Within our trail-rail-sail parameters, let’s use a “trail” metaphor to explain a rail conundrum. Suppose a state government were building a superhighway up to the state line, and on the other side of the line, the next state were building a corresponding one to meet it. But also suppose that rather than meeting it directly, it reached the line a short distance to one side. Under these circumstances, drivers in one state would have to exit the highway near the line and use a local road to connect to the disjointed continuation of the highway beyond. This would be supremely inefficient, especially when repeated at later state borders. Think of driving from Washington to Atlanta under those conditions, or from Brisbane to Melbourne. Fortunately, neither highway situation exists in reality.

But that type of situation does exist with railways. We’ve talked in the past about rail gauge, the inner measurement between two rails, and this illustration shows a variety of narrow, standard, and broad rail gauges. Standard gauge is the width in light blue, and is 1435 mm (4 ft 8.5 in). Anything wider is broad gauge, and note particularly here in light green Irish broad gauge at 1600 mm (5 ft 3 in). Anything narrower is narrow gauge, and note particularly here in medium blue Cape gauge at 1067 mm (3 ft 6 in), called that because of its extensive use in South Africa.

There are gauge problems internationally. Trains leaving Spain or Russia, both using varieties of broad gauge, require a change of undercarriages when crossing into the rest of Europe (in addition, Spain also uses narrow gauge in its north [2007/10]). But there are also gauge problems domestically, as in Switzerland, where passengers have to change trains in Zweisimmen between standard and narrow gauge (2008/15 “Golden Pass Route”).

The Great Rail Gauge Conundrum   That problem also has existed extensively in Australia. From the time railroads first came to Australia in the 1850’s up until a few decades ago, to extend the above highway metaphor, a rail traveler leaving Brisbane for Melbourne would have to change trains both at the QLD/NSW state line and at the NSW/VIC state line. This was because of what I call the Great Rail Gauge Conundrum that existed in Australia for all those years. Fortunately, in these last decades, the problem has been rectified reasonably, although not totally.

The situation in Australia was this for all those years: NSW was the only state using standard gauge. Most of SA (in the southern part) and VIC both used the above-mentioned Irish broad gauge, and were the only two adjoining states that had the same gauge. QLD opted for narrow gauge, the above-mentioned Cape gauge, as did TAS, WA, and northern SA, including the extension up from SA into NT. As some of us used to like to say in pseudo-French: Quelle mess.

How could this have happened? It all started out well. In 1846, in Britain, Henry Grey, the 3rd Earl Grey, became Secretary of State for the Colonies, also called Colonial Secretary (Earl Grey tea, flavored with bergamot oil, was named after his father, Charles Grey, the 2nd Earl Grey). His new policies brought significant change to the office. He declared that the colonies were to be governed for their own benefit and not for Britain and he accorded them self-government as far as possible. Two years in office, in 1848, showing concern for the well-being of the Australian colonies, he strongly advised them, when building railroads, to use a uniform gauge between them, which should be standard gauge, and that year, the colonies adopted that advice.

But then there was an influential chief engineer in NSW from Ireland who argued for Irish broad gauge, and the colonies then also agreed to this change. Finally, on the advice of a Scottish engineer familiar with standard gauge, NSW reneged on this last change and went back to standard. To save costs (smaller, lighter equipment, narrower turning radiuses), in 1865 QLD built using Cape narrow gauge. This worked well enough to persuade WA in 1879 to do the same, as well as TAS, and northern SA, and the die was cast. I wonder what Earl Grey, who lived until 1894, thought of all this.

Now although this was shortsighted, in fairness you have to consider the large size of the Australian colonies, that all rail service was local, and that there were in the beginning no rail connections between them, so there was no apparent problem. But the governments then didn’t visualize the need for intercity passenger or freight service. Even then, the colonies were separate governments before federation in 1901 and at intercolonial borders, passengers would have to pass through customs and immigration anyway, and all goods would also have to be removed for customs inspection. But with federation and free trade between states the problem became very apparent.

The coming together of two different gauges is referred to as a “break of gauge”, similar to the highway metaphor used above. By the end of WW2, there were no fewer than 12 breaks of gauge in Australia, which had been disruptive in both World Wars (see below). In addition, although there was an east-west transcontinental rail line between Perth and Sydney, it included enough breaks of gauge to make its use difficult. After WW1 a Royal Commission recommended gauge conversion in 1921, and after WW2, another postwar report in 1945 suggested the same, and in subsequent decades after that, change slowly came.

We’ll discuss individual problems and their resolutions. The two worst break-of-gauge bottlenecks were when the systems met at Albury NSW in 1881 and at Wallangara QLD in 1888.

Wallangara   Wallangara was the less severe of the two, and we’ll discuss that first. The original rail route from Sydney went north through Tenterfield (2010/8 Peter Allen) in northern NSW on its way to Brisbane. In anticipation of the meeting of disparate rail lines, the government of QLD purpose-built the small town (fewer than 400 people today) of Wallangara QLD to service the break of gauge for when the two systems met in 1888. I say this break was the less severe of the two, since Wallangara lies about ¼ the distance from Brisbane and ¾ the distance from Sydney, so the change of trains came closer to the beginning or end of the trip. This line was the only rail link for many years, until the all-standard gauge replacement was built further east, when all rail service stopped on this old line. Today, Wallangara amuses itself with its former rail existence. Imagine a town that existed only because of a break of gauge, and a break of gauge that doesn’t exist anymore, at that.

The newer, all standard gauge route was completed in 1932 through Grafton, much closer to the coast. Everything in NSW is standard gauge, so the novelty involved what is known as a “gauge thrust” into QLD, which simply means that an alien gauge (standard, in this case) was built into otherwise narrow-gauge QLD all the way into Brisbane’s Roma Street Station. This will allow me to ride unimpeded in my XPT sleeper into Brisbane. To my knowledge, this stretch is the only standard gauge track in QLD. The Sunlander I’ll be taking from Brisbane to Cairns is today the only overnight connection that is NOT standard gauge in the whole country. While the break of gauge problem has been solved at the border, no through rail service to the QLD beaches is possible from Sydney, since there remains the break of gauge within the Roma Street Station.

Here’s Slim Dusty singing The Sunlander (1955), telling about the train going right through from New South Wales to Queensland (also known as the Sunshine State, just like Florida). He mentions changing trains at Roma Street Station to the Sunlander, as we hear about his break of gauge.

Albury   Albury is a larger city of some 44,000 that lies in southern NSW right on the Murray River border with VIC. The problems here were always greater, since the Sydney-Melbourne route is a busy one. But there was the additional disadvantage that Albury is close to the midpoint between Sydney and Melbourne, so one’s trip was disrupted right in the middle. Furthermore, this also affected overnight trains. I find it hard to imagine changing sleeping cars at midnight, but that’s what happened.

The break of gauge at Albury was a major impediment to Australia’s war effort in both WW1 and WW2. Every soldier and every item of equipment and supplies had to be off-loaded and reloaded on the opposite side of the platform in Albury. Given the amount of rail traffic involved, at 450 m (1476 ft) the Albury Station platform is possibly the longest in Australia. When I’m coming from Melbourne to Sydney on my XPT sleeper, I should have no trouble in Albury, since a standard-gauge rail thrust went through in 1962 from Albury south to Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station (ex-Spencer Street Station). In May 2008 an agreement was reached to convert a second track south out of Albury.

In addition, even though Melbourne and Adelaide already had a compatible connection in broad gauge, just to standardize the network, in 1995 a dual-gauge conversion went through between them. Here, the inner track works with the mutual track for standard-gauge service, while the outer one works with the mutual track for broad-gauge service. (Four tracks could be used, but using three is cheaper, even though it causes double wear on the mutual track.) This other picture is a contrast between regular and dual-gauge tracks, also showing the complexity of splitting dual-gauge tracks into two lines. I’ll be taking the Overland, the only major day train of my trip, from Adelaide to Melbourne.

Mark Twain Speaks Up on Albury   Given that the Albury problem has been solved, let’s go back to 1895 and see what Mark Twain had to say on the subject of the Albury break of gauge.

While many associate Mark Twain with US domestic Mississippi River fiction, he actually traveled extensively, and wrote non-fiction on travel subjects, such as The Innocents Abroad (1869) and A Tramp Abroad (1880). In 1897 he published Following the Equator (British title: More Tramps Abroad), with the subtitle A Journey Around the World. As part of his RTW trip he sailed from Vancouver to Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, India, Cape Town and Southampton. In Australia in 1895 he stopped in Sydney, and later Hobart. When in Sydney, he considered going north into Queensland, but he felt his health prevented him from going into the northern heat (if he had, he’d have experienced the break at Wallangara). Instead, he bought himself a rail ticket south, from Sydney to Melbourne to Adelaide and back. In each direction, at both the NSW/VIC and VIC/SA intercolonial borders he’d have experienced customs and immigration, but only at the first one did he experience the Albury break of gauge, once in each direction. Hearing that he’d had something to say about Albury, I looked up the book in Project Gutenberg and did a word search for “Albury”. In Chapter 14 I found:

Of course Twain had positive things to say as well. The Sydney Writers Walk is a walkway around Circular Quay, and has 47 metal plaques embedded in the pavement honoring both Australian writers and those who lived in or visited Australia, including Joseph Conrad, Charles Darwin, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, Jack London, James Michener, Robert Lewis Stevenson, and Mark Twain. Read the quote on Twain’s plaque from Following the Equator.

East-West Transcontinental Rail   The east-west rail corridor has existed since the 1880’s and consisted of several different railway lines, with intermittent breaks of gauge. Finally, in 1970 the route was converted entirely to standard gauge, making through rail service, both freight and passenger, possible for the first time coast to coast. This route famously includes, between SA and WA, the vast Nullarbor Plain (NUL.ar.bor) which has the interesting Latin derivation “nullus” (“no”) and “arbor” (“tree”). Within the Nullarbor is the longest straight stretch of track in the world, running for 478 km (296 mi).

The Indian Pacific   It may seem that this famous train has been running forever, but it began service only in 1970 with the gauge conversion. It connects Sydney, Adelaide, and Perth, with intermediate stops. Just as the phrase “from the Atlantic to the Pacific” describes the width of the US, the name of this train indicates the width of Australia between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. I’ll be taking it from Sydney Central Station to East Perth, which requires an explanation. Since WA remains narrow gauge, the stretch from Kalgoorlie westward is dual gauge. The Indian Pacific goes only to East Perth, two short, local stops from Perth Station, which is near where my hotel is. It is still unclear to me if this is because the dual gauge doesn’t go that last bit, or if Perth Station cannot accommodate a train of this length. I’ll find out at the time, but in a sense, I’ll have a very minor break of gauge at East Perth.

Here is Slim Dusty singing his 1977 Indian Pacific, with a good accompanying video. Listen for his mentioning the Nullarbor.

North-South Transcontinental Rail: The Ghan   While other places have east-west transcontinental rail, I can’t think of anywhere other than Australia that has north-south transcontinental rail, the Cape-to-Cairo system in Africa never having been completed. In addition, the story of The Ghan is particularly colorful, having started as early as 1879, but not having been completed until six years ago, in 2004. And the story includes the most incredible, exotic, marvelous “break-of-gauge” that has ever existed in the world--and I don’t often go into such hyperbole.

Once the Overland Telegraph Line to Darwin via Alice was completed in 1872 (2010/12), there was interest in following it up with a rail line. Since it would be connecting with northern SA, which used narrow (Cape) gauge, this route would be a continuation of that gauge. Construction started at both ends of the proposed route, but the Great Depression of 1929 put an end of construction, and the narrow-gauge route was never completed.

At the northern end, construction started in 1883, and by 1929 it reached about 1/3 of the way to Alice, when construction stopped. Local service was provided for many years, but the northern section closed in 1976.

Construction at the southern end had started earlier, in 1879, just seven years after the completion of the telegraph line, but, although the route was meant to service Adelaide, it didn’t start there. It was considered best to start construction in Port Augusta (see above map), which means that travelers from (Irish broad gauge) Adelaide would already have a break of gauge by Port Augusta. The map shows that the route of the old Ghan followed the telegraph route closely, and did reach Alice by 1929, when construction stopped.

Given the dry climate of the Outback, starting in 1840 in Adelaide and lasting until 1907, camels, a non-native species, were introduced to Australia as transportation, and as pack and draft animals. Specifically, they were one-humped Arabian dromedary camels. Shown here in Kalgoorlie WA circa 1928 is a camel train moving a house. Immigrants from what is today Pakistan were brought in to manage the camels, but these workers were misnamed Afghans, although there were few actual ethnic Afghans among them. Camels hauled material and supplies for construction of the Ghan from the very beginning in 1879.

At any rate, as construction on the southern end of the route was ongoing, service to Alice was nevertheless provided, in that travelers arriving at wherever the southern railhead had reached would change there from the train to--you guessed it--camels for the final leg to Alice, a connection that was maintained until the railway reached Alice in 1929. Can we consider this the ultimate exotic “break of gauge”, from a narrow-gauge train to a camel “train”, (no pun really intended)? It must have been a most spectacular, and certainly unique, trip. What would Mark Twain have thought if he’d gone north out of Adelaide in 1895 and had tried it?

Obviously camel use in the Outback is no more, and camels have over time been released or escaped into the wild, which is also unique to Australia. While camels exist today in the great swath from Pakistan across the Middle East and North Africa, all are domesticated animals, and none wild, a population estimated at 13 million. That means that Australia’s camels form the world’s only feral (returned to the wild) camel population. The low estimate of these camels is 300,000, but more likely it’s today at about one million. With no natural predators, the population grows at an amazing rate of about 10% a year, which means the population could double in a decade, and these feral camels are becoming a minor agricultural pest. Still, when I’m in Uluru/Ayres Rock, there’s still a camel farm for tourist purposes and I’ve booked a one-hour camel ride, trekking in a camel train from the camel farm to the Rock. It should at least give a feeling about how this exotic “break of gauge” had been over on the Ghan.

Now we come to words and names. An old nickname for the Ghan was the Afghan Express, because of the camels and their supposedly Afghan drivers. Once Afghan was shortened to ‘Ghan, we got the name of the train and its route. To commemorate this history, at Alice Springs Station today there is this camel statue. In addition, note on the train that a camel is the logo of The Ghan.

The old route of the Ghan was narrow, and prone to delays and flash floods. Today, the Ghan Preservation Society maintains it as an historic rail route. In 1957, construction of the route of the modern Ghan was started, all standard gauge, and directly out of Adelaide itself. After Port Augusta, it took a new route with a straighter alignment, reducing the distance to Alice, which it reached in 1980, by 150 km (93 mi). Between 2001 and 2003, the Alice-Darwin stretch was completed, presumably including the old narrow-gauge right-of-way. The first trains reached Darwin, after precisely a century and a quarter of planning and waiting, in 2004.

Rail in Contemporary Australia   Most of the rail conundrum is now resolved, with just bits and pieces of concern here and there. The best news is that, by the end of the 20C, as shown on this Australian rail map, all mainland capital cities were connected by standard-gauge rail. Earl Grey would be proud. Australia’s track statistics are now these: 45.6% is standard gauge, principally NSW and interstate; 42.9% is narrow gauge, principally the large QLD system, also WA; 11.0% is broad gauge, in VIC and Adelaide, and 0.5% is dual gauge.

Given the large size of the states, rail distances are prodigious. I’m taking every interstate train (not in the below sequence), and these, in order, are their route lengths:

Brisbane of course is connected to other capitals only because of that standard-gauge rail thrust out of NSW, with rather extensive narrow-gauge service beyond (red on the map), including the overnight Sunlander. It’s all operated by Traveltrain, run by the QLD government, one of four state-government operated systems.

The other three systems run by state governments are: CountryLink in NSW (light blue), also rather extensive, all standard gauge, including the XPT (Express Passenger Train) overnight service to Brisbane and Melbourne (with almost equal route lengths); V/Line in VIC (green), still broad gauge; Transwa in WA (gold) still narrow gauge.

A private company, Great Southern Rail, now operates the Ghan (yellow), the Indian Pacific (navy blue), and the Overland (orange), the day train between Adelaide and Melbourne. It also runs special excursion trains all around the country, although Queensland beyond Brisbane, including the Sunlander route, still remains off limits.

Sadly, the last passenger train in Tasmania ran in 1978, and since 1990, uniquely among mainland states, there is no regional passenger service in SA outside of Adelaide and suburbs.

Just one more definition: when gauge conversion takes place, it usually leaves in its wake a number of “gauge orphans”. Because it’s often uneconomical to convert branch lines, these lines become “orphaned” and each branch line then has its own break of gauge with the main line, and becomes isolated. To extend the orphan concept, with interstate standardization, the above-mentioned narrow and broad gauge systems remaining are orphans, limited to local in-state service only.

Note the major rail stations shown on the map. We’ve discussed Sidney Central, Brisbane’s Roma Street, Melbourne’s Southern Cross, and East Perth serving Perth. We haven’t yet discussed Adelaide’s Parklands Terminal, also known as Keswick because of the suburb it’s located in. Rail in Adelaide is unique, with SA no longer having in-state service, only Adelaide’s suburban (broad-gauge) service, including to Keswick. Adelaide Station in town requires trains to reverse in order to leave, and has been left just for suburban service. There also wasn’t room to introduce a standard-gauge track as at Roma Street, especially given all the interstate trains arriving in Adelaide. Therefore, as in East Perth, arriving interstate passengers have a local break of gauge, transferring to a local broad-gauge train in Keswick for a couple of stops into Adelaide Station. Do also realize the variety of interstate trains arriving at Parklands Terminal, the Overland from the south, the Ghan from the north, and the Indian Pacific from both east and west.

China just opened a new 1069 km (664 mi) high-speed (HS) route that allows crossing half the country to Wuhan in time for lunch, and then being home again in Guangzhou in time for dinner. The line has the world’s fastest average speed, and completes the route in just over three hours. It’s like going from Boston to southern Virginia for lunch and being back in Boston for dinner. The Acela is the best the US has, but without a dedicated route, it’s not really high HS. The US is planning its first HS in Florida by 2014, between Tampa and Orlando. China has 42 (!!!!) HS lines either just having opened or set to open by 2012.

There is no HS rail in Australia, although there’s been talk. Since for HS you need a concentration of population (as in China), what I referred to earlier as the Southeast Corridor of cities, like the Northeast Corridor in the US, would be the logical HS rail corridor. Connecting Sydney and Melbourne is what’s been proposed so far, and it would be via Canberra, not as now. (The rail route via Albury had long been in place when Canberra’s ACT was formed in 1911. Canberra’s meager rail service essentially just connects with Sydney.) Logical extensions of such an initial route would be up to Brisbane and over to Adelaide. Just think what Earl Grey and Mark Twain would have thought of THAT.

ANZAC Biscuits   In 2010/9 under “Gallipoli” we first discussed the term ANZAC, as well as ANZAC biscuits, a sweet biscuit first prepared during WW1 to send to ANZAC troops, since these biscuits supposedly kept well during the sea voyage. They had, and still have, no eggs, due to WW1 shortages. They also include golden syrup, as discussed in 2010/9 under “billy tea/damper”. They remain popular to this day in both Australia and New Zealand, where I enjoyed a couple of them last year.

The term ANZAC is protected under Australian and New Zealand law, and permission is required to use it commercially or otherwise, which is presumably rarely granted. The only exception, which is limited, is for commercial makers of ANZAC biscuits, who may freely use the name, with the limitation that they (1) stick closely to the traditional recipe (merchants have been closed down who did not), and (2) DO NOT call them cookies.

I fully accept calling them biscuits, and any internationalist who is aware of word variations (prawn/shrimp; biscuit/cookie) should use the local word anyway (“When in Rome . . .”). But it’s also worthwhile to review the two words, biscuit and cookie.

Biscuits   The word biscuit derives from bis- (twice, similar to bi-) and -cuit (cooked, baked), and was applied originally to any pastry that, after being baked, was then further dried out in an oven to preserve it for long periods of time, such as on long journeys, as perhaps for rations at sea. It seems the original meaning covered what otherwise is a hard, crispy rusk. It would seem that however the word is used in English today, it’s varied considerable from the original concept.

The “twice-baked” concept also comes up in at least two other words used in English. Italian biscotto (plural biscotti, treated as a singular in English), has exactly the same derivation as biscuit. Biscotti, while sweeter than any rusk, do live up to their name, since they are first baked in slab form, then, after being sliced, get a second baking, which determines final hardness. The other word is German Zwieback, which, curiously, is a loan-translation from Italian to German of “biscotto”. “Zwie-“ is the combining form of “zwei” (two), and “back” is the root “bake”. Zwieback is similar to melba toast, and is, as the name says, twice-baked, the second baking taking place after slicing, as with biscotti.

So of the three related words used in English, biscotto, zwieback, biscuit, only the last one no longer lives up to the heritage of its name, but this is so to differing degrees in American and British usage. The American usage has swung most wildly from the original, since, aside from not referring to anything twice-baked, it doesn’t even refer to a cookie. An American biscuit is a small, soft bread roll, best when served warm with melting butter, or in the tradition of the American South, with gravy in the breakfast dish called “biscuits ‘n’ gravy”.

Neither does the British (and Australian) use of the word biscuit imply twice-baked, but at least it hasn’t moved over in the sphere of bread rolls. Still, while the British see “biscuit” as a single concept, Americans view the British usage as covering two fields that Americans do distinguish, cookies and crackers. Above I had to call ANZAC biscuits a “sweet biscuit” which is what a cookie is. In British usage, a you can also have a savoury biscuit, which Americans call crackers, used to describe a thin, crisp biscuit at least since 1739. For instance, British water biscuits are what Americans call crackers. Look at it this way: British “cheese and biscuits” are American “cheese and crackers”, while British “coffee and biscuits” are American “coffee and cookies”.

To add to the confusion, a leading US manufacturer of cookies is Nabisco, the National Biscuit Company, which is decidedly not named the “National Cookie Company”, so go figure.

Cookie   The word “cookie”, used in North America, both in the US and Canada, to describe a “sweet biscuit”, has always seemed to me a frivolous word, maybe because of its slang uses. Since the 1920’s it’s been used as slang for people, as in someone being a “smart cookie” or a “cute cookie”. For a period in time it could also be used as a girl’s name, as in the comics, where Dagwood and Blondie’s daughter is named Cookie. In contemporary technology, we also have computer cookies.

But I now find I have a lot more respect for the word, based on its very solid, Dutch-American, Hudson Valley heritage (“Dutch” being understood as including “Flemish”). We forget culinary heritages faster than you’d think. While everyone still associates newer fast foods properly, such as tacos with Mexico and pizza with Italy, in the case of older fast foods, there is no longer much association in people’s minds with Germany (or Austria) when talking about these foods: hamburgers with Hamburg, (especially given the forms “burger” and “cheeseburger”), frankfurters with Frankfurt (especially given the forms “franks” or “hot dogs”), or wieners with Vienna (Wien in German). It’s the same with our Dutch culinary heritage. Yes, we have one, and we regularly eat fast foods of Dutch-American heritage without any longer being aware of it.

Dutch culinary influence on American cooking was mostly in the form of pastries, and stemmed from New Netherland, particularly the Hudson Valley. For instance, the wafel (originally meaning “honeycomb”), when it was cooked soft, became by 1744 the waffle; when it was cooked hard and crispy, it became the wafer. Dough was curled around the handle of a wooden spoon to give it a corkscrew shape, and with krullen (note the -RU-) meaning to curl (note the -UR-), the resulting pastry was called in Dutch a kruller, spelled in English by 1805 cruller, which also indicates that cruller (-RU-) and [hair] curler (-UR-) are related words.

Another obvious indication of Dutch influence appears in the below items that include the Dutch word for “cake”, either in the form koek (rhymes with Luke) or koeken. For a simple example, the pannekoek became the pancake. But of particular interest is the koekje (J = Y), where -je is a diminutive, such as at the end of “doggie” or “Suzie”. That koekje by 1703 developed into “cookie” becomes quite evident, and shows the venerable origin of the word, which can be considered originally a diminutive in the form “cake+ie”, or “little cake”. However, only the word was adopted as a name, as the pastry itself had arrived with the British (as [sweet] biscuits?).

Another very well-known item is from he Hudson Valley, which was known for a dough ball prepared not by baking, but instead fried in oil and therefore called an olie-koeken, or “oil cake”. This dough ball was also called (perhaps because of its round shape resembling a large nut, such as a walnut) a dough nut, as recorded by none less than Hudson Valley’s Washington Irving in his writings in 1809, who also called these dough nuts olykoeks (in that spelling), a version that even moreso shows the heritage. The dough nut evolved into the two modern spellings, doughnut and donut. The change in shape from a dough ball to the present donut shape evolved very logically. To avoid having an uncooked center, which could easily happen, cooks eventually flattened out the dough ball top and bottom and also cut out its center, since having no center at all logically means having no uncooked center, and thus the donut hole was born in the Hudson Valley as well. And then today, some donut shops serve small, round “donut holes” as a separate item, making olykoeks/donuts having come full circle (no pun intended). These “donut holes” are now actually ur-donuts, simply smaller versions, and closer in size, to the original round nut shape the name donut is based on.

Although this would seem to end the Dutch/Flemish pastry story, it has a footnote, which I include to show both irony and amazement. The irony is that waffles made a second entry into New York (and the US), and they came this time directly from Dutch-speaking Flanders. This type of waffle was much sweeter and very large, including large indentations, and was served in the US version with strawberries and whipped cream instead of with just powdered sugar, as in Flanders. It had been invented in 1839 in the Flemish city of Ghent/Gent, but became known locally instead as a Brusselse wafel / Brussels waffle. The amazement I have is that, when they were introduced in the 1964 New York World’s Fair, they were to have been sold, logically, as Brussels waffles, but, in observance of the perceived “poor geographical skills of Americans”, the name was changed to Belgian waffles instead.