Bushwalk Australia

Anyone ever wanted to live with a hunter gathere group and learn bushtucker skills? I have always wanted to to travel to the aborginal communities where some of the old folks still know how to live off the land. You see quite a few bushcrafty types- especially in the US ( youtube is full of them) developing various skills but a lot of it is really the easy end of the spectrum, aka shelter making, tool building, primitive tech, basically 'fashioning stuff'. I do this myself.

The big problem, the elephant in the room, is whether your group can catch, hunt or gather enough calories in a day to live. This is an array of skills including the minute observation of your environment that is an order of magnitude more difficult to learn.

A lot of time, money and public emphasis goes into preserving the the painting, songs, dance etc of primitive cultures but the real lost art is thst which formed most of their day,. A vast array of skills and techniques to pull calories out of their environment

I wish more emphasis would go into it personally by the government, its like losing a branch of science. In practical terms its not something that can be taught in a school classroom or 2 week dance workshop, so its probably destined to completely dissappear.

While I have some skills in this area, I seriously doubt I could live off the land if the zombie apocalypse happened tonight.

Given I live in Victoria, however, it's very unlikely I'd have to go all the way back to a nomadic lifestyle*.
There would be significant remaining remnants of civilisation around to ensure that I could probably survive and provide for my immediate family.
e.g. there would still be cows / sheep / rabbits / etc around that I could avail myself of.

Re the US videos, most of these are in serious conflict with the "Leave No Trace" approach so not sure we should be encouraging their use too much.

* Unless, of course, we're talking about zombie fauna - in this case everything goes out the window!

I've always wanted to learn how to identify and prepare bush foods.

I looked into it a few times however discovered there are a number of common edible plants in Australia that look very similar to plants that are highly toxic.

So in order to survive on bush foods one would need to have a great deal of training and experience otherwise your better off not eating and waiting for rescue or self rescuing. The body can survive for weeks even months without food but not if you've inadvertently eaten a toxic plant.

The sort of knowledge required is not something I could pick up after few courses or walks with a knowledge person. I felt it was more in the months/years of required training/experience category.

Kao Windsong had it pretty dialed in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTK6Z6oCT3g
The book, "Wild Foods Australia" is a good resource.
And the controversial book, "The Biggest Estate on Earth"

I don't want to open a dicussion on "The Biggest Estate on Earth" other than to say that Aborigines were not nomads, hunter gathers. They travelled according to the seasons, and returned at harvest time, to tender their gardens and prepare their traps (which often meant burning).

With all the introduced species we have these days, I think you could probably survive off the land but purely hunter gathering, I don't like your chances.

Remember Les Hiddins? There was plenty of popular interest in the idea long before YouTube. At least enough for the ABC anyway.