^{Torres Strait Islander chef Nornie Bero is working to share the knowledge behind our booming bush tucker industry. Image: Armelle Habib.}

It’s the 200-year-old cultural cringe that Australia has only just begun to own up to.

Much like the people that it kept in rude health for at least 50,000 years before anybody else arrived, the original foods of this continent were assumed inferior to anything that was bought here.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s amazing how wrong we now know we were. Bush food flavours like pepperberries, wild rices and emu liver pates now take centre stage in our finest restaurants, our boutique gins feature floating green ants and the superfood potency of fruits such as the kakadu plum are rewriting nutritional textbooks.

And, according to John Newton, author of The Oldest Foods on Earth, we are only skimming the surface of the diversity and range of Australia’s Indigenous foods.

The continent hosts hundreds of unique truffle species along with thousands of fruiting trees, roots and edible plants that are only known because of Aboriginal and Torres Islander peoples’ ancient relationships with them.

So, how can you discover these native foods for yourself? We asked the chefs, growers and suppliers working to share the knowledge behind our booming bush tucker.
 

“My mission is to steer people away from the notion that bush tucker is exotic or for fine dining only and get them using Indigenous ingredients every day,” says Nornie Bero, the woman behind one of Melbourne’s most exciting Indigenous-owned food businesses, Mabu Mabu.

The Torres Strait Islander chef honed her skills in Italian and Japanese restaurants for 20 years, before starting Mabu Mabu as a market stall, selling sauces and condiments made from native ingredients. Bero expanded the business into a café, online shop and catering before opening a restaurant, Mabu Mabu Big Esso, in Federation Square in mid-2021. Her first cookbook, Mabu Mabu, was released in March 2022.

Mabu Mabu Big Esso is thriving on a difference of using native Australian ingredients in generous dishes made to share “the way Torres Strait and Aboriginal cultures have always done”.

Every item, from the wattleseed in the damper to the kangaroo in the bourguignon and the bunya nut in the bush basil pesto, is designed to seed a curiosity that is taking root with diners once they leave.

“Once people taste what is possible, they start asking how they can do it for themselves,” says Bero, who delights in her customers’ surprise when they learn that if Mabu Mabu’s ingredients aren’t growing under their feet, they are available locally.

“There is so much stuff growing wild around Melbourne like karkalla, samphire, river mint, warrigal greens and pippies that, with a little bit of knowledge, you can pick them yourself. It’s the same for every other city across the country.”

Equally important is knowing that almost every ingredient Bero uses at Mabu Mabu is commercially available – if you ask for it.

“If you don’t see native produce at your local grocer or butcher, it isn’t because it doesn’t exist, it’s because people aren’t asking for it,” she explains. “Everything from high-quality pepperberry to prime-cut emu is available from growers, harvesters and producers… but you have to ask for it.”

As the new kid on Australia’s culinary block, you could be forgiven for thinking that bush tucker’s flavours are there for novelty value. However, consider this; out of a field of 15,000 others, a blind-tested jar of Aboriginal bush citrus conserve called Lady Marmalade has been recognised as one of the world’s best artisanal marmalades at the 2022 World Marmalade Awards.

And you don’t have to be an international jam judge to see why this triple combination of wild finger lime, lemon myrtle and desert lime received two commendations from the judges. Aside from the grape-shaped desert limes floating inside, it looks like a standard marmalade and tastes like a marmalade should – but with just that something special more. The myrtle gives it a lemony, creamy aroma and the hint of sinus-clearing menthol, the tiny pearls of the finger limes pop like citrusy caviar and once a whole desert lime bursts under a butter knife its tartness zings beautifully against the marmalade’s navel orange sweetness.

“It shows how extraordinary the flavours of native foods really are.” says Adam Joseph, a jam manufacturer who was part of the Lady Marmalade team and helped to play a role in sourcing all ingredients from Aboriginal communities. “Well, everything except the sugar,” he adds.
 

Joseph isn’t Aboriginal but, having been in the food industry for 25 years, he’s seen the emergence of the bush food industry along with its dominance by non-Aboriginal people. The bush food market is valued at around $20 million annually, but a 2018 survey by Indigenous foods collective Bushfood Sensations found that less than 2 per cent of those businesses were owned or operated by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Things are improving, thanks to people like Joseph.

While Australia has said sorry to the Stolen Generations, purchasing from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is your personal way of saying thank you. “Doing less is simply an opportunity missed,” he says.

He suggests looking up Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-owned online food businesses such as Western Australia’s Mayi Harvests, New South Wales-based Indigiearth and My Dilly Bag, as well as Nornie Bero’s Kara Meta teas available at Mabu Mabu.

For dining out, Joseph recommends Byron Bay’s Karkalla, run by chef Mindy Woods, a Bundjalung woman, and Indigiearth’s Warakirri Dining Experience in Mudgee, led by Ngemba Weilwan woman Aunty Sharon Winsor.

“Taste this,” says Rob, one of the workers at Sydney’s IndigiGrow native plant nursery, passing me a red leaf freshly plucked off a plant.

My face creases with curiosity as I process the punch that such a little morsel can deliver. The flavour is sweet, then liquorice with caramel, vanilla, and even a bit of wintergreen. Quite delicious.

“That is sarsaparilla plant, it’s native to this area and was used as a daily health tonic. My people have been using it for a long time,” he says as his face breaks into an obviously proud smile.

A former brickie, Rob packed in his trade a couple of years ago to grow seedlings at the Aboriginal-owned nursery in La Perouse in Sydney’s southeast. Why? “Because there is something satisfying about sharing this knowledge of Country onto people,” he says.

And I’m grateful to Rob. That same sarsaparilla plant now sits at my home. And, in my own small way, I do feel better connected to the land I’m living on.

-

Mike Butler is a certified food judge (cheese and dairy) and is a Murri Aboriginal man originally from Queensland living in Gomera Country in Sydney.

By Mike Butler