Feeding an appetite for reconciliation
Gerald Power looks forward to a time when Indigenous Australian foods like emu and warrigal greens will become as common a sight on Aussie dining tables as steak and mash, ‘spag bol’ or a mid-week curry.
“It is just exciting. It is absolutely positive. I have to force them out the gate to get them to go down the road because they are so wanting it,” says Gerald of the tour groups who come through his native garden.
“We have 50, 60-year-old and 70-year-old people come here — and they've lived and breathed in Australia, but never tasted this food and they want to know more about it. It is just so amazingly positive.”
Leaving a long public service career in 2016, Gerald founded Indigenous Cultural Adventures here in Orange, with a vision of sharing the heritage and cultural knowledge of the region’s Wiradjuri people.
Born in Bowen, North Queensland, Gerald is of the Juru people and South Seas Islander decent. He first came to Orange as a young man picking apples almost four decades ago and he has been given the blessing of local Wiradjuri Elders to share traditional local knowledge.
But it is native foods that Gerald has a particular passion for.
“I was out there at Broken Hill and eating the bush bananas and sitting at Goodooga and eating snottygobbles — people have no idea about bush food that we've consumed for thousands and thousands of years and I thought, this is all healthy food and we are not eating it,” says Gerald.
“You look around Australia now and you've got probably every nation's restaurant sitting in the main streets— Korea , Italian and all this here, but where is the true Aussie stuff? Where is the First Nation food?”
Not only is there an untapped wealth of tasty and healthy produce native to Australia, he says, but Gerald also sees it as playing a part in the reconciliation journey here in Australia.
“I was Chairperson of the Orange NAIDOC Committee and this year the theme was 'Always Was, Always Will Be'… there is a political message that has been reverberating through the community across this nation to the wider community: We are living in a multicultural community now, but there is also an Indigenous First Nation people here — the oldest living and surviving human beings on this earth — and we need a voice. So this is one voice; sharing our food and sharing our journey.”
Ultimately, Gerald would like to see a First Nations cuisine become commonplace in Australia, but he knows there is work to be done to make people aware of our native food offerings.
“I want to see a First Nations cuisine, but I believe as a business plan we must first create the market. Once the market has been created, we can then take the business to the next level,” he says.
“So this is the journey; hopefully one day we will get something in Orange and hopefully we can get the employment of young Indigenous people, young people doing hospitality, chef apprenticeships and let them showcase their own food.”
Until then, Gerald and his team continue to showcase Indigenous produce through pop-ups, restaurant collaborations or tours through his small native garden.
“Cook it right and present it right and educate people around the herbs and vegetables and the fruit... we do all that stuff but also with a mixture of Italian, a mixture of Asian, but having those flavours there, the Indigenous proteins sitting on the plate and people are amazed when they actually try it out,” says Gerald.
“I had a guy who was a bit of gourmet and we just cooked up a bit of emu with a macadamia and warrigal pesto under a gum tree here. He said, ‘I’ve been all around the world, I've eaten some of the nicest foods around and I have to say this here has got to be number one!”
