Community & Business
10 April, 2024
Huge appetite for bush foods
Interest in bush foods generated Pittsworth Landcare’s most popular workshop in recent years with 65 people attending the Sunday (7th April) session at the Function Centre.
For the past eight years, Flora 4 Fauna founder Kemp Killerby has been sharing his passion for native Australian bush foods and medicinal plants far and wide.
He told his Pittsworth audience there are 6,500 bush foods and more than 2,000 plants with medicinal uses in Australia.
“And southern Queensland is teeming with bush foods and bush medicine. It really is the epicentre. There’s more in this region than anywhere else in Australia.”
He said southern Queensland and northern NSW are home to more than 200 different dry rainforest species, many of which are valuable bush foods, medicinal plants, fauna and pollinator attractors and utility trees.
Edible native plants and their products can be rich in vitamins, pest and disease resistant, have medicinal uses, provide boosts for biodiversity, native fauna, the environment and communities.
Species highlighted in his presentation included native cherry, ginger, rosella, raspberry and tamarind varieties, bunya nut, and round and finger limes.
Many of these plants were available as tubestock for purchase on the day, and were snapped up by participants.
After the talk, people were also able to sample bush foods and products.
The morning was fully funded by Pittsworth Landcare, with lunch catering by project officer Rebecca Kirby also provided free of charge.
Around one-third of participants were from the Pittsworth Millmerran area, with many from further afield, including Toowoomba, Southern Downs and Lockyer Valley districts.
One attendee listed Cairns as his locality, but organisers assume he hadn’t flown down especially for the day.
However, there’s no doubting the high level of enthusiasm in the room for bush foods.
Kemp Killerby was supported on Sunday by FigJam founder Jason Davidson, who is encouraging more land-holders to become producers of bush foods for his Ipswich-based indigenous catering company.
Pittsworth Landcare intends hosting a follow-up workshop on the commercial opportunities for growing bush foods later in the
year.
Alastair Silcock
