Cultivating a Creative Larder

“Historically, several inulin-laden foods, especially chicory, dahlia, Jerusalem artichokes, murnong, and yacon, have been used as staple food or as sustenance crops. Australian aborigines ate murnong, a tuberous plant, in the 19th century as their main vegetable food with a reported daily intake of 200-300 grams (Gott, 1984).”

Running down Kangaroos or finding a wombat down its burrow was a chancy business for the indigenous people who lived in the Gariwerd, so bringing back something to eat was often left to women.

Armed with their digging sticks and baskets, each with a carrying capacity of up to 30 kilograms, the Djab wurrung and Jardwadjali women and children gathered immense quantities of tuberous roots and edible food. One of the most important year-long food stapies was native yam daisy, or murnong. Its yeallow dandelion like flowers once covered the grasslands in their millions. Robinson describes the sight in 1841 of “women spread over the plain as far as I could see them… each with a load as much as she could carry.”

Over a period of a few years the women would dig over much of the plains country within their range to get at the sweet tasting, starch rich clumps of murnong tubers.

If they were taking such vast quantities, why did the murnong not become scarce? The answer is that the women only thinned the clumps of tubers. Moreover, the digging aerated the soil, incorporating litter and ash, thereby cultivating and fertilizing the tubers of murnong and other edible orchid and lily species.

During my time at Wartook, within what has been such an abundant garden, I have had time to reflect and learn from the techniques these early people employed and how I can apply this to my creative life. Digging, foraging, cultivating, fertilizing, thinning, preparing wild gardens where community members can till the ground and develop their gardens. It is all a part of the daily routine here at Wartook, an important part of my creative life.