Babette Hayes, writer and designer, is a pioneer in the art of the Australian cookbook. Born in Syria to French parents, she attended design school in England before working for Queen magazine and as the Sunday Telegraph's cooking editor. She moved to Australia in 1964. At Belle magazine she worked with friend Lewis Morley, whose 1971 move to Australia she had encouraged. Besides her strong contributions to Australian interior design, Hayes was to exert a bracing influence on our food culture. During the 1970s she wrote many recipe books, starting with The Captain Cook Book: 200 years of Australian Cooking (1970), which traced the history of such local offerings as the carpetbag steak. Family Fare (1971), Australian Country-Style Cooking (1978) and Babette Hayes Talks About Food (1979) followed.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2005
© Lewis Morley Archive LLC
Lewis Morley (49 portraits)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Magda Keaney speaks with Lewis Morley about his photographic career and the major retrospective of his work on display at the NPG.
Drawn from some of the many donations made to the Gallery's collection, the exhibition Portraits for Posterity pays homage both to the remarkable (and varied) group of Australians who are portrayed in the portraits and the generosity of the many donors who have presented them to the Gallery.
