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Sell This | January 2002 | ASTA Agency Management
BY RALPH
GRIZZLE Beneath the starry skies of Alice Springs, billy tea boils over a blazing campfire, kangaroo stew simmers on smoldering coals, and Rod Steinert, a rugged outback bushman, allows a three-inch witchetty grub to dangle from his lips. "The witchetty grub," Steinert explains while attempting to keep the writhing creature from escaping his lips, "was a major source of food for Aborigines who traveled Australia's outback." Then, with
his forefinger, he gives the white, wiggly creature a push on its tush.
The Southern Cross winks as the last bit of the grub's rear slips through
his lips. "You have to be careful to close your mouth when you
bite down," he warns just before doing so, "or else the yellow
custard shoots out everywhere. They reckon that's how Australia's first
cave painting happened." Getting
Your Boots Dusty Shuffling in the sun-seared soil of the Northern Territory's outback, we toss boomerangs, meet real Aborigines, scan the sparsely vegetated horizon for hopping kangaroos and generally contort our faces as Steinert presents us with the particulars of the Aborigine's bizarre diet. The tour, operated 365 days a year, spans three hours, from 8:30 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. The cost is AU$79 (about $41) per adult and AU$39 ($20) per child, with transfers to and from the airport included. If your clients prefer to drive to the activity site, the cost is AU$60 ($31) per adult and AU$30 ($15) per child. An optional evening tour, the Outback Bushman's Dinner, runs two hours and requires a group of at least 10. Wendy Schatz,
a native (Brisbane) Australian who now resides in Bellevue, Washington,
recommends the tour to travelers who don't mind getting a little dust
on their boots. She says that among her clients interest in the world's
oldest living culture is becoming increasingly popular. Those who are
keen on learning more, she says, generally do well with small local
tours, like Steinert's, that provide an up-close, hands-on look. Peeling open an acacia root unearthed for the occasion, Steinert reveals the witchetty grub to our tour group. Resembling a short string of popcorn, its yellow forehead and glistening white body are met by a chorus of oohs and yechs as it is passed around for inspection. "Eaten raw, it has a woody flavor," says Steinert, who tried his first one about 25 years ago and now typically eats a grub a day. "But it tastes like the yolk of a hard-boiled egg. It's actually quite pleasant." Few of
us, however, are willing to discover the taste for ourselves. I tried
one and swallowed it with difficulty. No one salivates over the bush coconut, a knotty growth about the size of a golf ball that grows on gum trees. It's not so much the outer appearance that turns people off as what's inside: slimy larva and its offspring, maggots. In terms of protein, though, the bush coconut is hard to beat. And the taste isn't all that bad. I tried one: tastes like grated carrots. Water-holding frogs, another outback delicacy, burrow as deep as 12 feet and are usually eaten raw to preserve moisture, an important consideration in these deserts. Steinert places his forefinger over the frog's rear and his thumb over its head, squeezing together quickly, the idea being not to let a drop of water escape. We retreat a step when he asks if anyone is still hungry. Of course, no one is, but a woman from California wants to know how many people the frog will feed. "You can feed up to 5,000 tourists with one," he quips. "Curiously, though, it'll only feed one Aborigine." For his
part, Steinert prefers lizard, or goanna as it is known Down Under.
Though goanna can be eaten raw, Steinert bakes his whole in the hot
sand beneath a fire (the idea again is to preserve moisture). Fifteen
minutes later, he flops the sizzling goanna into a bowl made of tree
bark, scrapes the prickly scales off and disembowels it. "It tastes
like a cross between fish and chicken," he says slicing into the
white meat and passing it around. "I could eat it till the cows
come home." Many of us, understandably, are wishing the cows would
come home. Boomerangs
And Wild Things The returning boomerang, he explains, was used only for rounding up birds, waterfowl and ducks off waterways. "And it could only be used where you had wide expanses of water. If you had too many trees, the returning boomerang wouldn't work." The boomerang that most Aborigines used was the hunting boomerang. Ranging from two- to three-feet, it is an aerodynamically shaped piece of wood that "goes dead straight and keeps going dead straight until hopefully it hits a bird or an animal," Steinert says. An Aborigine clad in jeans and a Western-style shirt shows the accuracy of the hunting boomerang. Winding up like a baseball pitcher, he sends it hurtling end over end for about a hundred yards until it hits a spot marked on the ground. We clap. Today,
hardly anyone would think of using the boomerang for hunting, Steinert
tells us. "The Aborigines will carry one around to shift the coals
of the fire, or if they shoot an animal, they may use the boomerang
to finish it off rather than hitting it over the head with a club,"
he says, adding that these days, "no one in Australia gets less
than 98 percent of their diet from the supermarket." That's a comforting
thought as we consider our next meal Down Under. Box: Hungry
For More? Box: Become
an Outback Expert
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