Bardies, Quandong and Murray Cod. Bush food dinners and menus 1864 – 2024

11 December 2025

November 2025

This article reviews formal meals and menus for imagined meals focussed on Australian native foods across 160 years from 1864 – 2024.

The meals were:

  • The first and second experimental dinners of the Acclimatization Society of Victoria in 1861 and 1864
  • The February 1954 dinner of the Beefsteak Club
  • A Bushfoods Buffet at the Fourth Symposium of Australian Gastronomy in 1990
  • A 2024 dinner presented by Indigiearth partnering with the New South Wales Parliamentary Executive Chef to showcase the work of Indigiearth.

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Big Mulch

Paul van Reyk
My first essay on food was in Year 10 - people seemed to like it. It took me 56 years to come back to it, so I have a lot of catching up to do. My focus is on Anglo-Saxon settler culinary ways in Australia, roughly from the first days of colonisation to the 1960s - 1970s. I particularly write about stuff that has not been written about before but is very much a part of the Anglo-Saxon Australian table. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I do writing.