bush tucker

File:Yuendumu Gold 33.jpg]]

Aboriginal Australians have eaten native animal and plant foods for the estimated 60,000 years of human habitation on the Australian continent, using various traditional methods of processing and cooking.{{Cite book|title=Bush Tucker Field Guide |last=Hiddins| first=Les| publisher=Explore Australia Publishing|year=2003|isbn=1741170281|location=Australia|pages=x}} An estimated 4,999 species of native food were used by Aboriginal peoples. With much of it unsafe or unpalatable raw, food was processed by cooking on open fires, boiling in bark containers, pounding vegetables and seeds, or hanging bags in running water.{{cite web | title=About Native Australian food | website=Food | date=1 July 2008 | url=https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/2008/07/01/about-native-australian-food | access-date=1 June 2020}}

File:Billardiera scandens(cropped).jpg]]

Bush tucker provided a source of nutrition to the non-indigenous colonial settlers, often supplementing meagre rations. However, bushfoods were often considered to be inferior by colonists unfamiliar with Australia, generally preferring familiar foods from their homelands.{{Cite book|title=The Oldest Foods on Earth|last=Newton|first=John|publisher=NewSouth Publishing|year=2016|isbn=9781742234373|location=Sydney, Australia}}{{Cite book|title=The Colonial Kitchen|last=O'Brien|first=Charmaine|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|year=2016|isbn=9781442249813|location=USA}}{{Cite book|title=Eat Your History, Stories and Recipes from Australian Kitchens|last=Newling|first=Jacqui|publisher=Sydney Living Museums and NewSouth Publishing|year=2015|isbn=9781742234687|location=Sydney, Australia}}

Especially in the more densely colonised areas of south-eastern Australia, the introduction of non-native foods to Aboriginal people resulted in an almost complete abandonment of native foods by them. This impact on traditional foods was further accentuated by the loss of traditional lands, which has resulted in reduced access to native foods by Aboriginal people, and destruction of native habitat for agriculture.

The 19th century English botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, writing of Australian plants, remarked that although bushtucker is "eatable," it is not "fit to eat". In 1889, botanist Joseph Maiden reiterated this sentiment with the comment on native food plants being "nothing to boast of as eatables."Maiden, J.H., The Useful Native Plants of Australia, 1889, p.1 The first monograph to be published on the flora of Australia reported the lack of edible plants on the first page, where it presented Billardiera scandens as, "... almost the only wild eatable fruit of the country".{{cite book |last=Smith |first= J E |author-link=James Edward Smith (botanist) |title= Spec. Bot. New Holland|year=1793 |publisher=James Sowerby |quote=AMID all the beauty and variety which the vegetable productions of New Holland display in such profusion, there has not yet been discovered a proportionable degree of usefulness to mankind, at least with respect to food. }}

{{further|History of the bushfood industry}}

Apart from the macadamia nut, with the first small-scale commercial plantation being planted in Australia in the 1880s, no native food plants were produced commercially until the 1990s. The macadamia was the only Australian native plant food developed and cropped on a large scale. Hawaii, however, was where the macadamia was commercially developed to its greatest extent.{{cite book|url=https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/RES-039.pdf|series=Research extension series|issn=0271-9916|title=Macadamia nuts in Hawaii: History and production|last1=Shigeura|first1=Gordon T.|first2=Hiroshi|last2=Ooka|date=April 1984|publisher=University of Hawaii. College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources|access-date=1 June 2020}}

From the 1970s, non-Indigenous Australians began to recognise previously overlooked native Australian foods. Textbooks such as Wildfoods in Australia (1981) by botanists Alan and Joan Cribb{{Citation | author1=Cribb, A. B. (Alan Bridson) | author2=Cribb, J. W. (Joan Winifred), 1930- | title=Wild medicine in Australia | publication-date=1981 | publisher=Fontana/Collins | isbn=978-0-00-636559-4 }} were popular. In the late 1970s, horticulturists started to assess native food-plants for commercial use and cultivation.

In 1980, South Australia legalised the sale of kangaroo meat for human consumption, and it is now commonly found in supermarkets and prized for its nutritional value as a lean meat. Analysis shows that a variety of bushfoods are exceptionally nutritious.Low, T., Wild Food Plants of Australia, Angus & Robertson, 1992, pp 199–202 {{ISBN|0-207-16930-6}} In the mid-1980s, several Sydney restaurants began using native Australian ingredients in recipes more familiar to non-Indigenous tastes, providing the first opportunity for bushfoods to be tried by non-Indigenous Australians on a gourmet level.

Following popular TV programs on "bush tucker", a surge in interest in the late 1980s saw the publication of books like Bushfood: Aboriginal Food and Herbal Medicine by Jennifer Isaacs, The Bushfood Handbook and Uniquely Australian by Vic Cherikoff, and Wild Food Plants of Australia by Tim Low.

An advantage of growing the native foods is that they are well adapted to Australia's environment, in particular at the extreme ends, and are ecologically sound. Bush-tucker ingredients were initially harvested from the wild, but cultivated sources have become increasingly important to provide sustainable supplies for a growing market, with some Aboriginal communities also involved in the supply chain. However, despite the industry being founded on Aboriginal knowledge of the plants, Aboriginal participation in the commercial sale of bush tucker is currently still marginal, and mostly at the supply end of value chains. Organisations are working to increase Aboriginal participation in the bush-tucker market. Gourmet-style processed food and dried food have been developed for the domestic and export markets.{{cn|date=June 2020}}

The term "bushfood" is one of several terms describing native Australian food, evolving from the older-style "bush tucker" which was used in the 1970s and 1980s.{{Citation needed|date=October 2011}}

In the 21st century, many restaurants are serving emu, crocodile, yabbies and locally sourced eels, and using native plant spices for flavour. Producers have sprung up across the country to serve the new markets, including Tasmanian pepper, Victorian eel farms and South Australian plantations of quandongs, bush tomatoes, and native citrus.

In 2020, researchers at the University of Queensland were researching a fruit native to Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, Buchanania obovata, known as the green plum. Eaten for more than 53,000 years but previously little-known among non-Indigenous people, the scientists learnt about the plum from people at the remote community of Yirrkala. It is harvested some time after the Kakadu plum harvests. Nutritional analysis showed high levels of protein, dietary fibre and the minerals potassium, phosphorus and magnesium. In addition, the folate level is among the highest of commercially available fruits. Its potential as a commercial crop for Indigenous communities is being investigated.{{cite web | title=Native green plums from Arnhem Land found to have significant health benefits, commercial appeal|first=Halina |last=Baczkowski | website=ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) | date=31 May 2020 | url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-31/native-bush-food-green-plums-found-to-have-health-benefits/12292208 | access-date=1 June 2020|series=Landline}} [https://iview.abc.net.au/show/landline On iview]

{{further|Indigenous Australian food groups|Australian Aboriginal sweet foods}}

Toxic seeds, such as Cycas media and Moreton Bay chestnut, 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 Melaleuca species, is widely used for wrapping food placed in ground ovens. Bush bread was made by women using many types of seeds, nuts and corns to process a flour or dough. Some animals, such as kangaroos, were cooked in their own skins, and others, such as turtles, were cooked in their own shells.

Kangaroo is quite common and can be found in Australian supermarkets, often cheaper than beef. Other animals, for example, jimba (sheep), emu, goanna and witchetty grubs, are eaten by Aboriginal Australians. Fish and shellfish are culinary features of the Australian coastal communities.

Examples of Australian native plant foods include the fruits quandong, kutjera, muntries, riberry, Davidson's plum, and finger lime. Native spices include lemon myrtle, mountain pepper, and the kakadu plum. Various native yams are valued as food, and a popular leafy vegetable is warrigal greens. Nuts include bunya nut and the most identifiable bush tucker plant harvested and sold in large-scale commercial quantities, the macadamia nut. Knowledge of Aboriginal uses of fungi is meagre, but beefsteak fungus and native "bread" (a fungus also) were certainly eaten.

Australian bush tucker plants can be divided into several distinct and large regional culinary provinces. Some species listed grow across several climatic boundaries.

Arid and semi-arid zones of the low rainfall interior.

File:Santalum acuminatum fruit1.JPG]]

File:Bush-Tomato.jpges]]

• Bush coconut
• Mulga apple

Subtropical rainforests of New South Wales to the wet tropics of Northern Queensland.

File:Acronychia acidula1.jpg]]

File:Citrus australasica red whole.jpg]]

File:Backhousia citriodora.jpg]]

Warm and cool temperate zones of southern Australia, including Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria and the highlands of New South Wales.

File:Aclo 001 lhp.jpg]]

Malcolm Douglas was one of the first TV presenters to show how to 'live off the land' in the Australian Outback. Major Les Hiddins, a retired Australian Army soldier popularised the idea of bush tucker as a food resource. He presented a TV series called The Bush Tucker Man{{Cite web |title=Homepage |url=https://bushtuckerman.com.au/ |access-date=2022-09-07 |website=Bush Tucker Man |language=en-AU}} on the ABC TV network in the late 1980s. In the series, Hiddins demonstrated his research for NORFORCE in identifying foods which might sustain or augment army forces in the northern Australian Outback.

Starting in 2002, I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! became notorious for its "Bushtucker Trials", some of which involved eating meat-based bush tucker (such as mealworms, locusts and kangaroo testicles) to win meals for the camp.

In early 2003, the first cooking show featuring authentic Australian foods and called Dining Downunder was produced by Vic Cherikoff and Bailey Park Productions of Toronto, Canada. This was followed by the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) production of Message Stick with Aboriginal chef, Mark Olive.{{Cite web |date=2019-11-20 |title=Cooking with culture: How Mark Olive found fame in food |url=https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/feature/cooking-culture-how-mark-olive-found-fame-food |access-date=2022-09-07 |website=NITV |language=en}}

In 2008, Ray Mears made a survival television series called Ray Mears Goes Walkabout, which focused on the history of survival in Australia with a focus on bush tucker.{{Citation |title=Ray Mears Goes Walkabout |date=2008-01-01 |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3571244/ |type=Documentary |access-date=2022-09-07}}

In the TV survival series Survivorman, host and narrator Les Stroud spent time in the Australian outback. After successfully finding and eating a witchetty grub raw he found many more and cooked them, stating they were much better cooked.{{Cite web |last=sperkins-pom |date=2012-11-21 |title=Les Stroud on Eating for Survival |url=https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/books-media/les-stroud-eating-survival/ |access-date=2022-09-07 |website=Outside Online |language=en-US}} After cooking in hot embers of his fire, he removed the head and the hind of the grub and squeezed out thick yellow liquid before eating.

The SBS documentary series Food Safari featured bush tucker in an episode that went to air in 2013.{{cite web | title=Food Safari – A Look At Bush Tucker | website=SBS Food | date=4 March 2013 | url=https://www.sbs.com.au/food/video/20651587800/Food-Safari-A-Look-At-Bush-Tucker | access-date=1 June 2020}}

{{Portal|Australia|Food}}

• Australian Aboriginal sweet foods
• Australian cuisine
• Bush bread
• Bushfood industry history
• Bushmeat
• Bush medicine
• Damper
• Indigenous Australian food groups
• Country food, equivalent term in Canada used to refer to food eaten by the Indigenous peoples of Canada
• Medieval cuisine, cuisine of the Middle Ages in Europe
• Pre-Columbian cuisine, ancient cuisine of the Americas

{{reflist}}

• Bruneteau, Jean-Paul, Tukka, Real Australian Food, {{ISBN|0-207-18966-8}}.
• Cherikoff, Vic, The Bushfood Handbook, {{ISBN|0-646-15496-6}}.
• Isaacs, Jennifer, Bushfood, Weldons, Sydney.
• Kersh, Jennice and Raymond, Edna's Table, {{ISBN|0-7336-0539-7}}.
• Low, Tim, Wild Food Plants of Australia, {{ISBN|978-0-207-14383-0}}

• {{cite web | title=Australian Bushfoods | date=31 May 2020 | url=http://ausbushfoods.com/}} (Supersedes [http://ausbushfoods.com/bushfoodsonline/index.htm Australian Bushfoods magazine site])

• {{cite book|url=https://www.agrifutures.com.au/wp-content/uploads/publications/12-066.pdf|title=Australian Native Food Industry Stocktake|first=Michael|last= Clarke|date=August 2012|publisher= Australian Government. Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation|isbn=978-1-74254-409-0| issn=1440-6845|series=Australian Native Foods Industry Stocktake, Publication No. 12/066, Project No. PRJ-005855}}
• {{cite book|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276848464|last=Clarke, Philip|date=2007|title= Aboriginal People and Their Plants}} Long abstract; full text available on request.
• {{cite web | title=CSIRO CSE Research | website=Australian Native Foods | url=https://www.ausbushfoods.com/bushfoodsonline/reports/Fact%20Sheets/CSIRO%20CSE%20Research%20-%20Australian%20Native%20Foods.htm|date= 27 August 2007}}
• {{cite web | title=Indigenous Weather Knowledge: Walabunnba - Wantangka - hot weather | website= Bureau of Meteorology | url=http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/walabunnba/wantangka.shtml }} Bush Bean (Wakalpirri) and Bush Plum.

• {{cite book|url=https://www.ausbushfoods.com/bushfoodsonline/reports/Cultivation/cult_wildharvest_Aboriginal_Communities_04.pdf|first=Geoff|last=Miers|title=Cultivation and sustainable wild harvest of Bushfoods by Aboriginal Communities in Central Australia: A report for the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation|publisher=Australian Government. Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation|

isbn= 0-642-58690-X |issn =1440-6845|series=RIRDC Web-only Publication No W03/124, RIRDC Project No CLC-1A |date=July 2004}}

{{Australian cuisine}}

{{Indigenous Australians}}

{{Natural resources}}

{{Non-timber forest products}}

{{cuisine}}

Category:Australian cuisine

Category:Flora of Australia

Category:Australian Aboriginal bushcraft

Category:Indigenous cuisine

Category:Foraging

Category:Fauna of Australia

Category:Australian outback

Category:Rural culture in Oceania