ABSTRACT
Settler Australians brought with them a series of expectations and desires that patterned how they sought to interact with the lands that they farmed. The capacity of people to respond to opportunities were in turn fundamentally conditioned by the land, and the efforts of farmers iteratively transformed the ecology in a co-adaptive process that continues to this day. The food consumed by colonists in Australia reaffirmed cultural and historical bonds and sustained a shared sense of identity to create a tastescape that was familiar. The emigres from the British Isles had left behind a land of forests, with changing seasons and a climate that supported permanent agriculture. They came to a sub-tropical rainforest with abundant food resources but not knowing how to live off the land, and parties of explorers and overlanders travelled with pack horses and bullocks pulling heavy wagons full of supplies. Land clearing for food production compromised native food sources, and introduced species settled into sometimes uneasy relations in the local ecology. The establishment of the macadamia industry and the harvesting of lemon myrtle, aniseed myrtle, Davidson’s plum, riberry, native mint, wild limes, warrigal greens, Dorrigo pepper and finger limes signals new trends in the way we see the land and how it is used and, conversely a continuation of colonial relations and land-use patterns. This chapter will draw on biographies of land, cookbooks, and historical records to trace the history and commodification of native foods in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, providing a regional lens through which to observe historical responses to specific foods, the local effects of the global food system and the operations of colonialism in agricultural practice.
