Cabbage-tree hat
Encyclopedia
Cabbage tree hatsCabbage tree hats (also known as cabbage palm hats originate from Australia from around 1875-1880. Answers.com describes the hat as "a broad-brimmed hat made from cabbage-tree leaves."
After discovering that the leaves of the cabbage palm (the Cordyline australis could be woven into a hat, early settlers in Australia started to make cabbage tree hats, which soon became popular in towns and in the country.
The Powerhouse Museum describes a cabbage-tree hat thus: "Finely woven natural straw coloured hat; high tapering domed crown, wide flat brim; applied layered hat band of coarser plaiting with zig-zag border edges. Original stock book entry: "...made from leaves of Livistonia australis, Mart: (Palmae) which are first boiled, then dried and afterwards bleached." (OF)."
After discovering that the leaves of the cabbage palm (the Cordyline australis could be woven into a hat, early settlers in Australia started to make cabbage tree hats, which soon became popular in towns and in the country.
The Powerhouse Museum describes a cabbage-tree hat thus: "Finely woven natural straw coloured hat; high tapering domed crown, wide flat brim; applied layered hat band of coarser plaiting with zig-zag border edges. Original stock book entry: "...made from leaves of Livistonia australis, Mart: (Palmae) which are first boiled, then dried and afterwards bleached." (OF)."
Mentions of the hat
There are many mentions of the hat in Australian documents.- In Volume 6 of the "Historical Records of Victoria", published after the address by Police Historian Gary Presland at the Annual General Meeting in March 2005, it states: "Police Troopers wore a distinctive dress uniform, consisting of a blue jacket with red facings, black trousers with red stripe, Wellington boots, and pill-box cap. While on duty in the bush they usually wore patrol jacket and trousers, and wide brimmed cabbage tree hat."
- In Edward Micklethwaite Curr's "Recollections of Squatting in Victoria", it says: "Of the gentlemen one saw, a good sprinkling were squatters...Many of them, I noticed, indulged also in blue serge shirts in lieu of coats, cabbage tree hats, belt supporting leather tobacco pouches, and in some cases a pistol..."
- In Margaret Maynard's "Fashioned from Penury", it states: "... In the country, cabbage palm hats, as large as an umbrella, tied under the throat and sometimes burnt black by the sun, were especially common. Practical and cool, they were plaited from the plant Livistonia australia that grows in semi-coastal rainforest areas ...Later the making of these hats from cabbage palm became a form of cottage industry..."
- On page 53 of "Men of Yesterday", Margaret Kiddle refers to the cabbage tree hat as 'ubiquitious' in the 1840's.