If you travel to the South Western coast of Australia, you come across places with very French-sounding names like Esperance and the Recherche Archipelago. As a matter of fact, the French were actively exploring the Australian coastline in the early 1800s. The British established a garrison at Albany, another town near Esperance, in 1826 because they were so worried that the French were going to establish a colony there.

It is an interesting thought experiment to consider what contemporary European-Australian life would be like if we were all speaking French. For one thing the local cuisine would have had nearly a two-century head start on where it is now.

You see the British colonizers brought their “familiar” food with them, and for the most part looked with disdain at the Aborigines, their culture and the food they ate. Perhaps it is my imagination, but I think the French, though just as imperialistic, would probably have been more open to eating the indigenous amphibians and mollusks, and the rest of the wild game. They probably would have seized this new cornucopia of the new found land and made it their own.

Instead, growing up Australian meant eating fully cooked roasts and three “veg." Some call it “Empire Cuisine." Now don’t get me wrong, my mother was very good at this style of cooking, and her baking was, and is, phenomenal -- never in all my years did we have any food out of a box or out of the freezer. And we grew up on the coast, fishing, spearfishing, crabbing and prawning (shrimping), so we dined every week on the best fresh seafood on Earth.  We also loved the fresh Spring lamb and the "Harvey grass fed beef "(and still do).

The “discovery” that Australia is next to South East Asia in the seventies changed a lot of things, and the willingness of the Chinese communities (emigrating to Australia in the 1850s for the Gold Rush), and the Indian, Vietnamese, and Thai communities to share their rich cuisines with the rest of us helped to begin a change in our Australian dining habits. Conversely Australia’s willingness to embrace the non-British European immigrants as well as North African immigrants began an irreversible trend towards fusion and experimentation, and the emergence of food that was and is memorable.
Undeniably world-class examples of all the above abound in Australia, and we have been lucky enough to sample them.

But paralleling this gastronomic experimentation has been another movement in food, a look inward rather than outward. It has not been without its mistakes. Since chefs began experimenting with native foods there have been trendy efforts at harvesting everything that moves and grows in Australia, and then putting it in a sauce or on a plate. Beyond this, however, there have been those who have put onsiderable effort into cataloguing the proteins, the wild fruits, and spices that are native to Australia, as well as the cattle and lamb that are  now being bred specifically for the Australian climate.  And some extraordinarily talented chefs are working overtime to create an authentic Australian Cuisine.

Hanging out with Raylene and Gina (see Ben’s story) helped me appreciate this emerging cuisine in a new way. To tell you the truth, the Australian bush can be a daunting place. It is widely accepted that there are a lot of creatures and critters in Australia that can kill you. And that is for the most part how urban and suburban Australians feel. (By the way, most of us are urban/suburban and we're all pretty sure that the bush can kill you, and sure as heck it won't look after you. You get lost there you die of thirst, hunger or a bite from something. Just ask Burke and Wills (our equivalent of Lewis and Clarke, without the happy ending).

So, what a privilege to spend an afternoon in the bush and be fed from the bush. Bush foods and ingredients combined with Athol's continental culinary discipline, and the sophistication of Jimmy Shu's “East looking West,” cuisine... Hey, maybe we've got something there. It is early days yet, but people like Chef Andrew Fielke, Vic Cherikoff (a food scientist), a cadre of others, and the Aboriginal people who are sharing their bush knowledge with trusted partners are working together on this uniquely Australian cuisine. You will find it in the Northern Territory, where residents are a little closer to the bush, interact more with Aboriginal communities and have had the good fortune to inherit a number of fantastic chefs who are making it their mission to create something new.

Over the next ten to twenty years, the current and next generation of Australian chefs will define and then refine this new cuisine. It will be characterized by embracing of Australian native ingredients (and a strong partnership with those who collect or grow them), coupled with Continental and "East looking West" styles of cuisine. It will be regionally focused and, in the Northern Territory will draw inspiration from the arid climate foods of Alice Springs, and the tropical seafoods and Asian fruits and vegetables of Darwin.

Taste Down Under is working to be a part of this. And so we volunteered Ben and Jean-Jacques to collaborate with Athol and Jimmy to take the ingredients of the Northern Territory and develop a menu for a special dinner at Parliament House in Darwin.

They began the collaboration in Alice, sourced a number of ingredients from there and converged a week later on Darwin. In our next issue we will tell and show you what they came up with – it is certainly “a Taste” of what is to come.