There’s far too much to say about everything right now, but after an inspiring Futuresonic conference in Manchester I followed a hunch and visited a fellow conference attendee in Sheffield. We don’t know what it is yet, but there’s something good going on.

Rather than regret not doing anything and returning to Australia in the next month or so, I’m going to take the safer risk and stay in Sheffield for a while to actually get to know this young man. So, the hunt is on for a job, a flat, some dirt to garden in and new experiences.

More to come…

Since I’ve returned to Adelaide I’ve had opportunity to host a few guests as part of CouchSurfing, the program that introduced me to Sid, Ninnu, Ronja and a whole bunch of other lovely people. Regularly, conversation with my international visitors comes down to eating: favourite foods, traditional foods from their homelands and the difficulty of finding good bread while on the road. Just as it was when I was travelling overseas, I’m faced with the difficulty of defining what typical Australian food is.

There are the usual “Aussie Tucker” suspects of Vegemite, meat pies, pavlova, lamingtons, spag bog and Anzac biscuits. But in comparison to people who’ve come from most other countries (Canada and USA are probably the other exceptions) we can’t really identify distinct food cultures and rely instead on a few recipes and a salty, yeasty brand name. Our national identity is defined by events taking place during a little over two centuries of (primarily European) migration, and doesn’t really reflect a cohesive culture.

So I’ve thought and I’ve thought about this concept of food and national identity. Historically the French, the Italians, the Finns, the Spanish, the Germans, the Chinese, the Indians were not nations of people, they were many smaller regional and cultural groups who just happened to live within more recent borders. Migration, globalisation, the media, supermarkets, freezers and microwaves didn’t exist for thousands of years and so regional food cultures evolved out of eating seasonal, local foods.

Where people seem to have gone wrong in identifying Australian food culture is by looking for one food culture to rule them all rather than letting many smaller, localised food cultures emerge. Even the true food cultures of the Indigenous Australians seem to have been reduced down to a “bush tucker” of witchetty grubs and wattle seed, quandong, honey ants, lemon myrtle and kangaroo, ignoring the full spectrum of groups living on foods specific to the coast, rainforest, arid grasslands and bush.

Other people have probably come around to this idea before, but I’ve only just articulated this thought: As Australians we should be looking to our immediate bioregions as a way of identifying the seasonal foods which will then shape a plurality of culinary cultures. We should be taking pride in our local brands, environment and farmers, recognising the layers of food cultures, both indigenous and immigrated and working out what grows best where and when. Once we know what plants and animals are best suited to our local regions we can learn how to cook and eat the foods that make up our food culture.

Currently I can identify only one type of edible wild mushroom and teeny tiny native cherries, but part of my longer term garden plan is to plant a couple of areas with indigenous plants including those suitable for food. In the meantime I’ll be feeding my summer guests Vietnamese cold rolls with seasonal vegetables (some coming from my garden), suggesting they drink Coopers’ beers, Bickford cordials and local wines to be be followed by Haighs’ chocolates and local fruits.

Maybe in two hundred years my descendants will be able to say with more certainty what dishes make up the contemporary Tandanya bioregional food culture, but right now I’ll just have to play it by taste.

Over the last couple of years of drought, larger birds, more used to the Adelaide Hills and the outlying country areas have been moving into the leafy green/brown suburbs in search of water and food. Most importantly for this story, a beautiful kookaburra has moved into the trees surrounding my house.

A couple of times a day I’ll hear it laughing and lately it’s taken to perching on the mandarin tree or the main electricity wire coming from the street. I’ve finally had a chance to observe the brown and white patterns on its chest, the size of its massive beak, the helmet like crest on its head and the slight turquoise markings on the wing which mark it as a member of the kingfisher family of birds.

Today when I went outside for a break from style sheets and cms wrangling, I saw the most amazing thing. The kookaburra was surveying the yard from the wire and suddenly its entire stance changed, a ripple seemed to pass through its chest as it tensed up. A few more seconds passed and I followed the kookaburra’s line of sight down to the grass near the path – I couldn’t see anything…

And then, not as fast as I thought it would, the kookaburra gracefully drifted down to the path and picked something up in its beak. As the kookaburra whipped it’s head around, I saw the shine of a skink’s belly and heard the actual crunch of the little lizard being consumed.

“Wow”, I realised, “my kookaburra just caught its own food, and I got to watch!”

Possibly the most fantastic and unexpected thing that happened at Aliese’s yesterday was that I discovered that her backyard is full of stinging nettles. Most people would balk at the idea of picking nettles for fun, but what I saw in front of me was not a painful plant, but wild produce ready to be gathered.

Earlier this winter I’d hopefully planted seeds primarily so I could use the nettles as a nitrogen rich green compost, but they didn’t grow very well, so I’ve been looking out for some wild plants to harvest from. I’d seen some nettle-like plants by the side of the road earlier in the week, but my tentative stroke of the leaves didn’t result in any stings – so yesterday I took a braver approach and put my hand flat onto the leaves which did confirm my suspicion that the plants were indeed nettles.

It’s not that painful. I figure that nettle stings are the discomfort equivalent of eating warhead lollies – some people are braver or have a higher tolerance than others – luckily for me the sting is bearable.

So I borrowed some rubber gloves (I’m not yet brave enough to enter a nettle patch with bare hands) and scissors and picked a bag full of prickly leaves, ready to be dried and made into tea.

What did seem really weird that it was just over a year ago, in Finland’s early summer that I helped Ninnu prepare nettles for tea. But temperature wise I figure that there’s not much difference between July in Australia and early June in Finland.

Now of course I’ve remembered that nettles can be added to soup (fresh and dried), risottos, pancakes and used as a hair tonic as well as being a tea for people and gardens.

Aliese, it looks like I’ll have to come over this weekend and do some “weeding” for you!