Talk:Bush tucker

Never heard of the term Bushfood
As a random Australian browsing the history of this page as it's evolved for the last decade, I'd like to point out that the term "Bushfood" is not deserving of a mention in the opening sentence. It's barely deserving of a passing mention as a term that may have been used by a tiny minority of wankers1 for a brief instant in history (no doubt with well intentions, but certainly misguidedly). I've never heard the term in my 37 years and I doubt my children, or my children's children ever will. Hope that helps vindicate some of the discussions that went on here about it. Just because someone coined the term in a paper once, doesn't make it a thing. I'd be more interested in the etymology of the term "tucker" actually, why doesn't someone mention that instead of trying to dismiss the term as "colloquial" and therefore somewhat less legitimate? 124.181.125.20 (talk) 17:04, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

1. For want of a term as fitting for anyone that would try to reshape our perception of reality in this manner, regardless of their motivations.

Propose move back to Bush tucker
Bushfood? I've rarely heard the term - Bush tucker is a more common expression in my experience. Googling finds 33,400 for bushfood, 71,800 for "bush food" and 253,000 for "bush tucker".

The move from Bush tucker to this article appears to have been done by an anonymous user, otherwise I would contact them about it. I suggest moving back.

After the name's sorted out, redlinks Australian bush tucker, Australian bush food, and Australian bush foods, and possibly bush food should redirect to this article. --Singkong2005 06:27, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed. "Bush tucker" is the overwhelmingly more common term in my experience (I've never even heard the term "bushfood" used). Thefamouseccles 00:03, 11 June 2006 (UTC)


 * As explained in the article, "bushfood" is the term that is used by people who actually wild-harvest/produce, market and cook Australian native foods on a regular basis. The choice of "bushfood" over the term "bush tucker" was also made to differentiate between the more rustic witchetty grub cooked in the coals style (but nothing wrong with that by the way)from the developing gourmet bushfood scene of the 1980's, which was characterized by a very different style of cooking than what had been previously used with Australian native foods. But I don't think the term "bush tucker" should be totally superceded and displaced by the more gourmet inferred "bushfood" term. The two terms can happily coexist. Maybe they just need to be better explained. --User:John Moss 1.00, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
 * There are two different things here. Aboriginal use of bush food, which is vast, and includes bush medicine, and white people's use of bush food, and the commercialisation of a few plants. I think the two need to be differentiated, but not sure how.

I don't see any evidence that people who harvest or produce the foods prefer the term "bushfood". Even if such evidence were to come to light, it's not clear to me why what is effectively technical jargon such as "bushfood" should override normal terminology. There are many contrary examples in Wikipedia--a while back I discovered that German Shepherd Dog, the correct and unambiguous term, redirects to German Shepherd, which could offend some shepherds I know. Once again I propose renaming this page, and I'll do it if there are no objections within a month. Groogle (talk) 02:30, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Must say I am not fussed either way, lean slightly towards "bush tucker" though I think the other is getting more common all the time. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:37, 26 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Thoughtful response from macropneuma:
 * "Bush tucker" if the headwords of the lead sentence have in parentheses "(Australian Aboriginal English)" (perhaps include "(dialect)") (Ref: Macquarie national Australian dictionary). Then and only then does it feel comfortable titling the article "Bush tucker" or "Bush Tucker" (note the proper name);
 * alternatively "Australian native foods" – accurate, clear, quality, standard term nowadays, driven by respect from (and the lesser motivation of respectable terms for sales pitches, hmm, from) the more than $20 million/year export industry (could well be developed more as two articles as cuisines can mean long food traditions, while foods can mean individual ingredient foods; see the industry article: History of the bushfood industry; that definitely requires moving to "History of the Australian native foods industry"). This export and domestic industry increasingly develops by peoples who are Australian Aborigines, far beyond the days of little knowing 'rich white entrepreneurs who see dollar signs' in the next 'get rich quick' food business.


 * Do all of you reading here know that four species of Oryza Rice(s) grow naturally here in northern Australia, and in New Guinea? They have grown and evolved in Australia as part of their natural distribution for millions of years and did not recently arrive, introduced from Asia. Technically the term is autochthonous Australian native plant species, in other words long term indigenous. Evolved in Australia for even more than the certain few millions of years, we are guessing, they could have perhaps for 20–30 million years. This one example is just 'the tip of the iceberg'. 4,000–6,000 different native Australian plant species used for foods by peoples who are Australian Aborigines, as recorded by European Australian scientists in published scientific literature, most well recorded of all in southern Australia by Dr. Beth Gott, Monash Uni, Melbourne. The worldwide rice industry knows a lot about this example, why don’t most of the European Australian people i’ve talked to(?): cultural supremacist, racialist, history of attitudes to this country and her thousands of native foods.
 * Reference:
 * One more example will suffice i believe. Everyone who has come within cooee of tropical fruits knows the popular tropical fruit: Longan Dimocarpus longan (in some parts of SE Asia threatened with extinction in the wild). In Australia only, grows naturally the endemic species Dimocarpus australianus (for millions of years).
 * One more example will suffice i believe. Everyone who has come within cooee of tropical fruits knows the popular tropical fruit: Longan Dimocarpus longan (in some parts of SE Asia threatened with extinction in the wild). In Australia only, grows naturally the endemic species Dimocarpus australianus (for millions of years).


 * This term "Australian native foods" and the hundreds of language specific terms, for three examples of them in English translations as i don’t know the words for cuisines/foods in these languages: Martu cuisines/foods, Kuku Yalanji cuisines/foods, Boonwurrung cuisines/foods, also medicines. These two classes of terms have the highest quality, most respected, reliable references sources, both scholarly and industry reports. i don’t know if "Australian native foods" necessarily has the Google comparable quantity yet; i haven’t checked that comparison as its not reliable enough to be important for me; its only good for a notability check, and not more substantial, more scholarly nor more reliable. I’m certain that because of the history of past overwhelming cultural supremacist, racialist, politics, the term "Australian native cuisines" does not have the comparable quantity in Google yet—accuracy and quality of words over quantity—trumping quantity—every time, for me. Generically, terms that have some but less notability via Google hits, but are more accurate, quality wording and more scholarly, with scholarly sources, can take the article titles and subsume the more crass populist term(s), and sometimes poor English terms, for the same subject and subsume their Google hits quantities of notability.


 * Many popular selling Australian books, web forums, hobbyist clubs and a few better quality, more reliable experienced/scholarly books use the term "bushfoods". The current national body of Australian native foods (not of hobbyists clubs) some 5–10 years ago articulated well the point about the term "bushfoods" not having the clarity/professionalism/true respect/scholarly accuracy and sales respect. They made the very good decision IMHO, to use the term "Australian native foods" and to try to convert to that term, eventually all the government reports (many reports from RIRDC), and those many from industry, media, hobbyists, scholars, future scholarly writing, exporter’s product wordings, etc..


 * Most serious Australian people in this discipline (including myself nature farming a little and a lot of scholarly study) aren’t totally comfortable with the terms, when used by non–Aboriginal Australian English speakers, of "bush tucker" or "bush food"—less respectful of our many friends who are Aborigines. Although in the context of conversations with my friends who are Australian Aborigines, it’s acceptable for me to speak the Aboriginal English i know well enough, including using in Aboriginal English dialect the term Bush tucker deriving from that phrase in Aboriginal pidgin English from colonial times, and we greatly respect Aboriginal English speakers using that, their own term. Used in non-Aboriginal Australian English in a less serious, tongue–in–cheek, mocking tone since, historically, a few decades ago it was appropriated from Aboriginal English by populist media like the TV 'Bush Tucker Man' series and his series of books and videos merchandise. We have no disrespect therefore don’t want to appropriate a normal Aboriginal English term into a tongue–in–cheek (mocking tone), less than respectfully used, non-Aboriginal Australian English term. We Wikipedians can do better than that of course.


 * The term bushfood has the history of being half way between the following:
 * 1) the history of the cultural supremacist, racist mocking, disregard, disrespect for the Australian Aboriginal English dialect, in this instance, in the usage in Aboriginal English of the term bush tucker (not the way the term is used in 'whitefullah/gubba/balanda/migiloo' English) and
 * 2) the non–Aboriginal Australian English terms for foods, respected because of, and derived from Europe and Asia, such as: French cuisine, Italian cuisine, Japanese cuisine, etc..
 * So i think i’ve shown that we do not have to use—i mean in the particular usage we adopt—we don’t have to use such half baked, compromise ideas as the cultural supremacist, food racialism, use of words.
 * The questions now:
 * How do you think the majority of readers will receive the title "Bush tucker" together with the first following words of an immediate specification of its usage as a term in the Australian Aboriginal English dialect?
 * Will enough readers in the wider world have respect for the Australian Aboriginal English dialect, when reading this? Will enough readers have the broad-mindedness, the respect, for different cultures and experience of thinking from different cultures’ points of views, to appreciate it or will it turn readers in mockers of the subject, of the peoples? Again. i’m not entirely comfortable with and not a fan of the term bushfoods (either).
 * Or otherwise do we need to accept that Wikipedia requires more of a communication tactics approach and an approach of 'marketing' to the audience, of the worldly English majority dialect (also called globish)?


 * I hope youse can appreciate, learn from and respect my words extensive words here. If any one person here does not have utmost respect for peoples who are Australian Aborigines they have lost me and my respect. I add that i am from Scottish, Irish, French and English ancestry. As far as i know, our ancestors from there and from about six generations in Australia did not include any people who are Aborigines, but this has been extensively suppressed in many thousands of families until recent years of decreasing racialism—for example, many mixed ancestry friends of mine, in my own experience of growing up with people who are Aborigines. Wikipedia should not allow the other pages that it has which continue publishing statements of political, Australian, cultural supremacist, racialist, propaganda. One of the worst Australian 'nasties' i have heard, for one example of many times, last week with a friend of a friend over a meal, again it was the vindictive blaming of people who are Aborigines for racism, by non-Indigenous people who, psychologically, desperately, can’t admit their own racialism and racism—they have psychologically staked too much on their own hubris of denying their own families’ racialist histories, embedded as it is in all post 1770,1788 Australian history of my and all of our ancestors. The true, widely said saying, but simplistically worded for effect in black and white terms, says: "White Australia has a Black history"


 * i can provide, on request, too many reference sources for all of the above statements, but it is quite a massive load of referencing. Just writing the words does enough.


 * Refer for some of the many examples, to my many scholarly reference sources already on my user page. Furthermore to the extensively documented facts that peoples who are Australian Aborigines used thousands of species for foods and even more additional species in medicines, shelters, tools, weapons and so on (scholarly records of a minimum 4,000 food plant species used, up to a maximum number of plant species that i’ve heard from one research group of 6,000 food plants species; out of the total number of, scientifically accepted and foreshadowed, plant species in Australia of about 25–30,000).
 * Please refer to page 36 of the following simple and easy book to access on the internet and please don’t mind the understated title of the book:
 * —--macropneuma 04:51, 27 April 2013 (UTC) —copyedited—--macropneuma 09:04, 27 April 2013 (UTC) —partly copyedited—--macropneuma 07:16, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * —--macropneuma 04:51, 27 April 2013 (UTC) —copyedited—--macropneuma 09:04, 27 April 2013 (UTC) —partly copyedited—--macropneuma 07:16, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Headlines
Is it just me or is the headlines in the artical, font sizes are bigger?--KevinWindows 08:21, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Norforce link broken
As it was mentioned I tried to link Norforce to the Wiki page as per the ol' square brackets method. But it's a red/broken link for some reason. Anybody a little more experienced with Wiki than I know why? Ozlucien (talk) 05:23, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Links are case-sensitive - now fixed --Melburnian (talk) 06:29, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the term "Bushfood" and its use, again
Hallo all,

Although I am not a native speaker of English and have never set my foot on Australian soil, I doubt that the equation "Bushfood" = "that which has traditionally used by Australian Aboriginals" is accurate (and if I am right then the article is misleading). Years ago I read an article on mercenaries in Africa in an English language magazine (sorry I forgot the name of that one) and remember a passage where one "old hand" was quoted as saying "...Bushfood is good for your immune system - that's what they teach you at the South African Army...". I am completely sure they wrote the term "Bushfood" there. And as an South African who worked all his life in that continent he certainly did not refer to Australian plants and stuff, did he? So I infer that what the article in its current form says about the use of the term is not wrong, but too limited and hence gives the reader a wrong impression - and therfore needs to be corrected and amended.

Otherwise fine and highly interesting.

Regards, Sophophilos 147.142.186.54 (talk) 12:31, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with you. I've thought for some time that this article should be moved to Bush tucker. Despite what John Moss says above about bushfood being "the term that is used by people who actually wild-harvest/produce, market and cook Australian native foods on a regular basis", plenty of sites for which it is certainly not the most commonly used term for Australian native foods among the general population; bush tucker is (I point out again that Google hits for "bush tucker" (~255,000) outweigh those for "bushfood"/"bush food" (~14,600/~55,900) by more than 3 to 1, and plenty of the initial hits for "bush tucker" are for specialty or "gourmet" online shops). And since you point out that the word "bushfood" is also used elsewhere, I'm even more strongly convinced that this article as it stands (i.e. the article about native Australian foodstuffs) should be moved to Bush tucker. Thefamouseccles (talk) 01:44, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

I support John Moss's analysis. With all respect Thefamousseccles, I'm not sure on what basis you derived your figures for searches on Google, because Google shows "bush foods" with 24,800,000 hits while "bush tucker" only gets 759,000 hits. I think that is self explantory as to what is the prominent term in popular usage. Perhaps the term "bush food" is also used in South Africa, but popular current use going on the first 100 entries on Google clearly is dominated by the reference to Australian native foods. Phytogent (talk) 04:14, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Phytogent, I don't know how much the state of the Internet would have changed in the six months since your comment, but the current (as of 25-01-2010) number of Ghits lists "bush tucker" at ~ 170,000 hits, whereas the combined search "bush food" OR "bush foods" OR "bushfood" OR "bushfoods" only makes up 97,900 hits. I'm a little stumped myself as to how your search on "bush foods" could have come up more than two orders of magnitude off mine. I'm not arguing that "bush food" and variants are not a popular way of referring to Australian native foods, but I stand by what I said: "bush tucker" is the more commonly used term. Thefamouseccles (talk) 10:49, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Aboriginal knowledge role in modern native foods industry
I'm not sure if this sentence is totally correct as a absolute statement: "However, despite the industry being founded on Aboriginal knowledge of the plants,...". Aboriginal knowledge definitely was the original source of information for the commercial use of native food plants of Central Australia and the Top End, like wattle seed, desert tomato, kakadu plum and quangdong. However, the direct link with Aboriginal knowledge is not so clear with the commercialization of east coast native food plants like, riberry, Davidson's plum, Illawarra plum, warrigal greens, lemon myrtle, native mint, river mint, anise myrtle, finger lime and Dorrigo pepper. Bunya nut is one of the few east coast species where Aboriginal knowledge clearly played a primary role in commercial development of the species. The Aboriginal usage aspects for many of the east coast species was retrofitted into the historical profile of the commercialized species for food safety arguments after the species were already in commercial use, but in some cases, Aboriginal knowledge on east coast food plants is scant or non-existant as a tragic result of the disruption to traditional culture by non-indigenous colonization. It's often hard to come-by Aboriginal names for many east coast species. I wonder how we can change this sentence to more accurately reflect the history of commercial development without being indifferent to the point?Aareo (talk) 11:33, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Requested move 7 May 2015

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Move. We have a unanimous consensus that this is the common name in the relevant variety of English. Cúchullain t/ c 18:02, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Bushfood → Bush tucker – Finally had enough and am proposing this move on a formal basis. "Bushfood" is an uncommon neologism that's primarily the result of cultural cringe and the consequent unwillingness to use the vernacular Australian term bush tucker, which not only is predominant for this meaning among Australians more generally, but is more respectful of the Indigenous origin of the term in Kriol bush taga. Straight Google searches demonstrate the predominance of "bush tucker" ("bush tucker": 425,000 hits; "bushfood": 186,000 hits; "bush food": 140,000 hits as at 07 May 2015), and Google Ngrams further confirms that in published books "bush tucker" is more common by an order of magnitude (and moreover shows how rare the compound word "bushfood" is, even when compared to the uncompounded "bush food"). There is no reasonable justification for maintaining the page at the current title and it should be moved promptly, with "bushfood" and perhaps also "bush food" as redirects. Thefamouseccles (talk) 03:39, 7 May 2015 (UTC) As at 04:10, 20 May 2015 (UTC), it looks like we've got pretty strong consensus on this per WP:COMMONNAME, WP:ENGVAR, WP:TIES and WP:TITLEVAR, to which I'd add WP:PRECISION (on the basis of distinguishing Australian bush food from bush food elsewhere in the world, as noted by 209.211.131.181). Since I proposed the move, I don't feel comfortable closing the discussion in case it sparks issues of conflict of interest. Anyone else want to make the move happen? Thefamouseccles (talk) 04:10, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment being a more specific Australian term, would certainly clarify the scope of the article with its title, as it would no longer be confused with food in "the bush" in the rest of the world -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 05:24, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Support "bushfood" and "bush food" should become an overview article about this type of food all over the globe -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 03:37, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Support. Australian topic so move per WP:ENGVAR. Zarcadia (talk) 11:40, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Support: per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:TITLEVAR. Ebonelm (talk) 11:41, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Support. I'm not convinced that this should be a separate topic from bushmeat, but so long as we do treat them separately we should use the local terms for them. 209.211.131.181 (talk) 12:52, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
 * When this moves, then "bush food" should be made into an overview article, or disambiguation page, to link to the various "bush" edibles articles -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 23:16, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The bushmeat article is specifically about meat sourced from the wild and often sold on the market (and resulting in over-harvesting phenomena and disease outbreaks, and typically specific to tropical forests), where "bush tucker" seems to be about anything one might eat in the bush in Australia, without any real relationship to sale in markets and without any major observed problems arising from that. There are some issues that seem to arise in the bushmeat context that are quite different from those of Australian bush tucker. (One might hold out hope that rabbits and cane toads would be over-harvested for bushmeat, but alas this is not the case.) I'm not sure there is really a common theme that requires trying to tie these two topics together as a common topic. If they didn't both use the word "bush", no one would probably suggest it. —BarrelProof (talk) 08:42, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:COMMONNAME. Khestwol (talk) 20:38, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:TIES: This is a distinctly Australian topic, so it is appropriate to use the common name that is applied in Australia. —BarrelProof (talk) 10:52, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Support - Logical to use the most common Australian term for the subject due to national ties.--Yaksar (let's chat) 18:11, 18 May 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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List cleanup
These lists could be presented in a much more helpful way. It is not adequate to group all states together like this (eg, bush tucker of Victoria is completely irrelevant for people looking for bush tucker in Tasmania)

I'd recommend creating a sortable table for each 'culinary province'.

The table for each culinary province should have 5 columns: i) Plant part ii) Scientific name iii) Common name iv) Examples v) Citation

I will create a table, specifically for Tasmania, to show what I feel is a more informative layout. Vitreology (talk) 03:24, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Query reference: Cycnogeton procerum (formerly Triglochin procera)
I note this plant in the list: Cycnogeton procerum (formerly Triglochin procera) BUT when I go to that link, it doesn't bring up the page Cycnogeton procerum but instead links to the Triglochin page. I searched for the Cycnogeton procerum page, but it only brought up the Cynogeton general page. On the general page there's mention of Cycnogeton procerum but there's no existing page/link under that name.

Which is it? Is it still Triglochin procera or is it now Cycnogeton procerum? This needs to be corrected/updated and followed through to ensure any references to it, are corrected/updated on all relevant pages, and not just a confusing mention on this page.

Tzali (talk) 16:22, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Query: remove Dianella tasmanica?
I note on the Dianella tasmanica page that it says "The fruits of Dianella tasmanica are toxic to an unknown degree and should not be eaten. They ..., produce an irritating tingling sensation in the mouth when consumed." Therefore I'd suggest it should be removed from this list, unless someone is able to determine if it's truly edible and not toxic.

Tzali (talk) 16:48, 4 March 2023 (UTC)