Outside Clarence Town’s tiny butchershop, which has stood a corner of the wide main drag for almost 100 years, butcher Ethan Patfield holds a bunch of sausages up for the camera.
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As well as his leather belt of razor-sharp knives and his butcher’s apron, Mr Patfield is wearing a big grin – because there’s something special about these snags.
After taking ownership of the town’s butchery just a few weeks ago, Mr Patfield’s thin, traditional Australian snags have been named the best in the Hunter by the judges of the Sausage King Competition.
“I’m stoked,” Mr Patfield said.
“The Traditional Australian [category] is the cream of the crop.
“It’s the one every butcher wants to win because it’s your day-to-day sausage. It’s not a one-off. It’s the one you sell all day.”
But the journey of Mr Patfield’s award-winning bangers go back far further than when he walked through the door of Clarence Town’s butcher shop earlier this year.
The story began when he walked through the same door 13 years ago. At age 13, Ethan was working his first job as a clean-up boy at the shop.
The butcher who owned the place at that stage was using a sausage recipe that went back at-least 60 years in Clarence Town. Generations of residents had eaten those sausages – and Ethan was a big fan as well.
“I remember Saturday afternoons, helping dad mow the lawn,” Mr Patfield said.
“And when we were done he’d cook up some snags. For dinner we were always having bangers and mash.”
But, at 16, he was told the shop couldn’t offer him an apprenticeship in the line of work he’d fallen in love with.
“I made a promise to myself that day,” he said.
“I walked out of there and said I’m going to buy this butcher shop.”
For a decade he honed his craft at Raymond Terrace, working his way up to manager and saved his money.
A month ago Mr Patfield realised his dream – he bought the shop along with his mates. And while residents of Clarence Town quickly developed a spiraling addiction to his Vegemite-cheese sausages, one of the first orders of business was taking that 60 year-old snag recipe and tweaking it – just slightly – with what he’d learned in the last decade.
“It’s got to have a good mix of flavours, it’s got to have a good consistency – I just enjoy making sausages,” he said.
“If you’ve got a good sausage, you’ve got a good shop.”
On September 24 the Hunter’s champion will face the other regions of NSW and, if the sausage gods smile on Clarence Town there, he’ll progress to nationals.
