2024
Bill Harney’s Cook Book first published in 1960 is unique among Australian cookery books on two counts. First, it deals almost exclusively with recipes for cooking native animals and plants. Second, it incorporates Northern Australian Indigenous food knowledge and practice. That it is in the genre of bush cooking recipes takes nothing away from its achievement.
When I first bought the book I was expecting it to be a humorous collection of tales of Anglo Australians and ‘bush tucker’, native foods. The cover cartoon by “Vane” didn’t make for any other first impression. It shows someone dressed as a bush camp cook – singlet, hat, apron and all – holding a dead snake which is about to be put into a kerosene tin of hot water heated by wood.
What I found instead was a book of recipes and commentary that dealt seriously with bush cooking, cooking native foods, and Indigenous Northern Australian’s food practices. What humour there was came from Harney’s recollections of bush cooks and failed bush cooking.
