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Australian meals on wheels goes native

By Barbie Dutter in Sydney

11 February 2007 - (Sunday Telegraph,UK) - Fancy a spiny anteater casserole for lunch, or perhaps a spit-roasted lizard with a couple of juicy grubs on the side?

It sounds like the stuff of a television reality show, but pensioners in rural Australia may soon have such fare delivered to their doorstep in their daily meals on wheels.

The providers of the service in New South Wales, Australia's most populous state, are turning to traditional "bush tucker" to make their meals healthier and more appropriate for their elderly clients many of whom are Aboriginal.

Soon, they hope, the scheme will be so popular that pensioners across Australia -including the non-indigenous - will be reaping the benefits of a salt-free, low-fat, vitamin-rich diet.

The early focus will be on native fruit and vegetables, with a 25-acre bush tucker garden to be planted within months. It will provide ingredients such as guandong (native peach), bush tomato, bush bananas, desert lime, lemon myrtle and Kakadu plum.

But as soon as conservation and regulatory hurdles have been overcome, organisers intend to provide dishes using traditional bush meats such as goanna (lizard), echidna (spiny anteater), yabbies (crayfish) and freshwater turtles - alongside the more familiar kangaroo and emu. Fat and maggot-like witchetty grubs, an Aboriginal delicacy eaten raw or rolled in the hot ash of an open fire, may also feature on the menu.

Beryl Carmichael, an Aboriginal elder who is helping to set up the pilot scheme in the remote town of Menindee, said: "It's all coming from the request of our old people. They're getting sick of their ordinary meals and they want something from the bush, something they remember from their youth.

"We thought, if we establish a bush tucker garden, we can accommodate them. And we'll be using bush meats because they love the stews and pies you can make with kangaroo and emu."

Mrs Carmichael, 71, said that goanna could be roasted or cooked in the microwave, and tasted "like chicken, only stringier". The echidna, or spiny anteater is traditionally roasted over an open fire to melt its porcupine-like spikes. And as for witchetty grubs: "They're beautiful, juicy and soft, just like lamb's brains."

Les MacDonald, the chief executive of the New South Wales Meals on Wheels Association, has become something of a bush tucker evangelist, working to persuade government agencies, scientists and Aboriginal groups that native menus are both practical and desirable. He said that the consumption of too much "Western crap" had contributed to soaring rates of type two diabetes among Aboriginals, and a bush tucker diet appeared to be the obvious cure.

"Bush tucker is fantastic in terms of its nutritional content," he said. "It is rich in antioxidants and also has medicinal properties."

Arch Campbell, 86, who has been receiving meals on wheels at his Sydney home for five years, described the bush tucker scheme as "a quaint idea" and said he was keen to try it. "I have never eaten bush tucker, but I love the outback, and I like the sound of emu casserole and kangaroo," he said. "I would probably try a witchetty grub, but then I've always been one to try new things. I tried the Chinese menu once, but it didn't really suit me."

Source: The Telegraph

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