Stock Library: Bush Tucker

Behind the scenes

Australians call it “bush tucker”. But that term implies bare survival—just picking fruit and fungi off the ground or nibbling unpalatable twigs and grasses. The truth is, there’s a whole food industry racing ahead in Australia, including agriculture and horticulture, food processing and manufacturing, cooking and cuisine, all culminating with superb dining experiences.

Rather than a few meagre berries and fatty lizards, the Australian continent produces an abundant harvest of wild foods fit for gourmet eating. There is a staggering variety in the form of fruits, seeds, nuts, roots, tubers, leaves, shoots, stems, flowers, nectar, sap and gum. And that doesn’t include the obvious animal foods like shellfish, fish, reptiles, birds, marsupials and, dare I say it, insects.

I’ve been on a ten-year search to document as many of the native or wild foods as I can. If I see an animal eating it, I taste it too. If I see chew marks on it, I have a munch. You’ll often see me halt my photography to lick a tree trunk or suck on a grevillea blossom. There is a technique I’ve developed for trying things safely: after a short chew I spit it out and wait for any reactions. About 90% of them taste terrible! It’s that 10% that makes the search rewarding. I love it when I hit on a real winner, like my discovery of rosemary boronia. We regularly use it at my house to season lamb.

My photographic treks have led me across the great mulga-covered plains of the arid outback and it was years before I realized I was travelling through an abundant crop. Mulga is an acacia tree which, like most of its relatives, produces so much nutritious seed that I’m sure it could feed half the world’s population. “Wattleseed” has become a new cuisine staple and I’ve equally enjoyed trekking through the restaurants of Sydney looking for innovative dishes.

My recent culinary attention has been on bunya bunya—the large nuts of a Queensland pine tree. I’ve been experimenting with it in my kitchen by using it in place of traditional pine nuts.

Whether it’s sweet nectar glistening on a huge proteaceae flower or aboriginals digging for honeypot ants, all the following photos are of edible plants and animals. I hope you’ll enjoy whetting your visual appetite on this selection from the stock library.

PS – There are 195 images in the show; be sure to see all 13 pages. If you don’t find what you like online, I have heaps more!