Australia Day is that one day of the year when everyone has an opinion about what it means to be Australian. I’m much more interested in what it means to eat Australian. For the first two centuries of white settlement in this country, we slavishly followed the customs of our “mother country”, Britain.  We imported livestock (sheep, cattle) and plants foreign to this continent and fashioned kitchen gardens in the style of those in the old country. Vegemite sandwiches, meat pies, lamb chops and three veg (potatoes, peas, carrots) became standard fare. Yet how many of us know that the milky white flowers called “oyster flowers” by Aboriginal people tell them when to move camp to the oyster beds, for this is the time when the oysters are fat and white? Or that when the batwing coral tree flowers and its orange flowers fall, it’s time to go and dig crabs in the mangroves? Or that you can tell when poisonous stingers are present in northern waters by the blooming of a particular flower? Every Aboriginal child was once taught the importance of such natural signs: that the winds, the blooming of plants and the seeding of grasses, and not a fixed calendar of dates and months, herald the change of seasons. How many among us can lay claim to such knowledge and awareness of their environment? As Jennifer Isaacs, author of Bush Food (Ti Tree Press), points out, “Their knowledge has not always been recognised, to the peril of those early European-Australian explorers who died of thirst and starvation close to permanent rock springs or under trees bearing thousands of edible seeds.” At the Australia Day Lunch conducted by the Australia Day Council of NSW last week at the Sydney Convention Centre, a witticism stamped on the program said “Australia is built on meat pies, sausages and galvanised iron.” Amusing, yes, but it set in train many questions for me. As Michael Symons, author of “One Continuous Picnic”, said of the meat pie, “(it’s)  borrowed, crude, of dubious contents, portable, factory made and by mostly foreign manufacturers.” Fortunately things have begun to change.  Since Symons first published his pioneering book over three decades ago, the way we eat and cook has matured in many ways, and we have made a tentative start to incorporate native foods and spices in our food. Books such as Juleigh Robins’ “Wild Lime” and “Wild Food” are leading the way, and just last week a new retail outlet called Wild Basket opened on Sydney’s lower north shore. Owned and operated by former Macquarie Bank employee, Kristy Robinson and her husband Trent, their philosophy is to support our local food heroes as well as having a strong focus on native Australian ingredients, some of which include A Taste of the Bush, Australian Capers, Basically Wild Sauces and Kurrajong Native Foods. It’s a timely concept.