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Fusion Cuisine Down Under

By: Karolyn Wrightson

Australia is a nation of immigrants. Since World War Two, there has been a tremendous influx of people from southern and eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia. Australia also produces some of the world’s finest seafood, lamb and beef. It has immense orchards and garden markets. Mix these two factors and what do you get? Fusion cuisine! – food cooked by the newcomers in their traditional styles, but the recipes are adapted to Aussie ingredients. Indeed, to dine in the top restaurants in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth these days, is to experience the world’s great cuisines in one continent.

But my favorite Aussie meal is far harder to come by. You have to go bush, Fair Dinkum! My favorite tucker is cooked over a fire, with gum smoke filling the air. The sky is a swath of zillions of stars in the Milky Way. A fillet of barramundi has been seasoned with berries from a nearby bush, then wrapped in paperbark and laid on the fire to roast. It is served up with a hunk of fresh hot damper bread cooked in the ashes, and smeared with butter. We wash this down with a good Shiraz. Dessert is a huge, sweet Australian orange and a wedge of the finest King Island Tasmanian blue cheese.

Then I sip a cup of billy tea and listen to the locals sing irreverent Aussie cowboy songs around the campfire. Finally I crawl into my swag, zip it up, and fall asleep to a lullaby played by a lone guitarist who is still sitting by the fire, enjoying his last stubbie of the day.

I awake to the smell of bacon frying. We down fresh eggs and hot cakes with Aussie honey. We climb into our swim togs and head for the billabong, for a swim that doubles as a bath in water so clear that you come out refreshed, without the soap and rag. The Aboriginal children are scampering up trees and walking out onto limbs hanging over the billabong. They stop, balance themselves, and do Olympic-quality double back flips into the water.

We dry off and go on a bush walk to an art gallery. The galleries hold the largest collection of the oldest rock art in the world. We listed to an Aboriginal elder tell the stories, and show us amazing paintings like the long-extinct Tasmanian tiger.

A day like this will cost you two or three times more than a night in Sydney’s most posh hotel. But long after you have forgotten the thread count of those hotel sheets, you will remember the gum smoke, the damper bread, and the laughter of the children. And that is priceless.

Karolyn Wrightson started Essential Downunder Travel in 1999, to plan custom tineraries for travelers who want to get off the beaten track and experience what they see. She has spent months in the outback and cities of Australia focusing on nature, the environment, and Aboriginal culture. She has won five Opal Awards from Tourism Australia for her work. She has been recommended by National Geographic Traveler as one of the top Australia agents in the USA.

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Karolyn Wrightson of Essential DownUnder Travel can be contacted through her website http://www.essentialdownunder.com

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