Building on Bushfoods | Australian native plants | Gardening Australia

Millie meets an inspiring Dja Dja Wurrung elder whose love of native food plants has grown into a community project focused on cooking, country, culture, and connection.

In the apple growing heartland of Victoria, Harcourt has something else growing right from the heart of the area. Aunty Julie is a Dja Dja Wurrung elder, Indigenous youth advocate, and Harcourt local. When she retired from teaching, she found herself spending time cooking with native ingredients and decided to have a go at growing some, starting with lemon myrtle, aniseed and pepperberry which are easy to grow and use. Julie continued to explore and try more unusual plants that are difficult to grow in the challenging climate. “Here in Harcourt, in Central Victoria, a lot of people believe we can’t grow the tropical stuff, but here’s proof that we can.” She’s successfully grown many Indigenous fruiting trees including lemon aspen, black apple, desert lime, minya and muntries.

Aunty Julie uses both the botanical and the Indigenous names for the plants. The Indigenous names often have dual meanings such as lemon myrtle’s name ‘girri girri’ which means both sour and urine!

The cherry ballart is a hemi parasitic tree that is seen as a sacred tree “as the little tree has to attach to the big tree … it represents community, in that you’ve got to work together” Julie says.

In the spirit of working together, Aunty Julie took her knowledge of native plants and teamed up with local Aboriginal organisation Nalderun, to create the Murnong Mammas.

“We wanted to have the opportunity for some of the Aboriginal women to be employed in the area, and there were 2 or 3 that were quite competent in cooking, so I thought let’s have a go at making some stuff using the local ingredients”. With about 8 in the team they launched a catering business, and when COVID hit they moved to selling native ingredients at the Castlemaine Farmers Market.

Murnong Mammas’ co-founder Melinda Harper believes that by creating delicious food with traditional ingredients, it also introduces the local people of Castlemaine to the local culture. Their most popular product is the Davidson’s Plum, or Ooray, with a sweet and sour taste and sold as a powder or in date balls. They also provide recipes so people can learn how to use the ingredients, such as for delicious wattleseed biscuits.

Entrepreneur, Sharlee Dunolly-Lee has started Dja Wonmuruk, an Indigenous loose-leaf tea company, after taking Aunty Julie’s bush tucker course. “It started out as a hobby but now it’s actually grown into a business … it’s pretty exciting” says Sharlee. “This is exactly what I want to see happening, is our young people being able to move into an area, and she’s actually selling her teas in the USA now” says Julie.

For Aunty Julie, growing these plants and sharing knowledge raises awareness of the local Indigenous peoples and their connections to this place. And the Murnong Mammas is nurturing future generations and a connected local community.

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