GARGANTUAN APPETITE

Evening Star, Issue 19616, 23 July 1927, Page 3

GARGANTUAN APPETITE

AUSTRALIA'S CHAMPION EATER COLOSSAL MEAL. Once upon a time a long, long while ago a few loaves and a law fishes proved more than enough for a multitude. To feed au eminent resident of Coif’s Harbor, a N.S.W. North Coast town, a multitude of loaves and fishes might not prove enough. For Robert Capper Bray, J.P., prominent business man, lay preacher, and food dignitary, has yet to meet a banquet to which he must strike his colors and admit defeat. Bray is Australia’s champion eater, if any other man-size performer at the dinner table disputes the title, Colt’s Harbor champion will willingly meet him. Weapons: Knife and fork. Rules; Snatch as snatch can. But before rushing into the arena potential challengers should study awhile the records of the title holder. Here are some of them: An outsize in sucking pigs, crackling and all. Hall a butter box of corned beef sandwiches. Fifteen plates of ham and eggs (two eggs to the plate). Nineteen heaped helpings of chicken, ham, tongue, salad, topped off with a dozen or so small cakes, trifle, jellies, and anything else that remained. A whole case of grapes.

“ I can safely pose,” Jio assures ‘ Smith’s Weekly,’ ‘‘ as the man without an equal in respect to eating. In all my wanderings hundreds have acclaimed me so. Since the ago of fourteen 1 have figured in many dinner table incidents.

“But in Coff’s Harbor I represent half a dozen lodges as secretary—committeeman of a number of others, and principal officer in a number —apart from being my own manager m a storekeoping business. “Is it any wonder that an abnormal appetite was given to yours truly, R. C. Bray.”

Read pf Bray’s colossal meals, and picture him as a human man, corpulent an ad bulky. In reality ho is slim, of medium height, and his forty odd years sit lightly on his shoulders. Full of energy', be can go for days without sleep and without food! For ordinarily he is not a big eater—most of his meals are merely normal. NEVER HAD ENOUGH. Ho rises from an orthodox threecourse dinner contentedly enough; but if a. friend should call with a box of biscuits and invite him to fall to. It would be a matter of minutes before the box was emptv. Bray confesses he has never known how it feels to have had enough to eat. Plates and plates may come and go, but he goes on for ever. In his feats of eating he finds as much amusement as his admirers. Before starting off lie sedks only one assurance—that there will be sufficient for the others.

When the Coff's Harbor Chamber of Commerce staged a banquet in tho sample room of a local hotel a suck ing pig was ordered from a local butcher. A country member, learning that Australia’s champion cater was to be there, considered that “one bloomin’ pig was no good if Bob was present ” —and his offer of an emergency “sucker” w-as accepted with gratitude. This gave a ray of hope to other guests who found adolescent pork to their taste—and fifty guests_ reduced the butcher’s “ sucker ” to ruins. Bob Bray ate the other. -Another classic example was at a

local picnic in the early days of the war. Bob’s attack on the sandwiches was so intense and prolonged that the ladies in charge of the refreshment booth pleaded for an armistice, which was granted by the victor, who smilingly left a hank note by way of reparation. Boh Bray conducts the services at the Anglican Church when'the vicar : a absent, and one time he was asked by a newly-arrived parson to have supper at a local cafe. Bob accepted, and his choice was ham and eggs. He was a dumbfounded clergyman who watched fifteen plates come and go. When he had laid that solid foundation Bob topped up with a few pounds of fruit. It was at a local ball some years ago that Bob put up his record of nineteen plates of food. Ho did not reach the twentieth—there was nothing left. 1 Not long ago a local resident inserted an advertisement in the Coif’s Harbor paper offering to back his fancy to cat oysters against the cream of the talent of the Nambucca River, where there are some of the most valiant trenchermen of N.S. Wales. Negotiations were nicely in progress and Goff’s Harbor was preparing for a mighty victory when a tout divulged a stable secret—Boh Bray was the challenger’s “dark house.” Nambucca panicked. No race; all bets were declared off. So Bob Bray goes Ids way rejoicing —-and his challenge remains uncovered. Ho would probably threaten to “eat his hat” if ho were beaten; and what’s more Goff’s Harbor wouldn’t be very surprised if he carried out his threat.