Tropes

Smart_Planet_2 00674.txt

'Bush tucker':'meet Australia's superfoodskangaroo Apple (solanum aviculare) MELBOURNE oe-In the 1980s there was a show called Bush tucker Man, featuring an Aussie outback adventurer called Â Les Hiddins (a Macgyver meets Bear Grylls character) who impressed us with his passionate knowledge of Indigenous foods. While it was compelling to watch Hiddins survive off the land, for most Australians (city dwellers especially), this was a remote and exotic concept. Today, the reality of eating from the land is much more palatable, especially with the recent spate of respectable magazines touting foraging as a big food trend. At this years Melbourne Food and Wine Festival foraging (along with fermentation) was a hot topic. Chef Ben Shewry, a quiet trailblazer in the Melbourne food scene, spoke in length about finding edible wild plants and foods. A witchetty grub shell. But just how edible are these native foods? In Australia, we colloquially refer to our native foods as Â Å bush tucker. Â Australias Aboriginal inhabitants have been eating off the land for centuries. As an environment that sustains them, they treat the land as a fundamental part of their wellbeing. Australians today have much to learn from their traditional practices. But if you think bush tucker is about witchetty grubs, youd better not tell that to Julie Weatherhead, an Indigenous food expert and environmental scientist. She rolls her eyes every time the edible insects are mentioned. Shes somewhat frustrated with how little Australians know about their native foods. On the Melbourne food scene bush tucker has enjoyed something of a niche market, with lemon myrtle and warrigal greens the most well known of Indigenous foods. Lilli pilli jam and native pepper are two more, but more likely to be found in boutique shops and high-end restaurants. Å Chefs don't really learn about it in their hospitality courses, Â Weatherhead says. Å They put a bit of lemon myrtle into something and call it Indigenous food. Some arent game enough to put it in their dishes, so the flavours are really mild and youre not sure what youre eating. Â Australian native food expert Julie Weatherhead Weatherhead points out the misconception that Australian native foods are primitive. She says that the Aborigines have been living long, healthy lives for centuries, due to their incredible connection, understanding and respect for the land. Of course, there are native animals that are edible too (such as kangaroos, crocodiles and emus), but Weatherhead prefers to educate us on the wonders of Australias native flora world. Julie and her husband, Anthony Hooper, live and work on their eight hectare Peppermint Ridge Farm in West Gippsland, (about an hour's drive out of Melbourne). Theyve been running food tours, and land and sustainability courses since 1996. An ecologist with a degree in environmental science and education, Weatherhead dedicates an area of the farm as her Å Living Classroom Â, to educate people on the multiple uses of bush tucker. Å The joy of bush foods is that they don't taste like anything you've ever tasted before, Â she says. caption id=attachment 7063 align=alignright width=300 caption=Some Acacia wattle seeds contain toxins and should not be eaten. Warrigal Greens (tetragonia tetragonoides

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