Sharon Winsor has spent 30 years sharing her knowledge of native Australian food. Her business Indigiearth sells lemon myrtle, salted dukkah and bush tomatoes, and she regularly hosts native dining events in Mudgee and Sydney. This month, she’s presenting a first-of-its-kind Australian Native Food festival at Sydney’s Carriageworks.
The festival has been a labour of love for the Ngemba Weilwan woman, who first presented the idea to Carriageworks five years ago.
“They loved the idea and we were actually going to do it back then, but obviously the year that Covid hit it got pushed to the side like most things did,” Winsor says.
More than 20 First Nations vendors will have market stalls at the festival, alongside chef demonstrations from well-known culinary figures including Kylie Kwong, Bruce Pascoe and Ben Shewry, as well as weaving workshops run by Ngumpie Weaving.
Winsor says she has always wanted to do something like this to celebrate native foods, “to give back to my people and culture … and to support the industry on a bigger scale”.
She says it can be challenging to find venues willing to host an event this size. When conceiving of the festival, she initially approached a number of other people and places, and found “not everyone understands our vision or sees or believes in what we do as blackfellas”.
“Sometimes we just have to back ourselves and go ahead with it,” she says.
To program the festival, Winsor reached out to “people [who have] built their careers using native ingredients and to people I’ve worked with and know in the industry,” she says. This time, she did not get knocked back – everyone she reached out to said “absolutely – we’re there”.
The festival runs on 27 and 28 September, with workshops and demonstrations both days. Aunty Beryl Van-Oploo, an elder and native ingredient master who founded the Indigenous catering company Yaama Barrgay, will give a demonstration with Kwong on the Saturday, and Gomeroi/Guumbraay woman Kerrie Saunders will join Pascoe for a demonstration on Sunday.
“I wanted to be able to bring in people like Kerrie Saunders and Raylene Brown [founder of Kungkas Can Cook] from Alice because they’re women I’ve known for a very long time and who’ve done so much hard work in the industry,” Winsor says.
The event is an opportunity for Winsor to show the industry “that we are still here” and “our women who’ve grown up black, they’ve done the hard yards, they’re our grassroots and they don’t get the opportunities they deserve”.
Some of the festival’s events are ticketed, but many aspects will be free and open to the public. There will be a diverse range of native Australian foods for sale, alongside native plants that visitors can take home from the festival’s nursery. Indigiearth is also running a pop-up cafe, serving dishes such as oysters with green ants and finger lime pearls.
“I specifically curated this event to happen in September because it’s a new season for us and that new beginning, new ceremony, new life cycle,” Winsor says. It’s a good time to try lemon myrtle, which is in season, “but there’s plenty of wattleseed at the moment and plenty of quandong fruit around too,” she says.
When Winsor established her native food business three decades ago, she navigated many misconceptions about bushfoods. “It’s much more than just an ingredient on a plate,” she says. “People don’t realise that it’s medicine, that we’ve got over 6,000 edible native species, that connects us to so much more.”
Australian Native Food festival runs on 27 and 28 September at Carriageworks in Sydney. Entry is free; registration is required. Chef demonstrations are ticketed
