White Hat's Brief History of Australian Food

A Brief History of Food in Australia - Part 1

Somewhere around 47,000 years ago the first humans arrived in Australia. There has never been a complete land bridge from Asia so the first humans to set foot on Australia had to make several over-the-horizon sea voyages into the unknown to reach here, making them the most accomplished seafarers of their time. As practised sailors we can assume that seafood made up a good part of their diet.

Upon reaching the top end they came across a whole range of strange and wondrous animals. “Yum” they thought “a change of diet”. Meanwhile they were being observed by numbers of pairs of eyes just above water level. “Yum” thought the crocs “a change of diet”. Meanwhile the humans were discussing the local vegetation. “Do you think those berries are poisonous?” “I don’t know – you should try some.” “Why don’t you try some?” “Well somebody’s got to try some”. On a nearby muddy riverbank the crocs were discussing their latest discovery – “You haven’t tried humans? You reeeeally must dahling! A bit crunchy, but they are free range.”

Within a remarkably short time humans had spread across the main landmass of Australia and had already commenced changing the ecology of the continent forever. Dinosaurs had long since disappeared from Australia but there was a range of large creatures now known as mega fauna which offered a tempting source of protein. The adults could prove a challenge for humans to kill but the younger animals were less of a problem, particularly as initially they may not have learned to become afraid of humans.

We don’t have any hard evidence of the available menu at the time so here is our guess.

Entrees & finger foods:

• Trunk of palorchestes azael pickled in salt water with bush tomatoes and bush pepper.
• Seared skewers of zaglossus hacketti. After long slow searing the quills of this echidna the size of a sheep could be torn out and the adhering meat eaten in a delicate fashion.

Soup:

• Procoptodon goliah tail soup. This giant kangaroo with its flat face was capable of generating a hearty soup. The real challenge was how you can boil water for a number of hours in a society which has not learned to extract and work metals.

Mains:

• Diprotodon optatum slow roasted on a bed of coals. This wombatocerous was just the thing if you having a number of friends over.
• Zygomaturus tasmanicus steaks lightly seared with lemon myrtle leaves. This bullock-like creature may well have tasted familiar to modern palates.

Or for those who prefer white meat:

• Drumstick of dromornis stirtoni roasted in a paperbark parcel. One drumstick serves 24 – this flightless bird was big.

Food on the run:

• The fast food of the period was probably thylacoleo carnifex served rare and consumed on the run before mum (who was a marsupial lion) returned.

A Brief History of Food in Australia - part 3

By the time Europeans arrived in Australia, Aboriginal man was definitely at the top of the food chain. The megafauna which were candidates for domestication and an agrarian lifestyle had become extinct not long after the arrival of Aboriginal man and by now a relatively small population of Aborigines was consuming the majority of animal protein in Australia and, through fire farming, was almost certainly consuming more of the edible grasses and grains than all the other herbivores. The most prized source of this animal protein was the kangaroo.

Tim Flannery is a scientist, historian and conservationist of international repute. He has written a number of books including The Future Eaters, and discovered two new species of kangaroo. Here is what he has to say on the matter.

“So extensive was Aboriginal hunting that large marsupials were rare at the time of European contact . . . in the 1840s John Gould felt both red kangaroos and koalas were doomed to extinction. It is also astonishing to read explorers’ journals and read how often they killed a kangaroo or a seal only to find a broken-off spear tip in the creature’s body.”

Fire farming caused the extinction of many smaller species, particularly insects, but produced suitable grazing grassland for kangaroos and thus an efficient ambush and hunting ground for man.

We tend to get a skewed view of Aboriginal life today because the communities remaining with traditional language and lifestyle are usually in the toughest environments – the bits the whitefellah wasn’t interested in until mining came along. However the great majority of Aboriginal people initially lived on the productive land of the south-east coast. It was this land that was most attractive to the whitefellah and this land where the blackfellah traditions are least visible today. At the time of European contact, shellfish, eels, lizards, smaller marsupials and certain plants still formed part of the Aboriginal diet but for many, kangaroo was the main source of protein.

Cooking kangaroo was fairly straightforward. Build a large fie and when the flames have died down, throw the kangaroo on and heap some of the hot coals on top. In the top end this might occur in a trench where other caught animals such as snakes, turtles etc would be thrown on then the whole affair covered with earth for half a day or more. In the colder south, the roo might be partially skinned first then wrapped in damp bark to stop the outside flesh from searing. The skins would be dried and used for ceremonial cloaks and other purposes. In the end, every part of the roo would be eaten except the bones.

see also:

• The White Hat Guide to Cooking Kangaroo & Wallaby

A Brief History of Australian Food - part 4

After Europeans had arrived with their European farm animals and European crops it was still hard going in the bush and on the farm. Animals take time to rear and crops take time to grow, but European traditions had long since found ways of filling the gaps. As early as 1600, Oliver de Serres wrote:

“No man need ever have an ill-provisioned house if there be but attached to it a dovecot, a warren and a fishpond wherein meat may be found as readily at hand as if it were stored in a larder”.

Around older properties today you may still spy a dovecot or a dam with fish and yabbies and as for rabbits – now there’s an idea.

Out the back of an established farmhouse you were likely to find a dairy. This may have a small internal moat which served the dual purpose of keeping the creepy-crawlies and also, through evaporation, keeping the milk, butter and cream cool. Also you were likely to find a room enclosed with wire netting for hanging and corning the carcases and meat. Without refrigeration, foods could be preserved by a few methods including drying, smoking, and salting (or corning or pickling). The corning room would contain a large barrel of salted water for corning meat.

Many Anglo-Australian recipes date from this period and it is fashionable to dismiss them as somehow uncultured in a time when ingredients now come refrigerated under plastic and we can throw them out if they go off. However many of these recipes are great examples of making the most of limited resources and, as such, maybe should not be regarded as so unfashionable in a world where food resources are under challenge.

Here is one of our offerings form that period:

• The White Hat recipe for corned beef