Watched online by mourners in far away places such as Cambodia, Turkey , and Magnetic Island , a funeral service took place in Melbourne last month for a woman who influenced culinary circles in the Victorian capital and elsewhere for many decades.
.JPG)
She was Ursula Murphy , 80, photographed above during a trip back to Germany in which she visited the bakehouse in which her father had worked as a pastry chef.
He had been a U-Boat navigator during WWll and became a prisoner of war in Scotland and Canada . He told his family how during his time as a POW he caught and sold rabbits .
Born in Hamburg in 1941, Ursula was 14 when she was brought to sunny Australia - Melbourne -with her mother and father , a sister and a brother. They spent time in the Bonegilla postwar immigrant camp , a former army camp, through which more than 300,000 migrants passed.
They started a popular milk bar in the Olympic Village and a bakery at Fairfield , her father using his pastry chef skills ; he also turned his hand to bricklaying , the family letterbox he made at Doncaster still extant .
Ursula developed a keen interest in cooking , some of it German , for which she became renowned . The demand for her cooking was so great she supplied a number of cafes and restaurants in Melbourne.
At one stage she was involved in running the restaurant in Melbourne's influential Athenaem Club , in Collins Street , started in 1868.
Her extensive range of recipes ,which included sticky date pudding, sponges and tarts was so popular she sold some at markets, a tasty sample shown here .
.JPG)
A blind date arranged through a milk bar connection led to her marrying Ron Murphy , a motor mechanic. One of her popular treats in great demand was Nusstorte, a Swiss caramel walnut pastry cake .
The demand for it was such that she bought 20 kilo bags of walnuts which Ron cracked while watching television .
Two daughters , Beverley and Angela , received cooking lessons from their mother who had a large recipe book , many notes in German.
During the funeral service , at Doncaster , Angela mentioned her mother's cooking classes which included strict instructions to use the right utensils. Her recipe for apple picnic cake was included in the remembrance card handed out at the service .
.JPG)
Today Bev and her partner Jason Carlos run the mainly Mexican Man Friday**** restaurant on Magnetic Island, North Queensland .
Angela, an experienced television journalist , started her career with Channel 9 Melbourne, worked in Ballarat, Sydney and Brisbane . Up until recenty she was an executive producer at a Turkish television station in Istanbul . During her time there she attended a Gallipoli anniversary .
****There is an interesting background story to Magnetic Island's Man Friday restaurant, established l988 . When Bev and Jason bought the business it bore that name , bestowed upon it by an Irish couple who had named it after an eatery they had liked in Ireland . When the Irish took over the business it had been called the Mexican Munchies. It obviously did not remind them of Ireland,so being on a Robinson Crusoe-like island, they changed it to Man Friday .
Still on the premises is a relic from the Mexican Munchies period : a large drawing on an exterior wall showing a Mexican sitting on a donkey, cactus plants in the background .
.JPG)
