Bush tucker, also called bush food, is any food native to Australia and historically eaten by Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders), but it can also describe any native flora, fauna or fungi used for culinary or medicinal purposes, regardless of the continent or culture. Animal native foods include kangaroo, emu, witchetty grubs and crocodile. Plant foods include fruits such as quandong, kutjera, spices such as lemon myrtle and vegetables such as warrigal greens and various native yams.
Traditional Indigenous Australians' use of bush foods has been severely affected by the colonisation of Australia beginning in 1788 and subsequent settlement by non-Indigenous peoples. The introduction of non-native organisms, together with the loss of and destruction of traditional lands and habitats, has resulted in reduced access to native foods by Aboriginal people.
Since the 1970s, there has been recognition of the nutritional and gourmet value of native foods by non-Indigenous Australians, and the bushfood industry has grown enormously. Kangaroo meat has been available in supermarkets since the 1980s, and many other foods are sold in restaurants or packaged as gourmet foods, which has led to expansion of commercial cultivation of native food crops.
History
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. 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. Colonisation
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.
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".
Modern use
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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. On iview
Types of 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.
Native Australian food-plants listed by culinary province and plant part Australian bush tucker plants can be divided into several distinct and large regional culinary provinces. Some species listed grow across several climatic boundaries.
Adansonia gregoriiboabBuchanania arborescenssparrow's mangoCitrus graciliskakadu limeEugenia carissoidesCedar Bay cherryFicus racemosacluster figManilkara kaukiwongiMelastoma affineblue tongueMimusops elengitanjongMorinda citrifoliagreat morindaPhysalis minimanative gooseberryTerminalia ferdinandianakakadu plumSyzygium erythrocalyxJohnstone's River satinashSyzygium fibrosumfibrous satinashSyzygium suborbicularelady apple
Vegetables Dioscorea alatapurple yam Dioscorea bulbiferaround yamDioscorea transversapencil yam, long yamEleocharis palustrisspikerush Ipomoea aquaticawater spinachNelumbo nuciferalotusNymphaea macrospermawater lily
Nuts Cycas mediacycad palm seeds (requires detoxification: see Bush bread )Semecarpus australiensisAustralian cashewTerminalia catappasea almond
Spices Eucalyptus staigerianalemon ironbarkMelaleuca leucadendraweeping paperbarkMelaleuca viridiflorakitcha-kontooOcimum tenuiflorumnative basil
Outback Australia Arid and semi-arid zones of the low rainfall interior.
Fruits
Capparis spp.native caper, caperbushCapparis mitchelliiwild orangeCapparis spinosasubsp. nummulariawild passionfruitCarissa lanceolatabush plum, conkerberryCitrus glaucadesert limeEnchylaena tomentosaruby saltbushFicus platypodadesert figMarsdenia australisdoubah, bush bananaOwenia acidulaemu appleSantalum acuminatumquandong, desert or sweet quandongSantalum murrayanumbitter quandongSolanum centraleakudjura, Australian desert raisin, bush tomatoSolanum cleistogarnumbush tomatoSolanum ellipticumbush tomato
Vegetables Calandrinia balonensisparakeelyaIpomoea costatabush potatoVigna lanceolatapencil yamsLepidium spp.peppercressesPortulaca intraterranealarge pigweed
Seeds Acacia aneuramulgaAcacia coleiAcacia coriaceadogwoodAcacia holosericeastrap wattleAcacia kempeanawitchetty bushAcacia murrayanaAcacia pycnanthaAcacia retinodesAcacia tetragonophylladead finish seed Acacia victoriaegundabluey, prickly wattleBrachychiton populneuskurrajongPanicum decompositumnative milletPortulaca oleraceapigweedTriodia spp.commonly known as spinifex
Spices Eucalyptus polybracteablue-leaved mallee
Insects in gall
Bush coconut Mulga apple
Eastern Australia Subtropical rainforests of New South Wales to the wet tropics of Northern Queensland.
Fruit
Acronychia acidulalemon aspenAcronychia oblongifoliawhite aspenAntidesma buniusHerbet River cherryArchirhodomyrtus becklerirose myrtleAustromyrtus dulcismidyimCarpobrotus glaucescenspigfaceCitrus australasicafinger limeCitrus australisdoojaDavidsonia jerseyanaNew South Wales Davidson's plumDavidsonia johnsoniismooth davidsoniaDavidsonia pruriensNorth Queensland Davidson's plumDiploglottis campbelliismall-leaf tamarindEupomatia laurinabolwarraFicus coronatasandpaper figMelodorum leichhardtiizig zag vinePandanus tectoriusHala fruitPleiogynium timorienseBurdekin plumPodocarpus elatusIllawarra plumPlanchonella australisblack appleRubus moluccanusbroad-leaf brambleRubus probusAtherton raspberryRubus rosifoliusrose-leaf brambleSyzygium australebrush cherrySyzygium luehmanniiriberrySyzygium paniculatummagenta lilly pillyXimenia americanayellow plum
Vegetable Apium prostratumsea celeryCommelina cyaneascurvy weedGeitonoplesium cymosumscrambling lilyTetragonia tetragonoideswarrigal greensTrachymene incisawild parsnipUrtica incisascrub nettle
Spices
Alpinia caeruleanative gingerBackhousia citriodoralemon myrtleBackhousia myrtifoliacinnamon myrtleBackhousia anisataaniseed myrtleLeptospermum liversidgeilemon tea-treeProstanthera incisacut-leaf mintbush, native thymeSmilax glyciphyllasweet sarsaparillaSyzygium anisatumaniseed myrtleTasmannia stipitataDorrigo pepper (leaf and pepperberry)