Australian native food is adding a distinct 'Australian flavour' to regional and international cuisines. The popular Australian native fruits include Davidson Plum, Kakadu Plum, Illawarra Plum, Finger Lime, Sunrise Lime, Lemon Aspen, Outback Lime, Muntries and Quandong.
Examples of Australian native plant foods include the fruits quandong, kutjera, muntries, riberry, Davidson's plum, and finger lime. Native spices include lemon myrtle, mountain pepper, and the kakadu plum. Various native yams are valued as food, and a popular leafy vegetable is warrigal greens.
Banana. Of course, bananas had to be on the list! Australians eat more than five million of these golden yellow fruits every day – and they are the highest selling supermarket food.
Some more unusual varieties suited to Australian gardeners include dwarf coconuts, black sapote and desert limes.
Among the native fruits, eleven prominent native species have been commercially produced in Australia including bush tomato, Davidson's plum, desert lime, finger lime, Kakadu plum, lemon aspen, muntries, quandong, Tasmanian pepper berry, and Illawarra plum.
Australia grows a wide range of deciduous fruits including apple, pear, grape, nashi, peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, cherry and to a lesser extent persimmon, kiwifruit and blueberries. About 70% of the current production occurs in temperate regions.
Durians are regarded as the 'king of fruits', but many find their smell offensive.
The types of fruit and seed depended on the season and availability, but could include wild passionfruit, wild oranges, bush tomato, bush banana, bush plums, mulga seeds and wattle seeds. Aboriginal Australians would also gather honey and nectar from bees, honey ants, flowers and trees.
The green 'plum', a nutritious ancient fruit eaten in Arnhem Land 53–65,000 years ago, is under the microscope of bush food researchers, who say it could one day be as popular as table grapes.
1. Chicken parmigiana. This classic Aussie chicken dish – with roots in Italian-American cooking – is a staple offering at many pub menus in the country. Whether you call it a parmi/parmy or a parma (but never a parmo), there's huge debate about where does the best parmigiana in Australia.
Roast lamb has been declared Australia's national dish in a major poll that shows we're still a country of meat eaters at heart.
Kangaroo paw (Anigozanthos)
This unique Australian plant get's its name from its furry flower which is shaped just like a kangaroo's paw. They're often red in colour, but in the wild their flowers can also range from green to pink, yellow and black.
Eucalypts. With 2,800 species of eucalypts (gum trees), these are the trees most commonly associated with Australia. Eucalypts are found in many areas, from the silver and red snow gums of the Australian Alps to the ancient river red gums in South Australia's Flinders Ranges.
Some well known edible native vegetables include yams, warrigal greens, native leek and water plantain. Australian natives offer a diverse and tasty range of vegetables to cultivate at home.
There is no one Aboriginal word that all Aborigines use for Australia; however, today they call Australia, ""Australia"" because that is what it is called today. There are more than 250 aboriginal tribes in Australia. Most of them didn't have a word for ""Australia""; they just named places around them.
Kakadu plum (Terminalia ferdinandiana), Illawarra plum (Podocarpus elatus), Burdekin plum (Pleiogynium timoriense), Davidson's plum (Davidsonia jerseyana, Davidsonia johnsonii and Davidsonia pruriens), riberry red (Syzygium luehmannii) and yellow finger limes (Citrus australasica), Tasmanian pepper (Tasmannia ...
Aboriginal people ate a large variety of plant foods such as fruits, nuts, roots, vegetables, grasses and seeds, as well as different meats such as kangaroos, 'porcupine'7, emus, possums, goannas, turtles, shellfish and fish.
Australian finger limes are a species of citrus fruit that are native to rainforests of the central eastern coast of Australia.
Opened in 1964, the Big Banana was one of the first, and remains one of the most popular, Big Things in Australia.
Mangosteen – The Queen of Tropical Fruits for Fantastic Reasons.
The Big Banana was the first Big Thing, built in 1964 in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, as a promotional sign for a banana stall. Now there are more than 150 Big Things in Australia. Some are famous.
Pavlova, is the national dessert of Australia.
Australia is the world's largest exporter of coal (35% of international trade), iron ore, lead, diamonds, rutile, zinc and zirconium, second largest of gold and uranium, and third largest of aluminium.