Australian Screen

Australia’s audiovisual heritage online




Bush Tucker is Everywhere (c.1987)

Synopsis

A documentary about traditional bush tucker.

Curator’s notes

Bush Tucker is Everywhere – and it certainly is. This documentary shows us how to find and prepare food in the bush. The native flora of the Australian outback provided nutritional staples for Indigenous people for millennia, and the preparation of the food in the documentary certainly makes the food appealing and appetising. We are shown the gathering of the Kunga berry or the bush currant in midsummer. We are shown the technique used to separate the leaves and grass from the fruit. An elder takes children to collect wild figs, Puya – bush bean, wild oranges, bush potato, bread made from bush flour.

Bush Tucker is Everywhere promotes important elements of the Nganampa Anwernekenhe series, that is, that learning by showing and doing is so important in Indigenous cultures.