Before the Christmas Holidays i contacted my amazing friend, Gerry Turpin. To see what his plans were and if he was keen to do some foraging and cooking. Gerry is the Indigenous Ethobotnist at James Cook University.
Gerry Turpin is the only formally trained Indigenous ethnobotanist in Australia and the winner of the 2013 Deadly award for Science. Gerry manages the Australian Tropical Herbarium at James Cook University Tropical Indigenous Ethnobotany Centre.
He responded with, "Whatever you're up to! Lets collect and cook." So I booked the flights for mid Janurary and Gerry organised to go to his Mbabaram country and stay with his sister Cherry.
Flew in the monday morning, the rain had been settled in FNQ for over a month so everything was well wet.
Gerry picked me up and we made our way out to Mbabaram country about two hours west of Cairns. We had spoken with our friend Charlie from ABC to see if they may be keen to come out and hang out with us and they were, we had locked in the wednesday.
We got some supplies at Atherton and arrived at camp around 2pm. Being exhausted from the travelling and having an amazing camp set up, i set off for an afternoon nap. Got up we went for a walk and checked out what was around and then Gerry made his famous sweet and sour pork for dinner.
The next morning after a cookup we went out adventuring and in search of some food.
We found:
- Bush cherries
- Musk Mellow
- Geebung
I made some bread dough and damper in the morning. The rain held off when we were out on country, and about ½ hour after we returned it absolutely bucketed down and we had a river underneath our camp and questioned whether our friends would make it out the next day. The fire was washed out.
Waking up Wednesday morning, there were no clouds to be sighted and the sun was out. We put the kettle on and lit the fire to create the coals to cook on later in the day. Once our friends Charlie and Brandon arrived headed out. Muskmellow and cherries were collected and we all returned to camp.
Gerry and Cherry’s family come out and join and we made
- Lemon myrtle scones
- Bush Cerry syrup yeast cake
- Roasted Muskmellow
- Salad with muskmellow leaves and ?
- Tamarin corned beef on Saltbush focaccia
Using the heat to cook with was testing but so rewarding - My soul is full and the experience is imprinted - Food for me - building relationships, connection and sharing knowledge.
