In 1844-45, Charles Sturt led an exploration party in a quest to discover the inland sea that was thought to exist in the centre of Australia. Following the Murray and Darling Rivers, they encountered bad weather and ran low on provisions, with Sturt himself suffering from scurvy. In 1845, Sturt recorded in his journal a meeting with Aboriginal people, who shared native foods with his party.

The account is referenced by Bruce Pascoe in his book Dark Emu. Sturt wrote that he found a village of about 400 people, who treated the explorers with “genuine hospitality” and offered them “large troughs of water…some roasted ducks and some cake”. Pascoe cites this account as evidence that Aboriginal people were grinding flour and baking a form of bread.

Also in 1845, another explorer, Clement Hodgkinson, gave an account of native foods that were suitable for consumption by Europeans.  Hodgkinson was an English civil engineer who worked as a contract surveyor for the New South Wales government on the northern rivers in 1840-42. Drawing on this experience, he published Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay (London, 1845), which included his comments on “bush tucker”.

‘Kangaroo steak is palatable enough if dressed in the same manner as veal cutlets or venison collops,’ he wrote, ‘but the small pademella, if cooked in the same manner as hare, is undoubtedly excellent’.  He even tasted reptiles, writing:

“…although nothing but the most extreme hunger could make me conquer my aversion, so as to dine on then, I must nevertheless own, that not one of them possessed any disagreeable taste. The flesh of the black snake in particular was rich and juicy, somewhat resembling in flavour the flesh of a sucking pig, whilst that of the guana was whiter and drier, and more approximated to fowl.”

In her essay “Nineteenth-Century Experimentation and the Role of Indigenous Foods in Australian Food Culture” for the Australian Humanities Review, Barbara Santich deals exhaustively with the many instances of early settlers experimenting with and even recommending native foods. She quotes Wilhelmina Rawson, the first Australian woman to write a cookbook, who advised that “Whatever the blacks eat the whites may safely try”.  Noting the renewed interest in native ingredients, Santich concludes that:

 If they are to join the ranks of foods which symbolise Australian-ness, they should not only be valued for their present-day ability to add a distinctive flavour to a particular dish but also for their past, for the stories associated with their role in traditional Aboriginal culture as well as with nineteenth-century experimentation.