Bush Tucker Field Guide

Discover the fascinating secrets of Australia's bush tucker with Les Hiddins, the Bush Tucker Man. Les describes more than 170 foods and medicines and their unique and often unusual uses, from the gulf plum to the green ant.

Describes 170 foods and medicines and their unique and often unusual uses.

Major Les Hiddins, best known as the Bush Tucker Man, has spent a lifetime travelling northern Australia. Here, Les shares his knowledge and passions, inviting readers to follow the bush tucker trail to explore the outback, and to understand more about this unique country.

‘This is a book about Australian food, not the foods that European Australians cooked from ingredients they brought with them, but the flora and fauna that nourished the Aboriginal peoples for over 50,000 years. It is because European Australians have hardly touched these foods for over 200 years that I am writing it.’ We celebrate cultural and culinary diversity, yet shun foods that grew here before white settlers arrived. We love ‘superfoods’ from exotic locations, yet reject those that grow here. We say we revere sustainable local produce, yet ignore Australian native plants and animals that are better for the land than those European ones. In this, the most important of his books, John Newton boils down these paradoxes by arguing that if you are what you eat, we need to eat different foods: foods that will help to reconcile us with the land and its first inhabitants. But the tide is turning. European Australians are beginning to accept and relish the flavours of Australia, everything from kangaroo to quandongs, from fresh muntries to the latest addition, magpie goose. With recipes from chefs such as Peter Gilmore, Maggie Beer and René Redzepi’s sous chef Beau Clugston, The Oldest Foods on Earth will convince you that this is one food revolution that really matters.

Tim Low has provided a truly reliable guide to our edible flora, making identification easy. Thus it is a perfect companion for bushwalkers, naturalists, scientists and, with emphasis on wild food cuisine, gourmets. Low describes more than 180 plants - from the most tasty and significant plant foods of southern and eastern Australia to the more important and spectacular inland and tropical foods. Distribution maps are provided with each description plus notes on how these plants were used in the past and can be used today. Beautifully illustrated with colour photographs and line drawings there is also a guide to poisonous and non-poisonous plants, and information on introduced food plants, the nutrients found in wild food plants, on bush survival, and how to forage for and cook with wild plants.

A decade ago, Tim Low journeyed to the remote northernmost tip of Australia. Instead of the pristine rain forests he expected, he found jungles infested with Latin American carpet grass and feral cattle. That incident helped inspire Feral Future, a passionate account of the history and implications of invasive species in that island nation, with consequences for ecological communities around the globe. Australia is far from alone in facing horrific ecological and economic damage from invading plants and animals, and in Low's capable hands, Australia's experiences serve as a wake-up call for all of us. He covers how invasive species like cane toads and pond apple got to Australia (often through misguided but intentional introductions) and what we can do to stop them. He also covers the many pests that Australia has exported to the world, including the paperbark tree (Melaleuca) that infests hundreds of thousands of acres in south Florida.

Outback Survival is a timeless, practical run down on everything you need to know to survive in the outback. Bob Cooper's incredible bushcraft skills have been developed through more than 25 years of experience in Australia's harsh outback. He has picked up tools of survival from the experiences of living with traditional Aboriginal communities, instructing with Special Forces Units, lecturing with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Service on desert survival in the Mexican Desert, delivering wilderness lessons in the UK and learning the skills of the bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. Bob has put his own lessons to the test, dropping himself off in the 42C heat of the Australian desert with only a map and soap box sized survival kit, no food, water or sleeping gear, and a 10 day walk across 160km of rough terrain back to safety. He did this alone and showed that with the right knowledge of the land, you can survive in even the harshest of conditions. The outback of Australia is one of the most unforgiving regions of the world, but Bob is committed to protecting and enhancing the experience people have when venturing out into the bush.

In this gorgeous and compact book, Samantha Martin - the 'Bush Tukka Woman' - shares her knowledge and love of bush tukka as taught to her by her mother and other Aboriginal elders. Her Bush Tukka Guide offers rich and wonderful insights into how Aboriginal people survived for centuries unearthing the bounty of this sometimes lush and often desolate land. The book is divided into three chapters covering plants, animals and some recipes to get you started using bush tukka at home. Learn how to find billygoat plums and mountain bush pepper in the wild; discover the reasons Aboriginal people ate magpie geese and honey ants; and test out the delicious flavours of bush tukka recipes like bunya nut pesto, lemon myrtle slow-cooked kangaroo or caramelised cluster figs with ice-cream.