Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye and today
Speaker 1: I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated April May
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. As a reminder, Radio Eye is a
Speaker 1: reading service intended for people who are blind or have
Speaker 1: other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
Speaker 1: Please join me now for the article titled how Australian
Speaker 1: chefs and farmers are rediscovering the ingredients that have been
Speaker 1: there all along. From kangaroo grass to kakadoo plums, native
Speaker 1: foods are redefining diner's taste buds and deepening their connection
Speaker 1: to the land. By j Cheshi's kangaroo grass covers the
Speaker 1: hillside at Yambura, Bruce Pasco's farm in the East Gippsland
Speaker 1: region of Victoria. In this sparsely populated rural corner of
Speaker 1: Southeast Australia, the native weed doesn't warrant much thought. It's
Speaker 1: a sturdy bulwark against erosion and catnip for livestock and
Speaker 1: marsupials hopping in from the forest to Pasco. Though, the
Speaker 1: seventy eight year old author of a groundbreaking and controversial
Speaker 1: history of Aboriginal agriculture, Dark Emu, it's something more profound
Speaker 1: a portal to Australia's past, when kangaroo grass planketed the
Speaker 1: continent before imported pasture grass arrived with sheep and cattle,
Speaker 1: and the indigenous inhabitants ground its seeds between stones to
Speaker 1: make flour for flatbreads cooked on hot coals. Pasco's book,
Speaker 1: first published in twenty fourteen, paints a portrait of life
Speaker 1: before European settlement that diverges from many history books. Australia,
Speaker 1: he argues, was not populated exclusively by nomadic hunter gatherers
Speaker 1: living off what they scrounged from the land, as some
Speaker 1: eighteenth century English explorers had described it, a characterization that
Speaker 1: was later used to justify rapid conquest. Pasco, while digging
Speaker 1: through archives at the Victoria State Library in Melbourne, found
Speaker 1: historical accounts that told a different story of encounters with
Speaker 1: people living in permanent settlements and using complex systems of
Speaker 1: agriculture and aquaculture with stone farming tools and fish dams
Speaker 1: and irrigation trenches. In the journals of Major Thomas Mitchell,
Speaker 1: an explorer and surveyor who traversed eastern Australia in the
Speaker 1: eighteen thirties and forties, Pasco read of grass piled in
Speaker 1: hayricks so that the desert was softened into the agreeable
Speaker 1: semblance of a hayfield, of seed made by the natives
Speaker 1: into a kind of paste or bread, and of land
Speaker 1: patches that resembled ground broken with the hoe. George Gray,
Speaker 1: another explorer of the same period, wrote of encountering frequent
Speaker 1: wells and land perforated with holes the natives made to
Speaker 1: dig up yams. In Western Australia, a settler named Jesse
Speaker 1: Hammond wrote of encountering a wicker favents built across a
Speaker 1: stream and a platform above it, where local people stood
Speaker 1: to catch the fish as they swam through the race.
Speaker 1: Synthesizing these accounts and others, Pasco's book became a pop
Speaker 1: history bestseller in Australia and a political lightning rod. Most
Speaker 1: of what it describes, he writes, disappeared as European settlements
Speaker 1: and agricultures subsumed or Aboriginal land and food culture. People
Speaker 1: would say, when we first came to this country, you
Speaker 1: could run your fingers through the soil because of the
Speaker 1: intensity of the agriculture that had been going on. Other
Speaker 1: people were saying, we saw Aboriginal people driving kangaroos in
Speaker 1: a mob, Pascoe told me on a springtime visit to
Speaker 1: his farm. I didn't learn that in my history classes
Speaker 1: any of that. It had been hidden from us deliberately. Pasco,
Speaker 1: a well known public intellectual since the nineteen eighties and
Speaker 1: the author of more than two dozen books of fiction,
Speaker 1: poetry and history, with an unread, truly white beard and
Speaker 1: a wide furrowed face, says that he likewise grew up
Speaker 1: with holes in his family's history. Raised in and around Melbourne,
Speaker 1: he learned about his Cornish ancestors, who had come to
Speaker 1: Adelaide in the nineteenth century to work in the mines
Speaker 1: on Australia's south coast, but only much later in life
Speaker 1: did he hear from relatives that he had indigenous ancestry too.
Speaker 1: He had also long dreamed of living off the land.
Speaker 1: When he was a young school teacher and just starting
Speaker 1: out as a writer, he lived on his own seven
Speaker 1: hundred seventy acre farm raising cattle. I was playing at
Speaker 1: farming because I loved it, he told me. The experience
Speaker 1: stuck with him even after he moved back to Melbourne,
Speaker 1: where he worked as a researcher for Victoria's Department of
Speaker 1: Education and later as a professor of Indigenous Agriculture at
Speaker 1: the University of Melbourne. Then in twenty eighteen, he bought Jumburah.
Speaker 1: In the years since, along with his life partner Lynn
Speaker 1: Harwood seventy four, also a former sp school teacher, and
Speaker 1: a pair of Australian cattle dogs, Pasco has worked to
Speaker 1: revive long ignored aboriginal foods and cultivation methods. The one
Speaker 1: hundred forty acre farm, a former cattle ranch, was cut
Speaker 1: from old growth rainforest along the banks of the Wallagaro River.
Speaker 1: Pasco is now working the land to grow a host
Speaker 1: of indigenous edible plants. Kangaroo grass, almost entirely forgotten as
Speaker 1: a staple of the Australian diet. Twenty seven percent protein
Speaker 1: he boasts is threshed into flower that's sold to local
Speaker 1: bakers and a few chefs in Melbourne through his culinary enterprise,
Speaker 1: Black Duck Foods, which seeks to influence Australian agriculture toward
Speaker 1: environmental sustainability and greater social inclusivity. In a small garden
Speaker 1: behind his home, caged to keep out kangaroos, wallabies and wombats,
Speaker 1: Pasco has planted neat rows of chocolate lilies, vanilla lilies,
Speaker 1: and bulbine lilies, native perennials with squat finger tubers dangling
Speaker 1: in bunches from the roots. He dug one out and
Speaker 1: handed it to meat to taste. It was extra crunchy
Speaker 1: like a radish and subtly sweet. You can shop it
Speaker 1: up and use it in dumplings, use it in a salad,
Speaker 1: eat it raw, fry it, bake it, put it in
Speaker 1: a curry. He said they're very forgiving plants and cooking
Speaker 1: because they hold their texture. In a makeshift nursery nearby,
Speaker 1: potted saplings of native quandong and courageong trees were beginning
Speaker 1: to sprout. When they mature, the quandongs will produce a
Speaker 1: tart fruit with twice the vitamin sea of an orange.
Speaker 1: The couragengs will produce edible roots with a sweet coconut taste.
Speaker 1: We bought this farm in order to try and educate
Speaker 1: Australians about their food. Pasco said it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: a conventional farm. It's wild food, a lot of it.
Speaker 1: In the nearly two hundred and fifty years since the
Speaker 1: so called first fleet carrying a one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: British convicts established the first settlement in what would become
Speaker 1: Sydney in seventeen eighty eight. Australia has drifted steadily away
Speaker 1: from its native bounty. Subsequent waves of migration brought foods
Speaker 1: from everywhere else pork pies, lamb roasts, shrimp, wantons, lasagna.
Speaker 1: The original foods eaten on the continent for thousands of
Speaker 1: years were largely forgotten as indigenous communities came under assault,
Speaker 1: their languages outlawed, their belief systems eroded. The first thing
Speaker 1: that goes is culture. Pasco told me, genetically your Aboriginal,
Speaker 1: but you have no knowledge unless it's passed on to you.
Speaker 1: By the mid nineteenth century, many indigenous communities had been
Speaker 1: forced off their ancestral lands and were living on government
Speaker 1: rations of white flour, refined sugar, and tinned beef. In
Speaker 1: the popular imagination, the wild foods of the continent some
Speaker 1: sixty five hundred edible plants and animals have been documented,
Speaker 1: were reduced to survivalist fair known by the blanket colloquialism.
Speaker 1: Bush tucker, an archetype emerged of the ossy bushmen, most
Speaker 1: memorably caricatured on film by Crocodile Dundee in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties as a rugged individualist with enough Aboriginal food knowledge
Speaker 1: to survive alone in the outback. On Australian television there
Speaker 1: was bush Tucker Man, a former Australian Army officer named
Speaker 1: Les Hiddens, who from nineteen eighty eight to nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: six traveled through remote regions, surviving on snakes, lizards and
Speaker 1: mangrove worms. But over the past forty years, as Australians
Speaker 1: have grappled with the legacy of policies and attitudes that
Speaker 1: decimated Aboriginal culture, some native foods have begun making in
Speaker 1: roads into wider notions of Australian identity. There has been
Speaker 1: a reappraisal, especially in the restaurant world, with chefs adding
Speaker 1: native finger limes and lemon, myrtle, bush tomatoes and cockadoo plums,
Speaker 1: kangaroo steaks and emo sausages to their kitchen arsenals. While
Speaker 1: popular tastes can be slow to change, a handful of
Speaker 1: chefs and TV personalities have broken through to the mainstream,
Speaker 1: many of them outsiders, it turns out, who are perhaps
Speaker 1: less burdened by the cultural baggage of growing up in Australia.
Speaker 1: Jean Paul Brunetaux, whose family moved to Australia from France
Speaker 1: when he was twelve, debuted one of the first restaurant
Speaker 1: men used to mix European cooking techniques with Australia's native
Speaker 1: ingredients when in nineteen eighty three he took over Round Trees,
Speaker 1: located in a Sydney suburb. Brunetou started his cooking career
Speaker 1: in the Australian Merchant Navy, and he got the idea
Speaker 1: for the reimagined restaurant while traveling the world. It dawned
Speaker 1: on me that wherever I went, I could eat local cuisine.
Speaker 1: He told me recently. If I was in Thailand, I
Speaker 1: could get Thai food. In Germany, I'd get German food.
Speaker 1: But whenever I came back to Australia, I always thought, well,
Speaker 1: we don't really have an Australian cuisine. At one port
Speaker 1: of call in New Zealand, he tasted the foods of
Speaker 1: the native Mayori people and a light bulb went off,
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, He said, hang on a sec
Speaker 1: what did the original people in Australia eat? He returned
Speaker 1: home from his tour of duty and began researching the
Speaker 1: traditional Aboriginal diet, as Pasco would do decades later. Bruneto
Speaker 1: read through accounts from early explorers and settlers. This was
Speaker 1: pre internet, he said, so it met libraries and historical texts.
Speaker 1: He began to track down ingredients and experiment. Every time
Speaker 1: I tasted something, I was wowed, he said. It was amazing.
Speaker 1: I thought, why isn't this used? Why don't we know
Speaker 1: about this? There's a cuisine in this. At Round Trees,
Speaker 1: the first Australian restaurant with a fully native concept, as
Speaker 1: Bruneto describes it, he served barbecued witchety grubs, wood eating
Speaker 1: moth larvae with a nutty taste in peanut sauce. He
Speaker 1: introduced urban Australians to quandongs and lemon myrtle, a tropical
Speaker 1: shrub with lemony leaves, and he successfully lobbied the government
Speaker 1: of New South Wales to approve the use of kangaroo
Speaker 1: meat in restaurants. It was pioneering work and I loved it,
Speaker 1: he said. By the nineteen nineties, a full fledged native
Speaker 1: foods movement seemed to be gaining momentum. In ten years,
Speaker 1: Australia's cuisine is going to be so new, so different
Speaker 1: from the rest of the world, that it's going to
Speaker 1: have an effect like nouvelle cuisine in France ten years ago,
Speaker 1: Bruneto predicted in the Montreal Gazette in nineteen ninety. Bush
Speaker 1: Tucker catches On read a headline in the Christian Science
Speaker 1: Monitor the following year touting the hot new trend in
Speaker 1: outback cuisine. But while niche businesses sprang up supplying native ingredients,
Speaker 1: promoting especially their superfood nutrient rich qualities, no explosion in
Speaker 1: restaurants focused on native foods materialized. When Mark Olif, an
Speaker 1: Indigenous chef from a sprawling suburb called Dapto on the
Speaker 1: coast of New South Wales, opened his first solo restaurant
Speaker 1: in Sydney in the mid nineties, serving crocodile meat lasagna
Speaker 1: and kangaroo loin with pepperberry sauce as a stand in
Speaker 1: for stekopovre. The new enthusiasm was already waning. Olive called
Speaker 1: his restaurant Midland, after historical feasting places found along the
Speaker 1: Australian coast, where Indigenous people left behind scattered and buried fishbones,
Speaker 1: seashells and other meal time detritus. His restaurant lasted only
Speaker 1: two years. People couldn't understand what I was trying to do,
Speaker 1: he told me recently. It was way ahead of its time.
Speaker 1: A gregarious, performative figure, Olive went on to study film
Speaker 1: and TV in Melbourne, and he found better luck promoting
Speaker 1: native foods when he successfully pitched a show to Australian
Speaker 1: TV called out Back Cafe. In the first episode, which
Speaker 1: premiered in two thousand six, he foraged for native ingredients
Speaker 1: and pieced together a telegenic spread, a salad of cold yabbees,
Speaker 1: a native crayfish pizza topped with smoked kangaroo ice cream
Speaker 1: infused with wattle seeds. It introduced Australians to a lot
Speaker 1: of indigenous herbs, spices, things they'd never heard of. He said,
Speaker 1: That's where my career started. The program ran for just
Speaker 1: two seasons, but it helped make Olive a celebrity. He
Speaker 1: has appeared regularly on telege since as a judge on
Speaker 1: the cooking competition The Chef's Line, as a co host
Speaker 1: of The Foraging focused on Country Kitchen, and has traveled
Speaker 1: the world as a sort of cultural ambassador. It's been
Speaker 1: a good forty years I've been working with this stuff.
Speaker 1: Olive told me of his experience promoting native ingredients, and
Speaker 1: it's only since reality TV started thirteen fourteen years ago
Speaker 1: that it's moved forward. For a while, Australians seemed most
Speaker 1: interested in engaging with native foods on television. Jacqueson Frillo,
Speaker 1: a Scotsman who settled in Australia in two thousand, was
Speaker 1: another chef and another outsider to make a name for
Speaker 1: himself by celebrating native ingredients on Australian TV. Like Bruneto,
Speaker 1: he had been startled to learn that the country had
Speaker 1: no widely recognized pre colonial cuisine to speak of, and
Speaker 1: he began visiting indigenous communities to learned about foods most
Speaker 1: chefs ignored. In twenty thirteen, he opened his flagship restaurant
Speaker 1: Urana and Adelaide, serving an elaborate tasting menu heavy on
Speaker 1: native ingredients. In twenty fourteen, I spent a week in
Speaker 1: the outback with Sonfrillo in a remote corner of the
Speaker 1: Kimberley in Western Australia. We slept under the stars and
Speaker 1: ate the wild food around us. A friend of Zanfrello's
Speaker 1: cooked us a feast of kangaroo tale the sinewy, gelatinous
Speaker 1: meat roasted in a pit he dug in the ground.
Speaker 1: Son Frillo spoke of his dream of creating a network
Speaker 1: of food suppliers through a foundation he intended to start,
Speaker 1: and of plans to catalog everything in a database of
Speaker 1: native foods. Sonfrillo's fame skyrocketed as he opened new restaurants
Speaker 1: and became a fixture on Australian TV as a judge
Speaker 1: on the cooking competition program Master Chef. He remained an
Speaker 1: evangelist for native ingredients, but three years ago, after public
Speaker 1: reports of financial mismanagement at his foundation, Zanfrillo was found
Speaker 1: dead in a Melbourne hotel room at the age of
Speaker 1: forty six. Although his cause of death was never made public,
Speaker 1: family and friends have suggested that Sonfrillo, who was married
Speaker 1: and had four children, died unexpectedly of natural causes. Today,
Speaker 1: Australia's most prominent restaurant showcasing native ingredients is run by
Speaker 1: another transplant chef, Ben Shuri from New Zealand. His restaurant Attica,
Speaker 1: is a high end yet understated gastronomic gem nestled between
Speaker 1: a massage therapist's studio and a veterinary hospital in a
Speaker 1: sleepy inner suburb of Melbourne called Ripponlia. In two thousand five,
Speaker 1: Shuri responded to an ad for a head chef job
Speaker 1: at what was then a modest neighborhood bistro. It lacked
Speaker 1: a clear eye identity, he recalled recently. The owner didn't
Speaker 1: work in hospitality and wasn't even present most of the time.
Speaker 1: He told me to make it whatever I wanted. Churie
Speaker 1: introduced a new menu that fused references from his eclectic
Speaker 1: background as a chef, a mix of Thai, French and
Speaker 1: Australian influences. It was more autobiographical than of any particular place.
Speaker 1: Soon the restaurant was racking up raves and food pilgrims
Speaker 1: flooded Rippamly. A decade ago, Schuie began a decisive shift,
Speaker 1: inspired in part by meeting Pasco, who was promoting Dark
Speaker 1: Emu at a food and ideas festival. That book had
Speaker 1: a profound effect on me. Schu Ree told me it
Speaker 1: totally flipped the script, dismantled the lie of Aboriginal people
Speaker 1: being solely hunter gatherers, and presented them as farmers, which
Speaker 1: of course they were. It was so obvious, it was
Speaker 1: right there. Schurie had already been experimenting with ingredients. He
Speaker 1: foraged himself. I poisoned myself multiple times, he told me.
Speaker 1: But Pasco introduced him to Aboriginal elders, who taught him
Speaker 1: the traditional uses of the foods he'd been collecting and
Speaker 1: other intriguing ingredients. He learned how to turn bunya nuts,
Speaker 1: the world's largest pine nuts, into a chestnutty puree. How
Speaker 1: to grill fish wrapped and bark from the paper bark tree,
Speaker 1: how to harness green ants as a tangy pepperys seasoning.
Speaker 1: Attica's chefs now cook almost exclusively with native ingredients. We
Speaker 1: haven't used hard hoof animals here for some time, said Shrwery,
Speaker 1: chatting in the restaurant's dining room. We prefer to use
Speaker 1: wallaby and kangaroo and emu and crocodile. Guests would begin
Speaker 1: arriving for dinner in a few hours. On a wooden tray,
Speaker 1: he'd laid out a selection of produce from the restaurant's larder.
Speaker 1: He held up a golf ball sized fruit with the
Speaker 1: bright purple skin. This ouh ray plum is intense, he said.
Speaker 1: It's sour on an almost unprecedented level. It makes an
Speaker 1: amazing jam. The fruit is also known as Davidson plum
Speaker 1: after a nineteenth century sugar cane grower, John Davidson, but
Speaker 1: Scheweery prefers the Aboriginal name. Davidson was a notorious murderer
Speaker 1: of Aboriginal people. He said, herein lies the trickiness of
Speaker 1: our country. There were also sprigs of salt bush, a
Speaker 1: wild salty shrub that grows on beeches and in deserts
Speaker 1: across the country. And red champagne finger limes with tiny
Speaker 1: sour pearls sometimes called citrus caviare bursting out from under
Speaker 1: their ruddy skin. My twelve course dinner that night included
Speaker 1: a miniature map of Australia, playfully constructed from thinly sliced
Speaker 1: raw fish, with tiny dollops of native produce deposited around
Speaker 1: various corners of the country, smidgeens of munch tree trees,
Speaker 1: tiny berries from South Australia that taste like spiced apples,
Speaker 1: of Geraldton wax, the soapy herbaceous leaves of a shrub
Speaker 1: from Western Australia of waregaal greens, a native spinach from
Speaker 1: New South Wales and elsewhere of rainforest cherry, a tangy
Speaker 1: sweet berry from Queensland. A buttery tart shell came filled
Speaker 1: with pepperberry cream and a sprinkle of green ants from
Speaker 1: the Northern Territory, adding a citrusy zing to the dish,
Speaker 1: which was served on a plate with hyperrealistic ants painted
Speaker 1: on it. Crocodile rib meat arrived on flatbread in a
Speaker 1: sort of sweet and savory gyro smeared with macedamia nut,
Speaker 1: yogurt and native honey. A classic Australian meat pie was
Speaker 1: stuffed with stewed kangaroo and paired with a shot of
Speaker 1: dark Emu Lager, a local beer brewed with native grass
Speaker 1: seeds and named after Pascoe's book. Schwelry has forged personal
Speaker 1: relationship with many of his suppliers, who are often isolated
Speaker 1: and working with very small quantities. We don't really have
Speaker 1: a consistent supply chain for some of these foods, he said.
Speaker 1: It may seem odd then that some ingredients I first
Speaker 1: tasted a decade ago have become big business, but not
Speaker 1: in the way chefs like Showery would hope. Demand has
Speaker 1: come instead from the pharmaceutical and beauty industries think skin
Speaker 1: creams made with finger limes and cacadoo plums, and shampoos
Speaker 1: infused with river mint. At the same time, Aboriginal owned
Speaker 1: businesses have been mostly left out of the expanding native
Speaker 1: foods and botanical sector, accounting for just two percent of
Speaker 1: all generated revenue according to a recent estimate. Pasco is
Speaker 1: working to even the playing field to pass down traditional knowledge.
Speaker 1: He explained, Aboriginal elders sometimes encourage younger generations to gather
Speaker 1: plants for interested outsiders, such as cosmetic industry representatives who
Speaker 1: show up in Aboriginal communities. They more or less donate
Speaker 1: those plants, and then the cosmetics industry think that's the price,
Speaker 1: Pascoe told me, so we're having to educate the market
Speaker 1: to be a bit more respectful. One morning in Perth,
Speaker 1: in Western Australia, I met with the founders of Gather Foods,
Speaker 1: an Aboriginal owned business, in their kitchen and a historic
Speaker 1: building of the Aboriginal Advancement Council, a civil rights group.
Speaker 1: The company launched in twenty sixteen as a catering business,
Speaker 1: before expanding to include events, food production, and a wholesale
Speaker 1: arm selling a wide range of native spices, herbs, jams
Speaker 1: and sauces. We started the business really to take the
Speaker 1: narrative back around native food, Jerry Mattera, a co founder
Speaker 1: and a trained chef raised in a small town south
Speaker 1: of Perth, told me. Along with funneling native ingredients into
Speaker 1: corporate catering gigs, gather foods hosts, bush Tucker talks and
Speaker 1: tastings experiences that offer tips on using, sourcing and growing
Speaker 1: native edible plants, with an option to include traditional dance
Speaker 1: performances and smoking ceremonies. The hope is to get people
Speaker 1: thinking a little bit differently about native foods. As Matera
Speaker 1: explained it, our ancestors have been here for over sixty
Speaker 1: thousand years and people should know that. The company works
Speaker 1: with the network of farms around the country to source
Speaker 1: native ingredients, which it slips into a range of sleekly
Speaker 1: packaged commercial products pints of chocolate, wattleseed ice cream, jars
Speaker 1: of chili and desert lime flavored roasted nuts, bottles of
Speaker 1: gin infused with salt bush and sunrise lime. This year
Speaker 1: on the waterfront in Fremantle, just south of Perth, Materira
Speaker 1: and his team are opening their own culinary complex with
Speaker 1: the cafe, retail shop and an event space, and they
Speaker 1: have been working on exporting their products globally. I feel
Speaker 1: like we're at the tip of an explosion, Matira said.
Speaker 1: Like many champions of indigenous Australian ingredients, Materia sees Pasco
Speaker 1: as a personal hero. All that he's about is bringing
Speaker 1: native food to the forefront, Materira told me. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, Pasco published a new book, Black Duck, A
Speaker 1: Year at Yamburah, chronicling both life on his farm as
Speaker 1: it emerged from the COVID nineteen pandemic and the public
Speaker 1: reaction to dark Emu with pastoral sketches by Harwood. Since
Speaker 1: buying the property, he's tackled his share of logistical challenges,
Speaker 1: from staff and equipment shortages to devastating wildfires. While launching
Speaker 1: an agricultural business from scratch, He's made his life more
Speaker 1: difficult by hewing closely to indigenous growing techniques. We are
Speaker 1: not applying fertilizer except in the very early stages, not
Speaker 1: providing much water because part of the argument is these
Speaker 1: practices are sustainable and the old people did it with
Speaker 1: what was available, so we have to do it with
Speaker 1: what is available. He uses fire as a land management
Speaker 1: tool firestick farming. The Aboriginal community calls it conducting controlled
Speaker 1: burns to clear out invasive vegetation and encourage new growth.
Speaker 1: The weather was turning windy. Harwood was preparing lamb stew
Speaker 1: for dinner. Near By, a mob of kangaroos emerged from
Speaker 1: the forest to graze. As we spoke, Pasco noticed smoke
Speaker 1: rising from the river bank, and he popped down to
Speaker 1: investigate the embers of a fire lit earlier that day
Speaker 1: had come back to life. Jumping on to the dock
Speaker 1: where he moors his motor boat in the river, he
Speaker 1: grabbed a bucket and doused the burning planks, then rushed
Speaker 1: back up the hill. He returned a few minutes later
Speaker 1: with a vat of water and a powerful hose, and
Speaker 1: soon the fire was out. Kangaroo grass farming, it turns out,
Speaker 1: is rigorous work, and the business has been a struggle.
Speaker 1: But Pasco has hope. It's very boutique at the moment,
Speaker 1: he admitted, but sooner or later he felt sure it
Speaker 1: would catch on and if we have anything to do
Speaker 1: with it, there will be cultural acknowledgment and Aboriginal people
Speaker 1: will benefit. To hasten that change. In early twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: Pasco brought on new partners at the farm, handing day
Speaker 1: to day management over to members of the local Indigenous community,
Speaker 1: and he has set in motion plans to transfer ownership.
Speaker 1: A few years ago, in the Sydney Opera House, Olive
Speaker 1: opened a new incarnation of Bidden, more than twenty five
Speaker 1: years after closing the first. It's a more ambitious version
Speaker 1: of the original restaurant, serving kangaroo prejute, crocodile tanduri, geraldton
Speaker 1: wax panacotta and cocktails made with green ant infused gin.
Speaker 1: Among restaurants, it may be the most high profile bridge
Speaker 1: yet between ancient and modern Australia, another step toward bringing
Speaker 1: native ingredients into the mainstream. At the restaurant's inauguration in
Speaker 1: July twenty twenty three, Olive spoke to some four hundred
Speaker 1: well wishers, who included his ninety year old father. Recalling
Speaker 1: his early days as a chef, Olive told the crowd,
Speaker 1: if you said to me that an indigenous bloke from
Speaker 1: Dapto would one day open a restaurant at the Sydney
Speaker 1: Opera House, I would have said, that's mission impossible. This
Speaker 1: concludes readings from the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your reader
Speaker 1: has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and have
Speaker 1: a great day.