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Issue 16 - Outback Australia |
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The reason is that I am really following on from my column in May when I wrote about being able to travel around Australia these days and be able to get good food no matter where you are. The food may not be gourmet, but it will be honest and well cooked even if sometimes it is not easy to get the fresh ingredients. And nothing could be harder than in the Kimberley where the very climate conspires against growing all but the hardiest of plants, and where rain either comes all together through the wet months or not at all. Yet no matter where we went we ate wonderfully. On homesteads where all the food has to be flown or trucked in, in tiny towns or camp sites there was an earnest desire to prepare and serve good food.
The Australian Outback
It has been a long time between columns, mainly because The Happy Gourmet has just returned from annual holidays. This year, along with a lot of fellow Australians, holidays were taken at home but as far away from home which is in Sydney, as it is possible to be and still be on the continent. The holiday this year was taken in the Kimberley - West Australias ancient land. With its coastline inaccessible except by sea and with one main bitumen road, it is the last of the frontier out posts, the whole region the size of Victoria and with a population of barely 31,000. It was an adventure holiday - wild and wonderful, huge spaces and skies and back to nature in a big way.
Travelling from Darwin to Broome by boat meant that we came face to face with a marine world that was as diverse as it was, at times, terrifying. Salt water crocodiles abound, as do sharks, sea snakes and stingrays. On the other hand the fish literally leap into your boat, and we had a magical day coming down to coast to Broome being escorted by whales and dolphins leaping and spouting.
After Broome it was into a four wheel drive to travel the Gibb River Road, the 660 kilometre dirt cattle truck route which is rough and tough as are the people who live on the outstations and homesteads along the way. Some of these homesteads can only be reached from the Gibb River Road via a graded dirt track sometimes up to 50 kilometres away.
In this kind of holiday you are back to basics, confronted by a harsh yet wonderful country millions of years old with a climate that even in winter is over 30 degrees. There is a grandeur in the rock formations and the beauty of the gorges with, in July, the rivers still running and the waterfalls flowing. Amongst this isolation you come across wonderful palm fringed swimming holes which you may or may not need to share with fresh water crocodiles. And above all you can see rock art - Wandjina and Bradshaws (Guin Guin) - reminding you that this ancient land has an ancient culture and spirit world that remains germane to its people today. Why, you might question, should I write about such a trip for a food site.
The reason is that I am really following on from my column in May when I wrote about being able to travel around Australia these days and be able to get good food no matter where you are. The food may not be gourmet, but it will be honest and well cooked even if sometimes it is not easy to get the fresh ingredients. And nothing could be harder than in the Kimberley where the very climate conspires against growing all but the hardiest of plants, and where rain either comes all together through the wet months or not at all. Yet no matter where we went we ate wonderfully. On homesteads where all the food has to be flown or trucked in, in tiny towns or camp sites there was an earnest desire to prepare and serve good food.
This also flowed over into shopping. Going into one of the major supermarkets in Alice Springs, we were confronted by a range of products and fresh vegetables that you would expect to see in a major city. Organic herbs, baby beets, fresh cheeses, salad greens - all available and obviously popular.
Having first asked around about where to eat on our only night in the Alice, we were given a couple of names including Hanuman an excellent South East Asian restaurant that is also in Darwin. Somehow we decided to suss something out for ourselves and found the Red Ochre Grill where the waitresses were fantastic and a woman chef - Jane Booth - is presenting imaginative food with a heavy emphasis on the use of bush tucker. Salt bush featured prominently both steamed and fresh as did fresh muntries , bunya nut hummus, camel, kangaroo, bush tomato, wattleseed, lemon myrtle, wild pepper. Coming from Adelaide she is sourcing many of her ingredients from her home town and the whole meal was imaginative, beautifully cooked and as good as anything you could find in a major city.
Darwin and Broome of course are much more sophisticated and you would expect the restaurants to reflect that. Indeed they did - favourites in Broome were Café Carlotta and Noodle Fish Zu, Zoo Café and any of the food outlets at Cable Beach Resort. Darwin which is booming has wonderful venues at Cullen Bay, the Wharf Precinct or in the city where Hanuman and Christos sit side by side.
Sometimes in travelling around you are limited to eating in hotels but even then the standard of food was a surprise. The frozen or prepared catering pack seldom evenuated.
We have really come of age in Australia regarding our cooking and favourite foods and it alters the preconceptions of someone who lives in a major city. Steak and chips have moved over and the pub menu has curry or chilli beef, duck breast or lamb shanks. What hasnt changed is the size of the servings - huge. Well it is a hard life in the outback and those who live it need refuelling often.
As you can see I have already a nucleus of names for our very own restaurant recommendation list. What we need now is a lot more from you so that we can start our list and make it relevant. No matter where in Australia you have had a good meal we want to hear about it.
We are rightly proud of what we can produce to go on the plate - we should also be enormously proud of all those unsung chefs out there who are using this produce so effectively.
The Happy Gourmet
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