Clarence Slockee, Aboriginal Education Officer, leads guided Aboriginal heritage tours of the Royal Botanic Gardens
Bush foods – some of which are exceptional sources of antioxidants, the CSIRO recently found – are growing strong at the three NSW Botanic Gardens.
At the Royal Botanic Gardens, a display called Cadi Jam Ora: First Encounters explores the Cadigal people's understanding of plants and the environment.
Bush foods in the display include the Daguba (or Lilly Pilly, the European name), the fruit of which is eaten raw and the Wad-ang-gari (Heath Banksia), the flowers of which were soaked in water to produce a sweet, high-energy drink.
Mount Tomah Botanic Garden, in the Blue Mountains on the edge of the Hawkesbury region, features story boards describing how the local Darug Aboriginal people lived and how they used plants for bush foods.
The seasonal cycles of plants dictated Darug people's movement around their territories. Their staple diet was the edible lily tuber that they replanted each season in the flats around the Hawkesbury-Nepean (Deerubin) River.
The D'harawal people are the traditional owners of the Mount Annan Botanic Gardens. They had an intimate knowledge of edible plants. Some of these plants were potentially poisonous, but the D'harawal knew how to treat them in order to make them edible.
The most important of these was the 'burrawang' (Macrozamia). Its highly toxic seeds were pounded, placed in running water for up to two weeks to wash away the toxin, then pounded again. The resulting flour was baked into flat cakes that were soft to eat and formed a staple of the D'harawal diet.
Bush tucker tours
At the Royal Botanic Gardens, join Aboriginal Education Officer, Clarence Slockee, on a guided Aboriginal heritage tour. The tours introduce traditional music, dance and artefacts, and include bush food tastings. Tours operate every Friday at 2pm during February (there are no tours in January). From March the tours will be on at 10am on Fridays. Phone 9231 8134 to book or visit the Royal Botanic Gardens website for more details.
Guided walking tours at Mount Annan Botanic Garden also investigate bush foods. For bookings and information about availability, phone 4634 7935.
Find out more
A Royal Botanic Gardens' publication called Bush Foods of New South Wales, by Kathy Stewart and Bob Percival, is available from the Gardens Shop
Visit the CSIRO website for more information on antioxidants in bush foods.