you will find beauty everywhere

Vincent van Gogh

Enjoy The Wild Foods

With every migrant of people around the world, food-plants were in the rucksacks. The first people of New Zealand transported their favourite sweet potato, our Aboriginal people travelled with seeds, and yams. American Indians carried their ketchup and corn cakes. In fact, where ever people travel, they bear the foods of their culture.

In steps – Permaculture!

Permaculture tries to build a resilient, sustainable culture. We try to ease pressure on the land. Instead of forcing the land to grow what we are accustomed to, we can be tolerant and learn how to enjoy what our land readily offers.

See Our Top Bush Tuckers

1. Finger Lime – Many of our friends hunger for this fruit. It performs well on the edge of a forest where it can get a little direct sunlight to form fruits.

1. Macadamia – the visiting children have learnt when they are ready to eat. They have a devoted smashing station made with two rocks. They look for slight blemishes on the shells. The pattern is mottled like a leopard skin. This develops when the fruit has fallen away and the nut has matured.
2. Native Raspberry – we select to grow the less seedy fruits. They deliciously tart and fruit nearly all year around but most importantly they are fruit over winter.
3. Dianella – Wollongong Uni Innovation Campus has the best we have ever tasted. And hardly anyone knows to eat them. These look stunning and taste great.
4. Walking-Stick Palm – small but delightful and easy to pick.
5. Anniseed Myrtle – Fantastic leaves for herb tea.
6. Sandpaper Fig (the skin is tough like a kiwifruit and the flesh is sweet). This grows to be a huge tree – so make sure it is not going to block the sun coming to your home or over your neighbours t also helps to hold the bank of a local creeks or an area too steep for other uses. Why mow an area when something like a giant local will happily grow there.
7. Native Rosella – the flowers are like a soft lettuce. This is a short-lived delicate shrub. Shrubs and understorey plants that are edible are hard to find in a permaculture system – so this is a must in our food jungle.
8. Davidson Plum – strong bitter flavour, spectacular plant, erect and ferny with fine pastel pink flowers. It is also an understorey plant until it reaches maturity.  The fruits fall when they are ready so keep a layer of soft mulch underneath to pillow their fall.
9. Sea grape – small fleshy fruits. Commonly grown in large areas like a steep bank.
10. Native Orange – the skin is bitter but the flesh is perfumed and sweet. There is variation in the fruits on the single tree. This plant deserves to be cultivated and developed.
11. Lilly Pilly – The best Lilly Pilly my family has tasted are ones that were growing in the carpark of MacArthur Square Shopping
    

    Centre. It grows happily here too. Search for varieties with big purple fruits

12. Lemon Myrtle – good for herb tea and as a perfume. We were very happy for years with this Myrtle until we discovered the Anniseed Myrtle.
13. Blueberry Ash – These fruits look pretty but a bit skinny in comparison with Dianella.  A bonus is it fruits late in summer when other plants are having a rest.
14. Bunya Bunya pine tree – our Bunya stayed in a big pot for 9 years. It worked tirelessly as our Christmas Tree. Finally, it got too big for the house so we planted it far from the house and out of way of children because the pine cones can reach 30kg. Boom – Bunya nuts punch down from the sky.

Come and taste some Bush Tucker in our special Bush Tucker Workshop with Narelle Happ.

Earn Credit towards your Permaculture Design Course by doing workshops with Permaculture Wollongong Insitute.