Bush foods have had a poor image in white Australia. The usual responses to indigenous foods appear to range from intrigue with their exotic appeal to horror at the idea of eating our national emblems. The urban population has little knowledge of the methods of finding or cooking bush foods. Until recently indigenous foods were not cultivated commercially in Australia. Even the macadamia nut, which originated in Queensland, was previously transported for cultivation to Hawaii. Where indigenous foods are used at all by white Australians, it is usually as a substitute for, or supplement to, the traditional white Australian diet.

Yet there appears to be a wealth of untapped folklore regarding the use of bush foods in Australia’s country areas. Nineteenth-century settlers incorporated small amounts of bush foods in their diets. In 1878 Mina Ramson’s Queensland Cooking Book included recipes for wallaby soup, bandicoot, pigweed salad and boiled thistle.^[1] It is only in the past five to ten years, however, that we have have seen the cultivation and marketing of a range of indigenous foods in Australia. Crocodiles are now being farmed, and sold at gourmet delicatessens. Indigenous nuts and seeds are being produced both for domestic consumption and export. Today, ‘bush tucker’ or ‘bush foods’ are often cited as the latest food fad and are predicted to become the foods of the future in Australia.^[2] There has been a groundswell of interest in indigenous foods since 1982, when they had international exposure in the Wall Street Journal.^[3] There seems to be an attempt to find an authentically Australian cuisine. The rising interest also reflects worldwide trends toward increasing environmental awareness. Indigenous plants and animals are popular partly because they have the potential to provide environmentally safe food sources.