Ahhh Mr. Nelson, good to hear from you and I hope this finds you well.
You are correct, The lady to whom you refer was one called Flo, and she was married to the Premier of Queensland, a bloke called Joe. This Joe, prior to becoming Premier, was a man from the land and earned his keep growing peanuts and pumpkins. Flo his wife was famous for her culinary skills but more so for her pumpkin scones. Now it is fact that Flo did say publicly that it was the
VB which was the secret ingredient.
Anyways, one of Joe's ministers was a huge bloke named Russ Hinze and he and Joe became great mates. Russ was fondly referred to as the minister for everything because nothing happened in Queensland without Russ giving it his blessing. Russ was a publican and had made his fortune running a house of ill repute located midway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
So unlucky was this poor Russ that when a multi lane freeway was constructed from Brisbane to the gold coast a mistake was made as to the route of the freeway and it ended up passing right through a section of Russ's property, namely his drive thru bottle shop.
To make a long story short, Russ used to sell some southern beers, particularly one called Victorian Bitter. The local drinkers didn't take to this beer and simply referred to it as
VB, which some say was short for very bad and by others as vile brew.
Anyways in an effort to get rid of the growing mountain of unsaleable
VB stock, Russ convinced Flo to incorporate it into her recipe for pumpkin scones.
Now, with the benefit of time we now know that Flo didn't incorporate it into the recipe for scones but rather just poured the stuff over the fields of growing pumpkin as a fertilizer.
So like most utterings by those Victorians, the devil is in the detail.