The Backstory
How did a Jesus-riding Skippy cowboy with a Super Mario moustache come to make good, honest woggy food the old way? What does that even mean? And how does he get away with calling his food woggy?
The seeds of Rockstock Deli were sown nearly four decades ago in the nation’s capital. Rocky Harvey was a 15 year old with a passion for trout fishing. He built a metho-burning smoker as a year 9 metalwork project, test-smoked a trout and never looked back.
If Feral Gourmet is a thing, then Rocky was Feral Gourmet from the beginning. Fishing, camping and hunting were his youthful occupations, and camping normally involved a 20 jar collection of gourmet spices in the camp kitchen. Because there’s no need to compromise on food just because you’re living rough.
And wherever there’s good fishing, hunting, camping and cooking, you’re going to find first and second generation Italians, Croatians, Serbians, Germans and Greeks. Or wogs as they often like to call themselves.
These first and second generational Aussie wogs were the guys Rocky grew up with and camped, fished and hunted with, who passed on many age old curing and smoking techniques, and who adopted Rocky as one of their own. While Anglo-Aussie Rocky was a Skippy, they said, he was soon woggier than the wogs.
Rocky’s passion for trout fishing and hunting drew him to move to the Australian Snowy Mountains, where he met his other love, a wonderful horse riding woman. That led to a cowboy hat, Cuban heels, a horse named Jesus, and eventually a moustache the likes of which hasn’t been seen since 1922.
There, Rocky also met Brad.
Rocky and Brad shared a frustration that the Australian Alps, despite their European climate and cultural connections, had very little truly local produce. If smallgoods should be made anywhere in Australia, they thought, it’s the Snowy Mountains.
It was Brad who created the “Feral Food Society”, an informal group of locals who gather on a Sunday afternoon at Brad’s famous Wildbrumby Distillery. After declaring that their best local produce was feral (trout, deer, rabbit and weeds), Brad challenged society members to bring a plate of something feral to drinks each Sunday afternoon.
Rocky took up the challenge, plating up venison in the form of salami, carpaccio, sausages and dry cured, and also trout and rabbit dishes, many made with Wildbrumby Gin botanicals.
And so Rockstock Deli was born.
So there you have it – the explanation of why you now have a Jesus riding skippy cowboy with a Super Mario moustache making gourmet woggy food in the Snowy Mountains. And why, as an honorary wog, he can get away with saying it.
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Thredbo, Cooma, Canberra, Yass,
Bungendore, Braidwood, South Coast