When you think about Gawler in South Australia and the surrounding country, there’s plenty growing.

You’re sitting on the doorstep of some of South Australia’s most productive agricultural regions, with horticulture, vineyards, orchards and broadacre farming all part of the landscape.

But apparently, somewhere amongst all that agriculture, Gawler also managed to grow something arguably just as important to Australian culture.

Chicken salt.

Yep. The glorious yellow stuff Australians have been dumping all over hot chips for decades can trace its beginnings back to Gawler, South Australia.

And weirdly enough, it wasn’t even invented for chips!

It actually started with chickens

Back in the early 1970s, a man named Peter Brinkworth was running a poultry business in Gawler.

Brinkworth was experimenting with seasonings for the chickens he was selling and developed his own blend of salt and spices to improve their flavour.

The original mixture reportedly included ingredients such as onion and garlic powders, celery salt, paprika, chicken stock or bouillon and MSG.

In other words, chicken salt was originally exactly what its name suggests… salt for chicken. Then somebody put it on chips, and Australia was never quite the same again.

The accidental upgrade

As the story goes, Brinkworth supplied his seasoning to takeaway businesses along with his poultry. At some point, one of those businesses tried sprinkling the seasoning over hot chips. This turned out to be a considerably bigger development than anyone involved probably realised at the time. Because while seasoning chickens was useful, putting the same stuff onto freshly fried potatoes created something Australians would eventually become borderline unreasonable about.

Chicken salt started spreading through takeaway shops, fish and chip shops and chicken shops. By 1979, Brinkworth had sold the business and recipe to the Mitani family, who went on to commercially produce the seasoning.

From there, chicken salt escaped South Australia and began its march across the country.

But here’s where it comes back to horticulture…

There’s something particularly Australian about the fact that one of our most famous seasonings became famous because somebody decided to put it on a potato. Because before there can be hot chips covered in chicken salt, somebody has to grow the potatoes, and South Australia happens to be very good at that too!

In fact, South Australia is responsible for around 80% of Australia’s washed potatoes. Some of the biggest names in the industry grow right here, including Mitolo Family Farms and Zerella Fresh, with major potato growing operations stretching from the Adelaide Plains through to the Mallee.

So while Gawler gets the credit for inventing the chicken salt, South Australian growers deserve some credit for growing an awful lot of the potatoes we’ve spent the last 50 years covering in it.

And potatoes are only part of the story. South Australia grows everything from onions, citrus and almonds to grapes, tomatoes and leafy vegetables. Drive through the agricultural areas surrounding Adelaide and further north and it becomes pretty obvious how closely food manufacturing, farming and regional towns have always been connected.

The things we think of as iconic Australian foods rarely begin in supermarkets or takeaway shops. They begin with growers, poultry producers, processors, packers, truck drivers and regional businesses experimenting with what they already have around them.

Chicken salt is a pretty perfect example. A poultry businessman in Gawler creates a seasoning for chickens, someone decides to put it on potatoes, a South Australian business commercialises it, and several decades later, asking an Australian whether they want chicken salt on their chips is almost unnecessary. Of course they do!!

So yes, Gawler really can claim chicken salt

There are plenty of Australian food origin stories that get argued about, exaggerated or claimed by three different towns. This one has some substance behind it. Peter Brinkworth is widely credited with developing chicken salt in Gawler in the early 1970s, and his story was eventually documented in the South Australian short film Salt of the Earth.

Which means next time you’re driving through Gawler on the way to a farm, orchard or vineyard, spare a thought for the town’s other contribution to Australian food production.

Gawler doesn’t just sit amongst some pretty impressive agricultural country, it also gave us the stuff we sprinkle all over it once it’s been turned into chips!