A streetcar named desire?

by Albert Caton

I was leafing through a copy of the December 2023 ‘Costco Connections’ magazine when a photograph at page 48 reminded me of the donut van that parked of a weekend between Station and Princes piers during the 1950s when I was a kid. Lo and behold, glancing at the author, Lisa Goldberg’s, text, I noticed ‘Port Melbourne‘! And I knew I’d come home.

Lisa was reminiscing about visits to the St Kilda and Port waterfronts, but mentioned especially the van (silver aluminium, it was) that was parked of a weekend beside the waterfront footpath between the ‘Mission to Seamen’ building and the forecourt to Princes Pier. It made and sold hot, aromatic, jam-filled ‘American donuts’. 

On a warm, still afternoon you could smell the donuts from yards away; and the smell was fantastic—with the same arousal of the senses that one experienced from the footpath beside the Swallow and Ariell Ltd factory along Princes Street when they were baking.

From memory the van advertised the donuts as ‘American’; but thanks to a Dutch baker’s offerings in Canberra, and the home baking of a Dutch friend, I believe that their origins are the Dutch ‘oliebollen’ or ‘olykoeken’—i.e. ‘oily cakes’, which are similarly fried, filled with jam, and dusted with fine sugar.

At much the same time along Swanson Street from Flinders Street Station in Melbourne city there was a cafe that had an automated donut-frying machine in the front window, squeezing rings of dough into hot oil, and half-way around the circle turning them over to cook the other side. Despite their sugar dusting they seemed heavy and fluffy, not a patch on the moist, light, bayside offerings (provided you made sure not to scald your mouth on their piping-hot jam).

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As well as contributing a story to the ‘Costco Connections’ magazine, Lisa Goldberg also published her memories of the doughnut van at Port Melbourne in the 1970s and her father, Jack on the internet. You can read her story and see more photos on the Monday Morning Cooking Club website.

What are your memories of the doughnut van?