Bush Tucker Plants or Bush Food - Australian native food plants

Bushtucker

What is Bush Tucker, or Bush Food?

It is food native to Australia, and was present before European colonisation.

Usage

Aborigines:

Australian aborigines selected food which was available and ate it for nutritional purposes. There was no refrigeration or storage containers. Local knowledge of which plants were edible, palatable, or delicious, as well as the best time for harvest, harvest and preparation methods, were passed down by word of mouth to the next generation. Some plants or their fruits are less toxic at cetain times.
Aborigines generally did not boil water, so their cooking methods (and hence their menus) were different from those used by the early settlers and modern users. They did not have pots or pans, although northern tribes were known to have used bailer shells. They did not make tea or coffee, nor similar drinks. They did not make jams, jellies, or chutneys, and made little use of flavourings.
Apart from Bunya nuts they only used food from their tribal area and did not trade.

Colonial and Early Settler Uses

Captain Cook, in order to protect his crew from scurvy, searched for suitable greens on landing at Botany Bay. Warrigal Greens (Tetragonia tetragonoides) was collected and taken back to England.
Many kinds of greens were popular with 18th and 19th century Europeans, and European settlers tried and used many Australian greens. Few of these are used today - most Australians would regard them as useless weeds.
Some greens were used as spices or flavourings. Wild fruits were collected and eaten either fresh, pickled, or made into jams and chutneys. Trial and error was used to determine edibility, although aboriginal use may have been observed.

Modern Bushfood Industry

The modern industry makes use of plants in different ways from those of the Aborigines eg flavour instead of nutrition.
Bushtucker plants are used now for jams, chutney and jellies, flavourings (eg. Lemon Myrtle), spices (eg. Mountain Pepper), drinks, sauces, colours (eg. Davidson's plum)
There is a novelty value in bushtucker for many people.
Only one indigenous plant, the Macadamia nut, has been well established in horticulture, and even then most of the early work was done by Americans. Some Americans even refer to it as the Hawaiian Nut, since it has been grown extensively there!
Apart from Macadamias, game meat is being exported.

Issues

Links

Useful bush tucker sites and more bush tucker plants

Traditional Cooking

Test Yourself

Bibliography

Purpose of this site

While this site should be useful for many people interested in Bush Tucker (Bush Food), it was designed especially as a resource for students studying Bush Tucker as a Multistrand Science elective unit in Queensland Schools, in particular, Alexandra Hills State High School.