AY Honors/Aboriginal Lore/Answer Key

The word Bushfood refers to any Australian native food, although it sometimes is used with the specific connotation of "food found in the Outback while living on the land". It is also called bushtucker. It includes both animal and plant foods native to Australia.

More recently the food industry refers to gourmet bushfoods as Australian native foods.

Examples of Australian native animal foods (meat) include kangaroo, emu and crocodile. These meats are not commonly found in Australia today, but may be found in special resturaunts. (update: kangaroo is quite common, being found in many normal supermarkets, and at prices comparable to beef) Other animals, for example the Goanna and the witchetty grub, were eaten by Aboriginal Australians and thus qualify as bushfood in every sense of the word. Fish and shellfish are culinary features of the Australian coastal communities.

Examples of Australian native plant foods include the fruits: quandong (Santalum acuminatum), Australian desert raisin (Solanum centrale), muntries (Kunzea pomifera), riberry (Syzygium luehmannii), Davidson's plum (Davidsonia spp.), and, Finger Lime (Citrus australasica). Native spices include lemon myrtle (Backhousia citriodora), mountain pepper (Tasmannia lanceolata), and, aniseed myrtle (Syzygium anisatum). A popular leafy vegetable is warrigal greens (Tetragonia tetragonoides).

Nuts include bunya nut (Araucaria bidwillii), and the most identifiable bushfood plant harvested and sold in large scale commercial quantities is the macadamia nut (Macadamia integrifolia).

Traditional Aboriginal use

Australian Aborigines have eaten native animal and plant foods for an estimated 60,000 years of human habitation on the Australian continent (see Indigenous Australian food groups).

Various traditional methods of processing and cooking are used. Toxic seeds, such as Cycad (Cycas media) and Moreton Bay Chestnut (Castanospermum australe) are processed to remove the toxins and render them safe to eat. Many foods are also baked in the hot campfire coals, or baked for several hours in ground ovens. ‘Paperbark’, the bark of Melalauca species, is widely used for wrapping food placed in ground ovens. Bush bread was made by women using many types of seeds, nuts and corms to process a flour or dough to make bread.

Aboriginal traditional native food use was severely impacted by the immigration of non-indigenous people, via displacement from traditional lands, destruction of native habitat, and the introduction of non-native foods.

The recent recognition of the nutritional value of native foods by non-indigenous Australians is introducing native cuisine to white Australians, many for the first time. However, there are intellectual property issues associated with the commercialisation of bushfood.

Colonial use

Bushfoods provided a source of nutrition to the non-indigenous colonial settlers, often supplementing meager rations. However, bushfoods were often considered to be inferior by colonists unfamiliar with the new land's food ingredients, generally preferring familiar foods from the homeland.

The only Australian native food developed and cropped on a large scale is the macadamia nut, with the first small-scale commercial plantation being planted in Australia in the 1880s. Subsequently, Hawaii was where the macadamia was commercially developed to its greatest extent from stock imported from Australia.

Modern use

In the 1970s non-indigenous Australians began to recognise the previously over-looked indigenous aspects of Australia, including native foods. Textbooks like Wildfoods In Australia by the botanist couple Cribb & Cribb were popular, and later the author Tim Low published Wild Food Plants of Australia.

TV shows also made use of the bushfood theme. Malcolm Douglas was one of the first presenters to show how to 'live off the land' in the Australian Outback. But it was probably Major Les Hiddins who popularised the idea of bush tucker. A retired Australian Army soldier, he presented a hit TV series called Bush Tucker Man on the ABC TV network in the late 1980s. In the series, Hiddins demonstrated his training and research in combat survival by locating native foodstuffs in the northern Australian Outback.

Bushfood enthusiasts in regional Australia began to assess the culinary and cropping qualities of bushfoods in the early 1980s. This regional research laid the foundations for the development of the modern bushfood industry (see bushfood industry history).

In the mid-1980s metropolitan bushfood restaurants were using native Australian ingredients in recipes more familiar to modern tastes. This provided the first opportunity for bushfoods to be tried by non-indigenous Australians on a serious gourmet level, and led to the realisation that many strong-flavoured bushfoods have spice-like qualities. Some of these bushfood ingredients now feature in modern Australian cuisine, and Australian spices are being increasingly recognised internationally.

Value-added bushfood products were also developed for the domestic and export market. The raw ingredients are sourced from wild and cultivated sources, with an emphasis on the latter to provide sustainable quantities.

In the last decade, industry groups such as the Southern Bushfood Association, the Queensland Bushfood Association, the Northern Bushfood Association, and many others have been pushing for the introduction of bushfood as genuine cuisine in Australian and international restaurants.

The term "bushfood" is one of several terms describing native Australian food, evolving from the older-style "bushtucker" which was used in the 1970s and 1980s. The word "bushfood" was chosen to reflect the sustainable nature of the industry's products, and to help exporters with product branding. The term "Australian native food" is another term recently coined to create further separation from the more rustic bush connotations. However, the term "bushfood" is still used by many industry workers and the Australian Government and CSIRO sources and authors.

Australian native food-plants listed by culinary province

Australian bushfood plants can be divided into several distinct and large regional culinary provinces. Please note, some species listed grow across several climatic boundaries.

Mr christies oreos

Tasty wheats

fruitopia

goog old no namer jew jubes

See also

• Bush bread
• Bushmeat, something quite different
• Indigenous Australian food groups

External links

• Aboriginal Australia
• Australian Bushfood and Native Medicine Forum
• Aboriginal women's knowledge
• CSIRO plant profiles [1]
• Bushfoods Magazine
• Eat Australia
• A Bushfood/Bushtucker resource site

References

• Bruneteau, Jean-Paul, Tukka, Real Australian Food, ISBN 0207189668.
• Cherikoff, Vic, The Bushfood Handbook, ISBN 0731669045.
• Issacs, Jennifer, Bushfood, Weldons, Sydney.
• Kersh, Jennice and Raymond, Edna's Table, ISBN 0733605397.
• Low, Tim, Wild Food Plants of Australia, ISBN 020769306.