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Now that I’ve got your attention there are a few important details that I want to cover before you get stuck into this website of mine. The first thing to realise is the fact that this site is not a survival manual. It is simply an education tool, so that as you move around this great Australian landscape, you can self educate using this site to help you along the way to better understand the country you are moving through. So that’s the first point to recognise. I will now go ahead and further explain a couple of other points. Just remember this database is focused on northern Australia, that is to say the landscape north of the Tropic of Capricorn.

The Scope of the Study By necessity, my original research was confined to the northern half of the Australian continent. It was deemed that the northern half of Australia was the priority area to focus on, as the Antarctic Penguins were deemed not be be of any threat. So as a result for Army I turned my attention to the land mass north of the Tropic of Capricorn, which falls just north of Alice Springs. Half a continent is quite enough for one individual to come to grips with I figured at the time. However where a species is also found to the south of that land mass as well as the northern sector, then that distribution is also noted here.

Map Distribution With each species there is a map showing the known distribution of each species. Now don't take that distribution too seriously as it simply is intended to be indicative of where the species have been sighted and where you may expect to find a species appearing as you move around the continent. If you want to really tie down the location of a particular species then there is a way to do that. You get on the Internet and look up the web site titled The Australian Virtual Herbarium and they will give you the exact detail you are looking for. Https://avh.chah.org.au is their WWW address. It's a great site and was never available when I first started cataloging Bush Tucker some 50 years ago of course, as there was no such thing as the internet back then.

Photographic Coverage A lot of my personal photographic records date back to the era of film (35 mm colour slides) which don't stand up very well when stored over many years in the Wet Tropics of Far North Queensland. As a result, I have had to undertake the massive task of re-photographing all the species I had on file but using digital cameras. That task is still not fully completed but is an ongoing project for me and my wife Sandy, as we move around the country. It also gives me something to do in my dotage.

Political Correctness Sorry I'm not big on Political Correctness, so if I’ve said something here that gets up your nose "Stiff Shit" and go and tell it to the Padre. I'm not interested.

Poisonous or Dangerous Species There are of course a number of resources in the Australian Outback that can be either dangerous or even perhaps deadly. Those species have been highlighted using bold text and a red skull and crossbones positioned on the photograph. Best to know about them and steer clear of them. In some cases, I have not included a particular Bush Tucker due to the fact that some of its close relatives are quite poisonous, and can easily be misidentified.

Nutritional Value The first organisation that I know of to publish the nutritional content of these Bush Foods was the Australian Army in conjunction with the Armed Forces Food Science Establishment in Scottsdale, Tasmania. The information appeared on the back of the maps printed by the Australian Army Survey Corps in the late 1980’s. These maps were nicknamed “snack maps” by the Diggers, and it's from those maps, which are no longer published, that I have obtained the information enclosed here. Not all the species have been analysed however, and that aspect may take quite some years in the future to complete. Perhaps some university somewhere may like to take that task on board. Don't hold your breath though, as I suspect they are far too busy researching topics that no one really cares about.

The Legend I intend to update this site quite regularly with new digital photographs and new information as well as additional species when they become available. Not only that but as the technology improves, so too will this site and hopefully include such things as video clips as well as voice narration. Thats all for the future and a challenge for me to come to grips with. Health and age come into play here but things are looking good in that respect.

Conclusion Finally I would like to add additional information down the track a little, I intend to include content that deals with some of Australia's historical past. Not the more obvious past but some of the lesser known issues such as the Dutch Settlement in Central Australia and George Greys explorations in the Kimberley as well as aspects dealing with our WW11 activity up north. By the way, our knowledge of the Dutch Settlement has expanded greatly and we now know just exactly where they were located and the their arrival date of 1708. That date means we have a whole new "invasion date" to get cranky about. Not only that, but we can now blame all sorts of dreadful things on the Dutch. You can pick up on that via my instagram account. bushtuckerman_leshiddins

See ya all down the track - Les Hiddins

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