• News
  • Sports
  • Finance
  • Lifestyle
  • Entertainment
  • Video
  • Travel
  • Cars
  • eBay
  • Jobs
  • Dating
  • Property
  • More sites
Make ninemsn your Homepage
Hot Topics:   Miranda Kerr Cudo: 57% off five day Thai holiday!
  • Mobile
  • Messenger
  • Hotmail
recipes
  • Recipes
    Ingredients
    Avocado
    Banana
    Beef
    Chicken
    Lamb
    Great rice recipes
    Seafood
    Search all recipes
    Cuisines
    Asian
    French
    Greek
    Indian
    Italian
    Spanish
    Thai
    Cooking inspiration
    Categories
    Barbecue
    Budget
    Easy
    Coles & Curtis
    Healthy
    Kids
    Less than 15 mins
    Food in pictures
  • How to
    Tips & tricks
    Expert advice
    Cooking tips
    Alana's blog
    Pink Leopard blog
    French Connection
     
    How to bake bread
    Making fresh pasta
    Pancake perfection
    More tips
  • Family
    Everyday recipes
    Coles & Curtis
    Cooking with kids
    recipes+
    Delicious desserts
    Easy soups
    More family meals

    Great family recipes

  • Healthy eating
    Healthy recipes
    News & features
    Healthy choices
    Special diets
     
    Low fat recipes
    Vegetarian recipes
    Low carb recipes
    Aussie food
    More healthy tips
  • Entertaining
    Party planning
    Special occasions
    Wine & cocktails
    Summer entertaining
    Grill a celebrity
    Desserts to impress
    More entertaining

    How to make a Bloody Mary

  • Cooking videos
  • Table talk

News and features

NINEMSN FOOD > Healthy recipes > News and features

First, catch your dinner... tracking and eating in Kakadu

By Sophie Gordon
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
 
Share with MessengerShare
Tweet
More about Healthy eating:
  • Deep frying food not linked to heart attack
  • Who invented the cheeseburger?
  • How to eat out without gaining weight
  • Women lie 474 times a year about their diets
  • Man markets panda poo tea
Topics:
Healthy eating


Clunk clunk clunk — I've hit a hollow sounding spot in the ground. The group huddles round and we use sticks to dig haphazardly in the mud. Could this finally be dinner? Alas ... it's just another rock, so with grumbling stomachs we resume prodding the damp earth in search of turtles that have buried themselves for the hot season.


Thankfully, our leader is more adept at her work. Patsy Raglar's agile form streaks ahead, gliding through the swamp in bare feet … quiet and observant, tapping attentively at the ground. After half-an-hour of fruitless tapping the rest of us give up and return to the truck, resigned to just a tiny ration of white apple for the evening. Minutes later, Pasty calls out triumphantly and we rush to 'ooh' and 'ahh' in admiration as she holds up her bounty — two fat, long-necked turtles.

No, this isn't an episode of Survivor but an Animal Tracks tour in World Heritage listed Kakadu National Park. Patsy is one of the local Bininj (Kakadu's Aboriginal people) who knows this land like the back of her hand. Her father was a famous local medicine man who taught his family the traditional skills for bush survival. Just seven hours on the Animal Tracks tour with Pasty and her offsider, Sean Arnold opens up an entirely new world to whitefellas like me.

Animal Tracks operates on a buffalo farm in the middle of Kakadu. Buffalos were introduced to the Top End from Timor as beasts of burden in the 1800s but quickly ran amuck when European settlements were abandoned, devastating top-soil and wetlands in what is now Kakadu National Park.

Culling reduced the park's buffalo population to small numbers and the environment recovered enough to flourish today but the Bininj had come to value buffalo as a food source so Patsy and her husband run this small farm to provide meat for local Aboriginal people.

This is an area rarely visited by the average tourist, but then Animal Tracks is not an average tour. If your idea of experiencing Aboriginal culture is an afternoon in an air-conditioned museum followed by a latte, then tracking with Patsy is probably not for you. Some people may find parts of the experience confronting — there's blood and guts and being cute isn't criteria for not ending up on a plate. Sean points out that squirming has been a typical whitefella response to much of traditional Aboriginal culture over the last two hundred odd years and one the rest of us must overcome in order to truly respect their unique ability as hunter/gatherers.

Despite having grown up on a farm and priding myself on a penchant for steak cooked 'blue', I've never so much as caught a fish, let alone watched a turtle turned into dinner in front of my eyes. Nevertheless, by the end of a day's tracking, I'm helping pluck magpie geese feathers and watching Patsy deftly gut and cut the birds in awe.

While the type of bush tucker available depends on the season, Patsy passes on some perennial knowledge. She rolls a bundle of green ants in her hand and declares it an excellent flu remedy — indeed, the tangy ants taste amazingly like vitamin C tablets. She strips a wattle tree's bark and ties it around our heads — the cool, sappy underside acts as a compress and is a good headache cure (a group member nursing a slight hangover later attests to the validity of its healing powers). Paperbark has a number of diverse uses — it's flammable enough to get a fire roaring in seconds yet tough enough to make plates and waterproof roofing.

Patsy's makeshift ovens are another revelation — she wraps the magpie geese first in green leaves for extra flavour and then in paperbark (yet another use, it makes great bush 'foil') before burying the birds in coals and hot rocks from the fire to roast slowly.

While Patsy puts the finishing touches to her bush tucker, Sean prepares a delicious damper in the coals that we drizzle with maple syrup and wash down with billy tea.

Then the moment of truth … and I'm pleasantly surprised. Cuts of the turtle taste like char-grilled squid and the magpie goose has a 'gamey' roast beef flavour. Served with a comfit of raspberries and a side dish of mashed potato, we speculate it could be the piece-de-resistance on one of Neil Perry's most extravagant menus. I go back for seconds and thirds.

Driving back to our accommodation at the small settlement of Cooinda, Patsy tells us tales from her childhood and Sean teaches us how to say 'goodbye' in her native Gune language. We drop Patsy at her home, wishing her "Bobo", then return to our hotel, tired but satisfied after one of the most memorable dining experiences of our lives.

Australia offers a myriad of unusual dining experiences for the adventurous foodie.

YOUR SAY: Have you ever have an outback tucker experience? What did you think of it? Tell us below!

 
Share with MessengerShare
Tweet

Also in this section

Valentine's Day treat: Adriano Zumbo's Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur milk chocolate macaronsValentine's Day treat: Adriano Zumbo's Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur milk chocolate macarons Deep frying food not linked to heart attackDeep frying food not linked to heart attack Who invented the cheeseburger?Who invented the cheeseburger? Eating off red plates can cut food intake by 40 percentEating off red plates can cut food intake by 40 percent

More inspiration

Rose scented white chocolate mousse with candied walnutsRose scented white chocolate mousse with candied walnutsI never really understood the desserts that were served in our house when I was growing up. My dad loved to experiment – tinned pineapple and sour cream was memorable – I remember it curdling, I... Valentine's treat: marinated strawberry and rose ricotta cheesecake glassValentine's treat: marinated strawberry and rose ricotta cheesecake glassLike every women I love receiving roses, but what I enjoy even more is incorporating beautiful crimson roses in my cooking and Valentine's Day is the perfect time to use the perfumed flavour of roses... Curtis Stone: How to make a reductionCurtis Stone: How to make a reduction
Recipe finder
Advanced search options
Recipes A-Z Meal maker
advertisement
Get great recipes on your mobile wherever you are.

Follow us on twitter @ninemsnFood

Alana Lowes: yoghurt flatbreadAlana Lowes: yoghurt flatbread Curtis Stone: How to use prosciutto when cookingCurtis Stone: How to use prosciutto when cooking Curtis Stone: How to make pastry doughCurtis Stone: How to make pastry dough
 
Top tips on how to cook for a crowd from the OzHarvest CEO Cook-offTop tips on how to cook for a crowd from the OzHarvest CEO Cook-off How to get teenagers interested in cookingHow to get teenagers interested in cooking
Celebrate the Queen's diamond jubilee with a $150,000 whiskeyCelebrate the Queen's diamond jubilee with a $150,000 whiskey
Valentine's Day breakfastsValentine's Day breakfasts

Recipes How to Family Healthy eating Entertaining Cooking videos Table talk
Gourmet TravellerGourmet TravellerWIN a trip to beautiful Hawaii
  • News
  • Sports
  • Finance
  • Lifestyle
  • Entertainment
  • Video
  • Travel
  • Cars
  • eBay
  • Jobs
  • Dating
  • Property
  • More sites
  • About ninemsn
  • Careers at ninemsn
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
Other ninemsn businesses: iSelect RateCity msnNZ Cudo
© 1997-2012 ninemsn Pty Ltd - All rights reserved