Ian Doyle remembers the old days like it was yesterday, when he was a young apprentice butcher lining up at 4.30am at the Gunnedah Abattoir to collect the day’s meat.
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The 69-year-old is still in the very shop he began his apprenticeship in when he was just 16 years old and hasn’t looked back.
Born in Gunnedah in 1947, Ian applied for an apprenticeship at what was then Jacob Enks’ Busy Butchery in Conadilly Street in 1964.
At the time, there were 13 butchers in Gunnedah. Today there are just four.
Things were “totally different” back then Ian said, where the butchery sold only three varieties of meat – beef, pork or lamb and they were very plain cuts.
Chicken wasn’t readily available or sold in butcher shops.
“You could have anything you wanted, as long as it was pork, beef or lamb,” Ian chuckled.
“We did make cutlets but we never ever crumbed them.”
The humble butcher used to make up the very fabric of food of the Gunnedah community.
Back then, people stocked up on their supplies for a week or two – now customers collect their meat daily.
Deliveries were also an important part of a butcher’s business.
Back in the day, the delivery van was out all day, every day.
“Every butcher shop had its own van,” Ian said.
“When I was an apprentice doing deliveries, you’d always see the milk man or the bread man on your runs.
“You ran into them every day and you’d have a good old chat.
“Everybody would leave their money on the front step. Imagine doing that today....” he said.
Ian sources all of his beef, lamb and pork locally, but it has to be sent further afield to be killed.
It was a big change after always having an abattoir on his doorstep.
“I’d never thought I’d never see an abattoir in Gunnedah. It was such a beautiful, big abattoir. Now we have to send our meat to the coast, near Kempsey and have it freighted back to us.
“It’s about the only closest abattoir that kills for independent butchers.”
Ian said there had been many changes since he began his apprenticeship.
One of the biggest was the change to decimal currency and the metric system from pounds to kilos.
“It was monstrous,” Ian said.
“It sounded like our prices went up two and a quarter times, but it wasn’t really.
“It was a hard one and everyone went through it.”
Another big change was the switch to electric scales. Before then, you used an old weight scale and wrote down the weights and prices on paper, before adding it up.
Machinery has also changed, especially when making sausages. They were all mixed by hand, which froze because of the need to use cold water.
They were formed using a machine you wound up by hand, but now it’s much easier and quicker using a machine that does the lot.
Ian said today more and more people were conscious of fat and value for money and they certainly had a lot more choice.
The supermarkets have also had an impact, as it is not viable for small butchers to stay open late or on a Sunday.
Back in the day, there weren’t supermarkets as such, but department stores which had a grocery department.
Ian and his wife Pam bought the butcher shop in 1976 and carried out some major renovations.
He still enjoys the job he has worked in for 52 years and seeing the people he greets through the door.
“You develop a good friendship with your clientele,” he said.
“It’s one of those great businesses where you can develop a great relationship between you and your customer.”
Ian said the birthdays were starting to catch up with him, but “you never know what will happen” in the future.
“I like the people. It’s kept me young. Over all these years, we’ve employed a lot of apprentices and that really does keep you young.
“It’s great,” Ian said.
Read a story about another Gunnedah great: Saddler Bill a true craftsman