, multiplied the mouths to feed to about 60 and took out any fresh fruit or vegetables. This was a daily reality for Commander John Goss during his career as a cook in the Navy.

John’s story is one of many shared in the Shrine’s special exhibition Taste of Combat: The Evolution of Military Food, which uncovers often-invisible service of catering for the military and the challenges, research and innovation involved in feeding the forces.

Listen as John unpacks his career and how he managed to cook in such an extreme environment.

Transcript

LAURA THOMAS: What did you have for dinner last night? Did you eat at home? Or maybe you dined out? How do you think you’d go if we took your dinner plans, put it 100 metres below sea level and multiplied the mouths to feed to about 60. Oh, and take out any fresh fruit or vegetables. Well, this was a daily reality for Commander John Goss during his career as a cook in the Navy. Three times a day for weeks on end, he worked to keep a team of submariners full and happy while balancing supplies and the realities of life at sea. John’s story is one of many that is shared in the Shrine’s special exhibition Taste of Combat: The Evolution of Military Food, which uncovers often-invisible service of catering for the military and the challenges, research and innovation involved in feeding the forces. John joins me now to unpack his career and just how he managed to cook in such an extreme environment. Thanks for joining me, John.

JOHN GOSS: Oh, it's my pleasure.

LAURA THOMAS: Now tell me where it all started. How did you get into the world of military cheffing?

JOHN GOSS: At the age of 14, 15, the family moved from Southern Tasmania to a home closer to Hobart and I, at that high school that I went to, they had an Army Cadet unit, and I joined the Army Cadet unit, and that got me interested in a military, maybe a military career. I really do think that's where it started. My dad was in the military, he was a soldier himself of Second World War with four of his brothers. So we had a bit of a military background. But I think that's where it started, that this may be something I could, I could look for, look at, and not necessarily Army. I went to one camp where there were Navy, Army and Air Force. And I liked the look of the Navy uniform, the bell bottom pants looked pretty cool, but bear in mind, I'm 13, 14, years of age, so I was then made aware that Navy had introduced a program in 1961 to bring 15 and a half year old boys into the Navy. It was a government of the day initiative, many boys homeless, many boys in homes that were run by the churches. Boys homes, families came to Australia during the Second World War, and many of them had no extended family. So the Navy introduced a program to bring boys in at 15 and a half, which was 250 every six months. And you'd do 12 months of training over in HMAS Lewin in Western Australia, just basic seamanship, some skills, but you were in a uniform. You were in that Navy uniform. You actually went back to school as well. They had teachers, but that was for 12 months. And your course, yes, you learned to march. You learned to shoot, all those things that were military. At the end of that year, that period, you're 16 and a half now, you actually went to sea and you're at sea for 12 months before you would go away and do your category training. Why did I want to, or would like to have been a cook, goes back a lot of years. I did work in the kitchen as a 12, 13, year old boy in a hotel to help Mum and Dad out. So I thought I had a bit of a background in cooking, but there was no guarantee joining the Navy that I, in fact, could be a cook, because they went through a selection process, and Navy would basically look at that and look at your abilities. And my number one preference was Cook, and I got what I wanted. So at the end of my sea time, and I'm now 17 and a half, 18, I went to HMAS Cerberus to do my cookery course.

LAURA THOMAS: What was that training like?

JOHN GOSS: It was very simple. Australia's population (was) primarily British. The meals were very, very simple, very simple. You know, eggs and bacon, cornflakes and meat and three veg, fish, pork, lamb, beef and a couple of vegetables. And so it was, it was fairly simple. You did need to learn how to bake bread. At sea you would be required to bake because you couldn't carry enough bread for this time. And some butchery training, even though, at that time, the Navy still employed butchers in uniform because the meat was carcass meat, and it was broken down for the cooks by the butchers. And we had butchers at sea on some of our bigger ships as well. So very simple days.

LAURA THOMAS: I might be revealing myself a little bit here, but the thought of being on a submarine hundreds of meters below sea level is terrifying to me, but that that didn't cross your mind? You were just there for the adventure of it, I'm guessing?

JOHN GOSS: Well, submarines, that issue came up during my basic cooks course. One of my mates, my very best mate, Dutchy De Vries, who I joined up with as a 15 and a half. He and his family got off the ship in Fremantle early 1964 and Dutchy went around to the recruiting office, and the family was aware of this, and he joined the Navy, and he could hardly speak any English.

LAURA THOMAS: So he was Dutch I'm assuming by the nickname?

JOHN GOSS: He was Dutch. And we got all the way through, we stayed together through to the cook's course, and then we were made aware they were looking for volunteers for submarines, and Australian Defence Force, and Australian Navy, were just getting into submarines, and we started sending people over to UK in 1963 to do training on RN submarines, and our first four Oberon submarines were built in Scotland, and after our training, we would board one of them and bring it home to Australia. Submarines ,Dutchy and I spoke about it, and the idea was, if we both got there together, we would both go and spend our holidays, whatever holidays we might get, over in Holland with his family. So the attraction from me were Dutch girls. That got me into submarines. I had no idea, and there was very little information as to what you were getting into, what was available. We did have a couple of British submarines in Sydney at the time, and it was towards the end of the process you went through to see if you were suitable, that I actually got to walk on a submarine in Sydney and say, 'Ahhh, yes...'

LAURA THOMAS: This might have been a mistake.

JOHN GOSS: I'd lost Dutchy because he unfortunately failed one of the requirements for submarine service. So I ended up in UK on, you know, say, on my own, but with 40 other Australian Navy sailors to start our submarine training at HMS Dolphin down in Portsmouth.

LAURA THOMAS: So this had nothing to do with the cooking at this stage, you were going purely to train as a Submariner.

JOHN GOSS: Oh, it just sounded like a cool idea, and I'd get to Holland.

LAURA THOMAS: So what was that training like when you did get there?

JOHN GOSS: Quite frightening. And I thought I was out of my depth, because as a Submariner, at that time, you were trained in every aspect on that submarine. The last thing you got involved in was, 'Oh, I'm going to be a cook.' You had electrical training, marine engineering training, seamen training, because on that submarine, you were expected to be able to operate all the systems borrowed to after the submarine. You know, it was a team loading torpedoes, firing torpedoes, manning a piece of equipment, be it electrical engineering, shutting a valve in emergency, being in there, you could be anywhere in the submarine, you needed to know how to deal with a emergency situation. So, yeah, initially I thought I was going to battle through this, but I managed to get through. And then, of course, there was this, the escape training in 100 foot escape chamber, and you would do at least one ascent, free ascent from 100 feet, just grabbing a great gulp of air coming out of the hatch and breathing out slowly all the way to the surface. If you were in trouble, there were divers there that could come and grab you and give you a thump in the stomach to make you breathe. But yeah, look I got through. And then I was posted to my RN, my British submarine,

LAURA THOMAS: Right, and we're going full circle a little bit here, because was that posting back in the kitchen?

JOHN GOSS: Yes, I joined the submarine as a cook, but as a trainee cook. HM Submarine Odin, loved the name, was a very similar class submarine to what we were buying. But I was the trainee Cook, and I so I had one Cook, if you like, above me, my leading seamen cook. He was the qualified submarine, a qualified Cook, and he was responsible for me to do my training on the submarine, as well as support him in cooking. And then, of course, I had to pass a very detailed course before I got my dolphins, which signified I was a qualified Submariner, and I did achieve that through the help of that whole crew on board. I was the only Aussie on board. They made fun of me a lot, which I enjoyed.

LAURA THOMAS: That's good. Now, let's talk about catering on a submarine. What was that like?

JOHN GOSS: Well, we had a crew of 65, 65-68, three meals a day. And again, the food available to us, and there were limited storage, limited refrigeration, and some of it was still rations that were left over from the Second World War. I mean, we were getting tin products that were dated 1944 1945, tined vegetables and things like that. We could carry a certain amount of fresh vegetables and fresh bread to last probably five days. The endurance of submarines at the time was six weeks. You did carry emergency rations in case that went over, but you would sail with six weeks of rations on board. So at the end of the first week, you would run out of a lot of those fresh products, fresh vegetables, which were limited in variety and limited in what you could carry, but certainly potatoes, lots of bags of potatoes. The RN guys loved their fish and chips. You could carry a certain amount of frozen meat, but you, after about two to three weeks, you would revert to a lot of tin, bully beef, a lot of tin meats, tin fish. So you were really scratching to put something together, but the crew were used to this. A lot of the submariners had been in submarines for many years. So a Sunday breakfast every second Sunday was simply kippers

LAURA THOMAS: Just the fish?

JOHN GOSS: That's it. And it stunk. It was horrible, but they loved it. So that was just for Sunday breakfast every second Sunday, of course, you'd have tin baked beans and spaghetti, lots of tin products. It was really a lot of stews. One of the favourites of British Submariners was it was a dish called pot mess. It is, like it sounds, whatever you could find, you would create a stew, and you'd build it up. Hopefully you had some meat, some beef or lamb still in the freezer that you could use as a base, and then just build it up with vegetables. And this is a one choice for all the crew. And you would finish it off with tins of baked beans. You'd put tins of baked beans in it, and they loved it. Maybe you could have some mashed potatoes, if you still had potatoes or tin potatoes, but it was full of tin vegetables, you wouldn't get away with it today.

LAURA THOMAS: It sounds like you had to get really creative some of the time

JOHN GOSS: All the time! Yes, you did. And have the crew on side. The peeling of the potatoes for lunch and the evening meal, a bag of spuds would go aft, and as bag of spuds would go forward, and the sailors would sit over a bucket and peel their potatoes and then bring them down to us. So they were helping in that they felt that they were contributing, if you like. It was an environment full of diesel and smoke. You could smoke actually in the submarine, we were all issued 1000 cigarettes a month.

LAURA THOMAS: Each?

JOHN GOSS: Each. Now, I'd never smoked, but I would take them, it was a coupon, and you'd go and get your your cigarettes, because I would use them for favours from other sailors if I had a duty, didn't want to do it, I had a girl to meet or something, I'd give him three, you know, 300 fags, and he was happy. So you had this smoke environment, the diesel environment, but one of the breaks of the day was at 1130 every day of the year, rum time, top time, rum would come up at 1130. Now this, of course, went back to Nelson, and it lasted in the Royal Navy for 200 years. And they pulled the plug on it in 1971. And because of my position, I was called the Rum Bosun. So I had to get the rum up at 1130 every morning. And it come in 10 litre pipkins, which some may be aware of, was woven with cane. It had cane around this glass jar and a tot of rum is about five ounces. You had to be over 20. And officers never got it, never got rum. Even in Nelson time, they never got rum. They got gin and bread. But so I would put together enough rum for the forhead and afthead sailors mess and the senior sailors mess on the submarine, and that would go up, and they'd have someone there measure it out. Sailors got one and one. So they had one part rum, five ounces rum, and they would top it up with five ounces of water. So at 1030 every morning of the day of the year, they were drinking 10 ounces of rum. Senior sailors could have it neat. They had just five ounces of rum, so that broke the day up nicely. And those who didn't have to go on watch would probably go and have a little bit of a noddies.

LAURA THOMAS: It sounds called for. It's just crazy to think.

JOHN GOSS: But this was the environment, not only the catering and putting those meals together as best you could, but the environment of the submarine, and you know, you all had to work and live together in that close environment. During that time, I was operating out of HMS Neptune, which is in Faslane, in Scotland. And when you sailed, you went right into an operational situation because of the Cold War. So we were mindful of Russian submarines, Russian warships, even fishing boats that had sound equipment that were looking out. Everyone was looking out after everyone. You know, there were Americans, there, of course, the British, the French, the Russians. It was that Cold War period that really went from 1947 to 1991. It was tense. When you were out in that area of Russia and north up into towards the North Sea, you were aware that the Russians would occasionally throw a depth charge over the side. They didn't know you were there, but they toss it over anyway. And if you were lucky enough to be too close, it would hurt your ears, I could tell you. So again, the environment that I grew up in, in submarines as a cook, you know, set me up really well for my future in the Navy and to join HMAS Ovens, which was our third Oberon submarine out of build in Scotland. And late 1969 I crewed Ovens, then as a qualified Submariner, of course, with the other Cook, and we crewed that back to Australia, arriving back in Australia in October 1969 to join the Australian submarine squadron.

LAURA THOMAS: John, I imagine submarines have very limited real estate, so paint a picture of what space you were working in and where you were storing all this food three times a day.

JOHN GOSS: Well, yes, the galley was no more than about three meters long and a meter and a half wide. So it was a very confined space. It had an oven, two door oven, electric of course. It had an electric cooktop with four plates. It had a deep fryer with a single basket, a deep fryer. And basically that was it. You're creating an environment in the submarine yourself at this and one of the things I used to love doing was if I had onions to peel, I'd go and peel it up against the exhaust system. So it wasn't only me with tears in my eyes. The whole crew had tears in their eyes, but, but it was, it was a very close working. And we didn't have any magic stuff, like egg beaters. You had nothing electric, nothing. You did everything by hand, carved your meat, wooden spoon, things like that, we had nothing to help us to do that with. We had a cool room and a cold room, four five weeks, you could say you could keep enough frozen vegetables, using them wisely, and enough frozen meat, again, supplementing it with tin as you were going along.

JOHN GOSS: And as I said earlier, your fresh vegetables, you couldn't expect them to last any more than five days. So then you went to tin, frozen, dehydrated, a lot of dehydrated, beans, peas, onions, again, coming out of ration packs from the end of the Second World War, we were still using them. When I joined my Navy, my Australian Navy submarine, things changed. We had better refrigeration and larger refrigeration. Yeah, we moved away from the kippers and some of those offal meats people hate me talking about because you just don't see it nowadays, tripe, kidneys, liver, brains, all those things that, again, my early generation grew up with and from home as well, but the Brits loved their liver and bacon, their sauté kidneys. They had some nice names for them that I won't give on air but, but just think what your kidney does and what your liver does, and the names would arrive from there.

JOHN GOSS: So I got away from those when, if you like, I went back to the Australian Navy and onto my Australian Navy submarine. So we tried to do those mince and meat dishes that were quite bland, but it was more to the suitability of that crew that we had. By that time, we were able to carry a lot of extra milk that would last.

LAURA THOMAS: Oh, like a UHF

JOHN GOSS: Yeah that all started to come on. But the working day in the submarine for a cook from my Royal Navy to Australia, that didn't change you. You can easily expect to work at least a 16 hour day. Because you're feeding three meals a day, 65-70 people a day, and you had to prepare it, serve it, clean up, start preparing again. And then after about five, seven days, you'd have to take time out to do some baking. And, you know, bake bread, and bread rolls through the evening for the next day. And depending on the operational situation of the submarine, you could be called away at times to go and support other areas of the submarine, whether it was, you know, to load a torpedo or to man a piece of equipment or whatever you need to go up if you're on the surface, go up as a lookout. So interesting.

LAURA THOMAS: Did you enjoy it?

JOHN GOSS: Look I did. I do talk about it a lot, and people love hearing the stories. But I did, I say, you know, I developed as a person from this and to be mindful of others and looking after others, and in an environment that, yeah, very different in a submarine.

LAURA THOMAS: I think a key thing that comes through John, and maybe something that we don't think about as much is the impact of food and catering on morale. And obviously, when you're working in tense environments, like what I imagine would have been on the submarine, you are then a carrier of a key part of that morale. So how did you go about keeping that up?

JOHN GOSS: Yes, and it's something that's thrown at you from the minute you start your cookery course, your very basic course, one of the first things you were told by your instructors, and even way back then and even now, the ship's morale actually really starts in the galley. If you put up a poor product, everyone's coming through that from offices, senior sailors, sailors, they don't get any special treatment. So you've got to be very mindful that you are producing something that is, you put a lot of thought into and a lot of love into, if you like, because you want them to enjoy it. And I have seen it, a choice of dishes maybe it didn't satisfy a group or something, got something was wrong in the cooking component, and it starts moving through the ship. Then there's still a lot of Submariners out there that there are convinced that I never did pass the cook's course. But no it really does start from the galley. You've got to put that, those three meals out a day with all the care and attention, because a lot of those people are working hard and in environments on those ships that isn't pleasant, but to come up and have a sit down and have a nice meal is just a big tick in the box.

LAURA THOMAS: Talk to me about how over your career, the catering in the Navy, and I guess in the wider Defence Force, had to develop and adapt.

JOHN GOSS: Well, it certainly did, and joining as I did in the 1960s the doors were open in Australia for immigration, and we were getting more Brits, of course, but Asians, Chinese all over the country, and that affected catering across the country, not just with the Defence Force, Navy, Army, Air Force, but across the country. So we had to change to meet that, because a lot of these people were actually joining the Defence Force, and the old meat and three veg just didn't go anymore. One dish particularly comes to mind, and I think about it regularly, a dish called Chicken Cacciatore in the main galley down at HMAS Cerberus this would have been 1966 and we're probably feeding about 3000 sailors every meal through that big galley. The chief cook had been looking around and trying to move away from that meat and three veg, and he come up with this dish, chicken cacciatore, which, in fact, it's a an Italian dish that goes back to the 16th century, but we put it on for lunch, and it's a chicken dish, but it's got flavours that people weren't used to, spices that people weren't used to. We were starting to get used to cooking with those spices and flavours that ourselves. So introducing the sailors, many of our sailors and our older sailors, of course, to these new tasting dishes was quite interesting. And from that it just moved on. And then you started seeing around the country the restaurants, Italian, Greek, Chinese restaurants, opening those people in that period brought a lot of wonderful things into this country as far as food is concerned. And yes, the Defence Force had to adapt.

LAURA THOMAS: What other challenges did you come across in your catering career?

JOHN GOSS: When I left slaving over a hot stove, if I may say, left submarines and went to general service, and by this time, I'd been promoted to Chief Petty Officer, our cooks and our stewards, our catering personnel when they left the service, I don't know how I'd come aware of it and even started to think about it, but no one had any qualifications, formal qualifications, to go out into that big world and produce a document that said you're a qualified cook or a qualified food caterer. So I took that on as a challenge. And with my commission and my early postings as a sub lieutenant, Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander, I moved from brackets cook to catering and logistics, I kept the cooks and stewards in mind all the time. And this civil qualification just bugged me, and I wasn't going to let it go.

JOHN GOSS: In 1983 I held a meeting at Puckapunyal with Army, Navy and Air Force catering personnel and put this forward, and said, 'What do we do? We need to prepare our people for life after defence?'. Our technical branches had already been through this, and they were now training, their training was being conducted a lot by contractors, but they were getting civilian qualifications in electrical engineering technical training that they could leave the Navy with. So I got a great show of support. But pulling it together was another thing and convincing Canberra that our cooks and stewards needed civilian qualifications because they thought we were doing a pretty good job anyway. But it's after. What do you do after? So the long and the short of it is Cerberus become the hub for Navy, Army cookery training. But the training they got on a bus at seven o'clock in the morning, and they still do this today, they get on a bus and they go to a TAFE or a training institution around Frankston or in that area, and they start their basic skills training with a task book. And this is this task book is followed through by the services with various things that they have to achieve. And at the end of the day, which could take three, four years, and they've maybe had sea postings, uh, Army, they've been out in a bush camp, all these become ticks in the box, and they receive their civilian qualification from the authorities, from the state federal authorities actually get a civilian qualification. So when they leave, they can go apply for a job, and they can show that they've got the skills. That was a major, major change, and it come in late 80s, it started to come together, but now it's been operating for quite some time, and Cerberus is the hub where they all start their basic training at classroom and getting on a bus to go to school.

LAURA THOMAS: What a legacy to leave. That's such an important impact for people, as you said, preparing them for life after service, which is something that we know can be a challenge for veterans.

JOHN GOSS: It was recognised, and in 1983 I was on the Queens Honours list, and I got my Australian medal, well, it was an MBE, but now an AM, and I've been lucky enough through that period to receive a number of honours and awards. It was all based around this catering aspect for the Defence Force, and where I put, where I was able to put the Defence Force. And I'm super, super proud of it, I can tell you.

LAURA THOMAS: You should be. It's very well deserved. And speaking of the Queen, John, I know there's a story here that you have done some catering for the Queen through the Navy. Tell me about that. What was that like?

JOHN GOSS: Amazing. In 1986, the Queen and the Duke were coming to HMAS Cerberus to present the new Queen's colours. Navy have a set of colours that, and now they'll be presented with the king's colours at the Queen's colours, which we fly on our masthead. And they took me off a ship that I was on, and said, John, could you go to Cerberus, to the officer's mess and prepare that for the Queen's visit in that we were having a garden party for 400 people, and it was out on the lawns that we had the garden party. So that was my task, to get the mess ready, to prepare everything for the garden party. I still shake my head. I was watching people, the 400 invited guests, come up onto the lawn and setting themselves up. I was watching just behind a closed door, glass door in the officer's mess, and I felt someone beside me. And I looked, and it's the queen

LAURA THOMAS: My goodness.

JOHN GOSS: And she started the chat, of course. And so I spent 20 minutes talking to her about what was going on and the reason she left the Duke and the admirals that were all standing in a corner. They were talking about, in her words, grey things and guns that go bang. So we had a lovely chat for 20 minutes. We were just one on one. You don't get that and because she wanted to know what was going on, a little bit more about the base, amazing.

LAURA THOMAS: Incredible. What an experience. Not many people can say they've had a one on one, 20 minute talk with the queen.

JOHN GOSS: And, you know, everything has gone on in the last couple of years. A lot of that comes back to you, and with a lot of emotion,

LAURA THOMAS: I bet, I bet it's a pretty incredible thing, yeah. And you've had an incredible career, 57 years in the Navy. What are some other standout memories for you?

JOHN GOSS: When was when we say 57 years, I held an ID card for 57 years. I had 54 years of active service. I took a break for three years inactive. And in fact, I bought a post office down in Tasmania, in 1988 post office in Ross and as a postmaster, I wanted a break, and Navy supported that. So there was three years. So basically 54 years, but my last 15 years was largely built around managing, through Canberra, through Navy headquarters, Navy's heritage collection, and getting Navy to pull an organisation and management structure together to manage their heritage collection. And I'm again very proud to say that I had an enormous amount of support, and they got me to stay till my 75th birthday, the day before my 75th birthday. And I was very proud to say that I left them in a pretty good position with the management of that heritage, which is so important, not only to Navy, to our people of Australia, it belongs to them. The Heritage collection belongs to them.

LAURA THOMAS: Now I do want to jump back to your catering career a little bit more, John, because I have to ask, where is the weirdest place that you've served food?

JOHN GOSS: Well, obviously it's got to be in submarines. It has to be in submarines. But the choices of food as well, you really are down to the bottom of the store, and you're having to pull this together, and you're thinking, there's 70, 65 people depending on you for lunch or dinner. That submarine galley has got to be right up there with the weirdest. You know, a full breakfast of kippers. You'd never get away with that in an Australian Navy ship at all, nothing else, no eggs, no bacon, nothing else, just kippers. But they loved it. They loved it. So it's still great memories for me. I wear my dolphins with a lot of pride still and I have one plastered on the back of my motorhome, a dolphin with 'wear them with pride' written underneath it, as we do, as Submariners do.

LAURA THOMAS: The Catering Corp and the work of cooks and chefs in the military is something that's gone relatively underrepresented in our history books, and that's what this exhibition is all about, is trying to bring that to the fore. But I was curious as to what you hope people take away from you sharing your story and your history?

JOHN GOSS: In the media, I guess you see a ship or a plane, and you see some Defence personnel, army, in battle fatigues, with guns and things like that. But you never see a photo of anyone slaving over a hot pot out in the middle of a jungle somewhere or in a ship that's rocking and rolling. They're out there. They're doing their stuff. The recognition is within, yes, but outside, you just don't see it, which is a bit unfortunate, because it's a challenge. It doesn't matter whether you're on a base with or most, most of our bases now have contract caterers. There may be some of our cooks intermingled with that, but particularly army, you've still got your field kitchens. You've got to be prepared to get out and do that in an operational environment. They've still got to eat. And yes, there are ration packs, but you can't live off ration packs forever. You've got to get out there. You've got to be prepared. And with Navy, with our ships, a big part of the design of our ships is based around looking after our people, not only in living quarters, but the galley to cater, so that all those needs that we've got to consider when we're putting a meal on a plate, all that is a big consideration, but it's done behind the scenes. The thing you see on a ship is a, you know, maybe a big gun or a missile system up there, and big grey thing you can't see anything else but down inside that ship, or, you know, within the field of army, the cooks that need to come to the fore and keep those troops happy.

LAURA THOMAS: Well, thank you so much, John for sharing the stories with us. It's been fascinating talking to you.

JOHN GOSS: Oh, look. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

LAURA THOMAS: Thanks for listening to this episode of the podcast. Taste of combat: the Evolution of Military Food is on display at the Shrine until November 2025. You can visit for free every day, from 10am to 5pm. To learn more, head to shrine.org.au.