G'day Muttley, Foolestroupe (and anyone else not from Sydney),

I'm not surprised that non-Sydney terms and recipes are different. "Sydney or the Bush" is a definite linguistic reality, however it operates in other matters! Research into word sets and definitions (conducted on "neutral" ground ... in Canberra, during national exhibitions attracting crowds from all over Australia ... have shown that there is a distinct split between Sydney vocabulary and that of anywhere else in the country.

The Sydney influence is pronounced in a triangle bounded by Wollongong, Bathurst and Newcastle ... outside this area there is a broad similarity in accent, vocabulary and definition ... from Hobart to Cairns ... to Perth! (This matches my youthful feeling that Hobart and Brisbane, in the mid '60s, felt very similar [apart from climate details] ... and very different from Sydney, my home city.

Anyway, I had a friend who kept a small shop in Redfern in the '70s ... and he certainly sold a lot of 'methylated' spirits ... and lemonade to the same people (and not along with bottles of milk) so the metho/lemonade "White Lady" was alive and well (the white refers to the milky white colour of meths mixed with water - so my Dad told me ... from experience working with alchol-based shellac mixtures).

It should also be said, at this point, that John Dengate wasn't describing a Great Depression usage - rather the post-war drinking habits of a soldier broken by his WW 2 experience and the poor support offered to veterans whose wounds were not obvious.

Regards,

Bob