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Tasmania is home to an abundance of edible native plants if you know where to look and what to look for. This bush food has a long history with Indigenous people but are rarely found in the everyday Australian backyard.
First Nations elder, Aunty Kris Schaffer, is teaching Tasmanians proper protocols and practices to grow edible native plants in their own gardens.
Schaffer lives on Muwinina Country in Neika, Tasmania. This land has been cared for and sustained by her ancestors for thousands of years. She inherited a passion for nature from her parents and this evolved into a career as an Indigenous horticulturist and bush-food educator.
Kris performing a smoking ceremony at Analiese Gregory's home. Source: SBS Food
"Teaching is just a natural progression of living on the land and knowing the plants and animals," Schaffer says. "I learnt all about survival and safety in the bush and all of the bush skills. Being able to share that is part of my cultural practice and being on country."
Sharing my Indigenous heritage through food is just my responsibility.
Over the past few decades, Schaffer has designed and planted bush-food gardens in schools and communities across Tasmania. She also hosts workshops for families, where she teaches young children to identify, grow, harvest and preserve a range of edible native plants. This education provides her students with a new outlook on their connection to land and the Aboriginal stories associated with each plant.
Schaffer is currently working on a cookbook that will introduce people to the food Aboriginal peoples traditionally eat. She refers to it as the 'ABC of bush food' where people can learn how to grow native plants in their backyards and incorporate them into easy, everyday recipes.
This Tasmanian wallaby pie wouldn't be the same without a sprinkling of saltbush. Source: A Girl's Guide to Hunting, Fishing and Wild Cooking
"My new book brings in the by explaining the reason behind the naming of each plant and the story that goes with it," she explains. "Then also where that plant grows and its relation to the insects, reptiles, birds and animals that are a part of that ecosystem."
GREEN THUMB
How to nurture your own bush food garden
Wattleseed, saltbush, river mint and warrigal greens are among the native plants she recommends growing in a home garden.
Schaffer has enjoyed the challenge of reconnecting each plant with its storyline and learning the ecology and interconnectedness between all of Tasmania's plants and animals.
Before planting your own native garden, Schaffer encourages you to explore the history of each plant and the story of the land and people who first inhabited it.
Once you get a feel for cooking the fish, trout becomes a truly enjoyable thing to make. Source: A Girl's Guide to Hunting, Fishing and Wild Cooking
"It fits in with reconciliation," she says. "I hope that everyone can take a moment to realise that we're on a new pathway to understanding…how we look after ourselves and each other and what the proper protocols are."
BEAUTY OF BUSH FOOD
Celebrating Indigenous cultures with bush food and storytelling
Embracing bush food in her garden and kitchen is also Schaffer's way of honouring her ancestors and reconnecting with the land. She enjoyed the opportunity to share this passion on SBS Food's new show, , hosted by Analiese Gregory.
"It was beautiful working with Analiese because it brought back all my childhood memories," she says. “When I saw Analiese doing the floundering, that's all the things that I used to do as a child with my dad.
"We'd go pretty fishing overnight and floundering, and then go up and catch the sea-run trout. Dad and I would catch so many trout, we'd have trout for breakfast, lunch and dinner."
INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN CUISINE
This project is dedicated to raising the potential and profile of bush foods
