At 18 in my fourth year my wages were only 10 dollars lower and a qualified butcher , had a certificate for making small goods not so much the finished product as I didn't add all the ingredients, had not been given the recipe for most sausages except for most popular seller
FRITZ, which in Australia is only know by that name here in my own state .
The fair dinkum one is made in a natural casing called a bung, when filled out it becomes Bung Fritz , then it is tied by string just before the big hole at the end of casing , it is then cooked in the copper for one hour at 160 deg F, it is also dyed orange , I wasn't very popular once I let the temp go up and the skins all burst .
The next day we had Fritz made from Fritz , jock gave me a serve for being so bloody stupid as he said and I never done that again , talking about the copper reminded me of the very first time I lit it , brand new copper in a concrete box, the gas burner at the front was set back in , so silly bloody me tried to light it with a match , the match went out , the gas was still on , when I lit the next
match I lost my eyebrows and some front hair when it went WHOOSH , well it lit the copper but always after that I lit a taper about a foot long no bloody way was it going to get me again .
Back over at Bowden the equipment there was well out of date still had wood copper for making dripping , only difference was an idea I still use today for cooking crabs, instead of wood a four gallon drum with sawdust is used as the burner,
The drum has a round hole at the base big enough to take a piece of water pipe say (as your in inches ) roughly a three inch pipe, then another piece of pipe you place in from the top so that that they meet at the bottom centre . Holding the pipe in place you add sawdust tamping till its filled and packed tight , withdraw the pipes and you have an airway for draft , a bit of kero to light it and it will burn until all the sawdust has been used .
That Murphy fella seemed to take a liking to me, as once I let the dripping overflow and nearly burnt the shed down , managed to put it out , Pop nearly had a fit , he thought I was about to throw a bucket of water over it , instead it was a bucket of sawdust and one or two smothered it .