Samantha Martin

I'm not sure whether I originally bought this book for myself or for my son. Anyway, he had commandeered it and was just on the verge of contributing it to charity when I rescued it. I must confess, that I have somewhat mixed feelings about the book. On the one hand it covers a lot of ground: from plants to animals, shellfish, birds, reptiles and insects. But on the other hand it tends to be a bit superficial and maybe dangerous. For example, I was interested to know if one can eat the fruit of Lilli Pilli. And the answer from this book is pretty much a resounding yes. But it also mentions that there are around 25 different species around and when I googled "eating Lilly Pilli" I find that there seem to be around 60 species and not all species are equally palatable.I would have appreciated a bit more information about what species were best to plant/eat etc. And the same applies throughout the book. It covers a lot of ground but when you start looking for detail it's a bit superficial.
In some places it is just wrong. For example, it says that the lemon myrtle tree does not produce fruit. Well maybe not fruit of a size that one can eat, but it certainly produces flowers, fruit and small seeds.
There are some delightful throwaway lines illustrating native sexism...such as the bit on p92 describing how the woman and girls would immerse themselves in the water of creeks and rivers and swim along the banks ....while the men watched for crocodiles!! (I think I know which job I would prefer).
I learned a lot from the book. A lot of it I knew but lots of it was totally new to me...like the desert frogs and the fact that the women would sometimes dig a hole the height of their own body to extract the frogs. (Is that right? Seems those frogs were prodigious burrowers).
I liked the helpful, unpretentious style of the book including such details (in the recipe section) that one of the ingredients was 275 grams of Anzac biscuits. No slavishly sticking to traditional ingredients here.
Though there was also some helpful details about preparing and cooking echidnas (which are a protected species). Could I go into the wild and survive on bush tukka, harvested and prepared with the aid of this book? Hmm....I doubt it but it's certainly a good start. I'd actually like to see our departments of agriculture doing more research and plant breeding with native species so that yields could be improved and they could become commercialised and the fruits etc made more widely available. I give it four stars. (It was going to be three but on consideration, I've enjoyed it more than that).… (més)