A cabbage tree hat (also known as a cabbage palm hat) is a hat made from the leaves of the ''

Livistona australis ''Livistona australis'', the cabbage-tree palm, is an Australian plant species in the family Arecaceae. It is a tall, slender palm growing up to about 25 m in height and 0.35 m diameter.Boland ''et al.'', pp. 71–72. It is crowned ...

'', also known as the cabbage-tree palm. It is known as the first distinctively Australian headwear in use. Seeking protection from the sun, early European settlers started to make hats using fibre from the native palm, which soon became popular throughout the colonies. The process involved boiling, then drying, and finally bleaching the leaves. The

Powerhouse Museum The Powerhouse Museum is the major branch of the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences (MAAS) in Sydney, the others being the historic Sydney Observatory at Observatory Hill, and the newer Museums Discovery Centre at Castle Hill. Although often de ...

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."

Cabbage tree mob

During the convict era, gangs of insolent youths were known as ''cabbage tree mobs'' because they wore the hat. One of their favourite pastimes was to crush the hats of men deemed too " full of themselves". Cabbage tree mobs are recognised as a predecessor of the

larrikin Larrikin is an Australian English term meaning "a mischievous young person, an uncultivated, rowdy but good hearted person", or "a person who acts with apparent disregard for social or political conventions". In the 19th and early 20th centurie ...

Mentions of the hat

There are many mentions of the hat in Australian documents. * In Volume 2 of Collins, David
Account of the English Colony in New South Wales from its first settlement, in January 1788, to August 1801''
London 1802, Chapter XIX Flinders voyage to Moreton Bay in 1799. * In Volume 6 of the ''Historical Records of Victoria'', published after the address by Police Historian

Gary Presland Gary Presland is an Australian archaeologist and writer who studied history at La Trobe University 1973-76, and archaeology at the University of London, 1977-79. He was a staff member of the Victoria Archaeological Survey from 1983 to April 198 ...

at the Annual General Meeting in March 2005, it states: * In

Edward Micklethwaite Curr Edward Micklethwaite Curr (25 December 1820 – 3 August 1889) was an Australian pastoralist, author, advocate of Australian Aboriginal peoples, and squatter. Biography Curr was born in Hobart, Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land), the e ...

's ''Recollections of Squatting in Victoria'', it says: * In Margaret Maynard's ''Fashioned from Penury'', it states: * On page 53 of ''Men of Yesterday'',

Margaret Kiddle Margaret (Loch) Kiddle (10 September 1914 — 3 May 1958) was an Australian writer and historian. She wrote ''Moonbeam Stairs'' (1945), ''West of Sunset'' (1949), ''Caroline Chisholm'' (1950), ''The Candle'' (1950), and ''Men of Yesterday: A Soci ...

refers to the cabbage tree hat as "ubiquitous" in the 1840s.

References

External links

* *, historical hat maker in Canberra, Australia, makes & teaches Cabbage Tree Hat Workshops. {{Clothing Australian fashion 19th-century fashion Hats Australian headgear