Kunbarllanjnja Garden Goes Bush!

Bush tucker is not only very healthy, it is also an important part of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, history and way of life. Preserving knowledge of the dreaming stories of different bush tucker plants and foods as well as knowledge on how to find bush tucker, how to cook it and eat it is very important to communities.

As many people who have this knowledge are community elders, one way to enable them to easily teach the young people about bush tucker is by having some traditional plants growing close by – and this is a great reason for growing bush tucker in a community garden.

The other big healthy advantage is that the food that has underpinned survival for more than 40,000 years is close by and through understanding how it grows, it might be possible to supply it to the community, particularly to those who may not have the resources to travel long distances to find bush tucker.

In this way, a community garden that grows bush tucker can become kind of like a shop for traditional foods! In the case of yams which can be hard t o dig up, having them growing in nice soft soil that is easy to dig will encourage eating them.

The Kunbarllanjnja Gardeners have developed a plan to grow bush tucker in their market garden in order to complement the current crops of common fruits and vegetable and provide a local source of traditional foods.

The gardeners already have a Passionfruit vine underway in pots which will not only be a source of Passionfruit but also double as a windbreak to protect the Banana trees by growing along the garden fence. they are considering also growing a native Passionfruit which will an opportunity for the community to eat both of the two different passionfruits.

The next step is to get some yams growing. The gardeners Lance, Philemon and trainer Alex visited with the local traditional owners of Kunbarllanjnja and also of the surrounding region to learn about yams, and get permission to go and dig some up.

Three types of yam were identified – Saltwater yam, and two freshwater yams – Cheeky Yam and Garrabarra. These yams all grow as a climbing vine and will be ideal as a multi-purpose windbreak and food crop.

To go looking for Yams required the use of a council Troup Carrier, shovels, buckets for carrying the vines back and cold water and lunch for the trip. The first trip to a seaside area was unsuccessful in collecting yams, but a number of leaves were collected that matched the description from the yam stories and these were taken back to one of the Women Traditional Owners (TO) for identification.

The second trip was much closer and specifically to look for the Garrabarra following detailed advice from another TO.

This time there were several successes and two small yams were found, and four vines were collected. Getting the yams out was a bit tricky – they were being clever and growing under some big tree roots, but the garden team were not deterred!

The next step is to work out how to get them growing and the garden team are experimenting with propagating the vines from cuttings.

So far the gardeners have planted the yams in good healthy soil along the fence and they are already beginning to shoot.

Garden trainer Alex also used the bush  tucker expedition as an opportunity to teach some plant science to the team which you can watch on a video to be posted soon. In this way the expedition was an exercise in sharing knowledge between the Traditional Owners, the gardeners and the trainer.