As Australians we should be congratulated.
We have worked hard as producers and consumers to ensure that the food we reach for on a regular basis is homegrown. Australia is lucky when it comes to food security as some of the best produce in the global market is local. We are also a “net exporter” meaning that overall we have enough food to feed ourselves with surplus to sell to the international market.
Australian produce is highly sort after. But is this locally-grown produce Australian enough
Before European settlement the Aboriginal people survived on the native food for centuries. This bush tucker knowledge is still passed down through generations and in remote Australian communities it plays a significant part in everyday life.
Australia’s indigenous ingredients were not just a part of the Aboriginal diet, native food also played a part in the survival of the first settlers when they arrived on our shores — from a settlement in Port Jackson avoiding starvation by supplementing meagre rations with native plants and game, to Captain Cook fighting off a vicious outbreak of scurvy among his men by feeding them a diet of native plants at Botany Bay. Overland explorers such as Ludwig Leichhardt, John Stuart and Charles Sturt survived on nothing but indigenous ingredients.
Our history tells us that native food played a vital role as European settlement fanned out across this vast continent all those years ago.
Fast forward to present day and we find ourselves at the local grocery store. We are looking for the familiar, the cheap, the easy and of course the grown in Australia sticker. We stick to what we know. Potatoes? Check. Onions? Check. North Queensland bananas? Check. Activated almonds? Check. And don’t forget some organic cold pressed extra virgin olive oil!
These items are accessible and easy to incorporate into the many recipes we are learning from our favourite chefs daily. But is this Australian?
For me these ingredients serve as a stark reminder of Australia’s European settlement and farming practices. However, we must begin to ask: what about our native Australian ingredients? Where are they?
Finger limes, cluster figs, muntries, sea celery — all nowhere to be seen.
What about blood limes or apple berries? Can’t see them either.
Unless you have access to a specialty supplier it is most likely you too will not see any of them on your supermarket shelves.
This is a peculiar situation to be in because Australia is home to many native edible plants. From tangy fruits to nuts and seeds, mushrooms, tubers and seaweeds. This list goes on with our native edible foods numbering into the thousands.
So why did the use of native ingredients stop once the European settlers were no longer in danger of starvation? And why is it harder to find finger limes or native rosella than it is potatoes, pumpkins and oranges, which are Australian grown but not native Australian?
I believe European settlers never fully took on what this continent had to offer. They adapted crops and farming techniques which had evolved over thousands of years in other countries without taking a good look in their new back yard.
Initially this was out of necessity to quickly feed a growing nation and avoid starvation with the practices and ingredients they knew best. Who could blame them for sticking to what they know?
But it wasn’t just the farmers that were sticking to what they knew. The cravings of the motherland followed the pioneers to their new found home. It was hard to overcome a craving for some casserole with mashed potatoes or a good lashing of butter on some wheat bread. Since then the techniques both in farming and cooking have been passed down over generations and is still present today and sadly we have remained in our comfort zone.
Fortunately, times are changing in the food scene and we are being given a glimpse into what our native food looks like in modern cuisine. Australia has a new breed of talented chefs working passionately to bring us native produce. We have our eateries free from tradition and rules, ready to show diners something new and unseen, along with a new generation of farmers looking to innovate and who are willing to break tradition. It is a new wave of food pioneers.
For the first time we are seeing ingredients like bush bananas, native elderberries and native ginger on our menus. It will take time for us to be able to easily access the ingredients but the change is happening.
And if this trend takes hold, hopefully in the not too distant future you too will be reaching in the supermarket aisle for the truly Australian ingredient for your home cooking.
Lynton Tapp is the host of Channel 10’s My Market Kitchen and is the author of Outback Pantry cookbook. Go to lyntontapp.com for more information
Originally published as Why aren’t Aussies embracing bush tucker?