Bush tucker rewind

I wrote this in 2011.

I'm not sure how much has changed...

By Grant Jones

IT'S a red ribbon of corrugated road, 40km long, an hour south of Alice Springs. At the end of it is a gate but it is the beginning of a growing business venture for Max and Ruth Emery.

The locals say it is the greenest it has been for years, hay-coloured tufts of spinifex rise from the red soil, pockmarked by fat raindrops from the night before. Animal tracks and sand goannas holes abound, there are greeny-grey bushes and centuries old acacia, juvenile trees looking like green fair floss of a stick. Lightning strikes have caused blazes, blocking the highway for several days. Some seed pods split open at the first hint of smoke but the fires consume nitrogen which is not good for the Emery's 30,000 bush tomato plants. Solanum centrale will wait until the smoke blows over before putting out lateral roots and popping out 30 or 40 bushes. A mature plant can produce 3000 fruit.

Also know as desert raisin, the bush tomato is high in antioxidants and has been popular on the bush tucker menu for millennia. Julieigh Robins is a relatively recent convert, having fallen for native ingredients more than 20 years ago setting up Robins Foods with her chef-husband Ian.

"We were first passionate about the flavours but as we started to establish some networks with indigenous people it was that exposure, seeing what a difference you can make with developing this. I don't know if you'd call it an industry, I think we are focused on calling it our supply chain," she says during a tour of the remote farm.

"It makes you realise how well off you are. and how much value there is in it for them. Even if you can do a small thing it can have a big effect for some people. Also I think those ingredients are truly fantastic and we should be really proud of them as Australians."

Max is straight out of central casting, a former railway worker, tourist coach driver, bitumen sprayer, tutor for Aboriginal children and horticultural expert. Ruth is quietly spoken allowing Max centre stage to talk about their experiments with bush flora on this particular piece land that has been in her family for a century, but Ruth is also dab hand, growing quandong and kurrajong.

"There are four edible types," Max warns of the bush tomato. "The others will kill ya."

Despite a repaired bore thanks to funding from Robins' company and the Coles Indigenous Food Fund, the plants have failed to flourish. "You should have been here last year," Max declares, indicating the plants were up to his shoulder. But it's the nature of indigenous plants, more often harvested from the wild rather than grown in orderly rows.

"There hasn't been a history of cultivation," says Robins. "The plants haven't been hybridised, they are straight from the wild with no genetic manipulation. So they are difficult. It's taken a long time for people to learn how to grow them.

"There are plants on the east coast, such as lemon myrtle, which are commercially grown, but some of these desert and Top End plants are proving a bit more difficult to obtain. Twenty years ago you could only get a handful of everything."

Max produced several hundred kilos of bush tomato last year for Robins, and Robins is relying on him to double that as Outback Spirit has just launched a range of bush tomato sausages in Coles. Robins says it is all very nice to have indigenous ingredients sell in fancy delis and providores, but that doesn't do a lot for indigenous communities.

"Here's a nation that really prides itself on its food and the level of sophistication we have about food yet indigenous ingredients are seen as a little bit to the side and are not taken seriously," she says.

"Of course we are not the only people in the country doing indigenous food, but I think we are probably more committed to the value chain."

In 2008 they set up the Outback Sprit Foundation to separate their philanthropic work with indigenous communities from the business arm of their operation and work in conjunction with the Coles to fund food supply projects.

"We are trying to do it as ethically as we can and do it mainstream. It's nice to keep it as a lovely exclusive thing and get top dollar but that doesn't mean you are going to deliver any benefits down the chain " she says.

"That's why Coles commitment has been super important for the indigenous people as well as us, let's face it. Because without that pull and the commitment, you can't expand these businesses."

While she is disappointed at the size of the Emery crop, she has faith in Max and Ruth and other communities she has encouraged to grow indigenous food.

"While it's a lot more certain and less risk for them than it has been with wild harvest, you are still pretty much reliant on the climate like any other agricultural crop, frost, flood even the smoke can affect them," she says.

"With other agricultural crops it's not such an issue because the are such a lot of those crops around the country, so if you can't get them at one place you can get them at another. With native food you are really limited. It is real knife-edge stuff."

She dreads seeing other indigenous ingredients going the same way as the macadamia, which was successfully cultivated in Hawaii before its place of origin, but despite supply issues she has persisted.

"Like any human being you occasionally you feel really frustrated but I am, we are, committed on so many levels. We are committed financially, we have a business based on this, we have people who work for us, we have a commitment to the supply chain - both ends - to our indigenous suppliers and to people like Coles who have really stuck their neck out and supported this. So there really is not an option of saying this is too much. And if you feel like saying that it's only monetary because it's actually quite exciting to be involved in."

She looks forward to the day when the indigenous Australian section stands next to Asian or Italian produce sections, as she has barely scratched the surface.

"When you think about it 20 years is nothing. When we fist started it took 20 years for Asian produce to take off," she says.

"Also it's important for Australia to recognise Australian produce and we should be proud of it."