(source:media.australia)

Traditional Aboriginal food – or bush tucker – sustained Australia’s
original inhabitants for millennia. Now bush tucker has come of age.
Once only found in the diet of Indigenous Australians, native foods are
popping up on menus across the country and commercially produced
versions are creeping onto the shelves of our supermarkets.
Aboriginal chef Mark Olive is showing how it is done on Australia’s
first indigenous cooking show, The Outback Café, while our restaurants
are embracing more and more our locally grown bush tucker, the food
found in our deserts and outback that has sustained our indigenous
population for more than 50,000 years. As native foods gain a greater
following, it’s quite commonplace to find our restaurants adopting
such flavourings and ingredients as lemon myrtle and bush tomatoes
as part of a mod-Oz menu.
Australian native specialties such as warrigal (a spinach-like green),
kangaroo and emu, macadamias and wattle seed are becoming more
commonplace on menus – along with native mint, wild limes and
native rosella – a member of the hibiscus family that’s highly regarded
by serious jam makers.
Bush tucker has gone mainstream as Australian chefs are
experimenting more and more with its unusual and delicate flavours.
You can try an Indigenous restaurant or eat in a gourmet restaurant
that just happens to have native ingredients or Aussie dishes such as
emu or kangaroo on the menu. Or you can go bush on a bush tucker
tour with Aboriginal Australians in our outback. They’ll lead you back
through time to places where you can find and cook our native bush
foods in the wild. They’ll show you how they’ve survived off the land
for centuries, by catching animals, digging up roots, eating leaves and
even using them as medicine.
You can take your senses on a 50,000 year journey, hunt and cook,
or simply taste ‘bush tucker’. Or, you can choose to buy some native
produce at a local market and cook up a storm. Either way, be sure not
to miss the opportunity to taste the world’s oldest cuisine.