June 2025 The article looks at seven native plant cookbooks written by Indigenous cooks and chefs between 2006 – 2025. It looks at the authors’ reasons for writing the book, summarises …
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Big Mulch
Long form articles published and unpublished
Cakes, Biscuits, Puddings and Sometimes Curry. Fifty years of culinary use of coconuts in Australia
2 June 2025
2025 Few people know how useful cocoa-nuts are in cooking. They can be used in both the sweet and savoury dishes and, as many old Indians will tell you no curry …
Utopias and dystopias/ Upepsia and Dyspepsia
11 April 2025
2002 There’s no getting away from it. Food, sex and politics have been inextricably linked since Adam and Eve dallied with a snake over an apple in the Garden of Eden. …
Bitter Bread and Sour
6 April 2025
A paper for 'Cooking and Eating in Adversity' New Zealand Symposium of Gastronomy and Food History. November 2020 For dole bread is bitter bread Bitter bread and sour There’s grief in the taste …
Billycan in my hand. Australian folk songs about food
22 March 2025
2025 The unofficial Australian national song, ‘Waltzing Matilda’ is about a swagman (an itinerant) stealing a sheep that has come to drink from the billabong at which the swaggie has set …
A paper presented at the 2nd Australia’s Homosexual Histories Conference at the University of Melbourne, 5-6 November 1999 Two moments in the global history of fags, dykes and food resonate across …
‘The fortunate and indefatigable apothecary of Pitt-street’. J. Tawell Apothecary, Druggist, and Spice-Dealer
4 March 2025
July 2024 Since first encountering them I have been fascinated by apothecaries in the early years of the colonies and the part they played in the foodways. This advertisement of 21 …
Eating Skippy: The kangaroo at the Australian table
24 February 2025
February 2025 There is a slur on Australia at times with being told that Australia is the only country which eats the animals on its court of arms or flag – …
Chutney Men, Moral Panics and White Australia
13 February 2025
February 2025 In 1891 Adam Mahomed, John Silva and Agnes Fleming were raided by police on the basis of ‘numerous complaints that the house (in which they lived) … was the …
A damper tale
18 January 2025
January 2025 I like many other Australians have cooked a damper in the ashes of a fire while camping. I didn’t give any thought to its origin or its place at …
December 2024 There is a view that Australian cuisine was woeful before the influx post-World War 2 of migrants from Middle European countries beginning in 1947. Engagement with their cuisines – …
Published in Petits Propos Culinaire 106, Prospect Books, September 2016 A group of us have been meeting monthly to talk about food and food writing. At our last meeting the question …
Transforming food production and service? A response to the White Paper ‘Food AI: A game changer for Australia’s food and beverage sector’
14 November 2024
October 2024 The White Paper 'Food AI: A game changer for Australia's food and beverage sector' was published in April 2024. The White Paper was the result of ‘a collaborative effort, …