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Christmas Down Under: temperatures soar, the work ethic plummets and
an entire nation packs its bags and goes on hols. Now the cruel choices
begin. Will it be thongs, the beach and a tinny or two? Or perhaps it’s
time to dust off the banana chair, chill the vino and indulge in a fat juicy
novel or back issues of ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ.

Whatever the decision, ‘That Question’ will hang in the air like the
rhythmic buzzing of cicadas and the scent of factor 15 sunscreen. ‘What
shall we have for Christmas dinner?’

Many Aussies will plump for tradition. Some, remembering Empire, will
toast the Queen, then sit down to a heavy afternoon meal of stuffed turkey,
roast potatoes and gravy, followed by mince pies and gloriously steamy plum
puddings soaked in brandy butter sauce. Others will toss prawns and a few
snags on the barbie, quaff numerous stubbies and honour tradition through
ritual arguments with visiting rellies. Meanwhile, another group of Australians
will throw custom to the wind and enjoy a meal that celebrates the climate
and realities of life in the modern, multicultural land of Oz.

This new breed of gastronomic sophisticates will dine on an emerging
Australian cuisine. It goes under many names from ‘PacRim’ and ‘East-meets-West’
to ‘Mediterrasian’ and ‘fusion food’. But whatever it’s called, today’s
nouvelle Aussie tucker blends Asian flavours, Mediterranean influences,
Western cooking techniques, fresh ingredients, and native plants and animals.
It also combines a healthy diet with a healthy respect for the Australian
environment.

Almost a century ago, Philip Muskett, a Sydney surgeon and medical administrator,
railed against the stodgy meat-and-three-veg diet of New South Wales residents.
He would have approved of the new Aussie cuisine. In his book The Art of
Living in Australia, Muskett wrote, ‘The fact that our people live in direct
opposition to their semitropical environment has been constantly before
me.’ Muskett championed salads, but deplored the ‘faded vegetables’ from
which English salads of the time were assembled. No doubt he would have
applauded the consumption of native plants.

‘Many Australian plants appear to be especially designed by Mother Nature
to promote good health,’ says Jenny Brand Miller of the University of Sydney,
who is a specialist on the nutritional content of bush foods. Compared with
their cultivated cousins, they are packed with protein, trace elements like
magnesium and zinc, and vitamins. The now famous billygoat plum (Terminalia
ferdiandiana), for instance, is the richest known natural source of vitamin
C in the world – five times richer than its closest rival, the Hawaiian
cherry (Malpighia punicifolia) (This Week, 2 October). And seeds from many
types of wattle trees (Acacia spp.) are ‘energy dense’, says Brand Miller,
pointing to their high protein, carbohydrate and fat content (¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ,
Australian edition, 18 August 1988).

Land of plenty

Wild Australian plants are also rich in dietary fibre and low in sodium.
The carbohydrate in native roots, starchy tubers, seeds, fruits and nuts
tends to be digested and absorbed more slowly in the human gut than carbohydrate
from domesticated plants. These characteristics helped protect Australian
Aborigines from diabetes and heart disease before Western eating habits
were introduced, believes Kerin O’Dea, an expert in human nutrition at Deakin
University in Geelong, Victoria.

However, early European explorers and settlers failed to exploit Australia’s
natural larder. Between 1788 and 1790, the colony of Sydney nearly starved
to death while surrounded by plenty. Unable to cultivate their imported
wheat, they turned to native plants, only to find that they could not distinguish
between edible and inedible varieties. Two centuries on, the majority of
immigrant Australians, along with most indigenous peoples, choose to eat
the unhealthy, salty, fat-laden diet imported from Europe.

But some Aussies are going back to the nation’s culinary roots, and
they are not lacking in a sense of adventure. Insects, for example, are
quietly crawling into some dishes. The nutty witchetty grub (Cossidae spp.)
and the plentiful bogon moth (Agrotis infusa) – so numerous in Canberra
at this time of year that they have been known to disrupt proceedings in
Parliament – are good energy sources and high in the polyunsaturated fats
that help to guard against heart disease. Then there are tasty birds like
magpie geese (Anseranas semipalmata) and bustards (Ardeotis australis).
The Aussie appetite for things aquatic is already eclectic. Few would bulk
at anything, from the local molluscs, barramundi (Lates calcarifer), rock
oysters (Saccostrea commercialis) and lobster-like yabbies (Cherax albidus),
to the dozens of species of bony fish without common names that regularly
appear at the fish markets.

Gourmets are also discovering that the meat of emus (Dromaius novaehol-landiae),
and kangaroos and wallabies (Macropodidae) is not only good to eat, it is
good for the body. The flesh from this running and hopping larder is lean.
What little fat is found in native Australian game is mostly polyunsaturated.
By contrast, the muscle tissue of cattle, sheep and pigs is ‘marbled’ with
saturated fat, says Brand Miller.

Eating native animals makes ecological as well as culinary sense. Overgrazing
by sheep and cattle has contributed to serious soil erosion and land degradation
in Australia. Vast herds of these hard-hoofed herbivores can strip the foliage,
compact the soil and break the algal mat that covers grassland like a skin.
Once the thin topsoil is exposed, rain and wind peel it away, layer by layer.
¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵs with the Division of Ecology and Wildlife of the CSIRO, Australia’s
national research organisation, estimate that nearly a third of the nation’s
rangelands – some 2 million square kilometres – has been damaged by intensive
livestock grazing.

Gordon Grigg, a biologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane,
has long argued that because kangaroos are soft-footed, they offer the ultimate
‘sheep replacement therapy’ for damaged rangelands. He believes that roos
can be turned into a nice little earner for farmers willing to cut back
on their hard-hoofed stock. At present, farmers treat boomers as pests because
they compete with sheep and cattle for food and water. Their solution is
to shoot them.

But few of the 3.5 million kangaroos that are killed legally each year
make it onto Australian tables. Nearly half become carrion and the rest
are turned into pet food or sold at cut prices to European gourmands. ‘What
a waste,’ says Grigg, who believes a regulated national industry could put
nutritious food on the table, reduce the number of animals killed inhumanely
and stuff half a billion dollars into the pockets of farmers who would cull
a quota of free-ranging kangaroos living on their property.

Cull of the wild

According to Grigg, twenty years of monitoring both by himself and by
government wildlife biologists show that red kangaroos and eastern and western
grey kangaroos could easily be harvested for their meat. He believes that
farmers would do well to reduce the number of livestock they run and cull
wild kangaroos instead. While some environmentalists are horrified by the
thought of eating Australia’s national symbol, many biologists, ecologists
and government officials agree with Grigg. Australia’s Department of Primary
Industries and Energy sponsored a workshop this year that looked at ways
to support a properly managed kangaroo industry. A report, complete with
recommendations, is expected soon. Meanwhile, state legislators are grappling
with a baffling maze of laws that have left Australians wondering who can
eat roo and where to get it .

Controversy over the new Australian cuisine is not confined to the culinary
fate of kangaroos. Michael Symons, a food writer and restaurateur in South
Australia, cares little whether roos hop into the nation’s cooking pots
or not. His wrangle is with the chefs who use the quest for a true-blue
Aussie cuisine as an excuse for a gastronomic free-for-all. In his book
The Shared Table: Ideas for Australian Cuisine, Symons argues that a single
national cuisine – especially one that is a faddish mishmash of foods and
techniques – makes no sense at all.

He wants to see a move towards regional cuisines based on local ingredients
and sensitive to local climates. For inspiration, Sydneysiders could look
to cuisines like Creole or Cantonese, which arose in humid subtropical climes,
says Symons. Residents of dry, subtropical Darwin might turn to Indian or
Thai food for ideas. Greek, Italian and Moroccan influences suit Perth,
whereas French and British fare could inspire cooks in temperate Hobart
and Melbourne.

Seasonal foods, regional foods, healthy bush tucker, tastes and techniques
from East and West – the elements are all there. ‘Australia already has
a ‘restaurant’ cuisine, though it is not reflected in what is going on in
the home’ says Alan Saunders, a broadcaster with the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation. ‘Within a little while we will have as much of a distinctive
cuisine as anybody else has.’

Good on you, Australia! Now if only I could decide about Christmas dinner.
Pass the sunscreen and another gin and tonic while I consider the matter.

* * *

Rules on roos

A byzantine maze of regulations has prevented kangaroos and other native
animals from bounding regularly onto plates Down Under. The problem is that
each state and territory sets its own rules about food, and in each jurisdiction
several departments – covering health or wildlife, for example – may get
in on the act. Until a few years ago, it was illegal to eat roo meat in
most states. Now the law in every state and territory allows kangaroo and
emu to be eaten. However, in a bizarre twist of logic, some jurisdictions
only permit consumption of meat imported from other states, and then only
in restaurants.

Adventurous gastronomes are further confused by the fact that a federal
body, the National Food Authority, has produced a draft standard for game.
It aims to achieve uniformity in the way game is processed through a voluntary
code of practice. Approval should come from the National Food Standards
Council next year, following which, individual states and territories can
choose how to incorporate the standards into their own rules and regulations.

The draft covers a host of animals from opossum, wallaby and kangaroo
to donkey, goat, boar and camel. Wild emu is included, while farmed emu
falls under a separate standard. Native saltwater crocodiles, which can
be eaten only if they were raised on a farm, are not included.

A joke doing the rounds in Oz at the moment runs something like this.
A book about kangaroos has just been published. In Germany it is called
Disciplining Your Kangaroo; in France, Kangaroo au Vin; the British version
is Kangaroo and Empire; in America they call it Relating to Your Kangaroo;
and finally, the Australian edition – The Kangaroo: Federal or State Responsibility?